And more groceries...

So I've been feeling guilt over my groceries (you know me, always looking for a reason to feel guilty). I look at my pantry and everything is in a cardboard box....hamburger helper, instant potatoes. cake mix, instant oatmeal, granola bars, not to mention all of the cereal...all processed food in a box. OK maybe not all..I do have some in cans. :-) My guilt is over the amount of processed food that we now consume. Before I started ultra couponing, I would make homemade stroganauf instead of the stroganauf that comes in a box or I would make homemade stew instead of stew in a can. I am spending about the same amount of money, except now my pantry has much more food in it. So I feel a conflict here. The last couple of weeks I have tried to stock up on items that I use in recipes so that I can have some sort of a balance. I stocked up on pasta, butter, cheese, eggs, potatoes and more fruits instead of fruit snacks. This week I still saved a good amount--not as much as in the past, but I am still happy with it considering I had a different focus in mind. I still bought those evil capt crunch cereals . --I still have some capt crunch coupons and some life coupons if anyone wants them.

Here is some of my savings...

8 boxes of Life cereal
72 string cheeses
2 dozen eggs
5 lbs apples
4 lbs bananas
5 bags of tortilla chips
5 captain crunch
8 Fiber granola bars
6 Pace salsa ($4 each and I got them free!! YEAH!)
10 bottles of suave body wash
3 lbs of butcher bacon
4 wheat thins
6 boxes of taco shells
3 capri sun
2 ball park franks
3 packages of hot dogs
2 lbs of cheese
5 refried beans


Total Spent: $117.04
Total Saved: $199.44

These groceries will feed my entire family for the weekend. (Woo hoo!! All of my sisters, brother and parents plus the nieces and nephews. :-D )I don't think I'll need to go to the store for anything. This total does not include what I purchased at Lins. I was able to get 8 lbs of London broil to cut into steaks for my family this weekend. I was also able to purchase 10 lbs of day old ground beef at 1.29 a pound (it was regularly 2.99 a pound). Plus buns and marinades. I spent 39.75 at Lins but I'm not smart enough to figure out the savings.

Adventures with salt

Salt is a curious thing. It’s small and square and although it doesn’t feel good on a paper cut we still sprinkle it onto our food. Well, lately salt has been my friend.

Salt has made my life so much easier. My third boy, Ben, loves eggs. LOVES THEM. He loves to eat them almost as much as he loves to throw them. One of the things that he is famous for is grabbing the carton of eggs and then sneakily he will hide somewhere in the house and throw them all over the floor. Thankfully he has only catapulted them in non-carpeted areas. He waits until the perfect moment. It is when I am happily reading to the other boys or taking care of business on the computer. His brothers are usually distracted with other projects. His dad is generally not home when these incidents occur. However, dad has been fortunate enough to witness them a few times. It’s the sounds that always give it away. At first I would think that it was newspaper being crumpled up. But now I know better. That’s not newspaper that I hear. After hurling myself to the kitchen to see the disarray, the truth of the sound is revealed to me. It is not newspaper being crumpled up. Yes it is Ben gleefully watching the eggs splat on the floor. He sees me and instead of trying to escape the wrath of mom, he quickly throws as many eggs as he can. Then he scampers and hides beneath one of the kitchen chairs while I scream in anguish over my newly splattered kitchen. On the bright side, I have learned how to successfully clean up raw eggs. After all, cleaning up that stringy, gooey sludge was not exactly what I had envisioned as part of my day. I soon discovered that it would take several paper towels to get one egg off of the floor, and as everyone knows, I’m cheap. And I value those paper towels! My laziness and frugality was in conflict with the egg mess. I needed a solution so that my frustration and inertia could live simultaneously. Salt was the answer. When salt is generously sprinkled on the raw egg and then let sit for a minute or two, the egg congeals and then with a single paper towel, the egg comes right off the floor.—disinfect afterwards of course. With salt, I was able to pry Ben out from under the chair and instead of being crazy frustrated with him, I was able to logically/rationally/lovingly deal with him. I was also able to quickly clean up a mess that previously would have me pulling my hair out. I love salt.

Salt made me laugh the other day. The salt shaker was empty. So the logical thing to do was to fill it full of salt. I turn over the salt shaker, remove the stopper and commenced to fill the shaker with salt. I keep pouring salt and pouring more salt….and more salt. How in the world is all that salt fitting into the shaker! Well, it is then I realize that the salt will pour out of the salt shaker through those little holes when tipped upside down and salt will end up all over the floor. At least it was salt and not eggs that I had to clean up.

I love salt!

Spring Break

Happy St. Patrick's day! The kids made us a SPLENDID green breakfast. It ain't easy being green! (especially if you're orange juice!)


It has been so nice having Cory around a few extra days during his spring break from school. We have utilized him greatly. :-) Yesterday he fixed a loose drawer and shelf--more room for groceries now!! YEAH! Then he took the boys outside and did some big time yard work. They cleaned out dead leaves and branches, threw away garbage and really freshened up our fire pit area for the family next week (I'm going to see if I can get Ray to do some dutch oven...mmmmmm).




