Solutions for Sanity

Guys...it's COLD outside!  The leaves are falling in all colors and the chill in the air means football watching is more enjoyable and our hoodies feel much more comfortable. Have I mentioned boots?  Oh, I love boot season!  So, in celebration of it finally FEELING like fall, I thought I would list my top 10 fall things and see what some of my readers think are must-have or must-do for fall! 1. PUMPKINS.  Pumpkin everything.  Pie, muffins, anything baked.  I have a pumpkin muffin recipe and I add chocolate chips, because, well, chocolate is amazing! 2. GOOD EARTH TEA: Forget the pumpkin spice latte or whatever y'all spend too much money on.  This TEA is amazing.  It tastes like fall to me and I only drink it September through December, as weather allows.  No milk or sugar needed, it's perfect as is. 3. SOUP: I promise, not everything is about food, but this is the time of year to fatten up to keep warm for winter :) Chicken tor...

The last three weeks have been crazy --- my husband has been in Florida for work and I've been single mom and dealing with being both mom & dad the last 21 days.  Now that hubs is home, life is returning to normal.  But I wanted to share something that was a saving grace while he was gone, aside from my awesome friends & family. Amazon Subscribe & Save is an awesome service to my family.  With coupons and sales, I can get things cheaper than Costco or Sam's and even better - I don't have to leave my house or need to pick up other "good deals" that aren't really needs that I often see in the store.  Because I always do that!  Last week at Costco, I found king sheet for $11.97!  Uh, who can't use an extra set of sheets for under $12?  But yes, I found several other "good deals" and wound up spending over $100 when I set out for only 4 things.  Good deals aren't always good if you don't need anything :) But I digress, I'...

If you're like me and enjoy cooking, the hardest part can be deciding what to fix each night for dinner.  I feel like I make the same few things every week and am looking for new and exciting recipes to try that my family will eat.  Pinterest overwhelms me and those food videos on social media are often high calorie snacks and not real meals.  One of my favorite recipe sites is allrecipes.com because you can search by ingredients on hand, search with exclusions (ie mushrooms if your kids don't like them, or to avoid allergens) and you can see real ratings and reviews. I like to have recipes on hand so it's easier for me to see ingredients and steps, without going back to my phone.  So I print them out and put them in the clear page protectors (I'm a messy cook!). If the family decides it is a win, then I'll file it away in my recipe binder. Surprise, surprise, since moving it's been harder to keep up with the recipes.  For the entire month of May we ate...

Hello friends! I wanted to get in touch about the Giant Eagle deals for this week before they reset on Thursday!  I finally got a good shopping week in at Giant Eagle and had a wonderful cashier who was actually friendly and took my coupons without complaint!  I spent $43 at the store on Friday and got back over $7 in rebates.  For that money I received 8 bags of groceries! Here are some must do deals! Well YES! soups are on sale for 3/$5.  You can use 2 coupons from coupons.com or Swagbucks coupons for 75c/each for $1.50 savings on each can, making them only $.17!  But wait, we're not finished with $.17 soups! There is a BONUS: Ibotta has $1 on 2 rebate on the soups making this deal a MONEYMAKER!!! The Dole fruit bowls are all on sale for $2 each.  That's a pretty standard regular price, but with $1 off coupons from the paper on Fruitocracy, $1/2 any Dole bowls, plus the ones in coconut water $1 off as well, you can get these for only $1 eac...

Fall is always so busy for our family.  Besides wanting to do the traditional fun fall activities - apple picking, pumpkin patch, Halloween festivities, football games, etc, we've got two birthdays to celebrate. One birthday down last week.  It's so hard to know how to celebrate.  We've never done a party outside of our home because it seems like they are so overpriced.  We typically hold a party with 10-15 kids, because it's really hard to draw a line with where to stop...and it's absolute chaos.  But the kids love it.  We'd cram these kids in our tiny house and pray for good weather so they could run around outside for at least some of the time... Since moving, we took it really easy this year.  First birthday was our 9 year old - she had 3 girls over from school and they ate homemade pizza, did painting and crafts.  We have a lot of good family friends with younger kids so we had a park play date the next day and ate cake to ...