Oatmeal snack and Good Grocery Haul

Let's get the quick recipe out of the way :)
Logan has now done this twice, and it is his favorite. I thought I would put it out there for some other people to try since he likes it so much.

1. Fill up (clean) coffee pot with hot water. 
2.  Take largest heat proof mug (my fave is the green one we found at yard sale) and fill anywhere from 1/3 to half full, depending how hungry you are. (remember oats expand!) 
3. Put in a little brown sugar and hot chocolate mix. 
4. Pour in water to desired consistency and add a bit more sugar to taste (or even flavored coffee creamer! He says that's for tomorrow)
5. ENJOY!!

Now, I just want to brag about how happy I am about money we are saving. We aren't the greatest yet, and we still had some impulse buys, but hey, it was still a lot of savings! 

We went to Safeway.com  and looked at this weeks ads to create a Grocery list before going to the store.

(Safeway is the only grocery store in town, besides Three Bears which I (and my mother for that matter) don't trust. Logan and I had stopped there once and the meat was green and the hams that were on sale were all leaking and disgusting looking packages... It just was not right.)

A night or two ago, I sat down with Logan and Todd to find 30 ideas for dinner for the month of October.It was hard, but we did it! Now it is quite obvious we won't do it in the exact order, but we can plan for those meals and make sure to use up the meat in the freezer and plan extra for leftovers (like left over homemade pizza sauce into spaghetti the next night) 

Now for our savings tally: We saw that cream cheese (which I love in everything, especially mashed carrots and potatoes) was on sale 2 for $3 when regular price is 4.18. You bet we bought some! Logan had to buy some pasta-roni sides, at 8 for $10 not too bad for a quick side-dish. We picked up 4 boxes of cereal at a buy 2 get 2 free price as well as B1G1 bacon and sausage rolls (GREAT for spaghetti). We grabbed the bag of apples knowing I could make a pie and some caramels for caramel apples! I have at position 8 (this friday the 8th in other words)  fried chicken so we grabbed my rain check a few weeks ago for 2 pints of buttermilk for 75cents that they had been out of at that time. 

All in all, we saved exactly $75  according to the store receipt with our Safeway card and coupons! That makes me feel good because I know it is all things we will use, good storage items. (I can't eat bacon that much, but it freezes quite well!)

Which all this stuff was a pain in the butt to carry home on foot! 6 blocks, and up hill of all things! But we loaded down his wheelchair and had cereal in his back and OJ balanced in a bag on his foot, lol! I carried 5 bags myself, so please don't think I made him do it all lol. Just realize we got that much with this plan for that cheap!

P.S. the whole way I was thinking how grateful I am that my mom had brought me home from the store when I bought the 25 lbs bag of flour for $13... XD