Okay, have to admit. I’m pretty proud I pulled this one off.   So proud I had to take a break from my blogging hiatus to show you =)

Everyone told me they were easy to make, and I never believed them.  But its true.  My very first attempt at making home made tortillas.  YUMMY!!These and some home made bread were both finished today.  Its amazing what I find time to make when I’m out of grocery money for the week!

And just because I’m proud of my first tortillas, I’ll include another picture =)

I don’t normally post about deals, but this one may be too good to pass up =)

If you complete the following steps, you should end up with 20 Christmas Cards and 20 envelopes for a little over $2. Who doesn’t want to save a bit of cash around the holidays!

Go here

Then click the red button that says “Get Your Free Gift Here”

You enter in some info and they’ll email you a promotional code good for $15 off any item. The email comes in minutes.

Then go back here , click on “shop photo cards” and put together your fabulous Christmas card. To get the 20 cards and 20 envelopes for $2, you’ll need to choose one of the cards that says it comes in sets of 10. Mine was 10 for $4.99.

At checkout make sure you state you want 2 sets. The total for the 2 will be around $14.00. Enter in your promo code that was emailed to you and you get the cards free. You just pay the $2 for shipping.

Pretty fun right =) I love getting free stuff!!

I have an issue with our grocery budget. Since we started buying diapers for Justus, I always seem to go over budget. This is the week I decided I was going to figure out how to spend less on groceries and come under budget. The google searches began….

After searching out ways to reduce grocery spending, it looked like my 2 options were going to be to give up shampoo or to start making more things from scratch. I know giving up shampoo seems a little extreme, but apparently its all the rage now. Something about using baking soda and water and eliminating chemicals from your body or something like that.

I went back and forth between the two options. Initially I decided to try giving up shampoo. It would take less time than baking huge stockpiles =)

But pretty sure my husband would not be too thrilled about this option and would eventually insist on counseling for me which would probably be more money than our grocery bill currently was so I decided to tackle making things from scratch. Monday after everyone got up from naps, they all got cooking T-shirts on, we played some music and we made 2 dozen banana muffins, a dozen blueberry muffins, and 2 loaves of banana bread (I had just bought a large supply of bananas on sale that I needed to use) The mixing everything up only took about 40 minutes so it wasn’t too much time. The flour fight, the sugar dropped on the floor, and the nursing Justus was what made the experience a little lengthy.

We now have a nice little baked good stockpile in the freezer. My thought is to use these for snacks and breakfast and see if we can reduce our bill that way. I’ll let you know if I actually follow through or if in 3 weeks I suddenly remember all the baked goods in my freezer that I forgot to use and then end up throwing them out b/c they’ve gone bad.

So if you happen to see me with greasy hair, you’ll know this whole freezer stockpile thing didn’t work for me.

I have a new favorite blog you should check out if you live in the Fort Worth/Keller/Grapevine area.

Frugal in Fort Worth. I’ve been following it for a few weeks now and its wonderful. Its not inundated with millions of coupon deals or things where you have to sign up and give personal info. It simply picks one or two free events that are occurring in our area and lets you know about them.

It has been a great resource for me as I try to spend little or no money while still engaging my kiddos in fun activities. You should check it out!

Read with your kids 15 minutes a day for a week and earn a $3 gift card from Half Price Books. You can do this every week for the entire summer!

Read more about the program here

Print out a reading log here

The girls and I did this together last summer, and we had a blast going into the store every Friday for them to pick out a new book. There are many books in the store that are $3 or less so they will earn a free book a week each week of the summer.

There is no age minimum for this program. As long as either they are reading or you are reading to them for 15 min. a day, you qualify.

Thought I would pass on the great deal. Hope you enjoy!

I just did this deal and got 20 steak hamburgers from Omaha Steaks for $1.98.

Click here if you want to check out the deal and get some meat for almost free!!

Or click here if you don’t need the meat but would like some almost free other items from Omaha steaks.

The directions may sound confusing, but its really not bad. The hardest part is waiting for Geico to send you the confirmation email. It says they will send it in a couple hours, but it took almost 4 hours before it arrived in my inbox. Enjoy your cheap, but really good hamburgers!!