They Say It's Your Birthday...

I had 4 birthday wishes: make a cake, go for a walk, take a nap, and blog my cake.

It took 2 hours to get the dishwasher unloaded and loaded (it went something like this: load dish, take care of disaster, load dish, stop girls from fighting, load dish, repair toy, load dish, pick up screaming baby and rock, load dish, lose temper with fighting children, load dish, apologize to children and try to explain responsibility, load dish, shed a few tears, load dish, feed screaming teething baby... you get the idea). My baby (who is really a toddler, but I have trouble accepting that), pretty much scream/cried the whole day (until the babysitter came so Kip and I could go out to dinner; I should have called her in the morning).  And there were about 8 loads of laundry to be folded. Also, my cake was a disaster.

But it tasted good. And my kids are healthy and beautiful and bright. And I have a dishwasher, heaven bless it. And a washing machine too. And some great ideas about how to improve the disasterlyness of the cake.

Though you'll have to wait till Monday to get for that.

For now, a look at cake disaster. Enjoy.

Crooked cake, check. Almond filling oozing out, check, picture taken with flash so it's especially garish, check.

I ended up taking the messed up layers apart again, then shaving them so the crooked oozing cake didn't topple over. Here are the shaved bits. They should make a lovely trifle next week. Or, yeah, something like that. 

Naturally all that stacking and re-stacking took its toll. We let this frosting set and then refrosted it later.

Though the finished product looked a little like something someone made while in the midst of experiencing a severe bout of vertigo. I mean, I, uh, was going for the quaint, homemade look. 

It sure tasted good though. Stay tuned Monday for the cake that might have been--still delicious, but less, uh, quaint. 

Other highlights of the day: 

Kip found a baby turtle (it was sunning in the top of the mimosa tree--yeah, still a little flooded round here).

One of the ducks found herself a gentleman friend. Or rather a gentleman friend found one of the ducks. But I didn't take a picture of that. Kip named him Rico. He's been hanging around all day, even after we penned our ducks for the night. And I must say, as ducks go, he is rather handsome. 

Book Review: How to Shop For Free by Kathy Spencer

In her book, How to Shop for Free: Shopping Secrets for Smart Women Who Love to Get Something for Nothing, Kathy Spencer shares her method (and her madness) for using coupons to whittle her weekly grocery bill down to $4 or less. She also shares tips for getting medicines, clothes, and other commodities for free or nearly free.

And when I say that she shares her method, I mean that she gives lots and lots and, did I mention lots, of information. Which was one thing I really liked about this book. Honestly, I was a little surprised at how very many resources, tips, and perfectly legal tricks she gives about how to save. Admittedly, I approached the book as a bit of a cynic, expecting a few mediocre tips--things that a normal and busy kind of girl like myself either already does or could never ever do (and don't worry, there were some of those too). Apparently I've become jaded by books and articles promising to teach me something "new" and "fresh" and then rambling on about how in order to save money I should re-evaluate my car insurance, or fire my housekeeper, or not shop while I'm hungry--you know, that kind of thing. But this book really was full of nuts and bolts. So even though my cynicism wasn't entirely overwhelmed, I certainly did appreciate that.

Let's start off talking about why I was a cynic/skeptic:

1. We eat relatively few processed foods. This is as I think it should be whether the food is free or not. I see very few coupons for foods other than processed ones and therefore couldn't see myself benefiting too much from couponing.
2. In my town, there is not a store where coupons can be doubled or tripled. There are no CATalina deals (the type of deal where if you spend $30, they'll reward you with 10 or 15 "dollars" at the cash register--money that can be applied to your next shopping trip at that store).
3. It seems that all the coupon queens spend hours upon hours clipping, searching, researching, and shopping. I don't have the time for that. I have small children who usually shop with me (whee, fun). And even if I could save $20/week, that's sure not worth 10 or even 5 hours of work clipping and sale-matching.
4. I've been looking to match coupons to sales in the area (thereby scoring a lower final price) for a couple of weeks now and find that my internet coupons and the stores in our area rarely if ever match up on even one item.
5. I don't love to shop. I would never do it every day. Or for hours at a time. Or go to more than 3 (which is pretty much an absolute maximum--did I mention I shop with small children) stores in a day.

So, what exactly did I glean from this book? Plenty. For example, did you know...

