Budgeting for Organic Foods-Menu Planning

The key to a successful budget is planning. My biggest problem is waste and overbuying and you can combat both of these with a great plan. The other thing I notice is that when I plan I am more inspired to make more new and interesting foods.
My first step to planning is taking stock of what I have in the fridge/pantry that needs to be used up. This week I have some leftover beef stock from making crock pot roast beef sandwiches, zucchini and ham that I want to use up.

So lets start from there with the leftover beef broth, I'd like to make Risotto. I found a great recipe online that sounds delicious! Now I'm not using tenderloin for this, I'm using leftover chuck roast. That's another one of my big ways of saving money, really stretching our meat and using cheaper cuts. We really just use meat to add flavor and see it as a side not the main component. Pinterest has been a great source of inspiration and I saw these healthy Zucchini chips that I'd love to try. The ham is just begging to be made into Spit Pea Soup, YUM!!

Saturday-
Beef Risotto-I'll be using some mushrooms we have in the fridge for this, so we have everything in house to make this except for the wine. I'm also using Aborrio rice instead of the carnaroli rice the recipe calls for (Aborrio is also a great Risotto rice). As a side I want to make Zucchini chips because I think that would brighten up the heaviness of the meal, Also I'd like to bring them to the Superbowl party we are going to Sunday but want to try out the recipe beforehand.

Sunday-
SUPERBOWL!! We were invited to a friends house so I just wanted to bring a couple things, the first being the Zucchini chips and the second is Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Dip. These look delicious! For the Cookie Dough Dip I'll bring some apples as well as Graham Crackers to dip.

Monday-
Monday I'll be babysitting so its a great day to use my crockpot for some Split Pea Soup. We have some Ezekiel bread that will hold up nicely toasted with this soup! Another meal we don't need to buy anything for.

Tuesday-
Spicy Honey Chicken, Brown Rice and Broccoli. For this we buy our Chicken from Trader Joes and get Organic Cage Free thighs for 4.99 lb. It is a bit pricy but this will be the only meal this week that is featuring meat and using more than a lb.

Wednesday-
Another Pinterest find is Coconut, Shrimp and Corn Chowder. This looks delicious and we happen to have some wild caught shrimp in the freezer and all the ingredients in the pantry.

Thursday-
Dahl with Spinach served with brown rice. One of the hubs favorite foods is Dahl, which is awesome because its cheap and nutritious! We often do vegetarian nights to save cash. Thankfully the hubs will eat everything! If your family isn't big on the vegetarian bandwagon try to cook foods from other cultures, they might be so fooled by the new flavors that they will not even realize that they are eating vegetarian!

Friday-
Pizza! Pizza crust is cheap and easy to make yourself. Pizza is also a great fridge emptier; take your veggies, leftover meats, cheese ends and use them up! One of my friends parents instituted pizza night at their house when we were younger. Everyone was invited and they just made pizza after pizza. It was so fun and delicious and everyone ended up there on Friday nights! Something I definitely want to start doing in our house!

So as far as our menu plan goes here is what I need to buy: Garbonzo Beans, Graham Crackers, Onions, Garlic, Broccoli, Spinach, Chicken Thighs and Corn. As you can see I'm relying heavily on what is in my pantry so I really only need to pick up a few things to make our dinners. Now I go through and add in some of the other things we'll need this week: fruit, yogurt, milk, eggs. For our breakfasts we either eat eggs, oatmeal or smoothies so I try to have those things in the house at all times. Lunches generally are leftovers. Now that I'm all done figuring what we are eating this week I go through my house and see what needs to be re-filled. I like to keep a well stocked pantry (flour, sugar, oatmeal, beans, coffee, butter, peanut butter, tuna, jelly, baking needs, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, chicken broth, olive oil, etc). Once I see what I need to replenish I check the sales and see if there is anything there that I can buy in bulk. This week my groceries I need will probably only cost $40-45 so I have about $30-35 to restock my pantry or stock up on sales items. Sometimes I'll use this extra if I see good sales and sometimes I will roll it into the next weeks budget to save up in case there is a good sale on meat or I'm close to needing a high priced item (maple syrup, oils, etc). I'll also use the surplus to sometimes treat us to takeout.

What are you making this week?

