Home Made Chicken Broth-and then soup

Just a quick note, I have always bought my chicken stock for cooking, however, after talking with some girl friends a couple of weeks ago, I tried to make my own last weekend and what do you know, it turned out!!!!  All I did was take a "tray" of chicken thighs (I had them in the freezer from a sale this spring so it was time to use them, you can usually get them on sale for $2-4, depending on the sale/coupons) I put the chicken in a "stock pot" (it's all making sense now) covered them with water, I have no clue how much but if I had to guess I would say at least 4 qts.  I tossed in some onion and let it boil, and boil, and boil!  Then, I turned it off to let it cool somewhat.  At this point once it is cooled you could measure it out and freeze it, I decided to go ahead and make soup right away.  So, after taking the chicken meat off the bone, I returned half of it back to the pot (I used the rest for BBQ chicken sandwiches later in the week) and added carrots, egg noodles, salt, pepper, celery salt, and some chicken bouillon cubes (those would be optional, but with store bought chicken, I thought it needed the extra flavor!) Just let it simmer and that's all there is too it!  Who knew! ;)

SEPTEMBER 1st!

Well HELLO everyone! (well the 2 of you who follow this blog) :) It is the first of September and I am BACK!  I took the summer off, things get pretty crazy around this place for the summer, between farming, ranching, the office, and the lake, we are pretty busy!  I do as little cooking as possible in the summer and pretty much live off my stockpile since I don't have very much time to coupon and shop in the summer, and let me tell ya, that stockpile is a life saver! I am super excited for fall and can't wait to put up a few blogs with pictures!!!  I will be doing a little decorating in "the new part" and can't wait to post about that!  My garden has been good, that's right, I have a  garden, so I will post some of that, and last but not least, I have been reading and trying some really great recipes and can't wait to post about those!  So excited to be back!  Happy FALL everyone!

Pat-A-Crust

Here is a quick recipe I tried last night for pie crust. I used to buy pie crust. Life was good, someone else did the work, there they were ready to unroll and use... Then I discovered thePW cookbook, so I made them and would freeze them. Last night as Wade walked out of the house with the kids they said "what's mom going to do?"  Wade responded "she is going to make us a pie!" WHAT, I was?  I had no thoughts of the such!!!  I guess, if the kids and the man want pie, then I will give them pie!  Well I was out of pie crusts in the freezer and didn't have that kind of time so I called my friend Donna, who had brought one of these pies to a birthday party I was at.  This crust is so quick and easy, I don't know that I will ever roll another one!  It is a bit more "crumbly" than a rolled crust but that's a sacrifice I am willing to make! ;) (I don't EAT pie, just MAKE pie, so if the crust crumbles, I don't really care~) 

2 c. flour
2 T. sugar
Pinch of salt

sift together in a mixing bowl.  (got that, sounds tough I know)

2/3c. oil
3 T. milk

wisk together

NOW here is the tricky part...mix the dry ingredients and the oil/milk, with a fork, until it is all moistened and crumbly.  (I hope you can detect the sarcasm as this is about as easy as pie making gets!)

Pour the crust into your pie plate and start to "pat"!  I did the sides first then the bottom, just pressing and patting until you have a nice even crust.  If you want some "crust" for the top of your pie reserve 1/4 of the mixture.  I did that last night and then crumbled it on top of my pie filling.  Fill your pie and bake at 425 until crust is golden and pie filling is "set".  There you have it!  This, in combination with the canned apple pie filling I have from our apples off the tree last fall, is going to be a BREEZE to make a pie whenever they want one!  The pie Donna brought to the party was a strawberry pie, so I just might have to get that recipe from her too, it was AWESOME!  Hope you all get to impress someone with your QUICK pie making skills!  Good Luck!

