P.S. A cookie for whoever identifies the artist/track in the video.

Click on the thumbnails below to see the full shot.

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!

I wanted to share with you two links that I look to for ideas for kids and crafts. The first one is the Crafty Crow and the second one I just found is called Skip To My Lou. I have come across several ideas for this Valentine’s Day from these two blogs, including the “stained glass hearts” we made for our school room window!

Enjoy all the cutting, gluing and glitter!

My dear sister-in-law and mmom have consistently remembered that we are “expecting”. In their own ways they remembered our children in Ethiopia this Christmas season. sis-in-law gave us two children books with multi-racial characters and mmom gave us “There is No Me Without You” and two multi-racial children’s books (plus the gingerbread men!). In an earlier post several months ago I wrote how sad it can be at times when people who you love or are close to don’t even remember that you are expecting a new arrival in the family. I know it is hard for them because they don’t see the evidence of this happening and when you have no name or picture it is hard to relate. I am so happy that some have remembered to celebrate our coming children.

I was also excited to find the GAP (RED) onesies with the word “Treasu(red)” and the continent of Africa. Several months ago when I found out about the product I called our local store and was told it was last year’s product and they had no more. The day after Christmas I was at the mall in NY and was so surprised to walk by a children’s display of the (RED)  line and see some “Treasu(red)” onesies left; plus they were on SALE! I took a gamble and bought a 3-6 month one and a 18-24 month one. I am so excited to have our children wear them!!  It was a nice little reminder from the Lord that He does care about little details.

Also while in New York we had a fun little game where j’s Dad, had saved all his change throughout the year in a jar. We each gave a guess and then sat and counted it all out and rolled the change. In the end, j won because his guess was the closest to the total. So we were able to get some extra money. I’d like to think it would go to the adoption, but I think we’ll have to use it for gas since we’ve done a good bit of traveling over the Christmas holiday!

Our Christmas holiday was extended as we decided to drive up to Maine to see my family. We were sitting at the table in NY several hours before we had to leave to go back to South Carolina and the idea was hatched to come to Maine. My dear husband was in favor and so off we went! Now we are enjoying the snow in Maine.