Sunday, March 21, 2010

Haircuts and Other Necessities

Today on the way home from church I stopped at Walgreens because Glenn really needed a haircut and we can not find our haircutting scissors anywhere. I really didn't want to stop in Target or Wegmans because it was going to take too long but I was so glad I stopped at Walgreens. The only hair cutting scissors that they had were on sale for $7 down from $9 and they were Conair and all Conair hair products were buy one get one free. I was able to get a nice, new hairbrush for free with the scissors I bought, what a surprise. Thanks God for that added gift.

Haircuts are a necessity around here because, for some reason, our hair keeps on growing. Today I was able to cut Glenn's and Caleb's hair. I only said "Oops" once. (I guess it is a good thing that our hair keeps growing - Glenn tells me that he is used to my little mistakes on his hair and it is ok. I am thankful for a gracious husband!) I also cut off a few of the split ends on my hair as well which was a bit overdo. I was worried going to the store to buy scissors because I didn't know how much they were going to cost but I was pleasantly surprised at the price and laughed at myself when I thought of how much they actually save us. The last time Glenn paid for someone to cut his hair was right before his Upstate interview last January (I guess it worked - he got in!) and the last time I paid to have someone do anything to my hair was in Wyoming back in the summer of '05. I think $7 is well worth the savings that we'll get from them!

Another necessity around here is food. I have many friends on facebook that are often posting pictures of their couponing exploits at drug stores. They get some pretty amazing deals and are always talking about OOP (out of pocket) and coming home with tons of stuff for very little money. I am not exactly sure how they do it but I did get a good deal with some coupons that I got in the mail and online last week at Target. I got 5 boxes of Kashi Heart to Heart cereal and a box of Kashi crackers and a box of Kashi granola bars for only $7.17 total. I was pretty excited. I love Kashi stuff but without significant sales and coupons it is way out of our price range for our food budget right now but at less that $1.03 a box I was pretty excited to get some yummy healthy cereal and snacks. I took a picture and someday I may load it on here but not tonight.

Thank you God for unexpected free stuff, laughter and for coupons to stretch our food budget! I love you so much!

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Caleb's List of Recent Blessings

On Saturday afternoon Caleb came up to me and said, “Wow, Mom, God has really been blessing us lately, you really need to blog!” I asked him what he could think of and this is the list he came up with:

1. clothes from Kaylee – our neighbor girl used her snow day on Thursday to sort clothes in her room and she brought over a bag of clothes that were too little for her for the girls.

2. #10 can of pineapple – I am a big fan of the shop at the Regional Market called Buda's. It is a bent and dent store that shop at occasionally. I especially like to get #10 (big food service sized) cans of stuff that we use a lot of there. I have mostly bought #10 cans of beans to use in tacos and chili. We were going to have Lydia's Hawaiian Haystacks on Saturday night so I thought I would look for pineapple. They had #10 can of crushed or sliced pineapple for $3 each and we opted for a can of sliced because we could crush them but we couldn't make the crushed pineapple into larger chunks. The kids were super excited to have LOTS of pineapple on their Hawaiian Haystacks and are looking forward to Hawaiian pizza later this week.

3. “the free huge apples from the old man” - when I was looking at produce a cute little old man was taken with my kids and gave them each a huge apple for free from his stash for them to munch on.

4. “that lady that gave you a dollar off everything” - at the same stand I bought other things including garlic, lettuce (10 heads of romaine for $1!!!), tomatoes and peppers and the lady I paid had me only pay $1 for the containers of tomatoes and peppers that had $2 marked on them.

I am very grateful for the good deals that we get at the Regional Market to stretch our grocery budget. I am also thankful for how my kids are seeing God's graciousness to us and get excited about it! Thank you Lord.