Only 28 more days until school starts. Not that I'm counting or anything. This means that I have 28 more days to get organized, so that school mornings go as smooth as possible. Packing lunches is definitely on the top of my list of things that can make school mornings really hectic. But, it's so worth the effort. It costs $6/day...or $30/week for my kids to buy school lunches. I can make their lunches for half of that (or less!). Plus, I know what ingredients are going into their lunches and I know what they will/won't eat, so there's a lot less wasted food. So, today I thought I would share a few of my lunch packing tips and tricks with you all, in case you have hectic mornings like … [Read more...]

For a lot of folks, Summer is a time for family vacations. For some, that means packing up and heading out on a faraway adventure. For the rest of us, that means hanging out with friends and family at home - a "staycation". (We took a huge family vacation last year, so this year we decided to take it easy). I know that there are tons of travel sites out there, but I wanted to highlight a couple that I think are pretty handy. These sites are mostly for driving trips, as that's usually our preferred choice of travel. When I was growing up, that was a huge part of family vacation - squeezing into the car and hanging out for hours upon hours while we drove to our destination! For your … [Read more...]

(In case you missed my original post about sending care packages to troops, you can read about that here). My goal here is to show you how you can do this for very little out of pocket expense. Whether it's saying thank you to our troops, donating to your favorite cause or just showing someone that you care, you don't have to spend a lot of money doing it.  Over the past few months, I have accumulated quite a stash of travel-size personal care items (deodorant, feminine products, toothpaste, etc.). All of these items I have gotten for free (or pretty darn close to free) by using coupons. (I had been saving these smaller items to make a sort of gift bag for people staying at the local … [Read more...]