Shopping and junk

Keeping up with the MomDot blog party has been great for making sure I blog every day - but I feel like I'm neglecting updates on the REAL mission here!

The last 2 weeks have been big stock-up weeks for the dry pantry - between the General Mills sale and the week that followed it, I could probably eat out of my pantry and freezer for months! We finally did some basic food shopping this afternoon, but up until now the only thing I bought since shopping last Monday was a gallon of milk. $2.99 spent in ten days is pretty darn good!

And really, the only reason we went to the Price Rite was because DH was out of diet soda (He's not a big milk or water drinker, and being diabetic kinda limits his other options...so I cut my losses and make sure he has plenty of diet soda on hand), but while we were there I figured I'd get a headstart on next week's shopping. We spent $23.00 but other than the soda, eggs, bread, some bananas and the Boy Wonder's yogurt, everything else was baking/cooking supplies that will get used in small amounts over the next several weeks.

This time of year, you're going to see a lot of baking supplies on sale - The flyers have had a LOT of coupons for basics (cornflour, sugar, corn syrup, evaporated milk), and the manufacturer sites are putting out some great coupons too. You can get coupons for TollHouse morsels and Libby's pumpkin pie filling at Nestle's Very Best Baking site (just make sure you register). And there's a coupon for $1 off Arm & Hammer Baking soda HERE. Since I'm trying to make as much in my own kitchen as possible, I'll be padding my stockpile with baking staples now so that I can sail through the early part of next year when the prices go back up. I'm planning to budget an extra $30 this month and next month just for staples, we'll see how that goes :)

I'm working on re-posting some of the "Bricklaying" articles from the old blog....I might have to rewrite the last two since they weren't archived yet, Google Cache managed to save the rest of them :) I got really good response to that series, so I want to continue it - if there are topics you'd like to see, send me a message or leave a comment!