FCF Weekend Wrap-Up: Thrift store finds, Costco deals, our FCF Halloween costumes, and more!

Happy Monday...and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Our weekend was a blast. How was yours? 

I'm sure you are all enjoying Halloween festivities of one kind or another. We did a lot of fun, cheap, or free things this weekend. Check them out:

Friday:

• My son Hutch is growing faster than I can keep up with, especially when it comes to shoes. I decided to hit up a local thrift store, Deseret Industries, and found a few goodies:

We found him two pairs of shoes, one of which were these babies:

You can tell they are used, but they are still in pretty good condition. They were $4 which seemed a little steep to me for used children's shoes, but in looking at the big picture that's still a good deal.

$23 for kid shoes? Not in this life.

While I was there I found Priya some baby gap shoes for $2

And a fun new toy for my son. The balls spin around on top and fall through the holes, circle down the shute, and come out one of the openings in the bottom. He loves it.

 Got this for $4 also. Once again, I feel like other thrift stores would've sold it for cheaper, but no biggie.

You can find great children's things from thrift stores. My favorites? Shoes, toys, and books (see HERE and HERE for ideas). 

• Friday night we went to dinner at Red Robin (are you shocked? We seriously eat there like every weekend...). I can't help eating there, it's so cheap and so good! Their RR Cheeseburgers are only $5.99 right now and comes with bottomless steak fries. 

Remember THIS sneaky Red Robin tip? 

Get their cheap cheeseburger, add onion straws to it (should be free), ask for a side of BBQ and ranch sauces, mix the sauces together & add them to your burger, and you've got yourself their $9 Whisky River BBQ burger for just $5.99! Also, rather than buying an entire kids meal for Hutch we buy him a side of Mac 'N Cheese for $1.99. It's made with real cheese so it's better than the fake stuff, and is way more than he could eat.

Saturday:
Price-matched some amazing ground beef deals from Wal Mart. See my post HERE to see how I saved $3/lb!

I picked up a few things from Costco last weekend and forgot to post about it. Their coupon deals are good this month, here are a few of the things I recommend taking advantage of:

• Nearly all the components of my awesome Laundry Concoction are on sale, either $2.50 or $3 off (Tide, Clorox 2, Downy fabric softener, etc.). 

• Kirkland wipes are $4 off

• Their Take-n-bake pepperoni pizzas are only $6.99 after $3 off. If you don't plan to eat them right away, buy a few and freeze them. Perfect for a last-minute or weekend meal.

• Their organic canned tomatoes are B1G1 free. They end up being roughly $0.50/can which is decent, but I've been able to price-match them for cheaper - but only by a few cents each. For the convenience, I recommend just getting them from Costco while they are cheap!

For their other coupon offers this month click HERE. They are valid through 11/6, BTW.



Saturday Night we went to our church ward's Trunk-or-Treat. I love dressing up for Halloween and coming up with creative CHEAP or free costumes. (Remember last year's costumes?)
Since we are still living out of boxes in my aunt's basement waiting to close on our new house, I decided to keep things REALLY simple this year. Here's what we did:

Hutch is OBSESSED with Basketball and wears this Jimmer jersey everywhere. Yes, our Jimmer likes him some bling bling.

We decided to center our costumes around his obsession. 

My husband simply put Hutch's Fisher Price hoop down his back in a backpack, we put Priya in a ref bib we found at Target,  

and I made myself a basketball. 

I got an orange shirt from Michaels for $2.50 (and used a coupon on top of it), 

and used leftover paint from THIS project. It's not beautiful nor is it perfect, but it works. 

There are about 100 ways we could've made these costumes cooler. But like I said, we went reeeeeeeeeeeally simple this year.

Hey, simple, cheap or free costumes are the best! Remember this huge list of DIY costumes? Check out our friends who were hippie organic farmers:

Clever, right? Anyway, we had a blast.

Sunday:
We went to church then cooked one of my pans of frozen Baked Ziti because A) I didn't feel like cooking, and B) I was over my grocery budget for the month and didn't want to go grocery shopping this week. I LOVE having a good freezer meal on-hand.

