Tonights Goal

Ok, here is my goal for tonight. I am NOT going to bed until I finish that Thrifty Mama Post! I just needed to write that out loud for accountability! Thanks for letting me pretend someone out there cares. Ok, Ok enough procrastinating I must get started......

Deal Alert

I just got back from Kroger and wanted to tell you about some of the best deals I found. Remember these deals will only be available until Tuesday night.

Of course I am still pumped about the Laura Lean Beef I wrote about earlier. I hope you all took advantage of this deal.

Product, Kroger Sale Price, Coupons Used and Source with Date, Final Price

Boneless Chuck Pot Roast, $1.88 lb (normally $3.79 lb)

I went ahead and picked this up for next weeks Roast Meal

Boneless Top Sirloin Steaks Family Pack, $2.99 lb (normally $7.49 lb)

Wonder Whole Grain Bread, $1

Not the bread I usually get but it was whole wheat so I went ahead and picked up 4

Multigrain Cheerios, 3/$8, Use either $0.75 from coupons.com or $0.50 from 1/18 SS,

Final Price: $1.67 or $1.92

Kellogg's Fiber Plus Bars, $2, Use $0.75 from coupons.com (see sidebar) or $1 from 1/18 RP,

Final Price: $1.25 or $1

French's Worcestershire Sauce, $1, Use $0.50 from 1/18 SS, Final Price: FREE!

Green Giant Frozen Vegetables, $1, Use $0.50 for 2 from 1/4 SS, Final Price: $0.50 each

Quaker Quakes Rice Snacks, $1, Use $1 for 1 from 1/18 RP, Final Price: FREE!

My Favorite deal of the night: Rolaids, $1.59, Use $4 for 2 from 1/4 RP,

Final Price: You make $0.82 Yippie!

Pork Loin was also on sale, I'm sorry I don't remember the price, but I went ahead and bought it instead of the pork tenderloin for the pork dish this week.

Note: I did not take advantage of the deals that required the 1/18 coupons, I'll have to go back for them before Tues if I want to take advantage of those deals.

Note: Kroger doubles all paper coupons up to 0.60
* Your newspaper inserts come from 3 different sources: RedPlum (RP), Smart Source (SS) and Proctor and Gamble (PG)
** At Kroger.com you can load your Kroger Card with coupons from 3 different sources: shortcuts.com (s.cuts), P&G esavers (esaver), and cellfire (cf). When you check out you should see the discount on your receipt.

These are just some of the deals that I found this week. For a complete list I strongly recommend joining thegrocerygame.com and checking out other coupon blogs.
More on couponing and my total trip $ on Thrifty Thursday!

Garage Sale Update

I just wanted to let you know that I did NOT sell the homemade play dough or the hair color for Men. If you are interested in these products they can be found at Goodwill.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The good news: I reached my $ amount goal for the garage sale! Yea! I would definitely say from that stand point it was worth it to have a winter garage sale.

The Bad news: After loading up a truck load to take to Goodwill, I still brought a truck load back to our house. DH not happy!

The Ugly news: As I sit at the computer and look around at my surroundings I am faced with a harsh truth- "With the garage sale behind me, I no longer have an excuse for my house looking like it does?" Shoot! Must get busy.......well, maybe tomorrow!

10 Tips for a Successful Garage Sale

10. Have a designated Garage Sale station/container - Throughout the year as you run across things you want to get rid of or declutter; simply price and store in your garage sale container.

9. Set a Date- I will usually "think" about having a garage sale for months before I actually get around to doing one. To help prevent this procrastination I find it is helpful to pick a date and mark it on my calender 1 or 2 months prior to the event.

8. Get a Buddy- Having a Garage Sale can be quite torturous, but it is a little more bearable when you can do it with a friend. Plus you can split the cost of advertising.

7. Start Pricing Early- I usually try to price a little every night in the weeks leading up to a garage sale so I am not so overwhelmed the week or night before the event.

6. Plan to open early- the professional garage sale people are up at the crack of dawn so I usually like to open around 6am. (This garage sale we decided to open at 8am, since there is not too many competing garage sales this time of year)

5. Display your items. Someone once told me that their Grandmother would display her garage sale items on white table cloths. I remember thinking "Wow, Donna would so do that." I have NEVER gone that far but I do think it is helpful to display like items together.

4. Price it right- not to high, not to low. I can't seem to get this one right. I once did a garage sale with a friend who was selling the exact SAME t-shirts as me. She sold hers for $3 and I sold mine for $0.50, and guess what- SHE SOLD MORE THEN ME! So the next time I had a garage sale I priced all my items high and my garage sale friend (different friend) priced hers low. Guess who sold more- you guessed it- My friend!

3. Advertise- Put your garage sale in the paper. The night before place signs and balloons out pointing garage sale patrons in the right direction.

2. Have a garage sale in the winter! I had a professional garage sale shopper give me this advice. Today will be my first winter sale so I'll have to let you know if there is any truth to this tip later.

#1 Tip: Don't follow a word of advice I give you regarding garage sales! I have NEVER had a truly successful garage sale! But in true DRS fashion- I keep trying!!!

Thompson Family Fun Fact

This is the FIRST garage sale in the history of my marriage that my DH did not offer to pay me $$ NOT to have a garage sale. Too bad, because when I heard what the temperature was supposed to be today, I was fully ready to accept any offer that came my way.

Deal or No Deal

I am always fascinated by what people buy at garage sales. One man's trash is TRULY another man's treasure. This year I decided to plant 2 test items in my garage sale just to see if anyone would actually buy them: homemade play dough and Touch of Gray Hair Color for Men. The play dough we made for craft time about 9 months ago and the hair color I picked up free at Walgreens. What's your bet? Will they stay or will they go? (Go ahead and sing that last question)

Thompson Family Fun Fact

I usually have at least 1 garage sale a year, some years 2. How does one family accumulate so much stuff?

