Blooming

The "babies" are doing beautifully. It is truly amazing how fast they're sprouting and growing. These photos are taken five days apart:





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Snacktime - easy, healthy and fun

I had to make snack for preschool, and I still have a ton of yogurt in the fridge from the Great SFW Trip, so I dug up this cute recipe:





Take 16 ounces of peach yogurt, 16 ounces of partially-defrosted frozen peaches, and 1/4 cup honey. You can obviously use any flavors of yogurt and frozen fruit that suits your fancy. Blend it up however you like, divvy it up into 24 small cups, and stick a Popsicle stick 3/4 of the way in. After they've frozen you can pop them out and roll them in sugar sprinkles - I just did the tops. Both boys are loving them and think they're getting a treat!

They're alive!

The seedlings are sprouting! I hooked up the grow lights now that they've broken through and now our bedroom's like a disco.

Good Harris Teeter trip - without coupons!

Had a nice trip to HT this morning with only 3 coupons in my wallet! These deals are good through March 10th.

• The gallons of organic milk are on sale from $5.50 to $5 (savings of 10%). They freeze great, so it keeps me out of the store every few days. The savings is even greater (41%) when you figure that my local store (Giant) only carries half-gallons and they're always at least $4.29 each ($8.58/gallon!)

• The ketchups were on sale for $2 each (down from $2.99) and we're a Heinz family here. The dearth of coupons wasn't keeping me from my beloved Heinz!

• The grapes were on sale for $.99/pound, and all of you with kids know how many grapes two small boys can go through.

• The Palermo's pizzas were back on the fantastic Buy 2, Get 3 Free special! The price went up from $5.99 to $6.99 per pizza, but it still works out to just $2.80 per pizza after buying 5! The pizza is great, plus they have some fantastic vegetarian options (usually "Cheese" is the best a vegetarian can do, flavor-wise). Our favorites are The Napoli (pesto, fresh mozzarella) and The Messina (spinach and goat cheese). I bought a few Margharitas for the days when we have picky kids over as guests.

• The Steamfresh bags (selected bags only; I think it was peas, corn, broccoli, green beans, and the bags of rice) were on sale from $3 to $2, plus they were also Buy 2, Get 3 Free! I happened to have coupons for $1 off 3.

Scenario 1 (without Steamfresh coupons): Buy 5 and pay just $4! That works out to just 80 cents a bag (savings of 66%)

Scenario 2 (with Steamfresh coupons): Buy 10 and use 3 coupons - you'll pay just $5, which works out to just 50 cents a bag (savings of 83%)

Between this trip, my Safeway trip, and last week's trip to Shoppers Food Warehouse, our freezer is full. I love that feeling.

$36K Challenge - February update

Well it came right down to the wire, but it looks like we will make our $3,000 payment against debt for February!

I was just about to post that we were only going to be able to send around $1400 when a check came, via UPS Overnight AM delivery, for a huge 2-day job that Stewart did in September 2008. He told me about it at the end of January, and I have harangued and pestered this woman for a month about payment. She gave me a thousand promises and excuses and yesterday I left her a message that said "This is my last call on the matter. If we don't have payment by COB on Tuesday, I'll simply turn this account over to collects."

Voila - $1,650 in the mail today!

So, by the hair of our chinny-chin-chins, we made February's goal. Extra work had been very light this month, and not much is scheduled for March either so I'd be surprised if we make next month's, but I do have a few sales in the works on eBay and we'll keep our fingers crossed!

Cheap Morningstar Farms, finally!

I didn't have the energy to take a picture before throwing all of my finds in the freezer, but here's a quick rundown.

We eat a lot of veggie burgers and "fake" chicken-strips, but they're very expensive. Morningstar Farms is $4.50 a box (4 veggie burgers, 4 "chicken" burgers, or 7 "chicken" tenders in a box). I always check around online but can never find coupons for these!

So thank goodness for a great deal at Safeway this week. They're running a "Buy $25 in selected frozen foods, get a coupon for $10 off your next frozen food purchase" promotion. Plus the Morningstar Farms items were on sale from $4.50 to $3.50.

First transaction I bought 8 items at $3.50 each ($28) and got my $10/off coupon.
Next transaction I bought another 8 items at $3.50 each, minus the $10 coupon, minus the $1.50 coupon that spit out on my first transaction ($16.60) and got another $10/off coupon.
Last transaction I bought 3 items at $3.50 each, minus the $10 coupon ($.50).

Total before sale and coupons: $85.50
Total after sales and coupons: $45.00 - savings of 47%

These kinds of sales really help with items that don't normally have coupons in the Sunday papers. The boys already ate the "chicken" fingers for dinner last night and had a burger each for lunch today!

Forgot to add that the inserts had a coupon for a free 2-liter of Pepsi with any $10 purchase - I was able to use the coupon 3 times since I did 3 transactions. Any faithful reader knows about my Diet Caffeine Free Pepsi addiction so three free 2-liters is a nice little bonus!

Starting the garden

It's amazing that it took a full week of putting "Start seedlings" on my to-do list to finally get around to it. We had a tough week after some scary news from the pediatrician, but I also went real-estate hunting, put in a bid on an investment property (didn't get it) and I'm tying up some loose legal ends with our current rental houses as well. So poor seedlings didn't get started until about a week after I wanted them to but I think we'll be okay.

I bought two of these APS seed-starting systems to provide the seedlings with a constant water supply from below. I used the 40-block one for plants that will need to be transplanted at least once before putting in the ground (regular tomatoes, grape tomatoes, hot peppers, bell peppers, and eggplant) and used the 24-block one for the herbs and broccoli that will stay there until being put outside.





I went to Home Depot to spend my free $500 gift card on supplies and planned on buying a small shelving unit to put my seedlings and grow lights on. But as I was picking out the one that cost $104, I realized that I've sold off a lot of my eBay inventory and haven't filled it back in yet, and that I have plenty of space on the shelving in our bedroom (yes, shelving in the bedroom. Romantic, yes?)

So, I consolidated my inventory and cleared off two shelves. I put down a cheap shower curtain liner and positioned it to wrap up and over the seedling shelf. I'm not supplying any heat to the seedlings so I hope wrapping it in the liner will help keep some moisture and warmth in there. I put down a towel to catch drips and then lined the whole thing in free aluminum foil to reflect as much light as possible back onto the bottoms and sides of the seedlings. Voila!







Now let's just hope it works!