If something is a great deal that week (like how ground beef is a good deal this week) stock up, and make 2 or 3 of the same meal. Cook one to eat right away, and freeze the others. It's great for when you don't feel like cooking, need to take a meal to a friend, or if you are over your grocery budget for the week and shouldn't go grocery shopping!

After dinner we enjoyed the finer things in life...leaving the dirty dishes in the sink for a while so we could have some quality play time. Priceless.

So that was our weekend. Enjoy Halloween, be safe, eat lots of candy, and have a fun, cheap, or free week!

Price-matching/deal shopping deals this week: Great deal on ground beef

I didn't do any heavy grocery shopping this week because we have plenty of stuff around the house. However, I ran to Wal Mart to grab some juice and milk.

While there I remembered that we were out of ground beef and checked my phone quickly to see if there were any great ground beef deals (I used dealstomeals.com for a quick reference). I found this amazing deal:

At BuyLow this week their extra lean 7% fat ground beef is only $1.99/lb.
At Wal Mart the same meat is  $4.98/lb!

STOCK UP FOR YOUR LIVES, PEOPLE!

I bought 5 pounds and this week I will now make meals with ground beef (Taco soup, lasagna, etc.). The rest of the meat I don't use I will cook up (no seasonings added) and will freeze in 1 lb portions in ziplock baggies for quick future meals.

As for the juice, I got this good deal:

At BuyLow also (I believe...?) their Western Family 96oz apple juice is just $1.49.
At Wal Mart theirs was $2.48. 

Wal Mart doesn't have WF so I grabbed their GV and the checker didn't care.

For my step-by-step "how to" guide to price-matching/deal-shopping grocery methods, see the tab at the top of my site or click HERE.

Remember, never pay full-price for anything...EVER!

Savvy Saturday project: Fabric and ribbon wreath tutorial

Welcome back to Savvy Saturday! 

Today's project is a fun one that I originally saw HERE.  It's a creative way to use silk flowers, ribbon, and fabric to create a cute wreath. It doesn't take much ribbon or fabric to make the flowers so it's a great way to use up scraps. 

Use different color combinations of ribbon and flowers for different holidays; the possibilities are endless! 

Here's the one I made for Halloween:

Here's what you need:

Ribbon

Silk flower

Decorative brad

Wreath (I got mine at the dollar store)

Strip of fabric

Needle & thread

Hot glue

Here's what you do:

Get yourself a silk flower. I got mine 60% off at Michaels, then used an additional coupon.  It ended up being around $0.60.

Next, pull the flower off the stem,

and remove all the plastic parts.

Like so.

Put a decorative brad or button in the center to hold all the layers of petals together. I used these brads that I also bought with a coupon from Michaels. They are in the scrapbooking section typically.

Like so.

Next, get some scrap fabric. It doesn't need to be very thick, but you'll want it to be a decently long strip - depending on how big your flower is. You'll see what I mean in a second.

Take your strip of fabric and stitch along one side. Make sure to knot the end of the string so it doesn't come out.

Do this all the way up your strip. You will pull the string to gather the fabric. Do this as you go so you can see how your fabric "flower" is turning out size-wise.

I didn't know how long my strip of fabric needed to be so I gathered as I went, and kept measuring it against my silk flower.

You want it to be just larger than your silk flower so the fabric peeks out like so:

Next, measure your ribbon so that when you make a little loop it peeks out over top like so:

Cut the ribbon, and glue it together to form the loop.

Make as many as you want.

Lastly, take a second kind of ribbon and cut little strips. I did mine all the way across the back of the flower, but it's not exactly necessary; you could cut them shorter and just glue them so they stick out from the top.

 Piece it all together like so, and glue with hot glue.  

Glue your flower on, and there you go! 

My second one turned out way better but I didn't take pictures of the process. I used zebra striped felt and a bigger flower. It's fun to try different combos!

Wrap a dollar-store wreath in more ribbon of your choice (I got my ribbon from Wal Mart for less than $2 for the entire spool), glue the flowers on, and there you go!

