Oh I forgot–this is an addition:
My kids wanted me to do this little poll. We live in Florida and see lots of different license plates. Can you believe we have seen 49 of the 50 states here in Florida. So what state do you think we haven’t seen yet? Your 4 options are:

1. Alaska-you can’t get any farther than Alaska and Florida and still be able to drive. So is it Alaska?

2. North Dakota-a state with fewer people than many states and almost as far from Florida as Alaska? Do people from North Dakota need some fun in the sun?

3. Louisiana-another warm state and so close would they really come to Florida?

4. Hawaii-not an easy feet to get a car off the island and then drive to Florida? Would you do it or just fly?

Take the poll–it will THRILL my kids.

To get info on the GIVE-A-WAY this week CLICK HERE TO READ ALL ABOUT IT Here is a little bit of additional information I added to my post yesterday: One of the things you need to do is to subscribe (on the top, left hand side panel).If you guys will help me, get the word out, about my give-a-way, by doing a post about my it, let me know and I will put your name in again-that wasn’t going to be part of the give-a-way rules this time, but I am so sick and I just need your help to get the word out, so that is my THANK YOU. If you want to use your favorite pictures when you post that is fine.

I also PLAN on having Mr Linky up tonight by 8 p.m. for the first ever KNOCK OFF KNOCK OUT party on Monday. I can’t wait to see everyone’s projects-I am a project kind-of girl.

I wanted to let all of you know-when someone asks me a question I answer it back in the comments section so people can read my reply to what they have asked me. The only time I won’t do that is if it is only info they need and it won’t be helpful to others. If anyone knows a better way to handle this I am all ears.

Here are my quotes for the week.
The ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where the stand in times of challenge and controversy. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The test of your character is what it takes to stop you. Bob Jones

I think these quotes are fitting, don’t you? I did go grocery shopping yesterday-well part of my grocery shopping-and that shopping cart about stopped me in my tracks. Between being weak, pushing a cart that has an extra yard added to it so my 2 youngest could pretend they were driving a car (and keeping them occupied for a while), 2 bathroom stops with the lovely extended shopping cart, buying enough groceries for a family of 8 and trying to push a 100 lb cart around the store — (remember the vision you had of a 90 year old woman trying to get up the drive way while trying to keep from heaving her guts up) let’s just say it took me awhile. You should see the looks I get when I am grocery shopping-most of the residents in Naples Fl are retired people who have never lived on less than several million dollars (my husband worked for one man, who had sold one of his businesses for 300 million-yah you read that right) and most of these people have 10 items in their cart and here I am trying to find a spot to fit one more item. I have had people stop me and ask if I only shop once every couple of months and I just smile and say no this will last us a couple of weeks. I typically take my 2 big boys with me so we have 2 carts full but they have done so much this past week + a few days, helping with the little ones-while I was so sick, that I felt like they just needed to be able to stay home and have some fun. So I do have to do more shopping but I have some exciting info for you concerning saving money on your grocery bills. Do you remember this post Times are Tough How do you save money when you’ve already cut out all the extras? Well, I have some new info to add for you.

Our sweet friends, Jose, Kim, and their boys B1 and B2 came for a visit. Kim was sharing with me how a friend had told her she had been cutting her grocery bills in half, so Kim had her come over and show her how she did it, because she just didn’t believe she could cut her bills in half. Kim gave me a website that her friend had shared with her Southern Savers so I went and read up all I could (including her list of abbreviations for all her coupon lingo) and called my friend Kim to confirm that I had this concept down. I have tried coupon shopping before and just saved a little bit of money and it just wasn’t worth my time to clip a few coupons. We don’t get the newspaper-lets just say any extra paper about, is clutter and mess to me, and I will either have Mr G3 (4 yrs old) using a hole punch on it or Mr G2 (11 yrs Old) finding some new use to make something to go along with his new crafting projects of making swords and spears out of cardboard (Can you say this boy is into King Arthur right now-this is the child who wanted me to consider decorating his room in a dungeon, King Arthur theme, just a couple of months ago and when I nixed that idea he went a different route.) So now after that L-O-N-G run on sentence I don’t get the newspaper so I had no coupons to begin with (from the newspaper-I had printed off a few) and still was able to save $120 on my groceries yesterday and spent about $250 (still have about another $100 to buy) but that much will last us at for about a month (except milk and fresh fruits, deli meat–etc that we need to buy). I typically spend about $1000 a month on all our grocery, diapers, wipes, chemicals etc. I know that sounds like a lot but you divide that by 8 people, 3 meals a day and 30-31 days and it is not much per person per meal so this will cut that even more. There was a bunch of things that I got that were B1G1 FREE and the other store I am going to today also has a bunch of B1G1 FREE so I will have a bunch of food in the freezer. This will cut my grocery spending by more than 1/2 for this month (without all the coupons) — she says it takes about 6 weeks to acquire enough coupons to really start saving but she has places on her site to be able to print coupons. There is a place you can pay to have coupons sent to you if you want to get ones that you didn’t clip.

So how did I do it. I looked through all the sale flyers, on line, for stores in my area. There were 2 that had a bunch of B1G1 Free deals so it was worth it to me to go to 2 different places this week and I may even run to Wal-Mart to get a few things that would be cheaper there. How do I KNOW they are cheaper or not? These little cheat sheets (the ones in my 2nd post) are a huge savings technique for me. This was my second post on this blog. I have these sheets in a word document and if any one wants them e-mailed to them, let me know. I don’t know how to get them on here otherwise. Here is another post on getting the most for your buck purchasing fresh fruits and veggies. Southern Savers has a great idea about using a coop and buying locally and getting great deals by buying in huge bulk. That is something I will definitely look into whenever we get moved and settled but I don’t want to start something when we are so close to having my husband done with school. I don’t want them to adjust all their numbers and then us buy one or two times and be gone.
So back to HOW DID I DO IT-I made my grocery shopping list from the sale pages. I have used the loss leader pages for years but I always made my list for the week and then bought anything I could from the loss leader-silly me-I can’t believe I never thought of this myself. THIS TIME-I looked at the loss leader sale pages and then decided what we would have for meals-because so many things were B1G1 Free I was going to have a lot of extra food so that extended my food. This will give me extra grocery money to look for great deals over the month and only buy if it is a great deal. We have 2 refrigerators and an upright freezer so I have a little extra room for extra food.

If anyone has any questions on this please let me know and I will help you out as much as possible. AND yes I will be picking up a couple of newspapers to clip coupons but the rest of the paper is going to the trash so I have no other messes to pick up. Be sure and check out CVS and Walgreens ads this week-I always get great deals from these places as well.