Digital coupon deals, cooking and sewing

Hello everyone, 

I went to Dollar General today and did some super simple digital coupons deals.  The coupons can be added to your account either on their webpage or the Dollar General app.  When you check out, just put your cell phone number in the keypad and the coupons subtract, no paper or clipping needed.  

We needed both vitamins and trash bags so I made sure to go this Saturday, when there was a $5/25 Coupon.  

I found this deal, spelled out by Greg, the Coupon Dude (his blog is on my sidebar) and I did it just as he said.  

My total cash spent was $13.71

And I submitted my receipt on the CheckOut51 app and got back $4 for the Centrum vitamins.  

If you have a Dollar General near you and you need household supplies,  I think DG is the best place to get good and easy deals.  

Last night for supper, we had traditional crunchy tacos and a homemade chocolate pie.  

I don’t normally make pie, let alone 2 pies in 1 week, but 2 pie-crazy grandsons were here that evening and I thought I’d just make  second one.  

This one approved! And the other one did too but I didn’t get his photo.  Grandpa liked the pie too.  

Sewing

Ducky got a second fleece sweater, inspired by another grandson who is crazy about Captain America. 

I’m not sure Ducky loves it.  He seems to be saying “ are the kind of owner that is going to dress me up in silly costumes” 

I also sewed up 4 pillow shams for my son from a quilt with a hole in it.  

See the hole?  

Make it do, wear it out, use it up or do without.  

Baking, cleaning, sewing

Good evening everyone 

I’ve done very little baking this holiday season except for Christmas cookies.  

My husband mentioned he would like some pie.  There were still 6 Homemade crusts in the freezer made around Thanksgiving.  So I thawed out 2 and used the last 2 cans of cherry pie filling in the pantry and baked 1 cherry pie.  

I’m so glad I baked it on a foil covered cookie sheet.  That bubbled over juice would of been a mess in the bottom of the oven.  

Below are AFTER photos of the laundry room clean up.  

All the cabinets were wiped down with wood cleaner and the appliances got spray cleaner and Majic Eraser as needed. 

The clothespins were just loose in the black chicken rack on the wall.  I had a few extra mugs so I filled them with clothespins and 3 of them just fit on that little shelf.  

We have an assortment of lightbulbs,  once I removed them from their packages, they all fit in one basket.  

I laid down the spray cans which makes them easy to see what’s there and they are held in place with a heavy bag of craft rocks.  

Baskets of candles for emergencies

Brown paper sacks and jigsaw puzzles

Cleaning rags and clothes hangers 

This cabinet got some much needed new shelf paper 

And so did the drawer-

  I bought the Zote soap quite awhile ago.  I don’t like homemade laundry detergent so I’m not sure what I’ll do it with it.  

The other side for the laundry room- the clothespin bag on the wall is used as a trash can,  I put a plastic store bag inside and put dryer lint, etc in there.  There is no room on the floor for a regular trash can as this laundry room is narrow and a pass through from our garage into the rest of our home. 

And that’s our laundry room,  all 15 or so square feet of it.  It’s not big but I’m very thankful to have it ❤️

It’s so cold here! Ducky needed a sweater so I sewed up a super quick and simple one with a fleece scrap.  It’s just a tube, one seam on the underside that I finished off flat, and 2 slits for his front legs.  The bag end is rounded off so it doesn’t get in his way when he’s doing his business.  

End of the year catch up

Hello everyone, I didn’t Blog much in December but that seems to be almost the norm for a lot of bloggers like me.  I’m still here and we’re all fine.  

I am still shopping at CVS.  In fact, one of my plans is to shop for everything a lot more carefully.  

This is what I bought early this Sunday morning, on our way to church....

Before the total was a lot, about $130 ish.  

I had a few coupons, some extracarebucks from previous weeks,  some coupons from the CVS red box and 2 emailed coupons, a $10/60 and 30% off non sale items.  

After all deductions, I paid $32 in cash and got back $32 in Extracarebucks (that was just a coincidence the amounts were the same. ) 

One very easy deal for every CVS card holder is to get the $3.99 toothpaste Coupon from the CVS app and load it to your CVS card.  It makes a tube 100% free. 

