He Sowed She Sewed

Okie Dokie folks.  I am extremely excited about this.  Probably haven’t been this pumped about anything for quite some time.  Are you DYING to know what it is???

Yeah, thought so.  Okay-

Jared and I joined a club called the Joy of Cook that is a “buying club” where you can buy organic and healthy products for as cheap as regular products.  (the website we go to is unfi.com but you need a username and password sent to you by someone already in the organization)

So here is how it works- Once a month I look through the online catalogue and see what we need.  They have thousands of items for sale.  Some of the categories are frozen, bulk, dairy and refrigerated, grocery and beverages and personal care.

This month I ordered on the 8th and my items drove in a Semi-Truck from Iowa to our little town on the 16th of January.  It was so incredibly convenient and nice to shop online and have all of my random items in one place a week later.

One of the deals with ordering from this type of system is you have to buy a few more packages as you normally would buy from a grocery store.  This is nice because you will not run out of a certain item for a few months, but a bummer if one of the products turns out to be a dud.  This months order has proven to be a huge success with the family.

we are stocked up

We bought enough organic coffee to last us for most of the winter, bought incredible smelling lavender shower soap, organic pot stickers that we had with sweet brown jasmine rice for lunch yesterday.  Soda from Blue Sky and Hansens that is cheaper than the soda we can get in our local grocery store.

The kids are set on healthy granola bars for the next few months as well as organic quick oats for our oatmeal mornings.  My favorite deal was the yogurt that was so fairly priced I almost started jumping up and down when I realized my good fortune.

I got 6 of these yogurts, $2.60 for 32 ounces.  Holy smoly, you can’t buy regular yogurt, let alone this yogurt, for this price anywhere.  My two friends who were with me bought 4 yogurts off of me so I wouldn’t have to freeze some.

Okay, I am excited and just can’t believe more people don’t want to be a part of this amazing system.  I am pumped about the items and am already planning ahead to my order next month.

If you live in northern MN, I would love to talk to you so you can be apart of these deals.  And if I have this kind of thing in our tiny town then I am sure there is one like it close to where you live.

This is the entryway into our house:

Definitely needed some sort of coat hanger.  Right?

Went to a garage sale this summer where I found this great coat hanger AND mirror.

Doesn’t it look like it was meant for this space?

Okay, the kicker is that this mirror/coat hanger only cost me 25 cents.  Yes, that’s right one quarter.  You can buy a gumball or this mirror.  When I first saw the 25 cent sticker I thought maybe they meant $25 or perhaps was not marked right.  I brought my purchases up to the lady having the garage sale and gave her the money and she didn’t bat an eye.  Wow, I was pretty pumped and am so glad we have a place to hang our coats and do a final teeth check on our way out the door.

Two deals for ya:

1.  Holiday Gas Stations

~Deal~~~~if you buy a $50.00 gift card you get a free 12 pack of soda.

——so, choose to pay for your gas inside the gas station.  Before you pay for your gas, ask to buy a gift card.

——with your purchase of a gift card they will give you some free soda.

——then immediately after you pay for your gift card, use that gift card to pay for your gas.

2.  McDonalds

~Deal~~~~buy a $5.oo gift card and get a free small mocha or peppermint mocha

——-trust me, you’ll use that gift card someday

And the winner of the jewelry wallet giveaway is…

Congratulations Cassie!  Your gift will be in the mail shortly.

And now on to a Thrifty Thursday Post, I think we are due for one:

A couple weeks ago Jared and I went to our good friends’ wedding in the Twin Cities.

It was a wonderful time to see old friends and have a day without the kiddos, thanks Grandma and Grandpa!  My dress for the occasion came from a consignment shop on Grand Avenue called My Sister’s Closet.  It has a great variety and some very “out” there vintage clothes as well.  I found my dress for the wedding there and it was %10 off $18.   I was very happy to find such a great deal.  But most of all I LOVE the dress.  It was really comfortable, which is priority #1 but also it looked pretty good =)

Here are some pictures of my great deal and the fun day:

My mom let me borrow her black necklace she had previously found it at a thrift store.  Oh yeah and she had bought shoes a while ago but they slipped off her feet so she gave those to me!  So I went to a wedding and my entire outfit cost me $16.20!

the weather was so humid it completely fogged up my lens, darn

Well, that is one of my latest finds, hope you run in to some good deals too!

Every Monday there is a flea market about fifteen minutes away from my parents house.  A few times this summer we would trek over there to see what treasures we could scrounge up.

If you are okay with sifting through junk and people watching some real characters this is the place to find a few gems.

We found this picnic basket amongst some bottle openers, old melon crates and antique benches.  It is hard to look at junk, junk and more junk and then when you see something that is slightly interesting you don’t know if it is actually something nice or if it is just a nicer piece of junk than you are used to seeing.

