Easy coupon shopping at Dollar General, with no paper coupons

hello everyone.
Have you tried shopping at Dollar General with their great sales and electronic coupons?  I've been going there almost every week since I discovered how easy and how great the discounts are.
Saturday,  I bought all this

 And paid just $8.99 for all of it.  

I used just coupons on the Dollar General website/app.  

There are some more similar deals with this week,  

Greg the Coupon Dude  has spelled it all out in simple terms about which items to buy to get maximum savings.  He has a blog and a YouTube channel that he keeps updated.
I've also added him to my sidebar.

To get started, go online to DollarGeneral.com or download their app to your cell phone.
Set up an account and then add the digital coupons you think you want to use.
Plan your shopping ahead of time for maximum savings.
Then shop at your local Dollar General. Type in your cell phone number at the checkout.
And leave the store with a lot of products for not much money.

About Gain, the original Gain does have a very distinctive scent and I like it.  But I like the other scents even better.  The Island Fresh and Moonlight Breeze are much more subtle scents.  I think the Moonlight Breeze is very similar to Downy's scent and it's my favorite.  There may be even more scents that I'm not familiar with too.

If you make homemade laundry products and they work for you, then you are saving even more than me.  Ive tried 3 different homemade recipes for laundry soap and none of them worked in our water.  Homemade fabric softener left my dryer lint screen gummy.  

Doing stuff at home all day

Today is a holiday in the USA so all the grands were out of school and with their parents.
My husband and I stayed home all day except he was gone for 10 minutes to fill up our car.  Because of Harvey, gasoline has been in short supply in some places.  So just to be careful,  we've been keeping our tanks full.

Last night our dishwasher was making a funny squeak.  We think it was just two dishes scraping against each other but it made me remember I hadn't cleaned the inside of the dishwasher lately.
All dishwashers are different but for ours, both sets of spray arms come out easily and need cleaned as bits of stuff get caught inside.  I also took out the filter pieces and soaked them in vinegar to remover lime deposits.  Our Oklahoma water has lots of lime.
Then,  I poured that vinegar into the dishwasher and ran a short cycle with hottest water,
After, the interior was sparkly clean and there was no more funny squeak.

While I did this job, my husband worked on our slow draining bathroom sinks.  No photos, but he took the plastic drain pipes under the sinks apart and cleaned out "black gunk" with his fingers and an old toothbrush.  Ewww I know,  but I'm thankful he could and would do it.  

In the kitchen,  I made another batch of energy balls.

I cooked 4 pounds of breakfast sausage and then froze them for easy breakfasts.  Half is regular and half is hot sausage.  I put a label on the outside and a foil divider in keep them separate. 

I made a big salad that we will eat Tuesday and Wednesday, also a box of taco toppings that we had with tonight's tacos.

I talked to my daughter a few weeks ago about what clothes her children needed for winter.  One boy needs jeans and her daughter needs a coat.  I remembered this Columbia jacket I bought last year when my favorite thrift store was having their closing sale.  It's clean and soft, should fit Elizabeth fine and keep her warm.
I used a seam ripper to remove the tag that had the previous owners name on it.   Now it's ready for colder days.

My husband finished up a holster he's been working on.He has a Mares Leg pistol that looks like a short rifle.

He used an eagle belt buckle he has had for years. He kind of looks like Marshall Dillon when he modeled it.

We do live in Oklahoma and guns are very common here. But he doesn't walk around with this strapped on.  It's just something to have.
We are very safe with guns.  They are locked away and my husband had so much artillery training as a Marine, he follows every gun safety procedure.

We both enjoy making things and this was a project for him to work on leather.  

I did all our laundry today.  I use the clothes dryer some but I also hang most tops and pants to air dry on hangers.  

I also did some deep cleaning and a little decluttering in the kitchen.

On the table, are some top patterns and a few lengths of fabric. I plan to cut out 3 tops for me.
I like the other tops I've sewn up this summer so much, I don't like it when they all need laundered and I have to wear a store bought top.

This is my list of things I plan to do this week.

I made some progress but I think it will keep me busy all week.

This was a fairly normal day for us, I don't understand when people are bored.  There is always something that needs doing in our home. We have no time to be bored.

Freezers, cooking and zinnias

Good evening everyone.
This month my goal is to eat down our freezer.  We have quite a bit of frozen food on hand,
We are hoping to harvest lots of pecans at our friend's orchard in a couple months and we will store most of them in the freezer.

This is our chest freezer.

From these photos, it looks like we only have ice cream and vegetables.  

But this freezer is 3 feet deep and I promise there is more than enough meat for the month.  