Some other careful shopping was how I spent $70 in birthday money.  (My Birthday was a few days before Christmas and I turned 60 😱) 

I shopped sales and used coupons as well as a military discount at Rack Room Shoes.  

The sandals and boots were both originally $69 a pair. 

At Bath and Body Works, the big candles were in sale for $10 and I used a $10/40 Coupon. 

The double wall water bottle is from Walmart and was just $4.94

And I have $5 left

We are having really cold weather right now,  like most of North America, and the boots are really keeping my feet warm and cozy.  

With the New Year,  I have plans to do several home projects, like organizing.  

These are before photos of my laundry room.  I cleaned it all up Wednesday but haven’t had a chance to take after photos yet because.......

......my husband was out of town, 2 grandsons came to stay for a couple days,  we had an impromptu birthday party for my dad and............

We adopted a new puppy.  A friend posts him on Facebook.  He was found in the country and his owners couldn’t be found.  We suspect he was dumped off. 

She told me he was a sweetheart, but her parents couldn’t keep him because they were getting ready to downsize to a motor home.  

So I got him because he looks like a perfect pup for our home.  

He’s been to the Vet.  He weighed 7 pounds, could  be 6 weeks to 9 weeks old,  may be schnauzer or wire hair terrior and some mutt. He had worms and was treated for those and for his first puppy shot like a trooper. 

He’s eating great and doing good with house training.  He was around 5 grandchildren at one time and their noise and noisy toys didn’t bother him a bit.    

 our new puppy Ducky 

So,  I’ll take the laundry room after photos soon and Hopefully lots other before and after was January goes on.  

I’ll update my 100 day sewing challenge too. 

Goodbye for the last time in 2017.  

Very easy Faux Gingerbread houses

First, this is not my original idea.  I’ve seen variations of them in multiple places.     

I bought a box of Aldi graham crackers and broke them all to make squares.  

Each house uses 6 squares.  If you use every cracker in an Aldi box, there will be just enough for 9 houses. 

Then I made some Royal Icing with 4 cups powdered sugar, 3 egg whites and 1 teaspoon cream of tarter.  I used a hand mixer to beat it.  The recipe said for 5 minutes but mine was “right” after 30 seconds.  

Now,  take 6 cracker squares and shape your houses, using the icing to hold the pieces together,  you could use a bag but I used a knife for some and just dipped the edges for some.  You will have to hold the pieces for a few seconds while they set but mine set up fast.  

Each house was made on a disposable plate.  

Then I looked to see what candy was lingering in our pantry.  I found plenty.   I opened or unwrapped as needed and put the candy on divided dishes.  

Then I called in the 5 grands that were here.  

The houses are very simple but these were two were very excited about them.  

I sat with them and spread the icing on their houses so they could stick on candy.  

This was fun and much simpler than baking a gingerbread head from scratch.  

Any old candy is fine.  The kids didn’t are at all that they had a jumble of candy with no rhyme or reason,  they just like the hands on decorating part.  

December 2- More Christmas things

There were 17 family members visiting today, 19 total counting me and my husband.  

The grands like to craft so we did 2 craft projects. 

One was painting wood ornaments from a kit that I bought on clearance after Christmas 2016.  

Serious painting going on..........

Great grandpa Richard with his namesake baby Richard James or RJ,  didn’t paint but they had fun being outside.  

The finished ornaments- a few by adults, others by 2, 4, 5 and 7 year olds.  

The other craft was inspired by Pinterest and craft supplies I had on hand.  I used wood popsicle stick, with 3 held together with hot glue.  Then I spray painted them silver. My first plan was to paint them white but I had silver paint on hand so silver is what I used.  I did this before kiddos arrived.  

The kiddos used white school glue, glitter and sequins to decorate them.  

I’m so glad it was warm and only a very light breeze blowing.  We did all the crafting outdoors so the glue, paint and glitter mess stayed outside.  

