Jet.com and Living Social

If you haven't heard already Jet.com is a new online shopping site. I tried it out the other day and would have to say I am pretty impressed.

The premise of Jet is that the more your shop the more you save. Fairly simple. Whats cool is that there are certain items that are great to ship together etc that they will give you extra discounts to purchase with products that are already in your cart. You can see the extra savings pile up and you get free shipping on order $35 of more. 

BUT before you get started try it for FREE! Okay not totally free but pretty close. Here's what you need to do:

1. Follow this link to Living Social

2. Purchase the Jet.com $30 for $10 deal. 

3. Sign up for a new Jet.com account(only available on new accounts so if you have jet already, sorry!)

4. Go to Jet.com and spend only what you have to! I filled my cart to the amount that I need to get free shipping, $35.

5. Apply the Living Social Deal and Look At your Total! I ended up at $0.56.

6. AND how do you get it for free?????? (or almost free) Living Social gives you a link (hence why I'm asking you for follow mine above) that if three people buy the same deal from your link you get it FREE! 

Here is my receipt:

Price Subtotal                 $36.44

Extra Savings                  -$5.83

PROMO                        -$30.05

Shipping Fee                   FREE

Estimated Tax                  $0.00

Order Total         $0.56

I actually think this site will catch on a lot. It is very simple to use and I am finding that it is easier to find products I might now have purchased in store because of how overwhelming the grocery store can be these days. 

Try it out for yourself and see what you think. Please leave some comments about what you think. And thank you for those of you who followed my referral link!

-A.Nieman-

Updates on the Budget

Sticking to the new grocery budget has proven difficult. Getting down to a smaller budget each week is going to take some getting use to and some changes to the way we deal with meals.

As you know I don't have a steady schedule so meal planning is difficult. The past couple months, with changes going on at work, my schedule has been even more unsteady. And coming up next month my schedule will be changing even more.

So how to adapt your budget to an ever changing schedule? A stock pile.

My stock pile is really dwindling right now due to my lack of dedication to my coupon binder. It unfortunately is almost empty.... It is amazing the impact of not having a full or even semi full stock pile. I find it very difficult to plan meals in tight budget months. We have limited options for eating at home and then we end up eating out and going over budget.

Here is my goal for the rest of the year, October, November and December: ReStock my Stock Pile!

How and I going to achieve this: Coupons! and Sales!

It's time to get back to basics, and when a coupon guru tells you how important a stock pile is, trust me, believe them!

New Budget

This month I will trying out a new plan for my husband and my grocery budget. I have been trying to cut our grocery bill for a while and did great for a while on coupons but have found that I am lacking success lately. Or at least the success that I need to achieve to make my time cutting and organizing coupons worth it.

I was reading an article from my LearnVest email digest that showcased a couple different peoples' real budgets and one of them stuck with me. A young couple around the ages of my husband and myself spent around 100$ a week on groceries by planning out their menus each week. Right now I can spend up to $300-$400 a month on groceries, and our budget just cannot take it any more. So I am going to give this method a try.

Seeing as my grocery budget is the same as this couple, I am going to shoot for around $50 a week. I know its an ambitious cut, but I think it's manageable. Today is going to be my first trip and I plan on making sure I have what I need in my house for the next week of meals.

I think the most challenging part will be keeping my husband and myself to the meal plan we create at the beginning of the week. We have a tendency to do the impromptu dinner out.

I plan on keeping everyone posted as to how it goes. So wish us luck!

Snowman Cupcakes!

Source: repinly.com via A. Nieman Design on Pinterest

Santa Cookies

Source: lovefromtheoven.com via A. Nieman Design on Pinterest

Etsy Item of the Day 11.20.12

Source: etsy.com via A. on Pinterest

Next Years Garden

This year I didn't get much done in the garden so I have devised a plan to get motivated for next year. I purchased a rain barrel and composter on sale from the Home Depot to get the garden started. Unfortunately its too late in the season to install the rain barrel but the composter has been assembled and has started the composting journey. I'm not expecting it to have a ton of soil by next spring but you have to start somewhere.

I have also been loading up my pinterest Garden Board with ideas of what I would like the finished garden to resemble. Of course many of the ideas will not take shape for a couple years so I have decided to make a list of importance.

The number one thing on the list for next spring/summer is a vegetable garden.I'm not expecting it to be the greatest, but i would like to get one started that has at least the basics: tomatoes, carrots, peppers, and maybe a cabbage or two. Eventually it will grow into a large endeavor where going to the grocery store is a slim occasion.

