$10 free health items

Use code MHS10 at Medco Health Store and get $10 off your order. Shipping is only 99¢, too! I ordered children's Claritin Reditabs and only paid shipping which is an amazing price for anything made by Claritin. They have hundreds of products everyone uses like toothpaste, lotion, and over the counter medicine. Get your free $10 now because I have no idea how long this will last!

You will need to enter your credit card info before you can apply the discount, but you will be able to review the order before anything is charged.

Thanks, Coupon Pro!

Can you eat well on $1 a day?

Jeffrey at the Grocery Coupon Guide says you can and details how he did it with day by day posts. It was incredibly interesting and in theory, my family could eat well for $4 a day! I have some work to do because we are at about $8-10 a day for 4 people.

Book Review: I am Hutterite

I am Hutterite by Mary Ann Kirkby

First of all, I need to admit to a minor (major) obsession I had when I was a child (in high school and college.) I wanted to be Amish. I didn't just want to learn about their culture or read everything I could about them, which I did, but I wanted to actually BE Amish. I even had a brown dress that I called my Amish dress and spent an entire day at a youth convention telling people I was Amish.

So, when I was sent this book to read, I was thrilled. While Hutterites are not Amish (the biggest difference being that Hutterites do not claim ownership to anything), they live a very simple life. In 1528, Jacob Hutter, an Austrian hatmaker, led a group of refugees to the Czechoslovakia. He placed a blanket on the ground and they put all of their combined possession on the blanket. This is how the Hutterites began. The lived together, worked together, and shared everything. They based their lifestyle on Acts 2:44-45 which says, "And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need." 

The first Hutterite Colony was established in the United States in South Dakota in 1874. Mary Ann Kirkby's story begins in Western Canada in 1952 when her father came to the colony where her mother lived. Her mother, Mary, told her friend, "He's mine" as soon as she saw him.

This is the story of a girl raised with one ideal and way of life drastically different than the rest of the world but then moving, with her family, away from her early years to create a new life. This book is part history, part coming of age, and part journal. While I loved the story, it was, at times, very dry reading. I felt like there were moments when the author felt she HAD to write the book. It read like it was her mission to get the story out of her head, but not necessarily intended for others to read. That did, however, give the book a raw openness that I appreciated. I did enjoy reading about a people group of whom I had no previous experience.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from booksneeze.com to review. I did not receive monetary compensation for my opinion.

Review: YouShave Shave Box

Every year 2 million razors are thrown away. One person generates, on average, 11 pounds of garbage in razors each year! That is a staggering amount of trash that just sits in landfills. This is why YouShave! created the Shave Box and All Natural Razor Blade Lubricant. Using this product keeps your razors cleaner so the blades shave smoothly months after use.

I asked my husband to put his razor in the box and to give me his opinion on the product. He has used the same razor for five weeks and after shaving almost every day, he loves how sharp the blade has stayed. He also said it does reduce irritation when he shaves because the lubricant is already on the blade. He also liked that the box can be attached to the shower wall or mirror with the provided suction cups.

The only downside to the Shave Box is that the moisturizing strip that is built into most disposable razors has dissolved from spending all day in the Shave Box. He is using a Gillette Fusion razor. With the Lubricant and Shave Box, that strip is rendered unnecessary anyway but it was annoying to him.

How to Buy:

You can buy the Shave Box with Lubricant directly from YouShave! The complete kit is $14.99 with free priority shipping. Considering this really does extend the life of your razors, it's a great deal!


Disclaimer: I was sent this product from Business2Blogger in exchange for my honest opinion. I did not receive compensation for this review. 

No wind?

When you have a child with special needs, every day is a learning experience. I recently discovered that my son HATES wind in his hair. I'm not quite sure why I just figured this out but as I was thinking about it, it seems entirely possible that this was a new sensation. The air conditioning in my car wasn't cooling properly and since it was at least 100 degrees in my car with the windows up, I did the logical thing and opened all of the windows. The noise that came out of that child's mouth did not sound human! I looked back at him to see a look of terror on his face. He was grabbing his head with both hands while attempting to escape from his car seat. I quickly rolled up all the windows and then, rolled mine back down slowly. Then I rolled the back seat window down slowly (the one on the opposite side of where he was sitting). That's as far as I got before the noise started again. Luckily, we were close to home but my husband fixed the air this weekend. I guess we know who won't be a sky diver when he grows up!

Toxic America

Tonight and tomorrow will be the night's to watch CNN. Tonight (June 2) at 8 pm, Sanjay Gupta, M.D. will explore the problems that face a town in LA that has been fighting problems caused by chemical plants in Toxic Town. Then, tomorrow (June 3), he will explore the issues pregnant mothers and small children must contend with in Toxic Childhood. 

We will be watching because knowledge is the key to change.

Thanks, Cloth Diaper Blog!

Gorton's Fish Tee Giveaway

Like Gorton's Seafood on Facebook and you can enter every day in June to win an Old School Vintage Tee. They are giving away three shirts each day from June 1 - June 30.

Yes, you do have time to use coupons.

The number one complaint I hear from people on why they don't use coupons is that they just don't have time. I have wanted to do this math for a while to prove that it takes almost NO time to save money. Since my husband was off today, I was able to go to the grocery without kids but finding the coupons, looking at ads, and figuring out what I was going to buy was done while they were asleep.

1:30pm - 2:30pm: Quick check of what we have already, look at store ads online (Walgreens, Target, CVS, and Publix), go to Coupon Cravings, Fiddledeedee!, and Southern Savers to check coupon match ups for coupons I may already have or be able to get online. I don't make an actual list but I do jot down notes for each store of what I want to look at or things that are on sale that I might not have a coupon to match.

2:30pm - 4:00pm: CVS - spent $6.13, saved $14.78, got $2 Extra Care Bucks to use on my next trip. Target - spent $30.83, saved $35.60, got $15 in gift cards back to use on my next trip. Publix - spent $63.64, saved $42.59.

Total Spent: $100.60

Total Saved: $93.57

Total in "cash back:" $17.00

4:00pm - 4:30pm:  Put $200 worth of groceries away, play "Guess How Much I Paid" with husband (I hold up an item and say, "Guess how much I paid for this?") 

Bottom Line: From start to finish, I spent 3 hours to plan out my grocery trip for this week. (It usually lasts about a week and a half.) I saved almost $95 and made $17 to spend next week so I think of that in an hourly rate since this is basically my contribution to the family budget. In the sense that this is my job, I made about $37 per hour of work I put in.

As a stay at home mom, I absolutely can't justify NOT doing this for my family! It's so simple and I am guaranteed a great return. Garage sales, consignment stores, Ebay, and Craig's List can't do that! I see numbers like that EVERY WEEK if I put forth a little bit of effort. 

Save Money on Cleaning Products

Allyou.com has created a list of 30 money saving tips. I knew vinegar and baking soda could be used to clean around the house but I had no idea you could use coffee grinds, mouthwash, lemon Kool Aid, or bread as cleaning products! I also love the idea of putting newspaper at the bottom of the trashcan to soak up spills and odors. I will be doing that as soon as I take out the trash!

Art as a tool...

This is will not save you money and is completely unrelated to the overall premise of my blog but I loved it. I wanted to share it. It's beautiful, sweet, and brought my mind back to the heart of God.



Thanks, My Freshly Brewed Life for sharing!