I have found a great pattern magazine called Otterbre Design. They have great patterns for boys, girls, babies... etc.. They Mag. is about $15.00 but there are tons of patterns for you to trace and use. My husband does not mind that I buy them..(I have only bought a few.. if I know I will make something more than once) Also, Kwik Sew has some cool boy patterns, shirts, shorts etc.
I did the math myself and I am saving a lot of money by making it myself. I bought a bread machine at a resale shop for $6. (Salvation Army stores here usually have several sitting around for $5) I buy flour on sale for about $1/5 lb. bag. I go in with a friend on yeast in bulk from Sam's club and keep it in the freezer. The bread recipe I use uses 1 cup milk, 1 egg, 1/3 cup sugar, 3/4 tsp. salt, 2 Tbs. butter, 3 cups flour and 2 1/2 tsp. yeast. That makes a 2 lb. loaf and I might only make a few loaves a month since the slices are larger and we can cut one slice in half for a sandwich. Note: the only time this would not save me money is if I can get a cart full of expiring bread from the bread store for $2.50. They used to have a lot available, but they have since been able to streamline their orders for less waste. Good-bye great deals and hello bread machine.
Thanks for the recipe Brooke! I'll try it later! Our bread loaves are $1.97, but we use alot of it. Shelby-Thanks for the sewign pattern sites!! I love them!!! I'm hoping to make a couple of loaves of bread today and clean out the garage! UGH!!
Meg2006, if you have a Hancock Fabrics, they run their patterns on sale for $1 or $1.99 from time to time. Some of the other fabric stores may do the same. If you don't have a store nearby, check their sales online.
I got this recipe from someone else here at the Spot...it is now my go-to easy cheap recipe. http://allrecipes.com/recipe/portuguese-sweet-bread-i/detail.aspx
I'm coming in late! We pay cash for groceries. This REALLY makes a difference!!! I dont let dh go grocery shopping. And I'm also trying to go buy more at Aldi's. I've recently started cutting coupons again, but am still selective about what I buy. For example, there were granola bars on sale the other day and I had a double coupon. Even with that, the store brand were cheaper, so I let them go.
Jackie, Better late than Never! LOL We shop at Aldi all the time! That's the only place we go to shop. The only things we get at WallMart is TP, Diapers, and wipes. We do a big shopping trip in the city at Aldi, then if we run out of anything we can zip by WalMart, but we try not to run out! lol. I don't think we're going to be able to put a clothesline in our backyard since our property is rented, but I am cleaning out the garage so I can string it across and dry the clothes. I can't imagine what the neighbors (excepting our landlords, bc their super nice) will say! They'll be AGHAST!!! (Yes this makes me secretly happy.)
Sure wish we had a aldi's down here I would do so much there and save tons and tons of money on my grocery every week. I do coupons but you have to be very careful with them. Sometimes they don't pay off. We have no stores down here that will double coupons. Coupons, I fine are getting hard to find. Ones that we use. I don't care what people say I don't go buy all that stuff unless we need it. One lady was telling me she gets it all the time and if family don't use she trys and find someone that will or throws it away. Don't believe in that maybe if I had more money I would. I don't know. LOL
I've got a big list for Giant Eagle for this week, with coupons and sales. So today, dh decided that he wanted to cook hotdogs outside, since it's so nice. They're BIG at Giant Eagle, so I told him we'd go there and I'd do my major shopping I wanted. Got there, and they had VERY LITTLE in stock!!! The "final blow" was when I wanted Ocean Spray 100% Cran-Grape. Turns out they didn't even CARRY IT!!!! (But they had PLENTY of Pomgranate/Grape!) So I said the heck with it, and left. I called another GE around the corner, and they DO carry it, so I'll go there tomorrow.
I ran into that same problem at Winn-Dixie, Jackie. I made a whole list of sale stuff and they had very little of it in stock. There's a bigger one further away, but I've decided that for our area, Walmart really has the best prices. And I HATE grocery shopping at Walmart.
Giant Eagle has the worse prices overall. But if stick with what's on sale, especially if there are coupons, too. I've found this really cool place called Stretching A Buck. It's a web page, but I'm not going to post the link because it's for Central Ohio, so it wouldn't do any of you any good. (If anyone in Central Ohio reads this and is interested, PM me and I'll send it to you!) ANYWAY, the gal takes the ads for each store and notes which coupons you can use with them. She'll tell you which coupon fliers the item is in, or will give you the link to e-coupons or on-line print coupons. She'll let you know when you can use more than one (ie: a store coupon and a manufacture's coupon).