My only regret is that I did not take a picture of my garage prior to hauling all the junk away to my friends house for the sale. I guarantee if you got to see a picture of my presale garage, You would all feel much better about the current condition of your own garages.

Scrapbook Saturday

Good Morning. By the time you read this email I will be a human Popsicle! That's right, today is GARAGE SALE DAY!! Let me just go ahead and write what your thinking "Am I crazy? Who has a garage sale in the dead of winter?" Yeah, that would be me!

My co-garage seller told me that we are one of only 3 garage sales in town this weekend. So, that tells me that we are either really stupid or we are going to have the sale of a lifetime. Of course I am hoping for the later but am fully prepared to claim the first in the event our sale flops.

Stay tuned throughout this Scrapbook Saturday for the latest from Garage Sale Headquarters!

End of Day Update

Well, most everything is priced and ready to go for the Big Garage Sale in the morning. It is going to be ccccccold! If you come to the garage sale I will be the one dressed like marshmallow man.

As far as today goes.....The boys and I did get to have a fun craft time and devotional time but learning time didn't quite fit into our schedule. Daddy took the boys to our local high school basketball game while I worked on the garage sale- so at least they were able to have some family fun time tonight. House is still in shambles but hopefully I will have time and energy to tackle it after the sale. We'll see!

Deal Alert

For those of you who live close to a Kmart, they are having double coupon days until Tomorrow- and the cool thing is they double up to $2.00. The closest Kmart to me is 30 miles away so I have never taken advantage of this sale- but maybe one day I will!

Learning Time

For Learning Time today:

Colby and I will play Leap Frog Dominoes. Colby got this for Christmas, and I have to admit that I have not had a chance to play this with him yet. He has watched Daddy and me play dominoes before and wanted to join in, so I think he will enjoy it.

The neat thing about this dominoes is that you can change out the picture to work on: colors, shapes, numbers, counting, rhyming, or reading. Learning while playing got to love that!

Cohen and I are going to spend some extra reading time together and continue working on finding his nose!

Craft Time

Craft Time: In honor of this extremely cold day, we are going to attempt a winter time craft: Paper Plate Snowmans. Isn't he cute! I found this craft at http://www.kaboos.com/.

Maybe we will even have hot cocoa with Reddi Wip on top! Yummy!

Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!

Oh wait a minute, what am I thinking.... tomorrow I am having a garage sale...... Bring on the sunshine.

Devotional Time

I have to admit that I have not been too impressed with the devotionals (only done 2) found in this book. I am not going to give up on it yet, but I think today we will review Colby's Awana Cubbie book since he missed last week when he was sick.

I also want to try to teach Colby part of my memory verse for the week. It is amazing what a 4.75 year old can memorize.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Deuteronomy 6: 5

Familytime Friday

Today is Familytime Friday and I have to be honest with you- It it wasn't for the accountability of this blog I can guarantee familytime would be very limited second to the impending GARAGE SALE! But because I can count on so many of you checking in on me, I am determined to make our "times" today a priority. So I thank you and my boys thank you too!

Devotional Time, Craft Time, and Learning Time will post throughout the day. I want you to know that the posts were written last night as I was planning out my day, so I can't promise that any of the "times" will go as planned or go at all for that matter. But I'll let you know.

End of Day Update

I'm pooped! No Zone Work, No Day Tasks, No AM, Afternoon, or Bedtime Tasks.
I did get most of my pricing done for garage sale! I did get 4 packages of Laura Lean Beef! I did eat Bean Burritos! I did get to Read Colby one of Dave Ramsey's Children's Books (more on that in the future) And guess what!!! It is just a little after 9:30pm and I am shutting the blog down for the night and GOING TO BED!!!
I'm not quite ready to ask for sleep accountability, but I feel it is coming very soon!
Thank you so much for your support! You are making this so much fun for me!

Budget Countdown-Update

Ok, so I went back to Kroger and they had lots of Laura Lean Beef. I had 4 coupons (used printer at work to print 2 more) and so I got 4 packages of 4% fat ground beef. I am way over on my $96/week budget but again, I felt like I could not pass this deal up and will simply make up for the overages over the next couple of weeks.



Total Spent: $15.16
Total Saved: $8.56 (not bad for meat!)
Total Spent to Date: $236.59
Total Saved to Date: $180.54
Total Left for Year: $4763.41

Deal Alert- Kroger

Huge News from Kroger!

Laura Lean Beef is on sale 20% off!!! woo who!!!

Plus you can go here to print 2 $1 off coupons after you sign up for her newsletter.

Let me tell you how exciting this is- Last year I can remember this beef only going on sale 2x at the most! This is Kroger's leanest organic ground beef they offer! I would stock up if I were you.

Warning: I went last night to stock up and they were already out, but the meat man said they would be getting more! I tell you what- this is going to be one sad mama if I don't get some beef!

Deal Alert

For those of you who can get to a Pottery Barn Outlet Location- this is a great sale!
From Thursday 1/15 to Monday 1/19 they are having a 30%-75% off ALL Furniture Sale! Wow, really wish I could take advantage of this. The closest Outlet from our home town is Memphis, TN.

Deal Alert

There is a GREAT coupon booklet out by Home Made Simple. I took advantage of this deal last year and let me tell you I was able to snag some great deals because of it. The booklet offers $27 worth of coupons for products such as Dawn, Cascade, Mr. Clean, Swiffer, etc. Click here to get your booklet before they are gone.