1. Manufacturer and store coupons can be used together.
2. If you use a buy one get one free coupon (that's, say, a manufacturer's coupons), the free item is still technically purchased and therefore if you've got another store coupon for buy one get one free, you can get them both free.
3. CVS and Walgreens have a rewards type program where you can buy things, thereby earning "bucks" for the amount of what you spent. You can then use those "bucks" the next time you shop to buy more (though different) things that have "bucks" attached. In this way, you can keep buying and stockpiling without spending anything as long as you stick to those products that are spitting out the "bucks." These products are supposedly advertised each week.
4. You can buy coupons on eBay. Well, technically, the coupons are free and you buy for the service of having them clipped for you.
5. Peelies--those coupons stuck to other goods in the store--can sometimes be used without purchasing the item they're stuck to (read the fine print before peeling it off to be sure).

Those were all things I didn't know or didn't get or couldn't have possibly conceived (coupons? on eBay? how do the sellers make any money?)

We'll get to some things I plan to try in a minute, but for now...

With so much new and interesting information, how have I managed to hang desperately to pieces of my original skepticism? Well, I'll tell you...

1. In Evansville Indiana if you plan to eat some fresh produce with any frequency (and possibly even if you don't), you will never ever shop for free. As I said earlier, there are no stores that double or triple coupons and there are no CATalina deals (reward money when you spend a certain amount that can be used to shop at that same store the next time). Spencer buys most of her free meat and produce with CATalina money. I simply can't.
2. Because of this, the question remains: How much time with I have to expend clipping coupons, researching sales, going to different stores, removing children from car seats (over and over and, oh--the torture, over again), driving, and actually shopping in order to save some money on certain processed foods we do use (such as pasta) or toiletries? I don't yet know. If I could save $20-$50 for a few hours planning, that's totally worth it to me. If not, then it's just not. I plan to give it a try this month and find out. I'll let you know.
3. Printable coupons expire faster than newspaper ones, making the whole newspaper thing not necessary, but helpful if you're looking to pair coupons with store sales.
4. She plugged her blog a LOT. That's fine except that each time I went to her blog to try to get the amazingly helpful information I'd been promised, there just wasn't a whole lot there. For example, she kept talking about this fabulous database for coupons. You just search the coupon you hope to find and if it's out there anywhere and not expired, someone will have posted it. She even encourages you to start your couponing quest by searching for a buy one get one free coupon and trying to match it to a sale. I did just that. Not a single buy one get one free coupon listed. Then I searched Ghiradelli, which I'd certainly love to buy more cheaply. Nothing. In fact, the whole page of listed coupons was just that--a page. And a somewhat lean (yet processed food) page at that.
5. You've got to be willing and able to stockpile to make it work. I'm willing to stockpile, so that's not a problem for me, but I know others wouldn't or couldn't because of space limitations.
6. Even if you did manage to shop for free--meat, dairy, and produce included--you're not going to be shopping local or buying animal products from animals that have been humanely raised. Well, maybe once in a very blue moon if you live in a trendier city with trendier coupons. But still not often.
7. To coupon like Spencer does, you have to have a lot of time and heaven help you if you've got small kids with no one to watch them while you shop. Shopping for free is Spencer's job (and was even before she made a name for herself by doing it). She spends a lot of time doing it. I don't have a problem with that--per her estimation she saves $60,000/year, which isn't a bad salary. But if you already have a job or if you're an at-home mom with small children and hobbies besides shopping, you'll be hard pressed to find the 20-40 hours to shop for free (and that's if you live in an area with all the couponing perks).
8. I still don't love to shop. This method, especially the more advanced things like getting clothes for free--they're for people who love to shop, who go to the mall all the time, who'd rather be in a store getting a great deal than doing anything else. That's just not me.

That said, I do think some of her tricks of the trade can be adapted to those with less time than I have and I totally plan to try some of her stuff to see if I can save some money and maybe even start to score some of our basics for free.

What do I plan to try?

1. That CVS/Walgreens thing where you get the rewards bucks and are careful to apply them to another thing with rewards bucks, thereby never spending anything and getting lots of things for free. I'm not expecting bags of organic apples or anything. But some toilet paper would be nice. Or toothpaste. Or even some new eyeliner. I have a CVS and Walgreens very close to my house. I pass them constantly. All I'll need to do (theoretically) is have a quick look at their ads to determine what the rewards deals are ("Extra Bucks" at CVS and "Register rewards" at Walgreens) and then run in and get them, take home my rewards bucks and return another day to get the next rewarded item they've got. It sounds simple. We'll see if children in car seats cooperate.
2. Buy coupons online. I mean, how easy and awesome does that sound? No buying 4 Sunday papers. No clipping. No coupons for a bunch of stuff you'd NEVER use. And lots of coupons for stuff you would. I had a quick look at eBay the other night and found a package of 20 coupons for $1/pasta. The coupons cost about $2 (and that included shipping). Even if that left me with $.50/pasta package, that's a pretty good deal (not to Spencer maybe, but to me) and over time it would cut down my grocery bill. I plan to make a list of all the processed foods I do buy, or might buy if they were cheaper (pasta, chocolate chips, spices, peanut butter--oh help, the peanut butter we consume, yogurt, etc...) and then search for coupons for those items on eBay to see what turns up. My hope is that lots of coupons packages will turn up for lots of things we use. We'll see how that pans out in real life and I'll let you know.
3. Pairing store ads with coupons. I've been casually trying. I'm going to give it more of a go in the next few weeks and see what happens.