I'll post an inventory later in the week as we are getting a new upright freezer delivered on Wednesday, I think.  Chest freezers are just so hard to organize.  I've been wanting an upright for awhile and have been watching the ads.  Lowes is having a great sale this weekend.  With my husband's military discount and free delivery, were getting a nice upright for about 1/2 of what it would been without careful shopping.  

This chest freezer will get passed on to a son that hunts.  

If you want a new freezer,  this blogger Fun cheap or free is giving one away.  She is doing a challenge she calls "shelf-tember" where she wants people to cook from their pantry shelves and freezer all September and only spend $25 each week on fresh produce, milk, etc.  I'm not following her challenge exactly as we've already done a big grocery shopping trip this month.  But I do plan to not shop much more in September and to cook every meal at home with ingredients we already have.  

So far,  this month we've had barbecue sandwiches and taco bowls both made with cooked roast beef in the freezer and  sausage gravy on freezer biscuits. To avoid eating out,  I packed sandwiches, drinks and snacks when we drove to the commissary to shop.  

I'm pretty most of my blog readers do this kind of scratch cooking anyway.  But I'm guilty of going to the store and buying things we really could easily do without and eating out a convenience instead because it's a special occasion.  Any of you remember when eating out was most always because of a special occasion?

Our zinnias, that I grew from seed,  are doing so well even though summer is almost over.

If you're wanting lots of color in your yard next summer,  I recommend thrifty zinnias started from seed.

I think you readers are some of the nicest people on the internet,  I've gotten so many sweet comments this month and I thank you all ❤️

DIY sewing machine tune up - and LoveNotions pattern #3

I'm not sure when I bought this Necchi sewing machine but I'm guessing it was 6-7 years ago.  I've sewed with it a lot and it's never been serviced. That last dress I made was a tight textured knit fabric and my machine did not like sewing it, the tension looked wrong and it skipped quite a few stitches.
I thought about taking this machine in for service (and sometimes that is the only way) but I really like to just do things myself.
I did some searches about the causes of my stitch goofs.  One is a dirty machine.

So, I got out the brush that came with the machine.  I opened the front door and dusted all those parts.

Then I unscrewed the cover over the bobbin and dusted all that space.

My husband removed the screws on the bottom plate and found lots more lint and dust in there.
He said some canned air would of been good for cleaning the inside too, if we'd had any.

Another cause of skipped stitches might be the wrong needles.  I was using universal needles and they weren't working so I got 2 packs of needles for knits at Joann's.

If you look close, you can see the after stitch- in red at the top of the photo.
Our dusting and $7 in needles resulted in perfect stitches on knit fabric.
This saved at least $50 and 2 trips to the next town where a shop is that services sewing machines.

I've made 2 different Lovenotions.com patterns and liked them both so much. 

Tonight, I started a 3rd- the Cadence.  It is similar to the Laundry Day Tee but it uses woven fabric. 

The patterns can be printed on a home printer and then the pieces taped together.  That's my method, because I like to do things myself.  They can also be printed at a copy place on large sheets so no taping would be involved.

I hope to start cutting out a Cadence soon and I'll post the results. 

I truly like Love Notions because their garments are stylish very easy to sew and they are so easy to fit.  

If you want to try the Laundry Day Tee pattern for free, just join this page on Facebook and you can get the code to get that pattern free.  

August - finishing the month

hello everyone.
We had a family gathering here Sunday after church.  We had 4 generations of family - my parents, my husband's parents, 3 of our children with their spouses and children.
I did a very simple menu but everyone liked it just fine,
We had grilled hamburgers and smoked sausage dogs.
Side dishes were raw veggies and dip and chips.

Very simple buffet 

4 generations of men

2 year old Charlie wanted to sit with her great grandmother. Charlie had her own plate

 of food but she put it all on RoRo's plate 😍 and they shared. 

Sewing- I didn't sew as much as I hoped but I did finish 3 LoveNotions.com laundry day garments.
I made a white top in shirt length with fabric from my stash.

I sewed a tunic and dress from the same pattern with low cost Walmart fabric. 

I also did a few simple sewing projects that got added to my 100 day sewing challenge. 

My daughter has been doing some organizing projects.  This one will help them have smoother mornings.   She has 3 young children and they each get a hanging organizer and shoe box,  the organizers hold their school outfits for each day of the week.

I happened to be in Walmart one morning when they were doing some crazy clearances.  

All of these socks and boys underwear were clearanced to $1. I got enough for all our grands. 

This store had oodles of these and it was fun listening to other shoppers to call people to find out sizes so they could buy for them.  

When my husband and dressed for church, we both ended up wearing red, white and blue.  We tried taking some selfies these next 2 photos are the best of about 30.

Now, welcome September ❤️