EASY Pasta Salad

3 c. uncooked macaroni noodles
1 c. frozen peas, thawed and rinsed
1 8oz bag shredded cheddar cheese
2 c. miarcle whip
2 T. sugar

Cook the noddles, drain and COOL, then mix in the peas and cheese, then in a seperate bowl mix the mayo with the sugar (I always add some ranch dressing, or honey mustard, or even western dressing).  Mix the dressing in with the noodle mix.  Chill for a couple hour before serving.  Wade LOVES this super easy salad, I make it for him to eat for lunch during the week.  I almost always find some kind of meat to mix in, like left over bacon, ham, or summer sausage...pretty much a clean out the fridge salad, cause I also use whatever cheese I have left over in the fridge...and from time to time, I even have the left over noodles...ok maybe this should be "super easy don't throw that away put it in this..salad"!

Weekly Menu 4/25-4/29

MONDAY:

We had breakfast bowls...which was left over oven potatoes from Easter, left over sausage from Easter and then  I just wisked up some eggs and milk, put the potatoes and sausage in individual ramekins, then poured the egg mix over them and baked them until the eggs were almost set and topped them with shredded cheese!  Good, and super easy!

TUESDAY:

Tonight we are having a chicken skillet meal, I will slice up 2 chicken breasts and brown them (well it is actually whiting them but you know what I mean) then just pour some (about 2 cups) of noodles in that same pan, and add water to cover, once the water has cooked off, your noodles should be done and you can add a veggie if you want (I will be doing frozen peas/carrots) then mix in a sauce, like alfredo or spaghetti, or our new favorite and what I will be using tonight, about half a tub of Philadelphia cooking creme!(the Italian one)

WEDNESDAY:

Putting a couple roasts in the crock pot (to shred and make BBQ beef) and then making "cowboy beans" in another crock pot, I am PURPOSELY doubling this so I can freeze some for branding...we brand when we have time so depending on the weather, Wade usually just gives me a days notice about when they will brand a bunch or all...so it really helps to have the meals in the freezer! 

THURSDAY:

Grilling burgers, here again I will thaw out more meat than I need and use my AWESOME Tupperware burger press and make some extra patties, these come in so handy cause you can throw them on the grill frozen!  I will also make baked french fries!

FRIDAY:

Putting a WHOLE chicken in the crock pot, then will make some Betty Crocker potatoes when I get home...hope to have left overs for chicken salad!  ;)

Fabulous Freezer Idea!

My friend Chistina told me she has made sloppy joe's and froze them in muffin tins (I am sure I will use the cupcake liners) then once they are frozen, pop them out and seal them in a zip lock.  When you need a quick meal they are single serve ready to microwave and put on a bun or piece of bread!  HOW awesome is that!?!  I can't wait to get some in the freezer!  I get so so so excited about new ideas for my freezer...e-mail me if you have any great ideas!

Quick recipe for Chocolate Chip Bars

This weekend my family was out in the afternoon for coffee, so I wanted a quick recipe for some bars, I found this, modified it a bit and they were really good, served the purpose, and you are about to see how easy they were!

1 boxed yellow cake mix
2 eggs
1/2 c. oil
1/2-1 c. chocolate chips

That's it!  Mix the oil and eggs, add the cake mix (This is thick!  I might add 2 T. of water next time, but they did turn out good without it) and then add the chocolate chips, you have to spread (it won't just pour) it in a 9x13 and bake at 350^  for about 20 minutes, you don't want to over bake these, I must have because they were really good warm but when my company left I had to get out a metal spatula to get the rest out of the pan and into the trash... :)

Weekly Menu 4/18-4/22

Monday:

We had Pizza and root beer tonight thanks to my poor planning! 

I did, however, make it up to them with cupcakes!

Tuesday:

sloppy joe's and tator tots

I will make extra sloppy joe's and freeze in muffin tins

for single serve portions out of the freezer!  (Thanks for the idea Christina!)

Wednesday:

Beefy Noodle Bake

This makes 2 casseroles so I will freeze one!

Thursday:

Wade's Birthday! 

Tenderloin roast and oven roasted potatoes

Friday:

Spaghetti and garlic breadsticks

I will again make extra and freeze a spaghetti pie.

