Free Father's Day Cards from Shutterfly

Yay! I love cards from Shutterfly, especially when they are free! You can get 5 photo cards for free through June 9th. You still have to pay for shipping, which is just a few dollars. One of the best things is that you do not have to make all Father's Day cards for your 5 free cards!

Get started on Shutterfly right now! Be sure to enter the code DADCARD at checkout to get your cards for free!

Food Waste Friday

Every Friday, I join with The Frugal Girl and other bloggers to clean out my fridge and freezer and take a picture of anything that has gone bad over the last week. This holds me accountable to faithfully check every week, and motivates me to use up our leftovers. This has made a huge difference in the amount of food we waste every week. I encourage you to participate with me in food waste Friday, too!

Today I tossed a donut, a few cut up tomato pieces, and a ton of homemade oatmeal baby food. The donut was from my grandmother and is probably the saddest part of my food waste today. She got a bunch of these from my favorite donut shop in Hagerstown and we kept them in the fridge and would warm them up before eating. The last one I had was getting really dry and so I just never got around to this final guy. The tomatoes are dumb waste -- you should never leave that little bit of anything! And the baby food was a mistake on my part. I did homemade oatmeal for our daughter and thought I would just make a ton for my son. He struggles with the chunkier textures still, so it was way too much. Now I know and I'll make less!

How was your food waste this week? Do you have a lot of leftovers to go through over the weekend?

Homemade Stuffed Crust Pizza

We usually have pizza on our menu once a week, so I make a lot of homemade pizza! Its really important for our family to not have the same old kind of pizza every time we make it. Recently, I've been experimenting with stuffed crust pizza! I had been wanting to do this for a while since my husband loves stuffed crust pizza at Pizza Hut, then a few months ago Amy @ Flexible Dreams posted how she does stuffed crust. She uses cheese sticks, which makes it super easy and very cheesy, but since they are much more expensive than even shredded cheese, I opted for the cheese I already use for our pizza.

I rolled out our dough and sprinkled cheese around the edge.

Then I stretched and folded the dough over the cheese. It was sticky enough that I could just pinch the dough together.

I added our sauce, cheese and toppings and baked at 425 for about 12-15 minutes.

You can see that my pizza is not perfectly round. It still tasted great!

The finished product!

Yummy cheese! It would have been gooey with more cheese, so I will try to double up the amount I put in the next time I make this.

Extra good deal on Yardley Soap

I always try to point out when Yardley soap goes on sale at Walgreens for 69 cents because I love it so much for my homemade laundry detergent. This is one of those weeks!

To make things even better, the May issue of All You had a coupon for 30 cents off any Yardley! I have never seen a Yardley coupon before, so I was really excited, even though it is very low value.

Have you tried making your own detergent? What do you think of Yardley soap?

Summertime links

I know its a little early for summer, but we are looking at some much warmer weather over the next few days, so I thought I would pull out a few of my summer favorites!

We were soooo addicted to homemade frozen strawberry lemonade last summer! It was a nice treat during the day, or a great way to cool down before bed.

One of my favorite ways to keep things cool at dinnertime is to avoid the oven. We enjoy having several appetizer/side items for dinner instead of a large main course. This cuts down on the cooking and is a great way to mix things up from time to time!

We love pizza; I usually make it every week. But pizza heats the house up a ton! This Caesar Salad pizza is a fun twist on traditional pizza!


Do you have any favorite foods to keep cool as the weather heats up?

Garden Update - May

Our garden is coming along nicely right now! The weather has been fairly moderate and we are getting a ton of rain. I'm going to be spoiled when I have to water again because I am totally out of the habit.

I've also been adding coffee grounds to my garden! I keep a tub in my fridge and dump my coffee grounds into it every day. When I have a substantial tub-full, I spread it around my little plants. I did this two years ago with grounds from Starbucks (they had big bags sitting by the door for your garden, but I haven't seen them at our Starbucks since) and I felt like it helped my plants a ton. I did a little research and it sounds like coffee grounds are especially helpful when the soil is more clay-like, which is exactly what we have here in Delaware.

We have 6 nice looking zucchini plants

And a bunch of tomato plants. I opted to not thin them out too much yet, but I probably will need to soon.

