Mmmmm. . . Chocolate. . .

You know me. I LOVE anything that's free. Well, I love chocolate even if it isn't free, but today, you can get some free chocolate. Well, you have to wait 6 weeks for your voucher, but chocolate is well worth the wait.

Go to The Chocolate Relief Act on Friday to get your free chocolate! Then comment here and tell me thanks for pointing out one of the best deals of the decade;-)

The best part: you can get free chocolate EVERY Friday through September! Now that's what I call a stimulus package!

What a Waste!

The cookbook came today. I mean THE cookbook. I am totally in love with this cookbook. Since the day Jude started eating solid foods, I have been making them, so when someone in my Babyfit group told me about So Easy Baby Food, I had to have it.

I love this book because it tells you exactly how to make the best selection so that you know what you are getting is ripe, and step by step how to prepare and store it. What drove me to this was the process of making black beans for Jude this week. They were so bland and I can tell they are not his favorite (but he IS eating them, which is more than I can say for the zucchini that I tried).
**On a side note, do you know how messy it is when he refluxes and it was black beans? Eew!**

So life is grand, but I am bothered by just one thing. Here's the box it came in(Jude is in the pic for size perspective - and because he's cute):













(Please excuse my basket of clean laundry in the background!)
And here is the cookbook:













Do you think the company could have come up with a more appropriate shipping method? I do. And I let them know that, too. Don't worry. I was nice. I told them how much I liked their product, but in the future could they please select a more size appropriate shipping package. Not that I think that my request will make a difference. Bad habits die hard.

Cereal Success

It doesn't take too much to make me proud of myself when it comes to shopping. Today's accomplishment was getting 4 boxes of cereal - a $13 value (Yeah, I couldn't believe it either!) - for only $4.18. I pulled off this little feat by getting boxes that were buy-one-get-one-free for which I had a store coupon for $1.50 off and a manufacturer's coupon for $1.00. So, for each $3+ box of cereal, I spent around $1.05:-)

Yippe!

And It Was Free

I have been so excited about the website freecycle.org, first because we have gotten rid of things that we otherwise would have thrown out (all the stuff the previous owner left behind: vehicle ramps, diesel gas cans, fence gates, etc) and because of all the really great stuff we've needed (or wanted) and did not have to pay for. We got a weight bench and a whole set of weights for Jeff (and me once I let my gym membership expire), a crib, and a changing table. Add that to the cabinet that the other owner left behind and the baby room is almost ready to go. Too bad IT won't sleep in there until like March or April of '09:-)

So here are the photos of the free baby stuff. We still have to put the bottom of the crib in and add the mattress that came from Vickie's crib (we used that crib for a headboard on the guest bed). I can't believe my little sister is going to be 10 in a month!














We'll need to get one of those terry cloth covers for the actual changing pad because it has two small tears in the vinyl.














A friend gave us most of the books on the bottom shelf yesterday. The rest I got at the used bookstores in Chattanooga and LaFayette for a quarter to two dollars. Again, the 500 books thing:-)

The Queen of Frugality

Today was the 90 mile yard sale that goes from Ringgold to Marietta (so was yesterday and tomorrow). Having never attended one of these mega-yard sales, I didn't really know what to expect, so we took a healthy sum of money out of the bank, and ended up redepositing most of it. We didn't find any big ticket items that we wanted, as the jogging stroller was pretty dirty, and we already have a regular stroller and a swing. But, I am convinced that in the future this is definitely the way I'll go for finding children's clothes.

For less than $20 (19.25 to be exact) we got 19 articles of clothing, 4 bibs, two blankets (one is a swaddler), two crib sheets, and a hat. Some of the clothes are Baby Gap, and most are from Carter's (lots of Carter's fans here apparently). Nothing smells and nothing has stains.

Here're some photos of our loot:














See the little bib that says, "I love my grandma?" :-)















We even found a "Baby's First Christmas" gown in the right size range. And I love the little blue turtle neck down in the right corner that says, "Special Blessing."















After we bought it, and I was folding everything while we drove, Jeff pointed out to me that the little Winnie the Pooh suit was from the Disney Store, so it probably cost $30 - $40 originally. I paid $2.

Whew! What a day.

P.S. We did not go all 90 miles of the yard sale. That would have defeated the purpose of trying to save money. We went to Ringgold and a little in Whitfield County. Both within half an hour or less of here.

Baby Clothes

We hit the old Goodwill to find some shorts for Jeff today, but since they had no shorts that he liked, we wandered over to the Baby section. We got 6 wash cloths for $1.50 and four onsies for $1.29 each. Three of the onsies were Carter's brand. I LOVE Carter's stuff and I've been down to the Carter's outlet in Calhoun a few times to buy gifts for friends. I looked up similar Carter's onsies on the website today and found out that on those three onsies, we saved somewhere between $15 and $21! The ones I was looking at on the internet were $9 marked down to $6. And I paid $1.29 a piece:-) That makes me smile knowing that I paid less for all three onsies than one costs on sale!