My butter famine is over! But first:
Now I know how my mom felt when my brother and I came home from college for holiday breaks. Never mind that Asa has only been five minutes down the road in the dorm since August. Looking forward to and preparing for him to be home for a week has made me so excited! Brittany is joining us this week too because she has to work all week. Yay for me! Another girl in the house! (We have made plans to do our nails, make crafts, and watch some girly Christmas movies. Yes!!!)
In preparation for Thanksgiving break week and Thanksgiving day itself, I think I have bought out all the grocery stores from here to Lincoln. I have two full refrigerators, a full pantry, many full freezers – there is food everywhere. After standing on my head to find places for the last of my (many) grocery purchases yesterday and completely filling every space in both refrigerators, I realized we’d be getting our Bountiful Basket order today.
Thankfully, most of the order didn’t have to be refrigerated. And of course, we’re already doing a great job of beginning to eat our way through all the food, thus creating more refrigerator space. It doesn’t take long for food to disappear around here.
How blessed are we? Plenty to eat, plenty to share.
Do you want to hear about the end of my butter famine now?
Remember how we talked about the high cost of butter and how my supply was running low? Many of you shared the same situation occurring where you live. So have you been able to find some good butter deals now that it’s holiday season? I hadn’t until this week. Wednesday when I was in Lincoln, I made a stop at Aldi and bought 12 pounds for $2.49 each since that’s the best I’d seen it in a very long time. Back home two days later, I found a $2.49 price match for Challenge Butter (a great brand which is normally $5 a pound!). Plus I had a couple of 50¢ off coupons. I bought another dozen pounds, and then I saw that there are 55¢ off coupons inside each box!
I’m pretty sure I am going to be weird and open every single box, cut out all the coupons, then go back before the sale ends to get another dozen with the coupons. It’s Challenge Butter that I can get for $1.94!! So what if I’ll have 48 loose sticks of butter in my freezer? There’s nothing weird about that. Nothing at all.
Those pictures don’t do my butter-filled freezers justice. They only show part of my madness. Basically, I’ve just stuffed butter boxes in every nook and cranny of any space in my freezers that I can find. It feels so good to have an abundance of butter again. The holidays can now commence.
We started off our Thanksgiving break with little gifts. I couldn’t help it. Our boys are into crazy socks, and Elias and I found some fun Christmas socks in Lincoln after a follow-up doctor appointment for him Wednesday. (You can guess that those cat socks are for Malachi.) I found a free printable Thanksgiving candy wrapper which I prepped to go with the socks. Here’s the link if you want to make some (candy wrappers, not socks).
The boys have their first homeschool basketball game tonight. I can’t wait to see them play, but I’m almost more excited to see all the moms I rarely get to see except for during basketball season. I love how God has provided these families and the friendships that come with them.
The rest of the week, we have plans to watch movies, play Settlers of Catan, eat loads of food, kick back, and unfortunately, do a few math lessons that we’re behind in. With tiny bit of school work and a big bit of fun, hopefully the math won’t seem too bad! I even bought take-and-bake pizzas to make my load easier.
Are you taking a break during Thanksgiving week? Traveling? Staying home? Buying lots of butter?
Have a great weekend!
Oh yes, the butter restocking! I always always restock my freezers/fridge with butter at the holiday season each year. I still had several large ziploc bags full of sticks, but wanted to grab some more with baking coming up. I open each of the boxes of butter, stack the sticks in large ziploc bags. Double bag them, seal, and store in my freezers until I need them! It takes up way less room than having to find space for lb upon lb of butter.
So what I did, I ended up getting 2 lb packs at Walmart for $5.48, which was just a tiny bit over the $2.49 price at our Aldi’s too. I didn’t want to make trips to multiple stores, so I just stocked up at Walmart. I figured the .24ish cents each wasn’t going to kill me and probably cost me more in gas and time running around. I ended up buying 8 lbs. Then a few days later, my husband and I went to a Walmart in a different part of town. Same butter, same 2 lb packs….$7.62. Nope! I ended up going back to our Walmart for some groceries and picked up 12 more lbs a few days later.
I do this every fall/winter though. I make sure we are well stocked on meats, cheese, milk, butter, paper goods, pantry supplies before we get any real snow. We have had plenty of days where the weather is not fun to go out shopping in, those days I LOVE that I planned ahead and have everything we need already here.
I have 30 lbs of butter in my freezer. It was $1.99 a lb for land o lakes and I wanted to make sure I don’t run out.
Yes, butter stocking season! This is my first year for such things and I wanted to do it right so I bought 50 lbs of butter at Costco this morning. In my defense, it was a great sale and even the checkout lady told me I was smart to stock up :) Hopefully it will last the year until next butter stocking season.
Can I just tell you how much I enjoy your blog and your sense of humor? ????
Same here…bought 10 lbs @ $1.97, then went back and bought 4 more. The sale runs through the 30th, so I’ll have to go buy more!
I get low-pasteurized/non-homogenized milk and cream from a local dairy farm (raw milk is legal in Utah, but not available close to where I live). I usually get a gallon of cream a month and make butter with part of it. It’s cheaper (and better) then buying it at the store…well, except when they have these great sales!
Happy, Blessed Thanksgiving!!!
Got 18lbs in a case!! Never bought it like that before. Land O’ Lakes at $2.50. I think next time I will ask for a discount on the case! :) We go through it too!
I really want to come to your house and hang out!
Where did you find the price match for the Challenge butter? I’m in Omaha, NE and want to get in on that deal if I can!
It was a price match from Russ’ Market in Lincoln. Do you have that store in Omaha?
We had a sale on this in town too! I stocked up on five pounds. Probably should have bought even more! :)