My goals?

1. To save $20-$50/month for an hour or two of work.
2. In order to make it worthwhile to me the savings will have to really trump those from my beloved Aldi. For example, when I can get a box of cereal at Aldi for $1.59, it's not worth it to me to make another stop at another store to get a box that, after coupons, is $1.49. Smiling tiger on the front of the package or not.

Skepticism aside, this book was brim-full of ideas and info. It might be worth a trip to half.com or amazon. It's well worth a trip to your local library. Which, for the record, is where I got mine. I haven't been paid or reimbursed in any way to read and review this book. 

Ode to Container Gardening

Cheap Eat Challenge: Watch as our family of 6 tries to eat on $6/day.

I'm all about the traditional victory garden. We have one out back behind the garage where I plant as much as I can each year. Additionally, we have several flower beds and an herb garden. We've got a couple of baby fruit trees, young blueberry bushes, and bramble type berries like blackberry and (this year) raspberries. Each year I pull millions of weeds and harvest some food and swear that this is really all I've got time or energy for. And then each spring, with the clarion call of buds and birds, Kip and I cannot seem to refrain from digging out yet another garden plot. So, you see, we do have addictions besides chocolate. This spring we started work on a lovely little kitchen garden close to the house so I can leave the ugly or huge vegetables out back and work the pretty, more petite veggies in with flowers and herbs and all that sort of thing.

We may not have a Trader Joe's here in southern Indiana, but we have plenty of flat sunny spaces.

We also, it turns out, have plenty of rain. Oh sure, this is usually a good thing. But you know what they say about too much of a good thing. They say it will flood almost your entire backyard, killing your peach tree and sogging the earth into utter unworkability (take another look at the above picture and you'll notice some sandbags to the right). I know I'm blessed that it wasn't tornadoes and that it didn't flood our house and that the only real casualties have been my young peach tree and Kip's baby evergreens and some tomatoes I planted too early in the garden. And I do count those blessings. But I'm not going to lie, I want that flooding to go away and I have told it so in a very angry voice on numerous occasions. It has not listened and this makes me sad. I've been a little depressed about our halted gardening and dying lawn and all the mud and other annoyances that result when a flooded pond/creek make themselves a new home (or perhaps I should say larger home) in most of our back yard.

And yet. Today I went out on my deck and pulled up some radishes from the potted "square foot" gardens I keep there (they're more like 9 inch by 2 1/2 ft gardens, if you're counting and all).

Bless you little garden pots for being moveable and letting the water flow out of you faster than the ground can do. Bless you for providing me just one small pretty taste of spring when everything else is just a whole lot of mud. Bless you for being something almost everyone can do, even those who don't live on a big lot in the midwest. And bless you for cheering me up every time I look outside. Because you know what they say, every mud puddle has a silver lining. Or a pot standing above it. Or a cute little kid jumping into it with her new Easter shoes. Whatever...metaphor...bladdy...bladdy.

Some say that anything works in a square foot garden. I'm not sure I believe that, especially if it's really a 9 inch by 2 1/2 foot garden. However, lots of things will work, especially the smaller things. I do a lot of greens in my pots, as well as beets, radishes, and leeks. This year I have a couple strawberries and some carrots and parsnips also. Herbs would do beautifully. And the great thing about all these little things is that they're just the ones you go out to clip for a little spring salad. Even when the rain doesn't wish to come again another day.

A Recipe for Square Foot Dirt

1 part topsoil
1 part compost
1/2-1 part peat moss (I always do the 1/2 because I'm cheap)

Mix it together and put it in your pots.

The classic recipe from Mel Bartholomew of Square Foot Garden fame is:

1 part compost
1 part peat moss
1 part vermiculite

It might be better, but it's a lot more expensive. Also, I find that it's more difficult to get around to putting together because you have to hunt down the stuff. I like using ingredients that I can just get by the bag at Rural King.