Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Is it too early to start counting down to Christmas??

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

Special thanks to Mojosavings.com for sponsoring this post.

We have a fun countdown calendar in our living room that includes a special tile for every occasion: graduation, birthday, Easter, you name it. We can change the tile depending on what holiday or special day is pending, and change the number blocks to help us count down to the big day. Cute as it is, I’m kind of terrible with keeping up with it, so often it says 0 Days until Graduation for an entire month or as of late, 47 Days until Birthday. (I think I switched it last Tuesday??)

My kids are too old and too boy to think much about the cuteness of a countdown calendar. (Unless it happens to be their birthday that’s coming up. That’s when they tend to pay a little more attention. They do tend to get pretty excited as we count down to Christmas (don’t we all?!). In case you were wondering, there are only 181 days until Christmas. You’re welcome.

As much as I love Christmas, I don’t even want to think about it right now. I’m currently soaking up every minute of summertime! Christmas will come soon enough, and that is when it is worth taking a good look at the Lego Advent Calendars featured at Mojosavings. This is a very fun site that finds all the great deals and shares them with us so we don’t have to work so hard!

Now I really hate to bring it up as it’s also a little bit too early to start talking about Back to School savings. But seeing as that’s going to be right around the corner also (sniff), you’ll want to remember Mojosavings as they post all the latest and greatest of relevant deals and coupons.

COUPONS!!! The only thing better than a good deal is a good deal paired with a coupon, right?!

Now, I’m sort of done with the task of cutting coupons (no time for that!), but if I find great coupons that are digital and take no effort to use? I am all over it. Mojosavings does the work for us so all we have to do is search their site for the latest Kohls, Target, Walmart, etc. deals and coupons. And boom. There’s the deal, here’s a coupon, go therefore and save money.

So for whatever occasion you’re counting down the days, be sure to remember Mojosavings as a great site for finding deals and coupons to save you money on the big day!

As for me, I should probably go change the numbers on our countdown calendar. After all, it’s MY birthday coming up next and I’d hate for my family to think it is still 47 days away…

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Fun Groupon Coupons (I didn’t know about these!)

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

I’ve decided this is the time of year to buy stuff. Time to buy school supplies, books, shoes, and food. (Always food. Always.)

As I’m searching around for the best deals on all of these so that I can be prepared for a new school year without going broke, learning that there is such a thing as Groupon Coupons piqued my interest.

groupon

Groupon Coupon has partnered with many other businesses to offer coupons for places like Barnes and Noble, Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Footlocker, JCPenney, Kohls, and the list goes on and on.

It’s very exciting, so if you shop online, before you make your final purchases be sure to check your coupon options at Groupon Coupons to see if you can score extra savings. I’m finding coupons for just about every store I typically purchase from. Scoring extra savings on top of sale prices is really helpful! There are also plenty of printable coupons to be had, so before you head to out the door to do in-store Back-to-School shopping, be sure to click over to Groupon Coupons to see what you find.

Yay for more ways to save money!!

This post is sponsored by Groupon Coupons.

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How Price-Matching Helps Us Eat Real Food

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

Price-matching helps us eat real food. That’s all there is to it.

How Price-Matching Helps Us Eat Real Food

Some people live in a big town with many big grocery store options. I do not. Well, it’s more than what tiny towns offer, but still. The closest big name store is an hour away from where we live. In my town we have a Wal-mart and two locally owned stores that have decent deals sometimes.

Before I discovered price-matching at Wal-mart, I skimped on fresh produce purchases. I didn’t even realize I was skimping because I was just doing my best to stick to the budget. I bought the fruits and veggies I could afford, then we rationed them out to make them stretch.

groceries apr16 (1)

About a year and a half ago I discovered price-matching. I don’t know why I hadn’t checked into it before.

Yes. I do know why. I assumed I could only price-match processed foods like boxed cereals and hamburger helper. Therefore I figured it wouldn’t help me much.

Enter: Aldi. The city an hour away from us built its first Aldi store. That’s when I started hearing my friends say things like, “I price-matched Aldi avocados and got them for 39¢ each.” Wai-wai-wait. You did what??

And that’s when I finally started paying attention to what price-matching was.

groceries mar21

Wal-mart accepts price-matches from stores that are as far as one hour away. This is a huge benefit to me, because not only is there an Aldi an hour away, there is a Super Saver, a Hyvee, and now a Fresh Thyme Market! (Several other stores too.) I check Price-Matcherz every week because they do the hard work for me by providing a list of all the best deals. Sure, there are plenty of processed foods to wade through. But the produce!!!