This picnic basket caught my eye but I had to show it to my mom and Jared to get their opinions about it.  We brought the girls so we had to perform musical chairs, trading off watching them at the park so we could all have a good look at the basket.  Then we decided to make the purchase.

Jared is my bargainer.  I am extremely horrible at haggling.  I feel guilty and bad and start thinking about the people’s electric bill or the kids they need to send through college and finally end up paying exactly what the price tag said or even more.  Well, not more but never down.  So I have Jared do my negotiating for me.  He is extremely gifted at this process.  He decides before talking to the person how much he will begin at and how much he will be willing to spend in the end.  And he faithfully sticks to these prices.

We bought a few things this day and each and every purchase ended just at we wanted.  Perfect, thanks hunny.

This is the basket we bought: originally it was 19.50 but Jared haggled down to $16, and it even came with some super cute dishes.

Aleah helped me clean up the basket.  We used some lemon oil and rubbed it into the dry basket and made it look a great deal better.

If that flea market guy had rubbed it down with some lemon oil he could have charged at least twice as much.  Sorry flea market guy.

Before-

During-

Before and After Tops

After-

What a great little worker

I may have just scored the thrift of a lifetime.  For me at least =)

We had been in Wisconsin for less than a week and decided to go shopping at the local thrift stores.  More likely than not we find nothing at these stores and head home empty handed.  But this time I scored big time.

I was browsing through the crafting section of the store as Aleah tried on all the shoes and Sophi climbed in and out and in and back out again of a bassinet placed on the floor.  I was half browsing and half cracking up at the things they were finding and doing with them.  And then I spotted it.  A ziplock bag with this:

At first I didn’t know what it was.  I turned it over a few times trying to figure out what it was.  I opened up the back and took out one of the quilting blocks.  It was hand stitched and made with the cutest fabric.  Wow, this must have taken someone forever to make, I thought.  After falling in love with it, I nervously looked for a price tag.  It must be quite expensive since the person who made this must have spent months on it.  I turned the bag over and spotted the price tag:

Are they serious…fifty cents?  I was so pumped!  I tried to hold my extreme enthusiasm and excitement down a bit in fear that they had placed it on the self accidently.  Or perhaps they would want more money for it if they knew how pumped I was about my newfound treasure.

I paid the 50 cents and snuck out the door with the rest of the family.

Drove home and showed it to my mom and she said, “Wow- is this for me?” (umm…we’ll work out those details later.)

She told me that it was an old time way to make a quilt called, Grandma’s Flower Garden.  You take a hexagon and surround it with six other hexagons of another color, and then add onto those six hexagons with yet another color of 12 hexagons.  They were popular in the 1930’s. They were pieced  by hand in the time consuming  method called english paper piecing.

I can’t decide if I should put them all together or put some of them in picture frames.  They are all so beautiful I just want to simply look at them and wonder about the crafty woman who spent so much effort making these gorgeous creations.

Here are a couple great links for more information on the quilt:

 http://www.patternsfromhistory.com/colonial_revival/flower_garden.htm

or

http://www.rikrakstudio.blogspot.com/2010/06/quilt-catalogue-grandmothers-flower.html

Get a Caribou Coffee for only $1 every time the Twins win!  This deal will continue for the whole Twins baseball season.

Yay, for cheap yet fancy coffee!

This website helps me out when I don’t feel like organizing all my coupons, and has information on cheap or free events around the Twin Cities.

http://www.pocketyourdollars.com/

It is a wonderful resource for a variety of reasons.  This website has information on deals for groceries, recreation, eating out, freebies and even a coupon database.  It is a wonderful tool for those interested in making their dollar go a long way.

One great deal coming up: Get into the Minneapolis Institute of Art for free this Sunday, April 10 from 11-5pm

Check it out and you will save lots of money!

Cut your own hair.

Well, not your OWN hair, but get someone you love and trust to cut your hair for free =)

When we were first married, Jared got his hair cut at whatever  hair place was having a sale.  A few haircuts into our marriage, we decided to make an investment and buy some hair clippers.  Something like 20 bucks from Target.

Jared was very patient with me for the first few  cuts.  I had never cut anyone’s hair before and had no idea what I was doing.  The first haircuts ended with us saying, “Well, I guess you can wear a hat for the next few days.

But after the first trainwreck cuts, I got the hang of it.  I have figured out his hair and know how much to take off on top and what clippers to use around his neck.    It is very rewarding.  I love saving money, seeing him not look like a shaggy dog and the complements he gets afterwards.

You can even cut your neighbors hair!

Jared has incredibly thick hair and needs to be cut almost every month.  So let’s say the average men’s hair cut is $20, not including tip.  That is at least $240 dollars a year. In 10 years of cutting Jared’s hair we will have saved $2,400!

A bit dramatic perhaps, but you get my point =)