Grocery List
Garbonzo Beans-3 cans (1 for the dip and 2 for pantry as I used mine up this week on hummus)
Graham Crackers
chicken thighs
Onions
Garlic
Broccoli
Spinach
Corn
Apples
Bananas
Oranges/Clementines
Yogurt
milk
eggs
tuna


Extra
Red Wine

Budgeting for Organic Foods-Step 1 Taking Stock and Prioritizing

A few of my friends have been asking me how we afford to eat organic foods after they watched Food Inc. After some discussion I was a little shocked to know that we had almost the same grocery budget (mine was $5 more a week). I was asked to tell how to eat clean foods on a budget. Let me give you a little background on this, I started on this lifestyle shortly after we got married and have gradually gotten "crunchier". We make some choices that have been viewed as extreme in order to be able to fit this into our budget. I view our budget as a game of "Would You Rather", lets dive in a bit.

In our home we:
cloth diaper
use rags for cleaning
use cloth napkins for food
clean with vinegar and baking soda
line dry whatever clothes that we can
change our own oil and do car repairs that we can (well the hubby does these)
mend our own clothes
try to learn new skills rather than paying someone to do them for us (plumbing, electrical, etc)
buy used "beater" cars with cash
stockpile food either by buying in bulk for better prices or by buying the max amount of a sale price
shop at multiple stores for best prices
buy used clothing for the whole family if possible
bake from scratch instead of buying convenience foods
turn off lights like freaks
I cut my husbands hair
we don't have premium channels (and our cable is free)
we don't watch tv until the evening
we drink water for beverages
we don't have netflix or hulu plus

This is not an exhaustive list but it gives you an idea of the types of ways we cut back on our budget in other ways to accommodate the things that we find most important. What's most important to our family right now is for me to be home with our son and for all of us to eat nutritious REAL foods. Now don't think we are complete misers here. We do allow some luxuries into our life. My husband and I have a slight Starbucks addiction, we both have smartphones (his company pays for his and because we don't have to pay for a cell phone for him we use that savings for the data plan for me) and other things. We live a rich full life that we enjoy by taking stock of what's important to us and cutting things out that we don't care about. I would rather do these things and eat well than have some more conveniences and not be able to eat this way.

So I challenge you to take a look at your spending and write every single blessed thing down that you spend your money on. Once you have a month of that take a look at what you are spending your money on and figure out if there are things you can do to reduce that number. Remember that Rome wasn't built in a day and you don't need to make complete and drastic changes overnight but just little steps in the right direction. Figure out what the most important change to you is (for me it was buying organic milk and cage free organic eggs) and make that change this month. If you have questions or scenarios that you want to know more about let me know and we can address them in future posts. I'm not the authority on this but whatever knowledge I have I'd be happy to pass on.

Tips!

So, the hubs and I turned the t.v. off on January 3rd and kept it off till Feb 4th. Since then we've watched 1 tv show and 2 movies. I think we have broken our tv addiction. Woo hoo!

While at the library this week I picked up some videos of Julia Child's "The French Chef" series and have been watching one per day while Bug is nursing. I've never seen any of her shows before and I discovered that I ADORE her!! While watching she solved a big annoyance to me in the kitchen. We rarely have paper products as we use cloth napkins, cleaning rags, etc. One thing that I always need a napkin or paper towel for, is to butter pans for baking and cooking. Well while watching Julia, she used a spatula to spread the butter in the pan. It was like a huge lightbulb moment for me! One of those things that you don't think of but its such an easy solution!

Made my day!

Cloth Diapering so far

pic of my Bug's cute little cloth diapered tush!

Some of our parenting decisions were made automatically for us; cloth diapering and breastfeeding being the biggest. It was VERY important to both of us for me to stay home to raise the bug and for that to happen we had to lessen the cost of having a child. Diapering a child comes with an obscene cost, cloth diapering seemed like the best way to cut that and it has been. Thankfully we had purchased some cloth when we took care of my nieces twins and one of my friends handed me down some of her cloth diapers as her kids outgrew them; so even the cloth diapers didn't really have a significant impact on our budget. Even if we did have to purchase them it really just does make sense financially to go cloth. There are other bloggers who have gone into the cost analysis so I'm not going to do the math, I'll just link up a few here, here and here. I also like the environmental aspect of cloth diapering and appreciate how my frugal choices also tend to be green.

What we didn't realize is that when we left the hospital they would give us TONS of disposable diapers, we literally left with 5 packages. These 5 packages proved to be a great incentive to start with the cloth, we both HATED them. The bug some how leaked so bad that every time we changed him at night we were changing the sheets and his clothes too (some times ours as well).

