June 30th, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

I have never been much of a coupon clipper. It seemed like too much work for $.50 to me, and I usually bought store brand stuff anyway.

I am starting to see the light. I never knew the glories of stacking coupons and drug store rebate programs… now that I have been introduced to this intricate game of couponing to save good size chunks of money, I can definitely appreciate how people are fanatic couponers – and I would like to become one of them!

This is going to be a long-term tackle, because couponing at its finest really is an art and a skill that has to be developed! I’m getting better, though, and I love that I’m starting to get free or nearly free health and beauty products from Rite Aid and Walgreens – our church collects these items for needy families in the area, and now I can regularly bring in donations that don’t even affect our budget in any noticeable way! [I have gotten four free/super cheap name-brand tubes of toothpaste in the past 3 weeks. How much toothpaste can one family go through? Give those babies away!]

I follow several different blogs that have helped show me the basics of couponing science.

KingdomFirstMom.com was the first to introduce me to the beauty of drugstore rebates combined with coupons! She also gives good tips on freebies and special promotions!

MummyDeals.org – I’ve been following Clair’s blog for quite a few months now, and she has given me some great tips on special rebates, promotions, freebies, etc!

Coupon Allies is a blog that I was just recently told about – it’s a newer blog, but they have great basic couponing information, and for those of you who are in my area, they have scoops about our local stores (Giant Eagle, Marcs, Beuhlers, etc.)

If you’re new to couponing, check out MommySnacks.net’s beginner’s guide here.

Do you have any favorite couponing/ frugal blogs that you follow? Any couponing tips from those of you who are veterans? Please share!

What are you tackling today?

June 23rd, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

This weekend we stopped at a little orchard/ bakery/ cheese shop in Amish country and picked up 8 quarts of strawberries! Yes, that’s right… 8 quarts!

Today I got half of them washed and hulled and crushed and made up into some delicious freezer jam. I did run into an issue with the crushing part… the directions say to use a potato masher, but mine broke months ago. I usually use my hand crank food mill for mashed potatoes, but it doesn’t work with berries. I tragically lost the blade to my beloved manual food processor somewhere… so, what to do?

I stumbled upon a great method for crushing the berries! I put the hulled berries into a pie plate and used my apple slicer to smash/cut them! Worked like a charm!

I would love to pop one of these babies open and eat it with a spoon… don’t worry – I use the low sugar recipe, so it’s really just like eating a serving of fruit. Right?

Now, on to the next 4 quarts! What are you tackling today?

June 9th, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

I saw a great idea on another blog a few weeks back for a Scripture memory system – the original idea can be found at Simply Charlotte Mason.

I don’t know about you, but I often have good intentions that fall on their face for lack of a “master plan,” if you will. Scripture memory is one of these areas, both for myself and for teaching the kids! I know how important it is to memorize and meditate on Scripture, but somehow getting from the knowing to the doing is difficult!! So, when I saw this idea I had to try it – it is simple and intentional and will help us hide God’s Word deeply in our hearts!

The strength of this system, in my opinion, will be the regular review. You write your memory verses on index cards and file them behind different dividers – daily, evens, odds, one for each day of the week, and one for each day of the month. Then each day, you will work on your verse you are currently learning, which will be behind the “daily” divider. Then after you work on that, you will review the cards behind the applicable dividers. For instance, today is Tuesday the 9th, so you would review the “odd” verse, the “Tuesday” verse, and the “9″ verse. As you master the new verses, you bump everything back a divider. Simple and ingenious!

So, today I set out to find a recipe card box that was pretty… no luck. But, I did find a very cute little basket at Flower Factory for $2.00 – sold! I picked up some 4×6 cards for $.44, and three sheets of heavyweight scrapbook paper.

I made my own dividers out of the scrapbook paper because I didn’t feel like shelling out the cash to buy premade index card dividers… and at this point I don’t have dividers for the days of the month – I think I’m just going to number the upper right corner of the cards.

I’m excited about this tackle, and look forward to utilizing this system to memorize God’s Word together! I believe we will start making a habit of reviewing our verses at the breakfast table each morning.

You might be interested in the list of verses Leigh at Impress Your Kids has compiled – each verse corresponds to a letter of the alphabet to make it memorable. :)

May 26th, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

Remember last week’s tackle when I cleaned out the master closet? I had some extra motivation to tackle our closets (the kids’ closets and dressers were next, although not nearly as dramatic!) – I was preparing for our church’s first clothing and toy swap!

I have been thinking about an event like this for quite a few years, actually. We get lots of hand-me-down kids’ clothing, which has been such a blessing to us – I’m not sure what in the world they would be wearing without these much appreciated boxes of blessings! Our ABF is pretty good about sharing clothes with one another, but I thought it would be great if we could open it up to a church-wide swap. Especially during difficult economic times, knowing that many are on reduced incomes or have lost their jobs entirely, this is a very practical way for the church body to care for one another.

We asked that anyone interested in participating drop off any gently used clothing (washed and sorted by size) and toys that they were ready to part with at the church on Friday evening. We set tables up and labeled them according to gender and size and set all the clothing out on them, and also had toy, book, and baby item areas. On Saturday morning the room was open for everyone to come “shop” for free!

I came home with some clothing and some little tikes gems: a see saw (which is shaped like a fish and hence has been named “Moby”), a xylophone, and a dishwasher/sink for AG’s kitchen!

We didn’t have as many people participate as I had hoped – next time we do this I hope more will join in. That is not to say that we were lacking donations – wow, did we have a lot of stuff! However, the ratio of what was brought to what was taken was way out of proportion – we had so much left over!

It did not go to waste – the children’s clothing was boxed up and taken to family services for foster kids, the adult clothing and baby items were put into the closet for a ministry our church has to families in need, and the many, MANY toys that were left were trucked over to Salvation Army.

Lessons learned:
1. We need more than two women to man this event! We were expecting to have more of our women’s ministry committee there, but almost everyone ended up being out of town or unavailable for other reasons. This was a lot of work – if you do this at your church be sure to have adequate people on hand, especially for clean up. We really underestimated how much there would be leftover that needed to be dealt with before we could even consider cleaning up the room and setting up for children’s church the next day! By God’s grace we somehow accomplished this with 2 people in about 2.5 hours… and I thought I would sleep for the next two days!

2. Advertise, advertise, advertise. Even though the response from the church was much less than I had hoped, it was worth it because we had at least one mom come who does not attend church anywhere and said she is considering coming to the church, now! Next time I would love to open this up more deliberately to the community. What a great opportunity to show God’s love! The little boy of the woman I mentioned actually came up to me on Friday night and said, “Why are you doing this?” What an excellent question! :)

Have you ever attempted (or attended) a swap like this? Please share your gems of wisdom! :)