Showing posts with label #Fun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #Fun. Show all posts
Friday, October 16, 2015
Living with Less and Loving Life!
8:44 PM
- My favorite EASY way to save money is Walmart Price Matching. If you do not Price match at Walmart, you should! Here is their Price match policy (they call it their Ad Match Guarantee). Be familiar with it! You can, and should totally use it! BUT guess what? It has gotten even easier to do over the years because now you can use the Walmart Savings Catcher and let them figure out the price matches for you! I use that every time I go to Walmart!!!
- Another easy way that I save on my groceries is at Safeway. I have a Safeway Just for U account. (Which basically means I have a Safeway card). To set this up, all you do is get the card then register it online and use it each time you shop. (For those of you that don't want another card to keep track of, that's ok, you can just put your associated phone number in instead of scanning your card when you go through the check out-that's how I do it!). This card not only gives me automatic access to their sale prices, it gives me the opportunity to add manufacturers coupons onto my card to save even more money! (There are other grocery stores that have similar systems, but Safeway is the one I can use in my tiny town. Look for this type of program in your local grocery stores too!)
Travel Tip
Travel is my main goal in saving money these days. But as we all know, travel ain't cheap! I do my best to get the best deals I can on travel by following a few guidelines.
- First: PLAN ahead, do your homework (research, research, research) and be flexible.
- Compare prices. Always. I like to use Expedia first when I start to plan. I search for my airfare or hotels on there and compare the prices. Then I check the prices on the Hotel or airlines site. VERY often I have gotten flights and hotels for less simply by booking directly through them, but also often I have found that Expedia has the cheapest price. So check both places.
- Book travel in advance. It is significantly more expensive to do so last minute!
- Plan activities that are free or inexpensive! Even when our family goes on Disneyland vacations, we spend a couple days at the beach. The beach is free whereas a day at Disney is not. So, even when you are taking a trip that is a splurge, like a Disney trip, plan for free or nearly free activities!)
- You can save money on food when vacationing by staying in hotels with free breakfasts. (This is a MUST for my husband when we book a hotel!)
Day to Day Activities
Besides travel, we try to save money on our day to day activities. I include in that category things like school supplies, sports, holidays, birthdays, and family time together. Below are a few om the things we do as a family to tighten the belt with those often expensive day to day things.
- Again, I would say to PLAN ahead. We all know school is coming up in August or September, so start to watch ads EARLY to get the supplies you or your kids might need. It's great to buy the crayons when they are a quarter rather than when they cost $3. Watch the sales and buy low. :)
- Holidays---ug, right?! With 5 kids, Christmas and birthdays (for our kids AND all their friends) can get crazy and EXPENSIVE. One way I combat that expense becoming a huge burden is by planning ahead and watching clearance racks all year round. I have a present room. Really. It has lots of things that may end up as a present for my child to give a friend, or a Christmas gift, or whatever else. Things I know I will need. BUT I buy them all on clearance. For example, the morning after Easter last year I was at Walmart and saw all these prefilled Easter baskets on clearance. They were filled with toys and treats, and were 75% off. I bought 4 of them for $20 ($5 each). The next day there were still a few good ones left and by then they had been marked down to 90% off. I bought several more. We have opened the baskets and pulled out the toys for 10+ birthday party presents (for friends), used them for donations to the school, and given them to to our own kids. There are still 5 full baskets in the present room that will be used by Christmas I am sure (and I will not have to stress over a gift when my kids brings home a last minute birthday invitation).
- Speaking of Birthdays, do you realize there are a lot of FREE Birthday items you can sign up for? I have an article about it from a few years ago here. The article is old, but a lot of the items are still great.
- Family activities: It did not take us long during those really tight years to figure out that we did not have ANY money to dedicate to going out as a couple or as a family, so we got really creative. We found all the parks and trails near us. We looked for free activities listed near us on local news. We got involved in playgroups in our community. We went to libraries. We took a lot of walks. We played lots of made up games or we played board games until they wore out. We made free fun!!