It was so irritating, and both brands that they gave us let to the same effect. The hubs and I were so happy when we started using cloth because they really held the business in. We honestly haven't even noticed the laundry part of it too much, it works out to be an extra load every 2-3 days and you don't have to fold them!

So yeah, we cloth diaper and it isn't at all horrible like everyone insisted it would be when we were pregnant (all while giving us knowing looks and saying "we'll see how long that lasts"). It just works for us and for the boy, although I could see how if you were working full time or didn't have a washing machine cloth diapering would be hard. Also breastfeeding has its own advantages on cloth diapering so if I was formula feeding I might be singing a different tune.

The one thing that bothers me when people talk about cloth diapering is that they believe you have to buy the fancy expensive diapers. You can go crazy with cloth there are many many different options and some of them cost over $20 a diaper but you can go way cheaper than that. We opted to purchase prefolds, cheap prorap covers
and snappis to secure. Diapering with those options it costs about $50 per size and you can reuse for subsequent children, super cheap!

So what do you do? What made your decision for you?

Role Models

I'm completely struck by the shows like American Idol who are grooming the next "It" people.  When you look at the people that have made it and are famous in our society it amazes me that people aspire to that.  A quick look at some of the tv shows; Girls Next Door (girls famous for posing naked and group dating an 80 some year old man), Keeping up with the Kardashians (one sister gets famous from a sex tape and the show follows her family), Paris Hiltons New BFF (another sex tape but throw in some cash from being an heiress), Rock of Love (famous rock star search for love with a bunch of crazy women).  I can't imagine wanting any of that.  

Then you think of the two people that hit the pinnacle of their careers in rock and roll, Elvis and Michael Jackson.  Both of them had so much money and were known for their excess.  They had what would seem like everything in our society.  But both were empty known for their prescription drug use.  It amazes me that people romanticize that type of lifestyle.  It just shows you that when you do get that brass ring in the entertainment industry your life isn't fulfilled.

When I was younger I wanted to be happy when I grew up.  What I soon learned in my teen years was that I didn't equate happiness with money.  I equated money with bigger houses (more cleaning), fake friends, scam artists, etc.  Happiness seemed to be connected with how much you give of yourself to others.  Happily this early lesson has never proved wrong and even though I struggle sometimes with wanting bigger and better; mostly I'm extremely happy with what I've been blessed with. Sometimes it just takes a pause to realize that my life is very good and I have so much that I have enough to give as well.

Camping Trip

So we left off last week on our way to the campground in the pouring rain. The family that was going with us had a little girl so they weren't so sure they wanted to brave the elements. Well we turned into the state forest and it stopped raining. Wondering if it was just a beneficial fluke we quickly set up camp, worried that it would start raining again. We got the camp set up in record time and the weather held for us. Our friends ended up meeting us a few hours later with their little girl. It was so nice being out in the woods again hearing all the bugs and frogs. I really miss how loud nature can be :)

one of the gorgeous wooded paths

We were pretty much alone at the campsite that night, there were a couple of other campsites filled up but not really anyone that we even saw or heard. It was great spending a quiet night by the fire playing Phase 10, talking and making some smores. We woke up pretty late on Saturday and just spent the day walking around and playing on the playground.

The hubs and his good friend were "super" excited to play on the playground

The hubs caught the fishing bug while we were there and is so ridiculously excited to get back out with his pole.

My hottie

That night was another campfire, more games, more smores and more talking. This was probably one of the most relaxing camping weekends I've had in my life.

There's fish in that there water

A great bonus was how cheap it was, we stayed at the state park so it was $20 a night split by the two couples it was just $20 for the weekend. The campground allows 6 people on a site so it could be even cheaper if we split it three ways. We did pretty frugal meals; Hot dogs and pasta for dinners; eggs, bacon and pancakes for breakfasts and sandwiches for lunch.

Oh boy I love him :)

O...M...G... Soo good

So yesterday I got inspired and I made Mozzarella Cheese. It was alot easier than I thought, once I found the ingredients. I used a gallon of organic milk from an Amish Farm, about a teaspoon of sea salt, citric acid and some Junket Rennet. Lacy from Razor Family Farms has some fantastic directions, the only thing I found was that when I was finished and put it in the salt water mixture the edges were a little mushy. Also maybe I mixed it a little too much because the inside was harder than regular mozzarella. That being said the taste was fantastic and when shredded the texture and consistency were spot on.

