OK, so we’re a few days late. And the video ended up being almost 20 minutes long. And it’s over 100 Mb.

So, if you don’t make it through, we understand. And if you’re on a slow connection, all apologies. But here it is. The past year in a nutshell. And, at the beginning and end, some back-story, making it 3+ years in 18+ minutes. Not bad.

UPDATE: A few subtitles added to explain a few photos. Canaan now spelled properly.

Storytime! A dear friend of ours – one of the best storytellers of all time, mind you – has a yearly time when she dresses up as the Cat in the Hat for children to adore. Well, today was the day, and c, e and little h went to see. They also had their faces painted while they were there. We have several cats running around the house this afternoon.

Click on the thumbnails below to see the full shot.

Around the beginning of the new year I wanted to work on saving money in the area of groceries. I was launched into a world of frugal mamma blogs and lost in the various drug store reward lingo; just generally amazed at the wealth of information out there. I started printing coupons off the internet and often felt like I was spreading information all over the web in an effort to save some money.

I am quite sure I STILL have much to learn. Just yesterday another Mom told me about a great website to look up. Our family tends to not eat a lot of processed foods or sugary cereals so sometimes I feel like most of the coupons out there don’t help us out much. I don’t have time to go to three or four different grocery stores to get the best deals and it really does take a lot of hours to look up coupons and plan out shopping trips. Now of course, I am just starting and I am sure as time goes on, I’ll get the hang of it!

I’d like to share with you some things that I have particularly found helpful so far in my search. The first is a great new book by a blogger, Mary Ostyn. It is called Family Feasts for $75 a Week and I love it! She starts the book with tips on how she feeds her family of 12 with an exceptionally small amount of money. Throughout the book, which includes 200 recipes, she has ideas on keeping kids happy while out shopping, the most cost effective way to feed breakfast to a large family, shopping tips for navigating grocery stores and places like Costco and other helpful ideas. She has homemade recipes for things like cream of mushroom/chicken soups which I use as a base for crock pot recipes. One thing she is big on is making a price list of all the groceries you purchase. I’ve been documenting the normal price of my groceries at various area stores so I know when a sale is really a good sale. I’ve tried out several of her recipes and my family will heartily agree that they are good.

Another blog I find helpful is done by an old college friend. She collects great deals from various websites so you don’t have to spend a lot of time going to numerous places (of which there are many!). I am sure there are many other people who do the same as Spend Freely, but I am loyal to her blog. In fact, I recently got a coupon book of nice coupons here that Spend Freely posted. If I can get on the ball, I’ll try to let you know about opportunities like this.

The last thing I’ve been doing is called Swagbucks. It is a way to earn prizes such as gift cards to amazon, simply by searching the internet through their search engine. I’ve only been doing it for a month or so and I have a lot of points racked up. I am not going to cash in for a while, but it seems to be worth it. We’ll see how it goes!

So that is the start to my journey of being more careful with grocery spending. If you have any helpful tips feel free to leave a comment, I love hearing from you!