This week will be good for my freezer, with springs work around the corner, it is so nice to have the cooking out of the way, I never know when I will be out helping when I should be in making supper, so having my freezer ready is so WORTH the little extra work!

Addition! (No, not another baby!)

 My Dishes = LOVE

Mud Room (and Tucker)

MY Laying Boxes...for all the crap that ends up in a mud room!

Living room area, the door on the right is the bedroom.

FIREPLACE!

Breakfast bar...well sort of, mostly a table Wade cut 2 legs off of!

HUGE Dining room table

more of the table/dishes ;)

Fireplace in the bedroom

Master bath vanity...waiting patiently for my mirror to go 50% off at Hobby Lobby! ;)

Thought I would post a few photos of what I have been doing lately!  This addition has been YEARS in the making and I am happy to say we are down to Wade's office and my closet to finish! It has been really nice to see things come together, we are IN LOVE with how it is turning out and are enjoying the extra space!  As you can see, the walls are pretty bare, but trust me...I have stuff for that! :)

Freezer Organization!

I am pretty excited about something I started doing about 3 months ago that is making my life MUCH easier!  I said in an earlier post that when couponing and stockpiling, it is so important to KNOW what you have and keep like items together.  This is something that can be VERY difficult if you have a chest freezer like I do!  It seems like I would toss things in and NEVER be able to get to them, or buy way too much of one thing and be out of the next, it is very hard to keep things in their place in my freezer.  So with that being said, I decided to organize the freezer!  The next time I went to town I bought 5 rubbermaid tubs with lids that would fit stacked in my freezer like these:

I cleaned out everything in the freezer and divided the stuff amongst the tubs.  I labeled them baking goods, frozen veggies, cheese, meat, and one misc.  Now I have them all stacked in my freezer, if I need to get to something at the bottom I can pull the tubs out and easily get to the one I want. All similar items are in the tub so I know when it's time to "restock", therefore reducing waste due to not remembering what I have!  There is enough room in the "basket" for the meals I like to have on and then the area underneath is where I keep some bread items stacked!  I am LOVING this!  I think it probably takes up some extra space but I think it is so worth it!  I am lucky enough to have a deep freeze out in the garage where we keep all of our meats (like the beef and pork and deer we have so much of) and then in my "fridge freezer" I keep the more commonly used items like toaster strudel, frozen pizza, ice cream and those sorts of things!    Being organized like this sure has made meal prep and grocery shopping a lot easier and more enjoyable! Would sure LOVE to know what is working for some of you!

Weekly Menu 4/4 - 4/8

I know this is late but it might be helpful for next week!?

Monday: Sausage and oven roasted potatoes (these are the best, all you do is cube up some potatoes (don't even peel them) toss with some oil and whatever spices you like (I use chives and garlic pepper) and bake them covered for about an hour!) I also just covered the sausage with water and put it in the oven along with the potatoes (in a separate kettle of course), talk about set it and forget it!

Tuesday: We had hamburger helper, I was going to make hot dish but ended up working, so I think they had hamb helper, now that I think of it, I have no idea what they ate! ;)

Wednesday: We had chili topped baked potatoes.  (Again, so stinkin easy, I had left over chili from Sunday so I just threw baked potatoes in the oven, then cut them open, top with the heated up left overs and shredded cheese!)

Thursday: We are having Beef Stroganoff tonight. Last time I made it, I made a double batch of the meat to freeze so I took it out this morning and all I will have to do is heat it up and make some egg noodles!

Friday: Tacos!  I am planning on making extra of the taco meat to freeze, how easy are tacos on a busy night if you already have the meat made up! My cousin also told me she uses the left over meat in breakfast burritos, YUM!, and you ALL know how much I love a breakfast burrito! ;) 

OK, so maybe that wasn't so helpful, It was a pretty lazy week, but we did have supper every night so I guess maybe this will help you realize how EASY it can be to get supper on the table EVERY night!