Today I used the homemade mozzarella in a homemade pizza. My default pizza dough recipe is soo stinking easy.
I use:
1 cup of warm water
2.25 tsps of yeast
Mix together than add:
2 Tbsp of oil
1 Tbsp of honey
1 cup of whole wheat flour
1.5 cups of white flour
a shake of dried onions
dashes of oregano, garlic pepper, parsley, and sea salt.
Let rise for 10 minutes and bake at 450 degrees for 10-14 min.

Then I take one can of Crushed Tomatoes and open it and add about a teaspoon of sugar, then doctor it up with my spices. I use the can to mix up the spices so I'm not dirtying any other dishes.

(go ahead I know you want to click to enlarge the goodness)
I also carmelized some onions and picked basil from my garden and also some roasted red pepper.

One Word:

DELISH!!

Quick Fix

I've been going crazy the past couple years because we have about 30 frames in our back room of all different colors, materials, sizes and shapes. Every time I went into that room it bothered me a little bit. Well I found a cheap quick fix, I bought a can of flat black spray paint and painted all of our frames the same color. Not only is this employing what I have already instead of spending $10 + each on new frames. I also never have to worry about getting matching frames. I can pick up frames from the thrift stores or yard sales for .50c to a couple dollars and have them fit perfectly into my room.
Nice!

Fun with substitutions

So we had my whole family over for St. Patricks Day to eat some corned beef and cabbage, YUM! Of course I decked the house out to celebrate my favorite holiday.

It was so great having my family over as we usually have the hubs family over just cause they are so close. For my bridal shower the wishing well was decorations for my house which was the best idea since I love decorating for every holiday. So we have a ton of St. Patty's decorations

Well the kids asked for some juice with dinner and since we generally stick to water at home we didn't have any. This auntie felt so bad so we improvised and I taught them how to make lemonade.

Let me just say they loved "squishing" the lemons and tasting to make sure that it was just right. They probably drank 5 glasses each and had a blast. This no-spend month will probably be filled with substitutions and creativity, I've been really taking inventory of what I do have so that I can make the substitutions when the time comes. Hopefully they will be as fun (and as cute) as my lemonade sub :)

I just had to get one of her shirt, says Irish Temper and Italian Attitude, lol, what a pair!

Frugal Holidays

So one thing the hubs and I do for holidays is make our own cards for each other. The hubs will make a lovely card with what he wants to say in it. I know that he took time to make it and it says what he wants it to so I treasure it. Just a little thing that saves you $8(two cards) a holiday that to me is way way more special than the store bought version. His cards usually are made with some photoshop elements while mine are drawn with each of us using our strengths to show the other one how much we care. I love these cards because he usually will work in some inside joke into it so I'll be laughing out loud while reading.

Christmas Time

I have been slowly moving away from the whole buy buy buy of Christmas these past couple of years. My friends and I have a gift exchange in which we have to give something that was either made or re-used that you got for $5 or less. How many "things" can one person have. The hubs and I are incredibly blessed and have more than we need, and its true we don't need anymore. We're branching out and I'm going to be making even more gifts this year for family and friends. I've been practicing with my sewing machine and have been getting decent with it. I love this idea of not trying to show your love by buying things but doing it by actually giving your time to show it, then giving your money to the people who really need it. Hmm a Wii or a new well for a village, its not a hard choice.

A Beautiful Link

Biblical Womanhood gives a nice mini lesson on comparing ourselves to others. How quickly this can move from admiration to resentment, I don't know about you but I don't want to find a place for resentment to live in my life. If there is any I pray that God would completely wipe it out.

Election

Here is a great article about how, as Christians, we should be looking at the outcome of this election.

Thats about as much as you'll get out of me, I try not to go to far into politics with people I don't know and most of the time even with people I do know. I will be praying for our future president the same as I pray for the current one and I encourage you all to do the same. I will enjoy the blessed silence of all the political ads!

Go VOTE!!!

Line to vote 11/4/08

Todays the day, get out and vote!

We have a great responsibility to vote for who we feel is the best for us now.

The hubs and I have already gone early this morning and were happy to see a nice long line.
Buut we didn't get a sticker, I think with all my taxes I should at least get an "I voted" sticker!!
Now to pick up my freebies:
Starbucks-Get a free tall brewed coffee when you tell the Starbucks barista that you voted
Also I heard Ben and Jerry's are giving out free ice cream 5-8pm, Krispy Kreme is giving away free donuts and Chick Fil A is giving away free chicken sandwhiches.

I'm only rocking the starbucks but you should get all the voting freebies you can!