We have a happy little pot full of basil...yum!

And our lettuce is amazing! Its been a real treat to snip off lettuce before dinner. We've had salad several times, as well as tacos.

I bought a package of Impations seeds and was shocked to find a whopping 4 seeds when I opened it! Does anyone know if that is normal? I am thinking of writing to the company because it seemed so strange. I'm not really upset -- I'd mostly like to know if it was an accident. If it was not an accident, I've learned my lesson and I will just buy the plants next time!

We also have a ton of marigolds growing throughout our raised bed. I've read that marigolds are a natural deterrant for bugs, so I am excited that they are coming in so well. I'm planning to move some to our front yard once they get a little bigger and I need some more room for my growing squash and tomato plants.

Coupon Acceptancee Policies

A few weeks ago I added a new tab at the top of my blog that features several different stores' coupon acceptance policies.

It can be frustrating to spend time and energy planning a trip with coupons only to have them rejected by a cashier who just doesn't know their store's policy. Having these printed off and with you at the store can alleviate most of that issue!

Food Waste Friday

My computer has been fixed and is on it's way home to me right now, and I am really looking forward to getting back to regular posting.

I have no food waste picture today, which is mostly because we didn't waste anything! I did chop up some lettuce for a salad the other night and we ended up not eating it. I'm not going to have to buy too much lettuce right now, tough, because my garden is providing us with plenty! We enjoyed a nice salad last night and the only lettuce in it was out of our garden.

Local Middletown readers -- remember that today is our first day for curbside recycling. Is your recycling bin out for pickup? Mine sure is! And in the two weeks since I last dropped our recycling off we managed to fill nearly our whole 65-gallon bin!

Acme coupon booklet

I spied this coupon book by the register on a recent trip to Acme this week. It's full of recipes for summer and 27 coupons! Most of these coupons are manufacturer's coupons, which means they can be used at any store. A few of them are store coupons that can only be used at Acme AND can be stacked with manufacturer's coupons.





Be sure to pick one up on your next trip!

Rite Aid shopping trip

I had a bunch of errands to run today, and I am so glad that I was able to stop by Rite Aid. I spent $12.97 out of pocket and have $4 in rebates coming as well as $5 UP+ reward on my next RA trip PLUS my receipt has a survey with a coupon for $3 off a $15 purchase.

Here's what I got:




2 Biore - $7.99 each
1 Carefree - $1
1 eos lip balm - $2.99
2 Tylenol precise - $5 each
2 Finesse - $3.99 (bogo sale)

I had coupons for nearly everything.
-Buy one Biore cleaning strips get any cleanser free 3/6 smart source insert
-$1/1 carefree 5/8 smart source insert
-2 $5/1 Tylenol precise printed from Tylenol's website
-2 $1/1 Finesse hair care from May All You and 5/8 smart source insert

The eos has a $2 SCR. In the 5/8 smart source was a Finesse rebate for $2. The 2 Biore products produced a $5 UP+ reward. With the rebates my cost will be just $8.97 plus the $5 UP+ and $3/$15 purchase coupons to get something for cheap or free in the next two weeks!

Thanks to Mindi @ Moms Need to Know for the trip inspiration!

Slowing Things Down

Last week we had to send our laptop in to the manufacturer for some repair work. It ended up being really last minute in order to get it there before the warranty expired, so I did not have the chance to get some posts prepped ahead of time.

The next week or so is probably going to be a little light here, since my blogging options are limited to a dinosaur laptop that is ridiculously slow or mobile devices.

I'm also contemplating posting less over the summer months, but that is not set in stone yet.

One feature I was able to add late last week is the new "coupon acceptance policies" tab. I've compiled the coupon acceptance policies from various stores so that you can print them and carry them with you when you shop. I will also add to what I have as time permits.

Using coupons correctly is important ethically speaking, and so it is great to be able to see the differences between stores' policies laid out on paper. But there are also times when a cashier or even a manager does not know the proper coupling procedure. Having the coupon policy with you can clear up that confusion in a respectful way. The last thing a cashier needs is to be bullied by an over zealous and arrogant couponer, no matter how "right" we are about that extra coupon.

I hope you benefit from this list!