Frugal Friday

I'm starting a new thing! Considering I'm 30 pounds overweight, can't see my swollen feet and can hardly do anything without moving my belly out of the way, I've been reading a lot of blogs lately. Some of the people I know and some are completely random. I have so much to learn about this blog world. Buttons?? How cool! I want one! And I would love to install some computer program to a photoshop or way to have a cool heading like a lot of other blogs have.

Unfortunately, I'm about to have a newborn! And I'm sure most of you know what that means...no sleep, no food, no make-up, no sex, & no TIME!  I don't want to be one of those bloggers that will not update my blog until my child is 6 months old and try to recap everything over those 6 months. I'm going to do whatever I can to continue to keep you posted on what's going on around here, especially for my MN relatives. I want to learn so much more about this blog stuff though.. So do I start now?? I guess it's better now than never at all!

I've seen "messy mondays", thankful on a thursday, and flashback fridays, so I've decided to do a new "frugal friday" post. I've been out of my job now for about 5 months and while I'm not completely a stay at home mom, since I'm in grad school, I'm not a working mom either. And with our checkbooks being tighter than ever I've been having to come up with some ways to save money.And slowly but surely getting the hang of it. I figured every Friday I will do a post about some way to save money or live eco friendly. I'm sure some of you stay at home moms have figured out a few tricks along the way and I'd love to hear if you have any suggestions along the way. I'm open to new ideas!!

So with that being said, here's to  a new posting trend that I pray will continue even when I'm so sleep deprived that I'm walking into walls.

My first frugal Friday post is about those who have a new baby on the way or even young children. There are all kind of websites that you can go and sign up for and they send you free samples of baby items and coupons. I've done a p & g website with pampers that has sent me a sample of a new diaper they have on the market, "Enjoytheriderewards" program with Huggies where you can even use your points to enter contests such as winning a new mini van, etc.

But the one I love the most and it helped so much with Maci Rose is the gerber plan. A lot of you know, my grandmother kept MR while I worked. and don't get me wrong, she has kept all of us and many other of my cousins, and even one of my friends that we can to realize later, so she has some experience under her belt. With that being said, she always does things her way whether you like it or not and so as a first time mother I almost had a heart attack a few times. Like when i walked in to pick her up at 5 months old and she was sitting in her high chair eating KIX!! What?? No teeth! My grandmother calmly said she sucks them down until they are soft enough to swallow, don't worry!! DON'T WORRY?? Are you kidding me?

But there are other things she's done like water color painting and play dough at a year old and even teaching her to write her name and distinguishing the different power ranger colors that I must say have made Maci Rose one heck of a smart kid. She's very advanced in those ways. So thanks grandma! Even though I may have had some heart problems along the way ha!!

Ok, back to the gerber plan...they send you coupons in the mail that come with a little book with great advice as to what your child SHOULD be eating at a certain age or some of the activities they should be doing. etc. They start with pregnancy info and coupons, move to newborn, then supported sitter, sitter, crawler, toddler, and preschooler. Maci Rose is in the toddler phase and has been for about a year now and we haven't seen the pamplets or coupons coming in as often, but during the first year of their life you are getting stuff almost every month.

Another incentive with these coupons, is if you cut out the bar codes on the gerber products you buy and send in 10 of them they will send you a whole book of coupons again. They like to see that they are getting use obviously and we definitely used them. If you've never gone down the baby isle and tried gerber graduates little crunchies in the cheese flavor you don't know what you're missing!! Maci Rose and I both benefitted from those things. They taste like cheese curls and they virtually have hardly any fat and calories. I believe you can eat the entire can for around 200 cals.

So go and google the huggies, pampers, and gerber graduates (Start Healthy, Stay Healthy) websites and sign up for all the free goodies and coupons you can. Also, enter the contests, you never know you may win a new car in the meantime!!