Back to school time! Savings Jackpots this week.

I'm back to the daily grind!  Teachers report for duty tomorrow and students come on Monday.

We enjoyed our last little summer vacation to San Diego ten days ago.  We went to the beach and Sea World with Ryan's parents.  We rode in their car and they paid for gas.  We packed snacks and sandwiches for our beach day and booked our hotel well in advance with my father-in-law's discount.  It had a nice complimentary breakfast so no extra food costs there. We bought our Sea World tickets online which saved about $7 per person.  I order the kids meals when we go to places like this, so that saves us a little money too.

My new goal is to no longer purchase any manufactured bread products.  So over the weekend I made four loaves of french bread (put 3 in the freezer for future) and a loaf of whole wheat bread.  The whole wheat bread is pretty easy to make so I can do a weekly fresh loaf or double the recipe to make some hamburger buns.

I made a granola bars and a batch of banana breakfast muffins to freeze for quick breakfasts/snacks.

Made homemade chocolate pudding pops to freeze in my reusable popsicle molds.

Made a double batch of The Prudent Homemaker's laundry soap so I have plenty stocked up while I'm busy these first few months of school.

I made stir fry the other night so while cutting the vegetables, I cut up some extra to make chicken vegetable soup.  I cooked an extra chicken breast to shred and added it with the vegetables and bouillon mixed with water and various seasonings.  After boiling the soup, I poured it in some quart sized mason jars and put it in the fridge.  This was our dinner for tonight.  The jars could also be frozen if the soup will not be eaten the next day.

Made baby food sweet potatoes and peaches.  Working on trying to get the baby to try more table foods as well.  She's pickier than my son was, so it's going to take some persistance.

I have a wrought iron glider chair on my patio and the seat cushions were torn and faded.  Instead of buying new cushions, I just turned them around to the other side and they look like new!

I combined a trip across town to get awards for the Cub Scouts (I'm the committee chair for our church pack) to also get the baby's first year pictures at Portrait Innovations which is near the Scout office.  I have issues with this place, but they print your pictures in their studio right after the session, so it's worth the headache.  Basically, they take a ton of pictures and then try to get you to order the entire collection for $500 and the photographers are really annoying so you have to speak up to get the backgrounds/props you want.  They always have an ongoing special where you get one pose in a large package for $12.99.  I also had a coupon to get a free photo tote bag, so I used that and got the package of my favorite pose.  The amount of prints you get in the package is still cheaper than if you were to take your own photos and print them at Walmart or Costco.