Then today we helped celebrate Emmitt's birthday by playing over at Red Cliffs and eating some yummy cake. The cake was so incredibly cool looking that it was hard to want to eat it...(but its cake so the sacrifice was made. :-)


Time flies but Mark is already 6 weeks old! He is getting so cute as he starts smiling.

2 months ago....

I looked like this...

A friend of ours took these in her studio. I just love them! I've never been one to want to have my picture taken. I was always the one shirking in the background hoping not to be noticed. I always felt like the fattest one there and so I didn't want to be seen. Well, a friend of mine lost a sister-in-law/friend in a plane crash last year. And she said that they were so grateful to have pictures of her so that they can enjoy them now. Well, it got me thinking and looking for pictures of me, and well, I couldn't find hardly any! So, I decided to let myself be in pictures and to even smile in them! With my other three pregnancies the only pictures that I have of myself is when I'm in labor or scowling at the camara.--none of them are very flattering. So this time I wanted it to be different. And since I don't know if I'll be having any more children, I wanted to have some good pictures of what I looked like while pregnant.

I've been tagged!

Keri tagged me...and everyone I would have tagged. Oh well..its still fun.

The Eight Mysteries of Me
Here are the rules:
1) Post rules on your blog
2) Answer the six '8' items
3) Let each person know by leaving them a comment.

8 favorite TV shows:
1. Biggest Looser
2. Glen Beck
3. Hannity
4. Jerico
5. Brady Bunch
6. Law and Order
7. That show where they tear down a family's house and build them a new one...what was it called?? i forget, but it makes me bawl!
8. uuhhh..did I mention we disconnected the tv??? I don't remember anymore!


8 Things I did today:
1. Slept for 3 hours...total
2. Prepared sharing time and performed it
3. played Wacky 6...and lost
4. read to the kids
5. talked with Cory
6. wished for a nap
7. missed my Dad
8. freaked out that Luke only has 7 1/2 years till his mission...so little time to teach him SO MUCH!!!

8 Things I'm looking forward to:
1. Finishing the book Understanding the Times
2. Finishing Macbeth
3. Bottling chicken tomorrow
4. Memorizing this week's poem
5. Tuesday with Cory
6. A baby sleeping through the night
7. Ice cream after the kids are in bed (yep I'm not sharing tonight..I'm so mean)
8. sleep


8 Favorite Resturants
1. Applebees
2. Olive Garden
3. Famous Daves
4. Fall River Cafe
5. Cafe Rio
6. Luke and James' cooking night
7. Katy's house
8. Mom's house


8 Things on my wish list:
1. sleep
2. ice cream that doesn't make me gain weight
3. a clean kitchen
4. the laundry done
5. time to attend GWU
6. a new pair of jeans
7. to have primary staffed for "ONE WEEK!"
8. world peace

February Grocery Totals

This month I thought it would be fun to show my grocery bill for the entire month. At the end of January, Cory's work decreased his hours and so the need for us to be frugal was very much on my mind. My grocery "goal" or budget (I hate that word!) is about $100 a week. Two of my trips were significantly over that amount (see post below) but I easily made up for it with the weeks that I didn't do any shopping. So it balances out. We have a great Ward Preparedness Specialist who has kept me inspired and excited about saving money. I will be forever grateful for my wonderful sister for teaching me how to save money--and never complaining when I pepper you with questions. LOVE YOU KATY!

So, here are my totals for groceries for the month of February.
Among the savings is 26 cans of biscuits at .25 each
10 boxes of wheat thins/triscuits for $1 each
13 boxes of totino pizza rolls at .65 each
20 cans of Hunt's tomatoes at .60 each
plus a ton more :-)

Spent: 279.53

Saved: 793.52

Where's the fire extinguisher?!?!?!

Ok...so we had cake and ice cream for my 25th (plus 8) birthday. The boys and I made a yummy yummy cake and they INSISTED on having candles. Ugh. Candles. Well...as you can see we almost burnt the house down with the HUGE fire! HUGE! It was a moment. No my tears did not put out the candles. (at least not that I'll admit.)


For my birthday my wonderful, sweet, amazing, very cute (I admit it he's sexy ) husband gave me my own portable dvd player. So now, I can take it with me and watch a movie anywhere I want! YEAH! I'm sure he'll regret it next time we're traveling up to Idaho and I whip it out with A&E's Pride and Prejudice. It will almost be heaven!

I also received a cook book complied from wards all over the world. It is FANTASTIC! We found the cake recipe in it that we used tonight.

Snickers Cake (sounds good doesn't it!!)
Here is the recipe--in my own words since its in the other room and I'm to lazy to go get it because I'm full of cake.
Take a chocolate cake mix and mix it like instructed.
Pour half of it into a greased pan and bake for 15 minutes at 350*.

While its baking, melt a large bag of caramels (12 oz bag), 1/3 cup milk and 1/2 cup butter.
Melt it all together until smooth.

When the cake is done, remove it from the oven and pour the caramel mixture on. Followed by a cup of crushed nuts (we used almonds) and a cup of chocolate chips. Then pour the rest of the cake batter on top.

Bake at 200* for 20 minutes, then 375* for 10 minutes.
After it cools, you can frost it. It was really good, and really rich. But so easy to make!