Getting it done

I have unrealistic expectations of myself. There, I said it. I expect to be able to work full time, keep my house amazingly clean, make a home-cooked nutritious dinner every night, eat right, exercise, maintain a healthy marriage, keep in touch with my friends, read, spend time praying, studying my bible and find time for my many projects.

Shocker: I can't.

I'm coming to terms with this and realizing that I need to find ways to be able to do what I can. This week I started making "easy meals" for dinner. Instead of thinking I can come home and make a meatloaf, mashed potatoes and asparagus; I come home just saying hey I can make scrambled eggs. Just by giving myself that break I'm usually able to go a bit higher than I expected. I'll add some sauteed spinach and onions in the scrambled eggs and grate some cheese and put it in a pita.

I've noticed this in my weight loss, if I look at the big picture and the whole amount I want to lose I get frustrated and lose my way. If I take it a day at a time and try to make good choices within that day it works better and I feel better about myself in the meantime.

In my house, my goal is to make my bed every morning and put away more than I take out. Everything doesn't need to be spotless all the time I just need to try to do what I can. If I keep on track with it the house can look pretty decent.

So I'm trying to take life a bite at a time. I want to start working at whats at hand, trying to throw away the ridiculous expectations that I place on myself and on others.

Interesting Article on BPA's

Click here to read. Article links plastic bottles to Diabetes and Heart Disease, two things that run in my family already! There are also some other scary things linked to it in the article.
This is why I always use my Klean Kanteen from Non Toxic Tots.
I recently renewed my dedication to not use plastic bottles its amazing that I don't generally get drinks while I'm out but I still accumulate a good amount of plastic bottles. I just have to remember to ALWAYS bring my Klean Kanteen!

Simple Living

I was very inspired a couple months ago reading Like Merchant Ships to simplify my wardrobe. Currently the hubs and I share one large dresser and the closet. We have it divided evenly, however, my side is constantly overflowing and threatening the rest of the bedroom. I went through last week and took out things in two piles; one was very gently used to be taken to a consignment shop and the other were things that have gotten a lot of love (mostly stained) to be taken to either a thrift store or homeless shelter. I went through everything and was very strict with myself. If it stayed in my closet I had to start including it in my rotation (which as of the whole summer has been 1 pair of green capri's, 1 pair of grey shorts and 1 pair of jean shorts). When I got through I had two very large lawn and leaf bags full of clothes that needed to leave our house. I did go out and buy a few nice shirts as I really didn't have much other than t-shirts in my closet.

The closet is now separated by color, style (tank, short sleeve and long sleeve). I have several sizes of clothes in the closet organized by size so when I undergrow the clothes I have now I can get rid of them (hopefully consignment shop) and just start on the ones waiting in the closet. When I get down to my ideal size my closet should look pretty minimalistic but even now its definitely 100 times better than it was. It does bring me peace to try and pick out clothes and I feel less slovenly since there is nothing I can pick out with a stain on it. It also will save us money because I can see exactly what I have and if I need anything instead of just trying to remember and hopefully I will spend less money!

Just with that completed I am inspired to try to do the same with the rest of the house to go through with a discerning eye and keep only what we will truly use. The hubs and I try very hard to be cautious with our spending habits to not buy too much clutter, but even so it does find a way to fill up our rooms.

My hair, my crown of glory

So yeah, Dirkey's got her some thick old hair. Hair that hairdressers constantly comment on (oh when I say constant I'm talking about the two times a year that I go to a salon to get it cut). When Mama K told me that she washed her hair with a bar of soap I was skeptical. My brain was kind of exploding thinking that a bar of soap could never replace the ever changing amount of products that I put in my hair to make my ponytail look that much better. For one, I had never in my life, gone without conditioner. How does one do that, can you comb your hair afterwards? I've never even gotten it wet without putting conditioner in it before I attempted to comb it afterwards. So despite of my skepticism at how well this Shampoo Bar does, I decided to try it out. Now I stepped in gradually and used the bar in conjunction with a good natural conditioner but the more I read about it the more I saw that the websites said you don't need conditioner if you do this. I took the scary step last week and stopped using conditioner and you know what, I don't miss it. My hair looks and feels great (even though its still not out of its elastic jail of a ponytail).
I normally get mine at Chagrin Valley.