Trip to OKC

I am back from my 10 day trip to Oklahoma to visit family.  I took the boys, my sister and her one month old!  We should have for sure had a reality TV film crew with, no doubt it would have been good watching! We had such a good time, I just wanted to send for Wade and Emma and stay there!  With that length of trip it was so nice to be able to spend a LOT of time with everyone down there, I got to see cousins at a cutting, I took in 2 baby showers (same Momma, one in OK and one in TX), 2 rodeos, a trip to the zoo, 2 trips to "Uncle Trent's" farm, did some coupon shopping at stores we don't have, it was just so much fun to be able to do all those things!  I am home now and feeling very refreshed and ready to tackle the rest of the house additon project so I can move on to yard projects for this spring!  Did I mention I got to play with the cowboys, you all know how much I love a cowboy!  Here are a couple of my absolute favorites!

Fruity Pebble Treats

Just a quick note to let you in on my kids newest love "fruity pebble treats"!  I just make rice krispy bars but use fruity pebbles instead, and they LOVE them!  They beg for them!  They will clean, they will eat all their supper, they will even take a shower instead of a bath, with the simple promise of "fruity pebble treats"... I think I love them as much as they do! ;) 


PS:  I use the malt o meal cereal so really they are fruity dyno bite treats...but that's just a mouth full!

The Meal Planning Center!

YAY!  Finally a place to have all my cookbooks organized and right at my fingertips in my kitchen!  I love how this turned out, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with this old jelly cupboard when I bought it but with a little help from Wade it fits awesome right in the corner in the kitchen and frees up all the space my cookbooks used to be taking up in the pantry! From now on, when you see this picture, know that my weekly menu will be posted with it! :)  Happy meal planning!

The things DIVORCES are made of!

Last week while laying in bed at about 6:00 am, I heard Wade fire the truck up.  He told me he had to unload fertilizer so I didn't think anything of it.  I soon sat up in bed to see what the ruckus was, it was him, and he was stuck! Again, very likely this time of year so I didn't think anything of it.  Soon, I sat up again to see what the ruckus was, it was him roaring by in the 4WD tractor...and as I laid there, in my nice warm bed, barely awake, I remember my mom  saying "you don't have to do that, make him find a man to help him, those are the things divorces are made of"!  Her advice had come before we were married and to date I can count on ONE hand the amount of times I have been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had to help someone get "un-stuck".  So I laid there and contemplated, watched him make several trips from the tractor to the semi and back, so finally I decided to go help...and all I could think about the whole way out there was the advice my mom had given me...what was I thinking?  Volunteering?  For all he knew I was asleep...yet for some reason, I had to go out there!  Well, it was pretty cut and dry, I decided to be the pullee and it went off without a hitch, I came back in and retreated to the bed for another half hour of sleep.  I got up, got the kids up, everyone got ready as normal and as I was walking out the door Wade said to me "have you been losing weight?"  I laughed and thought "Ha Mom"  "getting him unstuck has the opposite affect on Wade!"

Keepin it real!

I just thought I would take a moment, well a post, to clarify that I am not perfect and do not claim to be super mom, super business woman, and surely not super wife!  I just have lots of ideas and want us all to have a place to share them!  So please rest assured that while I am telling you how to organize, and I am pretty darn good at it, it is an ongoing battle and I do have an old entry that looks like this:

It is right at the top of my list of things to get cleaned and organized, but for SURE by the time I get it done, the wheels will have fallen off the organizing buggy in another area of this house!  With that being said, I just want this to be a place we can all share ideas, we are all in the same boat...and sometimes all it takes is a little motivation to keep our "boats" afloat!

Weekly Menu 3/21

Hi All, well the 3 of you I have told about this blog!  Here is this weeks menu:  I am leaving for OKLAHOMA on Thursday for a week to see family (taking the boys with, we should have a film crew, as I am sure it would be good watchin!) so I am trying to make BIG portions to have left overs and some things in the freezer for Wade and Emma!

