Fall Wardrobe

Dear Nana and Poppi,

Thanks for the fabulous new clothes for the fall and winter! I am going to look so cute in all of them :) I love you!

Love,
Saide

Sadie is on the move!

After several weeks of trying Sadie can finally "crawl." it is not your traditional crawl. It is more of an army style crawl that involves rocking from side to side but she can definitely get to where she wants! Here are a couple videos we have of her "crawling" :)

CrossGendered

Daustin is the College Minister at our church NAOBC and he has recently begun a new series entitled CrossGendered where he and the other teacher are "reassessing gender amid cultural chaos." The college group meets Sundays at 10:30 for a time of worship and teaching. Here is a promo video I put together for the new series.

Sadie is 7 Months!

Wow time is flying by! I cannot believe my little baby is already 7 months old. She is definitely growing up WAY to fast! She weighs about 19 1/2 pounds now and is growing every day. She is sitting up well and can go from sitting to her tummy well. She is working hard on sitting back up. She is also working hard on crawling. She can stretch and pull herself forward but hasn't mastered coordinating the movements of her feet and arms. So for now when she wants something she just rolls with purpose from place to place. She is also working on self-feeding and eating more solid foods. While nothing has happened new in the teeth department I am sure that her top teeth will soon make an appearance judging by her chewing and drooling. She is a social butterfly and loves having play dates with her friends and playing outside! I look forward to seeing what this next month holds!

Couponing

Couponing and meal planning is something I used to do when we first got married but with the business of work and school I let it fall to the wayside. However, now that I am not working and we added another person to our household it has become even more important to try to be good stewards of our money. So in order to help reduce our grocery spending throughout the year I have taken up couponing again. Twice a month I plan our meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) for about 2 1/2 weeks worth then I use the meal plans to create our grocery list for food. I ten cut coupons and create a plan based off local sales papers and coupons on where to purchase our food needs for the meal plan. Using a meal plan has greatly cut down on our grocery spending and I find when I have things planed for meals we are less likely to go out.

With the remainder of our grocery budget, I look though the sales papers and coupons to create a plan to purchase our health and beauty items as well as our household cleaning items and paper products. If there is something we are out of I will buy that but beyond that I only purchase items that are on sale and I have coupon for. This allows us to “stock pile" on items like toilet paper, paper towels, and laundry detergent to name just a few so that we do not run out and I am able to purchase items at their lowest out of pockets cost. I know it seems time consuming but with a little patience to look though the ads, cut coupons, and meal plan along with help from great FREE websites like Money Saving Mom and Southern Savers I have had great success reducing our grocery spending.

Using this method, I have been able to save tremendous amounts of money on products we use a lot! I have a fabulous example from this week’s endeavor. At CVS this week I purchased the following items:

Tide Detergent, Dishwashing Tabs, Diapers, Face Wash, and aMulti Pack of Water(not pictured)

The total out of pockets cost before sales, coupons, and extra care bucks would have been $39.99.After the sale, my coupons, and using extra care bucks I only spent $4.88 out of pocket. That’s a savings of $35.09! Plus, I earned another extra care buck to spend on my next purchase!

I hope this has inspired you to consider couponing if you haven't already. I certainly believe it is worth the effort!