Do This Today

Its a simple fact that fun stuff like going to the movies, eating dinner at a restaurant, and going bowling can get expensive very quickly.  With school being out for the summer, we are doing more fun things around town to keep the kids happy and occupied, but our money tree hasn't sprouted yet so we are trying to keep it cheap.  The easiest thing that you can do to cut down the expense of eating out, seeing movies, or doing fun activities is to sign up for e-mail promotions for the places you love to go.  Many times, the first day you sign up, they will send you a coupon that you can use right away.  It only takes a few minutes, and the savings can really add up. 

Seriously, do this today.

Last Friday, I took the kiddo out for a "date night."  We went to Outback for some cheese fries and steak.  I am signed up to receive promotional e-mails from Outback since it's one of my fave restaurants.  Before we headed out, I checked my e-mail archive, and found a coupon they had sent the week prior that was good for $5 with the purchase of two entrees.  After dinner, we headed to the movie theater to see Brave (great movie by the way!), and I presented my $8 off the purchase of one ticket coupon that I had received when I bought the Brave DS video game.  With basically no work at all, we saved $13 on a single night out. Go to your favorite restaurant, arcade, movie theater, or store's websites, and sign up for e-mail updates so you can start saving today. 

Menu Planning: Start today!

The easiest thing you can do right now to lower your stress level, save money, and eat healthier is to start menu planning.  Before I started planning out all of my family's meals, I would often resort to drive through or delivery dinners when I was too tired or uninspired to figure out something to cook after work.  Now I am saving time and money by shopping less often, and avoiding those costly drive through meals. 

It's really easy to get started menu planning, and I know you wont regret it.  Just follow these easy steps:

1. Make a list of all of your family's favorite meals.  I started with dinners only, and added in breakfast, lunch, and snacks later on once I had the hang of menu planning.
2. Choose 7 meals from your list and write them down on your planner, calendar, or a piece of paper with the days of the week written out.
3. Repeat for as many weeks as you can in a single sitting.  I have found that it's way easier to stick to menu planning if you do it all at once rather than having to do it once a week.
4.  Cook, eat, and repeat!  Save all your menu plans and rotate them throughout the year.  I have 4 two week menus that I rotate on a regular basis since we mostly eat the same 20 or so meals on a regular basis.

Check out my Etsy shop, Neon Kiss, for some super cute polka dot menu planning pages.  I like to print my menus out in case I space out and forget what I'm supposed to be making during the week, and to help me remember to defrost meat the night before I need to use it. These colorful pages make me happy to look at every day.  

Organize Everything: Recipes

The best tip I have for everyone (man, woman, child, vampire, whoever) for any situation is this: Organize.  Having a plan, and easily accessible materials can help you do almost anything.  This week I'm working on organizing my recipes. 

Cooking really isn't my thing, but I try my darndest to make a decent selection of mostly edible entrees for my family each night.  I usually prefer to find new recipes online, and print them out to refer to while cooking.  After years of trying to keep up with half crumpled, food stained recipes printed out from the internet, I finally figured out the easiest way to organize them so that I can find the super easy casserole that i have made ten thousand times, but still can't remember the recipe without having the pathetic little print out taking up space on my counter. 

The best way to keep printed recipes from cluttering up your kitchen is to not print them at all.  No, I don't expect you to memorize them.  I am talking about saving them onto your phone, computer, or e-reader, or tablet so that you can search for the recipe you need and use the digital version instead of a printed copy.  I use Gmail for all of my mail and document storage, and I set up a folder called Recipes in my documents. When I save a recipe to the recipes folder, I add tags like "breakfast" or "quick" or "beef" so that I can find the recipe easily later on your phone, tablet, or any internet accessible device.

There are tons of ways to set up a digital recipe file even if you don't use Gmail. You could use any cloud based document storage solution to store your recipes so that you can see them at work, home, or on the go.  If you only want to view your recipes in one place, just set up a folder on your computer, and save each recipe in that folder.  You can use the built in search feature of your computer to find a recipe that you have saved quickly and easily.

Tips: Save recipes as PDF or Word files, and you can e-mail them to your Kindle.  Prop up your Kindle on the kitchen counter, and you've got a quick, easy, digital cookbook. 

Couponing for those of us who haven't completely lost our minds

When the TV show, Extreme Couponers, first came on, I was riveted.  Couponing seemed like such an easy concept, and I'm crazy about saving money, but realistically, I just don't have time to clip coupons in an extreme manner.  Also, I'm not completely insane yet, so I don't  have the urge to hoard mass amounts of toothpaste in my closet or dig through dumpsters for free coupons. I pretty much lost interest in coupons until yesterday when I found this book, Couponing For Busy People by Elle Marshall .  I love this book!  It's free to read for Amazon Prime members, and very cheap for everyone else.  The best part about this book is that it really is geared towards normal folk who want to save money without going totally coupon-insane.  Props to all the extreme couponers out there, but for the rest of us, check out this book. 

Save money & time at the library

Everyone knows that the library can be a huge money saver (all the books you can read, holla!), but sometimes it can be time consuming to browse through shelves to find the books or DVDs that you want to borrow.  Thankfully, many libraries now have an online catalogs of their offerings, and many have the option to reserve items for pickup.  Even if your library doesn't offer this feature, you can usually create a list of items you want to check out that includes the location, call number, and title so you can find what you want easily.  The reserve feature at my local library is especially awesome because you can search the offerings at 6 affiliated branches, and request items be delivered to your branch at no cost. It's one stop shopping for books and DVDs, and the best part is it costs absolutely nothing. Gotta love the library!

Welcome Post

Welcome! This is my inaugural post, and I would like to start out by saying this is not a hide in the woods and filter your own urine kind of survival blog.  When I say survival, I'm talking tips on how to eat in restaurants with your kids without having to duct tape their wiggly butts to their highchairs or how to score sweet deals on everything from groceries to vacations.  Hope you enjoy my survival tips, and feel free to share some of your own in the comments section.