Monday: Burritos and spanish rice... I will make extra and wrap them and toss in the freezer for quick lunches for Wade.

Tuesday: Cheese burgers and Fries...Here again I will make extra so Wade can just microwave them.

Wednesday: Crock Pot Western Chicken and Ramen Noodles (yes I said Ramen noodles, my kids LOVE them and they are a super easy finish to a crock pot meal) I will make extra chicken so Wade (or Emma) can just make more noodles.

Thursday: Crock Pot Cheesy Sausage and Potatoes This makes a LARGE batch so there will be leftovers!  I am leaving Thursday morning so I will toss this in in the morning before I head out! 

So, there it is, let me know if anyone needs recipes!  As you can see, I have a busy week so my crock pot will be getting used quite a bit!  I have some stuff in the freezer so they should have PLENTY to eat while we are gone!

mud puddles + little boys = wet boots

I  LOVE spring, FINALLY my kids can get out of the house and play...which ALWAYS leaves me looking for a way to dry their boots before the next days play.  I have tried lots of things, even resorted to each kid having 2 pairs of boots so one can have a day off to dry!  I googled "home made boot dryer" looking for an answer and came across this so I decided to give it a try. It works AWESOME!  All they are is counter top paper towel holders.  I bought these at Wal-Mart for $1.96, put the kids boots on them and set them over a register in the entry and they are dry by the next morning!  AWESOMENEES!

Weekly Menus

Here is another thing I think goes hand in hand with your couponing/shopping and also budgeting!  And also, just your sanity in general!  I have ALWAYS been really good about making a weekly menu, if you don't I challenge you to do one for next week, you will be hooked!  It is so win/win!  You can use what you have on hand, using up things in your fridge before they go to wast, it saves you the headache of planning every morning or night what to do, your meals will be on the table faster cause you will know what you are making so you can take your meat out in the morning, you can even do prep work in the morning or the night before, you will find you are no longer eating out just cause it was quicker, you can combine prep work (like if you are having 2 recipes this week with ground beef, brown it all at once), my husband always knows "the plan" so if he gets in the house first he can get things started,  I am sure you get my point by now, I just can't say enough about menu planning!  You can make this fun too, my sisters and I get together and plan menus, share recipes, maybe have a few drinks while we do so, and probably get at least 2 weeks or a month of menus out of the way at once, however, I can do a weekly menu in about 10 minutes! Once you get into the swig of things you will be lost without it!  As you get better you will find yourself doubling things to freeze one, or even just doing a little extra prep and throwing it in the freezer for later! Here again, it can be as simple as a week jotted down on a piece of paper, you can use a calendar, you can use a "weekly" memo pad that you can put right on your fridge, my sister keeps hers all organized in a binder, you can find several templates that you can print off on-line, you can buy software, the possibilities are really endless! I just recommend you keep things organized, so you can use your old menus for future reference!  You really will love this, you will find you aren't making the same thing over and over again, if you plan 2 weeks at a time, you won't be eating the same thing more than once in 2 weeks, that's not bad! So sit down with Sunday night (or whenever you have time) with some of our cookbooks and make a plan! To help you get started, I am going to post my menu for this past week, ending with tonight:

Monday:  Tuna Casserole (I make mine with cream cheese and velveeta instead of cream of mushroom) ;)
Tuesday: Grilled Ham and Cheese and baked French Fries
Wednesday: Sausage and Fried Potatoes (pure health food I know, you are going to realize I am not the healthiest cook! Last week I made brownies in my waffle iron!)
Thursday: Breakfast food!  We had left over sausage and waffles, then I make lots of extra waffles to freeze for breakfasts!  Another one of my favorites (just ask my sisters) on this night is an idea I got from my friend Kristi!  She makes breakfast burritos, with sausage, eggs, hashbrowns and cheese (I use the salsa con queso a lot) and make PLENTY extra, just wrap the extra individually in saran wrap and freeze them, super handy for Wade to grab for breakfast or just about anytime of the day really! Pop it in the microwave and they are SO good!
Friday: Homemade bacon cheeseburger pizza

So there, nothing fancy, this was a SUPER easy week cause I was busy at the office, but really, I never make anything that takes very long to prepare!  I will try to post a menu every week and if you need the recipes just comment!