No photos, but lunch was chili in the big crockpot with corn chips, crackers, cheese and sour cream for toppings,  a fresh fruit tray and some raw veggies with dip.  Dessert was cookies made with a hello cake mix and mini M&Ms and brownies made from a Berry Crocker mix.  

After lunch,  I took a nap with this 2 year old cutie. ❤️ she is the easiest napped of all 8 grands.  

My daughter said the photos I posted yesterday left her a bit confused so here is a full length photo of the dining table.  

Merry Christmas again everyone.  

I may post more but it may be after Christmas.  Who Knows?  I’ll just play it by ear.

Hello everyone,  we have had 3 busy weekends in a row and this weekend is also going to be busy

Life just gets busy this time of year, doesn’t it?  

I’ve had ideas for blog posts but just haven’t had the opportunity to actually do the posts.  

We did put out ours Christmas decorations this week so I’ll show them.  

We have 2  Nativity sets,  this one with tall ceramic figures made by a dear friend years ago.  

This plastic set was bought our first married Christmas at Kmart in Oceanside California.  The pieces are very durable as all our children played with it and it doesn’t look too worse for wear.  Son Bobby made the stand for the angel when he was about 10.  He cut and bent a clothes hanger to make it and I’ve used it ever since then.  

My brother makes us a fresh evergreen wreath every year and he delivered it yesterday.  

We rearranged the living room and I am so happy with how much roomier it seems.  

The white tree is new this year, purchased at Hobby Lobby.  

You know how women usually prefer clear white tree lights and men usually like colored lights? 

This tree has a big selling point——-

The lights are programable and can be clear or multicolor, they can be continuous or they can blink in several patterns.  

My mother in law’s thing has always been Christmas ornament collecting,  she’s done it so long and has several thousand.  Now,  she is starting to downsize a little.  She asked which ones we wanted and I chose the Campbell soup balls as my grandparents were Campbells.  

These balls are fragile and we decided to use them on this silver tree as a centerpiece.  This tree is very sturdy so I’m not worrying about them.  The limbs must be heavy wire under the tinsel and don’t sag at all when things are hung on them.  We bought the silver tree at Pier 1, maybe 10 years ago.  

The Campbell Soup Kids are different on every ball but they all seem happy, kind and of course cute.  

That’s the extent of our decorating this month.  

And if you don’t see any posts from me for awhile, maybe even until Christmas, it’s only because life is busy right now.  I’ll be back blogging when extra activities slow down.  

Merry Christmas everyone,  even if today is just December 1.  

🌲

Baking with a souvenir and a thrifty tip

We didn’t really do any shopping on our recent trip except for a few groceries that we ate in our condo rental. 

We stopped at the College of the Ozarks as we left Branson.  We had their very fancy brunch buffet which was truly first rate and just delicious. 

In their gift shop area, we bought a bag of stone ground cornmeal.  They raise the corn and grind it there at the college.  

It’s even in a muslin bag.  

I wanted to try it so I baked cornbread muffins for our supper. 

I used our favorite recipe, this cornbread is just slightly sweet and perfect to eat with soup or stew.  

It was easy to find my recipe since I redid my recipes a month or so back.  

Most of the recipes are ones I’ve had a while.  I prefer recipes that just use ingredients, over recipes that call for a package of something or prepared storebought ingredients.  Basic recipes are usually the thriftiest and they are also best for homemakers like me that keep a pantry.   

 Below are the finished cornbread muffins and the pot of vegetable beef soup.  

Close up of the soup - I used some cooked roast beef from the freezer, onion, celery, carrots, cabbage, potatoes, corn, canned diced tomatoes and some beef bouillon.  

Thrifty tip - some produce is priced per pound and some is priced per item.  

Aldi’s cabbage was $1.19 a head.  It was very obvious that the heads were very different sizes so I picked out the biggest one I saw.   

My head was marked as weighing 2.5 pounds.  I knew it was bigger so I weighed it when I got home.  

It weighed almost 4 pounds!  

So when produce is priced per item,  look them over and pick out the biggest or heaviest one to get the most for your money.