I'm back!

There's been a lot of drama around my household lately and it's been taking all of my time and attention so I didn't post for a few weeks. This morning I have a breather. I missed posting so here I am.

One of my friends sent me some Christian cartoons . I've never knew that such a thing existed. You can get them delivered to your email box for free. What a wonderful way to be reminded of Christian principles.

I'm doing a major clear out of household items. Many things I'm giving away for free on freecycle. Freecycle is a network of people who give or receive things given for free. To become a part of the freecycle network, you browse the groups to find one near you. Then you sign up to receive emails from the group either bundled together and sent once a day or as each email is generated. There are people in the group who offer free items and there are some who request items (although this is a limited practice). The recipient is responsible for getting the free item, which is generally left on the porch or sidewalk. I love this concept. It's in line with my reduce, reuse, and recycle enviro values.

Another list that I've been using more is craigslist. Craigslist is a free online ads list. You can post ads in your area for things you're selling or giving away and there's no fee to post. I'm selling some big ticket items on craigslist. Are you interested in a bedroom suite or water treatment system?

I've recently renewed my subscription to the Grocery Game. If you like using coupons and saving money on your grocery bill, then this maybe for you. The Grocery Game is a service which tracks the sales prices of grocery store items, determines how much savings the sale price is, whether or not that is the best price for the item, if there are any current coupons that can apply to the item, and how much you can save if all coupons and sales are applied. When I renewed my subscription and used their list, I saved 46% off of my grocery bill! I like those results. If you decide to join The Grocery Game, please consider using me as a referral. I can get free membership weeks for referring new members.

Another activity I'm reviving is once-a-month-cooking. Basically, this is cooking large batches of food and then freezing the extras to use later. Some people do a marathon cooking session one day a month and cook food for an entire month that day, freeze it, and then take out what they need for each dinner. I tried cooking 30 days of meals at once and it took me eight hours and I was exhausted! Now, I try to cook maybe a week or two worth of meals to freeze. I like the convenience of not having to cook everyday or every other day. This also saves money because we're less likely to go out to eat because we don't have time or energy to cook a meal. I even cook and freeze breakfast items that we can pop into the microwave during the morning rush. It's wonderful once you get through the marathon cooking sessions. Some people cook with a friend to make it a social as well as practical event. Unfortunately, the friend who lives closest to me hates to cook so I couldn't suggest we get together to do that. A good resource for more information about once-a-month-cooking (also known as freezer cooking) is this site. My first resource on this topic was an earlier version of this book.

I hope some of this information helps you save time and money!