Couponig 101: A few helpful tips to get you started!

Hey everyone, just wanted to list a few "tips" to get you started!

* Take a little time to get to know the coupon policy at the stores you shop at, when I started, I found coupon policies online for K-Mart and Wal-Mart, and called Dan's and asked questions!  Please remember that when you are out shopping, every transaction is not going to go smoothly, they might have to get the manager over there, and the manager might decide to not accept the coupon, that's how it goes, just remember your manners and be respectful.  I do not want cashiers to start rolling their eyes when they see a couponer in their line, so don't give everyone a bad rap by being rude!  Know the coupon policies where you shop and be prepared to deal with the little inconveniences in the check out line!

* Google "couponing blogs" and find a few that you like and use them as a resource!  I follow http://www.hip2save.com/ and www.iheartthemart.com and then there are a few others that I like so I read them every couple of days.

*Make sure to create a special e-mail just for your new hobby (or use an old one) because you will use it to sign up for special offers by e-mail and you will inevitably be getting spam and junk mail!  I use the first hotmail acct I ever started and the SAME password for all the stuff I sign up for just to simplify things.

*I use coupons.com, smartsource.com, and redplum.com along with the coupon blogs above to find on-line coupons.  Now, there usually aren't the inserts in the Dickinson Press, they are in the Tribune, so if you know someone who gets the Trib, have them save the inserts for you, or buy a Sunday paper!  I have someone who saves them for me, so, instead of buying a $2 paper, I look at the coupons I want more of, and use a coupon clipping service.  I use www.couponsthingsbydede.com.  What a clipping service is, is a place where you can order multiple coupons for a fee.  They can't charge you for the coupons, so you will see a handling fee, and then of course, a shipping charge.  I usually spend .08-.10 on a coupon.  I spend about $3-$5 a week on coupons (that includes shipping).  I order coupons on Tuesday, so normally I know the sales for the week and can get the coupons by Friday when I shop!

*Take a little time learning about "stockpiling" which basically means when things are on sale, you buy enough of that item to last you until the next sale cycle so you never have to pay full price for groceries/toiletries!  Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a bit of a stockpiler, so the only thing new to me is to be pairing coupons with sales, and getting an even better price!  The other thing about stockpiling is you need to be organized!  If you don't know what you have, you end up wasting and that defeats the purpose!  I am lucky enough to have a large pantry, a nice chest freezer (man I just cracked up at "I have a nice chest..."  LOL) and few closets in my bathrooms where I can store other necessities!  I think the key is to keep like items together and know what you will be using,  no one needs 150yr supply of deoderant, no matter how cheap it was! Now, this doesn't have to be fancy, maybe a shelf in the basement or shoe-box under the sink, the very important thing is to KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE.

*Have a BUDGET!  This is so important, and I have always "thought" that, but am very guilty of thinking it doesn't apply to me!  However, I am on the right track now and have very good budget and follow it and LOVE to see my savings!  It makes no difference if your grocery budget is $30 dollars a week or $300 dollars a week, the important thing is to stick to it! There are tons of ways to budget, I just sit down with a notebook and pencil and calculator and start figuring.  I add up all my monthly bills (these are just the "fixed" bills I get every month like utilities), then figure where to spend whats left (this is the part where you are really creating a budget, deciding what to spend on food, gas, entertainment, those types of things you can control and cut back).  I think that  NO MATTER what, you need to have some savings, even if it's $10 bucks a month, in a few months that could buy your groceries for a week, and sometimes, all you need is a seed to make you want to see your savings build up.  Soon you will be putting $10 away here and $5 there and you will be shocked how it adds up!   Another thing you might find useful when you are looking at your monthly bills is simply the idea of taking bills that you pay monthly and writing down the balance, working the debts from smallest to largest putting anything "extra" you have at the end of the month toward them one at a time, each time you pay something off it will free up that much more each month to put towards the next, and so on, until soon you will be left with things like you mortgage payment and maybe your vehicle payment.OK, that was a pretty detailed bugeting tip, but you get my point!