Once you find the areas in your personal budget where you can cut costs, and implement a plan to do so, I am SURE you will be able to find you are living with less and loving life just as our family did!
Best of luck in your saving journey!
And please, feel free to comment with any questions you may have for me!
Labels:
#Birthdays,
#Expedia,
#Family,
#Fun,
#Groceries,
#LoveLife,
#Safeway,
#Save,
#Saving,
#Travel,
#Walmart
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Monday, March 24, 2014
Showing our #DisneySide: My babys birthday party
6:29 PM
I think I had a small heart attack when I found out I was going to get to do a #DisneySide in home party celebration. I am such a huge Disney fan abs I love seeing people's cute Disney parties, so I was excited to say the least. (By the way, if you have not checked out the Disney side celebrations sure yet, do it here).
So, once I got my fabulous package, I started planning my party. Check out all the loot they sent:
Amazing right? Since I had a Mickey/Playhouse Disney theme, I thought I would use the stuff for an early party for my baby who is about to turn 3. We bought some fabulous food at Costco (how awesome are these Mickey chicken nuggets?)
Then we decorated and got stuff ready:
Here's the birthday boy ready to go:
One of the fun things we did during the party was to play a Disney Headband.
So fun!
We had a blast showing our #DisneySide. How do you like to show your #DisneySide?
Disclosure: Mom Select sent me this fabulous #DisneySide party kit. Thanks so much to all the companies that sponsored the kits! Other than the free stuff for the party, no other compensation was given and as always, all opinions expressed are my own.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Get this Party Started...Beckee's Deals Revamp
11:06 AM
Hello friends! Boy I have not been on here much! I have just moved across the country and I am doing my best to settle myself and 5 kids into a new place. I have also been trying to figure out what to do with my blog. I wondered if it was time to retire it altogether or maybe just revamp. I have decided to go with the revamp. I am still a mom of five looking for a great deal, I still want to share great deals, product reviews and other great content. However, my blog has had some changes.
While in Omaha, I focused a lot on local grocery deals, store sales and local free or cheap activities. I tried to do the same when I lived in Scottsdale, AZ last year but found it was difficult. In that area, grocery deal match ups and couponing were not of interest. I think some of it was backlash due to the perception of couponing people now have thanks to shows like Extreme Couponing. Some of it was the fact that most people living in that area do not need to coupon. Whatever the reason, it was a fail-my blog numbers dropped dramatically.
The place I live now is a small town. It does not have the same kinds of options for pricematching and groceries that big cities have. I am still learning how to shop and save money here. Luckily for me there is a FANTASTIC blog locally that is helping me learn. If you are a local or are planning to visit Grays Harbor at any point, make sure to check out Annaliese over at Grays Harbor Deals. Her blog is awesome! And I know her personally-she is awesome too!
Most of my readers live in Utah and Nebraska. I have a good group in Arizona, and I found I have a growing number all over the country-actually all over the world. I learned in looking at my blog stats, that the posts with the most hits are usually my travel posts. Awesome! Reviews and travel posts are the ones I like to do the most!!!
So, here comes the new plan (which is a work in progress, so bear with me): we are bringing back the weekly series! We are continuing to review and give away products, and we are focusing on deals that are not quite so local (that's not to say I won't post local stuff-I will sometimes).
My former Weekly Series looked like this:
- Sunday: Sunday Savings: Newspaper round up
- Monday: Mommy School Mondays
- Tuesday: Tuesdays Travels
- Wednesday: Beckee's Best of Omaha Grocery
- Thursday: Thrifty Thursdays (Random thrifty tips on a variety of topics)
- Friday: Weekend Warriors: Daycations
- Saturday: Service Spotlight Saturdays
Here's what I am going to do now:
- Sunday: Sunday Savings: Estate Sale Sundays
- Monday: Mommy School Mondays
- Tuesday: Tuesdays Travels
- Wednesday: Where's Wes (and Beckee) Wednesdays
- Thursday: Thrifty Thursdays
- Friday: Weekend Warriors: Daycations
- Saturday: Service Spotlight Saturdays
And this is what I will do for each of those.