The two best ways I've found to save money (besides actually knowing the difference between a need and a want which so many people don't these days!) is: 1. invest in the big things that will save you money over time 2. know what you can (and can't) buy used/generic Like an HE washer-saves not only on water/power but also on detergent. I paid a lot for my printer but the ink cartridges for it are only $1 and it's a jam up printer which having a good printer saves me from having to buy workbooks and curriculum as much because I can print out free resources! I buy almost all of our clothes used. I don't buy used shoes or underwear. I won't buy generic TP or cleaning supplies. I buy cleaning supplies once a year (usually) I clean my whole house with just a few cleaners (which also saves money) so this saves the $4 here, $3 here, $10 here that was coming out of our food budget. I clean almost everything in my house with dawn dish soap, murphy's oil soap or windex. Then I use Allen's naturally for washing laundry and with an HE washer, $50 worth of Allen's will last me 2 years! (I made my own before I discovered Allen's) I also have a smartkleen laundry ball for smaller loads (those last 365 washes) Cook from scratch, don't eat out, when you do eat out order water, know when kids eat free, etc. Bread machine and flour from Sam's club save us a fortune! LOL We also don't have a month TV bill ($79/year for Amazon Prime) or monthly cell phone bill (pay as you go-if I can't afford it then I do without a cell phone and I do survive just fine without an iPhone glued to my hand) VERY few people on the planet actually NEED a smart phone, but if you get suckered into one...there is that lovely data package each month that is a total rip off. I have a free phone, unlimited talk, text and web for $50/month.
We don't eat out as often as we used to. Now my husband and I will have a 'date night' or one of us will take one of the kids out for dinner. That saves us alot.
Found out this morning our income will be dropping by $117p/w so back to trimming the budget. Baby#3 is due end of June start of July. Anyway, http://www.favoritefreezerfoods.com/index.html has been helpful for us. And my husband's aunty says if she has vegies that are going soft she chops them up and chucks them in a container that lives in the freezer. When the container is full she makes soup. We got cloth nappies for $12 each, instead of the $30-40 ones our friends all got. Instead of buying a sleep sack for our 2nd child I bought a 2nd hand single 100% wool blanket and turned it into a double layer sleep sack, cost $5. ETA: You can water a new bottle of vinegar down with water (50:50) and leave it for a few days and it will return to full strength. Great if you use a lot of vinegar for cleaning
This also works for when you just have a half-serving of veggies leftover at a meal. When it's so small amount that you toss them instead of saving, put them into that same container. When it's full, you make soup. My kids called it "Leftovers Soup", lol!
I do this, too. Usually there a bit of a leftover roast that I throw in too. I also freeze small servings of soups and chili that are leftover. We pull them out for lunches or for a hodge podge meal when our grocery budget has been stretched as far as possible. If onions or peppers are on sale, I buy extra and chop them up and freeze them. Those work great on taco or fajita nights.
DAG!!! I just typed a whole response that I lost! WAHHHH!!!! 1. Instead of buying the pre made, proportioned SF jello for my husband, I bought the 4 oz glad ware containers and I make my own and pre portion in that for him to take to work. 2. Instead of buying the pre packaged V8 cans, I buy a large bottle and use the 8 oz jelly jars to portion out so that my husband can take to work - or I can grab and drink/take out with me. 3. I do not buy proportioned snacks for the kids when possible. I buy a large bag, the kids have containers to pack snacks when we're going somewhere - and if we're going to be somewhere where it will be hard to hold onto the containers after they eat (i.e. a gymnastics meet), I use snack sized zippy bags from the dollar store. 4. I do not buy cookies, brownies, etc. for the kids. I MAKE them. It's much cheaper. 5. I DETEST throwing away food. So I try really hard not to do that. We have "leftovers" night where we clean out the fridge of left overs and everyone can have a little of everything or all of one thing. And whatever's left gets thrown in a soup or casserole that is frozen for a later meal! 6. We have a local produce place that is super cheap, but sometimes you have to buy a bag of things if you only need one. But sometimes buying in bulk creates waste. So I try to find other uses for those foods...or plan around it. For example, I recently bought a bunch of veggies to make tomato soup, which left me with 4 or 5 red peppers. So I looked up recipes that I could use those red peppers in. Ended up finding another soup recipe that I had all the other ingredients for, so I made it, too and froze it for another time. I try to make a lot of things from scratch. Even salad dressings, etc. OH....I don't buy little trash bags for all our little trash cans around the house, I either use the store bags OR don't use any bag, and once a week my son goes around with a large one to collect all the trash from the smaller cans. Hmmmm.....If I think of anything else, I'll let you know!!!!
I wanted to add, too.... I have a Swiffer (the standard one) and instead of buying the pads for them, I actually just use plain white washcloths (got 18 of them for $4 from Walmart like 2 years ago). Also, I used to have a Swiffer Wet-Jet but what bothered me is I had to buy their solutions and their pads (well, our dollar store had the pads, but they were $1 for 4 pads). SO...hubby bought me a Libman Freedom Mop (on sale w/ coupon!). It has a rewashable pad (and I'm buying a couple extra so I always have a clean one on it), and you can use your own solution instead of having to buy theirs. I have concentrated Mr. Clean floor stuff, and a capful makes a quart - which lasts at least through 4 cleanings.
We call our freezer container of leftovers made into soup "Free soup" cause it's food that has been cooked, ate and left overs would have gone bad and thrown out-the cost of that food was for the original meal, so the cost of the soup is free! It makes me feel extra frugal. LOL
