Vocation of Motherhood

Target Shopping Trip

Today I made a quick run to Target and got some great buys! The tortilla wraps were not on sale, but they were a necessity :).

Here's the breakdown:

5 Ocean Spray juices (Light) @ 1.99 ea.
2 jars Pace Picante sauce @ 2.50 ea.
4 baby blankets @ .98 ea.
1 pack tortillas @ 1.74

Used 5 Target 1.00 off coupons for Ocean Spray
and 5 Ocean Spray manufacturer coupons @ 1.00 ea.
These were then FREE!

Used two 4.00 off coupons from the Pace sweeps that I won! This actually applied 3.00 in overage to my other items. So the total after coupons was 2.61(tax was an additional .58!) Pretty amazing :). And now I have some cute baby gifts for the future!

Happy Saving!
Mary in MN

Pizza Making Day

Crystal at Money Saving Mom has inspired me once again to get into the freezer cooking mode. I LOVE LOVE LOVE doing Once A Month Cooking, but it's been a few years and I really need to get back in the saddle with that. In the meantime, I made six pizzas yesterday to freeze and it was a success! Minus the teething baby, of course, but all in all, it turned out well. Here are the photos and the price comparisons....

All the pizzas lined up. I have one other one on the other counter that I made for the boys' after school snack.

See TEETHING BABY wandering around? That was when I escaped his little clutches leg embraces so I could snap some pictures.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, and How
Does Your Kitchen Grow?
With Baby Wails, and Dinner Bells
And Pretty Pizzas All In A Row...

One last piece of information: last week I bought some Red Baron pizzas for 2.50 each (great sale by the way) and after ate some I decided that I needed to stock the freezer with a few of our homemade pizzas.

So after the cost breakdown, I realized I saved spent 3.30 per pizza!!! Aghhh!!! How could I let this happen? We happy to LOVE cheese, and I'm not skimpy with it let me tell you. I also had mushrooms, pepperoni, red onion and a homemade sauce that was tasty. In the end, when I factored in the bread dough I came up with a very rough estimate of 3.30 per pie. Sigh. Oh well! Mr. Dreamy and co. all love the homemade pizza much better than the store bought frozen, so I'm stuck for now!

Happy Cooking!
Mary in MN

P.S. You didn't think I would miss Yona's little contribution, would you?

Freebies in the Mail!

  Tuesday was a fun mail day!! Received some freebies in the mail and of course I have to gush a little bit...

First, there was a Johnsonville sausage promotion a couple of months ago at our local grocery store. When you bought three packs of Italian sausage you could use a 3.00 off coupon in their store. So I did that, and combined it with three other 1.00 manufacturer coupons (stacked a man. coupon with a store coupon). Thus I paid 1.33 per pack of sausage, which was a treat because we don't eat it that often.

In addition, Johnsonville had their own promotion going on. If you purchased three packs of their sausage, you could send in a form to receive a FREE cookbook. I thought, hey, why not? At least I could give it as a gift. So I was surprised to receive a real Sandra Lee cookbook!! I honestly expected a little phamplet or something along those lines! This will be a great gift (ahem.... possibly an addition to my own cookbook collection? I need to try more stuff!).

Then I received a coupon for a FREE Del Monte grapefruit dish. That'll be a nice snack :).

Oh, and Pace Picante sauce is having a sweeps which I one for the SECOND time! I won two bottles of Pace!! Each coupon is worth 4.00, so after buying them at 3.59 I even had a little overage applied to my other groceries :).

Happy Saving!
Mary in MN   

Free Samples of Hyland's Products

Right now we have a baby teething in our home, so it's quite painful for all involved (no pun intended). I was browsing the Hyland's website for a coupon for teething tablets (pretty please???). I wasn't successful in finding a coupon but found some other freebies to request instead. Hyland's is a great homeopathic product... enjoy the freebies! (And make sure you have the RoboForm program downloaded, makes filling out these forms a snap!)

Mary in MN

Swimming In a Sea of Happiness....

Tonight I borrowed the newest issue of Family Circle from a friend. It's the January 2009 and one of the front taglines says, "101 Ways To Get Organized." They are speaking my language!! "After Christmas" is probably my favorite time of year. It is my maximum declutter-and-get-everything-in-order period. I love, love, love all the articles in magazines (I guess I can add "blogs" to that now) that I read about the newest heaven-sent products that will radically change my life for the better.

Tonight after we got all the kiddos to bed I sat down with my magazine immediately started to almost hyperventilate (see above article link and you'll know why!) Eventually I had to get up and start my "calendaring." This is my own term inspired by my love of all things "calendar". I truly enjoy sitting down and getting things on the calendar (with my Sharpie permanent marker of course)! A few years ago I somehow managed to talk myself into a palm pilot. Since then the battery has ceased and so has my use of it. I still have the palm desktop application on the computer and all of my updated contacts and birthdays are in it. So tonight I dutifully copied all the important birthdays into my new google calendar. The google calendar is truly a lifesaver. I'm enjoying it so very much! Especially the automatic email reminders I send to myself. I pre-set the birthdays calendar to send me an email four days prior to a birthday, so I have a little bit of time to get the card in the mailbox. I started a menu calendar too, but so far haven't been on top of it and dinners are not super organized like they should be. We still manage okay but I would  like to eventually get all the meals planned out at least a week ahead of time.

Now we also have a "paper calendar" that we keep on the wall by the kitchen. Underneath I have a wall mounted clear acrylic file holder for various papers and momentos that we need to keep handy when going out. I keep this wall calendar for the benefit of the rest of the family so they can keep somewhat organized. Last year I bought a Gooseberry Patch calendar and it was fine. This year I've reverted back to using a spiritually enriching of our Christian life calendar. I like to surround our family with images that inspire us of the divine, you know?

So now I'm off to follow links even though I should be in bed. Tonight, in the midst of a wonderful Asian meal with some dear friends, we got off to Mass. So tomorrow we shall sleep in and enjoy some nice family down time.

God bless your day and Happy Organizing!
Mary in MN