Food for Thought: Creamy Italian Chicken

I thought I would share one of our favorite recipes today. It is sooo easy to make and tastes really delish. I usually make it in my crock pot on Sundays and when we get home, it's Italian time!

Ingredients
4 Chicken Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts, thawed
1 package cream cheese
1 package dry Italian dressing mix
1/4 cup water
1 can Cream of Mushroom soup

Mix dressing, softened cream cheese, soup and water and pour over chicken in crock pot. Cook for 4-6 hours on low. Enjoy!

Heart for the Home: Decluttering

No, this is not really my office, thank goodness. But it's about what my two spare bedrooms look like right now. I am in the middle of organizing and decluttering (is that a word?) the closets in both rooms.

My dilemma started way back in May, when my husband's family was descending on our new home for a celebration weekend of his graduation from college (yay, honey!) Well, we had moved in March and although I had the best intentions, things were not completely put away or even unpacked by the beginning of May. So what did I do?

Shove it in the closet!

Good idea at the time, but I'm now reaping the consequences of that decision.

Since I work full-time outside the home, I don't always have the time I want to organize and "nest." But the Lord knows my heart. :P So over the past few weeks in my spare time in the evenings I have been pulling things out of the closets and sorting through them. Last night I finally made some headway and there are now 3 garbage bags of clothes waiting to be taken to Goodwill. I stopped kidding myself that I would ever wear them even if I lost weight to get back to my college body. *sigh*

It's a good feeling, though, finally checking some things off my infinite "to-do" list.

What about you? How do you organize and find time to declutter?

Design Diaries: Design Sponge

This blog is one of my favorite places to visit on the web. Every day there are multiple posts on really cool design stuff... my favorite ones are the DIY before and after photos (go figure!).

Recently, the team of bloggers has done a series on Australian design. Since I grew up partly in Brisbane, Queensland, this series was especially interesting to me. There are tons of pages to explore and enough inspiration to keep me excited about designing. Check it out.

Blog Schedule

I've been thinking that I want to give my blog a little more structure and my readers a little more reason to come back. While my main focus will be coupons and frugal living, I also want some "wiggle room" to be able to share cool design ideas or crafts that I see or house projects that we are doing. With that in mind, here's my proposed plan for blogging. We'll see if I can stick to it!

Sunday Restful Thoughts (scripture or other thoughts to inspire)

Monday Saavy Shopper (Coupon & Sale Scenarios for the week)

Tuesday Design Diaries (any designs I have seen that inspire me)

Wednesday Heart for the Home (renovation projects, nesting, etc.)

Thursday Food for Thought (menus on a budget, recipes, etc.)

Friday Cheap, Cheap, Cheap (ways to live frugally, inspiring ideas, etc)

Saturday Creative Solutions (crafty things, innovative ideas I see)

Febreeze Deals at Rite Aid

Here's a couple deals I'm going to try at Rite Aid this week. I've been trying to "freshen up" our house lately, and I love plud-ins and candles, so these are needed. If they weren't I probably wouldn't go for these deals since they require OOP expense.

Deal 1
Buy 1 800ml Febreeze Fabric spray on sale $4.99
Buy 1 500ml Febreeze Fabric spray $3.99
- minus BOGO coupon for 500ml bottle $3.99
- minus $2 SCR
Total for both $2.99


Deal 2
Buy 1 Febreeze candle on sale $6.99
Buy 1 Febreeze Noticeables Starter on sale $6.99
Buy 1 Febreeze Air Effects on sale $2.94
- minus $1 store coupon for buying both candle and noticeables
- minus $5 MCF for Noticeables
- minus $2.94 BOGO coupon for Air Effects, when you buy candle
- minus $1 SCR for Air Effects
Total $6.89 for all three

I will probably do this deal twice, since I have double coupons for all of them. Might as well while they're on sale, right? Only one I won't get the second time is the $1 SCR, since you can only get 1 rebate.

Family Trees

Last week I was trying to come up some crafty ideas for my mom's birthday present (hope she's not reading this!) and I ended up designing this really cute family tree made up of all of our names and info...



I was able to make it really tree-like using Illustrator and then printed it on some cool paper and found a frame I wasn't using a home and voila! What I think is a really pretty and meaningful present! (Not to mention frugal)

I'm not just posting this to show off. (Although I really like the idea! :P) I got to wondering if people would pay for something like this. So would you?

I'm thinking I would make the design and printing pretty inexpensive (like $5-10, depending on the size and complexity) and the cost of the frame would be up to the buyer.

Please let me know your thoughts!

I recently saw this idea (sort of...it kind of evolved from there) on someone else's blog, but I can't remember who now, so if you are that person, please let me know and I'll credit you!

Target Deal 9/2

I just have to write a short post on my trip to Target last night. Hopefully they are running this deal in all areas, because it's a great one and I would love it if all of you could get in on it.

So... Poptarts, Rice Krispie Treats and Keebler Cookies. On sale. 4/$9. But wait, there's more.

Target will give you a $5 Gift Card for every 4 boxes you buy. Any variety. My Target let me use those gift cards toward my purchase. Some Targets may not, but it's worth a try. Then you would be paying OOP $4 for 4 boxes!

There are also coupons out there for Kellogg's brand stuff. I used 4 $1/2 coupons for Keebler and Krispies and 4 $0.50/1 Poptart coupons found here, saving me $6 off my total.

I got 12 boxes total, used $15 in gift cards from buying those boxes, and used $6 in coupons, making my OOP $6. I also have another Kellogg's rebate for 10 UPCs and I will get $10 back from that. So I made $4 from this deal.

Anyone else try something similar or find some other deals at Target?