How to travel to Hawaii on a budget>

So I had mentioned before that the hubs and I were planning a trip to Hawaii. We were throwing around alot of ideas, with varying degrees of expensiveness. This trip is probably the last big trip for awhile so we really wanted to make the most of it and do it right. Now I have been to Oahu before, for a family reunion (my aunt and one of my cousins live there), and I definitely wanted to at least spend a week on Oahu to see my family. We were throwing around the idea of going to another island as well and had settled on Kauai as our second island. So we set off to planning with that intention.

The thing I've realized about planning trips is that you really need to decide what type of vacation you want to have right from the get go. We really wanted to just relax and have a good time. We went to Europe together and did the "see everything you can possibly see in 10 days thing", seriously 3 country's in two weeks! So ultimately we decided to stick to Oahu since I'm not going to Hawaii without visiting my peeps! Which thankfully also decreases our total price by about $300 bucks for airfare.

I love traveling and I'm pretty good (if I do say so myself) at getting a good deal. We found airfare from Sidestep. Sidestep is a service that you enter in your information and they search all the travel sites to find out the best value then you complete your transaction on the site with the best value. This time we found our best price was with Northwest Airlines and it cost us about $650 a piece (from Philadelphia). We have one layover in Minnesota so I'm hoping that there might be a possibility to see my sister and her kids even if its only a few minutes.

Once we booked our flight I settled into trying to find a place to stay. I had the luxury of experience with this and was able to remember what each of the parts of the Island were like. If we went with a hotel they really are mostly located in Waikiki, while there was a really nice one near my Aunt called Ihilani. The hotels at Waikiki are nice but it is very much a city type atmosphere and the beaches were very crowded there, it really didn't seam like the best choice for the hubs and I. Ihilani was a gorgeous resort with a really beautiful beach but if we booked there we really wouldn't have been able to afford much else. I then started looking into Bed and Breakfasts to see if this might be a better option. Turns out there are some awesome B&B's in Oahu and we found one that really fits our budget that is right on the ocean!!! We were able to do this for about $130 a night. Since beaches are public property we probably will take a trip to Ihilani's beach one day as its my aunts favorite beach.

We then turned our sites to a rental car, I found most rentals for compact cars were about $25 while the convertibles were about $50. The hubs and I were toying with the idea of a convertible but couldn't justify $50 a day. I was a step away from booking on Sidestep when I thought to check one other website, Hotwire. I was able to find a convertible for $25 a day, which completely rocks my socks off!!!

So thats where we stand now, we have the big stuff out of the way and now we are starting to investigate some of the things to do on the Island. More on that later :)

Frugal Friday-My guide to online shopping

Today's frugal friday involves online shopping. Being the stereotypical American, I'm a busy person. By the time I get home from work, make dinner, throw a load of laundry in the washer; I don't want or have time to run out to the mall. Online shopping has wrapped me in its warm blanket of simplicity and ease. I love the fact that I can shop for gifts in the comfort of my own home, bargain shopping easily between sites. I also love being able to find gifts that I can feel good about giving; as I'm becoming more environmentally aware I'm able to find organic cotton, sustainable and fair trade products with great ease right on the internet. When I first started online shopping I wasn't quite the bargain hunter that I am today; I made a few blunders and paid for things that weren't quite what they seemed. So this is a little guide to tell you my tricks to online shopping.

1.)Find the item you want-If I'm completely blank on what to get someone I check out some of the standard gift giving websites (Mighty Goods, Red Envelope, Non Toxic Tots). If I really don't have any idea I just start googling away, when shopping for my wedding invitations I google "cheap wedding invitations" my husbands wedding band was purchased on eweddingbands.com. There are so many online retailers that it really is simple to find ANYTHING YOU NEED. Be careful once you find the item; read the small print, check the measurements, read the reviews of the product.

2.)Figure out what site you will use to purchase-Once I find the item I will google the item and look at the different sites that sell it. Its here that I try to put my money where my mouth is. I try not to purchase on big mega giants like Walmart, Target, Macy's; but put my money to something I feel good about supporting (WAHM shops, Environmentally Sound Companies, Companies supporting Fair Trade). Within these sites I do a bit of bargain shopping to see where the cheapest place to purchase is.

3.)Google for Coupon Codes-I then google to see if I can find a coupon code for free shipping or a percentage off of my order. Its like the old saying goes-You never know until you ask.

I know its not rocket science but these are the things that I've learned from online shopping, hope it helps you!

<a href="http://www.dirkey.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img alt="Dirkey" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2306/2422433079_00cdb91b63_m.jpg" border="0" /></a>

I found out that Frugal Friday didn't start here-the original is at Biblical Womanhood, go check out the original!