Hopefully one day it will look like this:

Source: thischickcooks.net via A. on Pinterest

Candy Corn Cupcakes! Yes Please!

Source: cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com via A. on Pinterest

Food Week Pin of the Week

Source: popularpng.com via Diane on Pinterest

Blog Feature for Food Week

I have to pass on one of my favorite blogs to you in honor of food week on A. Nieman Design. The blog is SpiffyCookie. Not only is she a good friend of mine, but I enjoy reading her blog postings. She focuses on bakery, sweets and deserts, but from time to time she does do some posts about entre meals.

Please take a swing over there and check her out! 

Item of the day. 8.20.12

Signal Girl cooking timer

Item of the Day 8.19.12

Tiny Angel Food Baking Dishes - Nine - Circa 1950s

Soup of the day!

Source: randomthoughtsandthrills.blogspot.com via Asia on Pinterest

Pin of the Week!

Good Morning Everyone!

You know me and series I love them! (for a little while then I get lazy). So here is my latest creation!

Pin of the Week!
One pin I really ove that i have to share with you my readers!
Can you tell I'm hungry!

Source: alexandracooks.com via Brian on Pinterest

Best Saving's To Date

I have been couponing for awhile and I will be the first to admit that I am not a coupon queen. But I have been getting better and better at saving at the grocery store.

Lately I have been collecting all the coupons that I can and waiting for one big shopping trip in the month (usually surrounding my monthly commission check). The day of, I have been pulling up the Giant Eagle ad and making sure I grab all the coupons that have items on sale. Just these two simple things have helped me increase my savings.

My last greatest savings was around $50, but now I have surpassed that and am now at $73.41! It's not a free grocery bill but that s a huge savings for me and my fiance'. Since I bought quite a bit I probably wont have to go back to the grocery store to do a big shop till at least next month if not the month after that! Of course I will need to pick up the essentials every so often, like milk, eggs, and banana's.

This proves that you don't have to go crazy with coupons to save some money. I don't spend hours everyday organizing my coupons and calculating my savings, dumpster diving for coupons and other methods coupon queens use for their savings. I simple cut coupons, keep them in an organized binder by expiration date and pair them with weekly specials and last but not least save my food perks from Giant Eagle until I have a large % available.

I may not ever get to a free bill, but I'm saving money and that's what counts!

Vacation Time

You may have noticed that I have been a little absent this past week and a half. This is due to my fiance and I having several days off which is extremely unusual. We work opposing schedules him monday thru friday 9-5 and myself retail which means working every weekend with my days off during the week. So basically we don't get to spend days together unless we request time off.


My fiance was off this whole week which was wonderful and meant we could spend some time working on our upcoming wedding! (Stay tuned to some upcoming post about how I am designing our wedding).


The main areas were accomplished was the cake and the music for the ceremony. I can't wait to share with you the vendors we have found for our wedding. So far they have been fabulous and have made things very stress free.


Another big event during this time period was my Birthday! Well my birthday wasn't really the big event, its what I received for my birthday. My fiance adopted a cat for my birthday!


Her name is Vavita and is an affectionate and playful 2 year old. I am so excited to have her join our family and you better believe there will be some upcoming posts on her!

Coffee and Design

Coffee and Design

Item of the Day 1.27.12

four colorful nesting bowls blue, green, yellow, pink, home decor  gift for mom

Item(s) of the Day 11.2.11 (I couldn't pick just one)

vintage french cream white enamel coffee pot

 

Wool Acorns, 8 Felt Handmade Woodland Waldorf Colorful Peachy Orange Halloween home decor Fall Thanksgiving pumpkin

 

Hand Stamped Holiday Spoons Fork and Ladle Set 7 piece. Christmas or Thanksgiving Serving Set Silver Plated

 

 

Google Calendar for Your Coupons!

Today we went grocery shopping and I always feel like I don't have a good system for making sure I use all my coupons before they expire. So I decided to try something new. I listed all my coupons according to their expiration date. I then printed out the month and took it with us to the grocery store. As we went around the store I check the list to make sure I wasn't missing anything that would expire soon. It definitely helped and here is my list for the month:

I also put together a shopping list of items we normal get in a word document. After printing it out I highlighted the ones that we needed. I think it helps to have a more complete list rather than trying to write up a list every time we go shopping.