Estate Sale Sundays: We just bought a really cool big old home. We have many empty rooms which we will fill throughout the years. Local friends told us to just check out Estate Sales. I had never even heard of them but now I am obsessed. At my very first Estate Sale, I found a TREASURE! I found the recipe box from that wonderful woman. I am trying to cook through some of her hand written recipes. Sundays, I will show you some of my recipe creations from this box (and from any other box I can find). I will also show you some of the fun stuff I pick up at Estate sales as they come up and I will let you know of any upcoming estate sales I hear of.
Mommy School Mondays: I teach my kids preschool before I send them off to Kindergarten. I love it. 4 of my 5 kids go back to school next week, and it will just be me and my baby boy (ok-he's 2) at home. We will be doing some organized Mommy school activities and some not so organized. Mondays I will try to share with you some lessons, resources and fun things I have used with my kids over the years (or with my 2 year old that week).
Tuesdays Travels: Wow-this one takes some time and effort. It is where I try to research and share all kinds of fun activities to do in a vacation spot of my choice. I tried to share places I know last time. I will revisit some of those, and I will also pick spots I want to visit and research them and share my finds with you! I am sure I will BEG for reader input here and ask for YOUR best tips and tricks for visiting these places. Remember, many will be places I have not visited before, so I will want people to give input that have firsthand experience visiting or living there!!
Where's Wes (and Beckee) Wednesday: This my be a short lived series-depending on how many pictures I can find or take. Wes is my husband and the other day I was looking at pics of us from various places and mentioned that it would be fun to do a Where in the world is Wes series. He thought I was joking...hehehe...If I can coordinate these pictures with the Daycation post for the week, I will-that means I will post a pic of Wes (or me, or the kids) somewhere in the world on Wednesday. Then on Fridays Weekend Warrior Daycation post, we will reveal where the pic was taken AND I will post about that place!
Thrifty Thursday: This one is various Thrifty ideas or Tips. That's it.
Weekend Warriors Daycations: This started as a series when my husband was a medical resident and we had very little money or time for any kind of vacation. So, we started taking any weekend he had off and having "Daycations" at local areas. Parks, Malls, Lakes, Rivers, Free local events, anywhere! We could make anything into a Daycation. Now we have lived in many places, and I have had the chance to visit a lot of these places for Day trips. I have a whole new area to discover here in Grays Harbor as well. These Daycation posts have consistently been my biggest posts for people to come back to. The Daycations will be from places all over, but because I have lived in these places, a lot of them will likely be in or near: Salt Lake City, Omaha, Spokane, San Diego, Scottsdale/Phoenix, Grays Harbor/Olympia/Seattle. I also spent a lot of time in Anaheim/Long Beach/LA area, love New York City, and Chicago as well so look forward to those areas as well. Really-it could be ANYWHERE! I love Greece too...just sayin...
Saturdays Service Spotlight: I love to focus on the positive. I love seeing great examples of Service in my life. This is going to be a place I can share internet articles about service, or personal experiences. Readers can submit items to be shared this day. I will ask my friends and family to contribute. The point of this is to show the positive in the world! It is a place for me to remember the great things people do for each other when the media focuses so much on the bad!
So, if you made it through this post-WOW! Thanks for being a loyal reader! Remember there will still be reviews and giveaways! I have a couple reviews going up this week!!
And now, Let's get this party started!!
Labels:
#Fun,
#Revamp,
Beckee's Business,
Daycations,
Estate Sale Sundays,
Monday Mommy School,
Saturday Service,
Thrifty Thursday,
Tuesdays Travels,
Weekend Warriors,
Wheres Wes Wednesday
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