*Have a plan when you shop, take a few minutes to look at the sale fliers, and do some coupon matchups, have a list and stick to it!  Pick a day to shop so you don't find yourself constantly at the store, I go once a week that way I can hit the sales and get the fresh food I need! 

*Keep your coupons organized, there are a TON of different methods, you can google "coupon organization" and watch you tube videos, or just read, you can make an investment in a custom made binder, or you can use envelopes and a shoe box, it doesn't matter how you do it, as long as you have a system that works for you! 

*You aren't going to, nor do you need to, get every deal!  There are TONS of deals, 90% of them won't be useful to you, don't find yourself wasting time signing up for freebies you won't use, clipping coupons for things your family doesn't need, those types of things with BOG you down and you will be burnt out before you know it!   I treat this like a hobby, and just like any other hobby, in the beginning, you will spend more time reading blogs, learning the lingo, all that stuff, but once you are in a groove, you won't spend much more than 15 minutes a day, if even, couponing!

*and most importantly BE REALISTIC!  You are not going to feed your family of 5 for $6 a month, that's not what it's about, it is about doing the best with what you have!   You may find in the beginning that you are actually spending a little more than normal cause you are still shopping and trying to coupon to build your stock pile, but soon, you will find yourself, only buying your coupon items and being able to "shop from your stock pile at home" instead of running out to the store for every little thing. 

Welcome

Hello!  Well, here we go again, I started a blog, and quit blogging once before, yet for some reson I decided to start again!  My old blog was a a mix between ranch wife stories, working mom time savers, and of course, recipes!  Well, this one will be all that plus a place for us to share local deals.  For any of you who don't know, I have, in the past 2 months, started to coupon!  There were several reasons I wanted to start, the main one being I have not been very good about bugeting and saving over the past few years. I am blessed with a good job and a husband who has a good job, so I was still spending just about all the money I waned too, after all, we have good jobs so "it's just money, we can always make more"!  I didn't realize how bad my spending habbits were (well ok I have always known but chose to ignore them) until last fall when I had a little bout with skin cancer and decided that if I was in fact going to die, I had better clean every nook and cranny in this house as to not leave my mess for someone else! ;)  Well, I did just that, I had Wade pull the farm truck up to the back door and started cleaning, organizing, donating, tossing, and it went on and on.  THREE truck loads later, I was "decluttered" "simplified" whatever you want to call it, I was! When I was about done with all this my husband said to me, "you realize this is only going to work if you don't bring a yukon load of crap back into the house twice a week"!  He was refferring to my "couple times a week" trips to Dickinson to get, well, whatever, mostly just crap I didn't need and in about 4 years was going to toss into the backend of the old red truck!  So it was then I decided that I don't need to shop til I drop 4 days a week.  Well, fast fwd a couple of months, and I was working on my balance sheet at the office for the bank, when I called the banker to run though our "debts" and I realized, that in the business we are in, we can't possibly avoid business debt, however, I CAN avoid household debt!  So I decided that Iam going to save where possible, so that I can get any little household debt I might have paid off!  It seems like just a day or two after that phone call I was reading my cousin Holley's blog and she had a post about couponing...after a few texts to her and a lot of reading, I decided, hey this seems pretty awesome!  One of the main reasone I LOVE to coupon is it spills into other areas of spending for me and has reallykept me on budget!  After a few months of telling my friends about couponing, and learning how to make it work for me at local stores I decided to start this blog as a place for US to share local deals. We don't have the big drugstores or the grocery chainns that double coupons, but we do have some GREAT local stores that have great deals! So, please check back often and email me with your ideas for deals, recipes, stories, and tips on how to be happy to "Live Within Your Harvest"!