This was a good trial run. I plan to make a much cuter one for Christmas, with many more flowers and lots more ribbon. For now, this will do :)

Hey, it took me all of about 10 minutes so it was worth the try! 

Pretty easy, eh?

If you try this project be sure to email me at funcheaporfree@gmail.com or post pictures on our facebook wall so we can all see how you did it. Always fun to share, right?? 

Happy Saturday, and enjoy crafting!!

A Friend's great price-matching grocery trip!

I have mentioned many times before how I choose to deal-shop and price-match to buy my groceries for dirt cheap (no coupons needed!). I finally created a page explaining this process in great detail for you! (click HERE or see the tab at the top of my site)

Shannon, a FCF friend, emailed me her recent price-matching successes. I thought I'd share them with you for "Friend-Feature Friday" to inspire you to try price-matching and deal-shopping too!

Here is Shannon's success story:

Hi there!! I just got back from my second awesome price-matching trip so I thought I’d email you the details! It was a bit of work getting prepared (studying grocery mailers and creating a list of what we needed based on the best deals) but I was able to stay well below my budget of $100 for this grocery trip—all this only cost $75! And really, if you took out the two whole organic chickens, Halloween candy and some other things that weren’t on sale (flour, chicken broth, sugar, pecans) then this would have been much cheaper.

Also, we do a cash budget and there were some things I had to buy for other things, otherwise I would have bought much more of the great deal items. I’m going to go back next week when I get more cash to stock up!!

Here are some good price-match deals from the haul:

Ken’s SteakHouse Dressings: $1 each

Yellow Onions: 5 lbs. for $.75

Cache Valley Sliced Cheeses: $1 each

My husband's favorite muffin mix: $.88 each

Toddler Toothpaste: $1.99

Bottle of Olive Oil: $3.50

Gallon of Whole Milk: $2.25

I also got a 10lb bag of potatoes for $1.99 and other great deals.
Last time I did the price-matching they didn’t check any of my ads. However, this time the checker asked to see a bunch of them, so it was a little more stressful because I had both kids with me, but luckily I had circled all the items in the mailers that were on my list so they were easy to find. I think the lady behind me in line was a little bugged but hey, I saved a ton of money!
I feel so empowered. I wish I had started doing this sooner, this will save my family so much money...for little to no effort!

What a great trip, thanks for sharing Shannon! By the way, check out her super cute company, Plum Street Prints.

Give price-matching and deal-shopping a try, and let me know how it goes. Happy grocery shopping :)

Replay Thursday! Savings tip replay: Repurpose old sweaters into leg warmers!

Welcome back to Replay Thursday, where I "replay" and oldie - but goodie - savings tip so you don't miss out on anything great!

Since it's starting to get cold outside (here in Utah, anyway...) I've been going through my winter clothes and selling or donating things I don't want anymore. 

It reminded me of this tip that was posted a while back, and I thought I'd repost it to give you a good idea of how to repurpose those old sweaters that you would otherwise throw out! You could also find cheap sweaters at thrift stores or yard sales to make this project. Enjoy!

photo source

I found THIS fun tutorial on how to make leg warmers out of old sweaters.

What a great fun idea!

What you'll need is

• An old sweater
• Scissors
• A sewing machine or needle and thread

All you do is:

• Cut of the sleeve of your sweater, cutting straight across so the sleeve creates a long tube.
• Turn the tube inside out and try it on with the cut end down toward your feet.
• If the tube is too loose: pinch the inside of the tube so it's as tight as you want it against your leg. Pin the pinched excess all the way down the inside of the tube, from top to bottom. Sew along your pinned line and cut off the excess that you had "pinched" away from your leg. When you turn the tube right-side out again you won't see the part you cut off.
• Once it's the tightness you want it, take off the tube. Fold the cut end up to create a hem (making sure your tube is still inside out).
• Sew the hem at the bottom of your tube.
• Turn it right-side out, and now you have a leg warmer! Yippee!

They look like so much fun and would also make great gifts! This is also a great way to make baby/child  leg warmers.
  If you try this out, be sure to send me pictures to funcheaporfree@gmail.com or post them on our Facebook Wall so I can share your successes with everyone.

Enjoy your Thursday :)