I used to have to pay at least $2.48 for a pound of strawberries in season. Now I can often get them for $1.29! I often get pineapple for $1.29 and cantaloupe for 99¢. I’ve price-matched asparagus for 88¢/pound and 3-pound bags of apples for $1.50.

feb 5 groceries

Not only am I now able to buy oodles and gobs of fresh produce for my family each week, I sometimes even have enough room in the budget to buy some for our local Mission. Price-matching saves us loads of money and ensures that our home is filled with nourishing food.

Read the how-to of how price-matching helps our family.

What grocery store options do you have where you live? Are you a price-matcher or is that something you haven’t needed to mess with?

A couple of other produce money-saving options:

  • I love the savings and quality of Bountiful Baskets. If you’re brave, you can watch as I unpacked our latest BB box. (Beware because out of nowhere I started to boohoo at the end because it was the day before Mother’s Day and I can’t talk about Mother’s Day without crying no matter how hard I try. Facebook Live makes a girl vulnerable. It’s a good thing we’re friends.)
  • I clip coupons when I find them. They are rare.
  • I’m trying to get the hang of Ibotta. Usually there are produce rebate offers! I use the app on my phone to make it easiest. (If you want to try it out, you can get an instant $10 rebate if you sign up through my referral code and redeem a rebate within 2 weeks).

Some of these links are affiliate links.

 

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Whole Foods Couponing…and a Thank You!

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

As you may remember, I used to be a Coupon Queen. I was the one who would be in front of you in the check out line with 47 coupons and a cart full of groceries. After the cashier spent ten minutes subtracting out my coupons, my receipt total would be somewhere in the $24 range for a cart full of food.

If indeed we can call it food. I wasn’t exactly using coupons to get fruits and vegetables, you know?  But shucks…most of it was free! Free poptarts are great, right?

Learn to make healthier, homemade poptarts if you need a poptart fix!

Well, as you know, we’ve changed our ways a little bit entirely and now I shop completely differently. (You can read this post to learn how I grocery shop. And you can read this entire series to learn about our Healthy Eating Journey.)  I now recognize that spending money on good, whole foods is a perfect investment in our overall health.

But I still love finding great deals on great groceries!

This is where the “Thank You!” part of this post comes in. Remember how I mentioned that if you sign up for Shop it to Me…I could earn free gift cards?  Well…several of you signed up, which means that I earned several free gift cards. I appreciate it so much!  There were several gift card choices…but of course…I chose the cards for Whole Foods!! Who can pass up free groceries at Whole Foods??!

Matt and I were able to hit a Whole Foods store while we were away for the weekend at the Weekend to Remember conference. (Yes, part of our romantic weekend was spent shopping for asparagus. You know your relationship is solid when you can lovingly gaze at organic produce together.)

Not only did I have a few Shop it to Me Whole Foods cards to use…I had been doing my homework and had put together some coupons to use during our outing. It brought back memories and I have to admit that I felt quite giddy as I actually put coupons into an envelope again. I really haven’t done that (to this extent) for a long time. (Yeah I know…I’m a geek.)

The kids were pretty happy to see us when we got home…especially when they saw we had brought home cereal and yogurt!! (Hey guys…didn’t you even miss us just a little bit?)

We stocked up on chicken wings and boneless, skinless chicken breasts because I just don’t have a great source for those nearby. We found great deals on lettuce, asparagus, apples, pears and zucchini…Larabars, yogurt, butter and cheese.

And then, because they were on sale, because I had coupons and because they are gluten free…we splurged on a few items I lovingly call “organic junk food” that we’ll save for a rainy day. Cereal and chips…woohoo! Malachi sure does look disappointed with our loot, huh? :)

I had also been sent a Brat Hans Sausages coupon so that I could try them for free! We cashed in on that and WOW, you should have seen the boys when they found those in the bag! I thought they were going to eat me when they saw them! They must feel they have a brat deficiency or something?

So thank you to all who signed up for Shop it to Me …you made our Whole Foods shopping trip very fun!! If you haven’t signed up for Shop it to Me , you certainly can and it wouldn’t hurt my feelings even a little bit. :)  NOBODY  has to spend any money unless you want to – that’s the beauty of it!!! AND, more importantly, after you sign up, you can tell YOUR friends and family about Shop it to Me  so that YOU can receive free gift cards!!!

I did want to note:  I normally do the majority of this type of shopping through Azure Standard…Whole Foods is two hours away and I’m blessed to have an Azure Standard drop point right here in my town!! Azure is much less expensive and has everything I need. This Whole Foods trip was a fun splurge, gave me a “grocery store shopping fix” and well…I had gift cards. And coupons. And needed to get Brats, apparently. :)

Do you shop at Whole Foods? Do you have one close to you, or do you have to drive pretty far like I do? What do you like to get at Whole Foods?

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