My 100th Post

is my first 365.
These are the PJ pants I'm making to learn how to sew. I think come this Thursday, I just might be finished with lessons and looking to sew on my own! I've ordered two patterns that I'm so excited to get to work on which means plenty of 365 posts!

And then here's a sneak peek of some new additions I hope to be adding to the shop!



365

I'm also looking for a few people willing to give up their normal shopping list and try something different. For over a year I have been using my grocery/coupon list when I go shopping and I've noticed it's saved me a ton of time (and money because I remember the coupons!) Just recently I've added on a meal planner to the grocery/coupon list in an attempt to plan out our meals, in turn planning out what foods I buy. We were in a horrible habit of waiting until hubs got home from work to decide what we wanted for dinner and we were eating at 7:30/8:00... way too late for this girl. So I gave this method a try and I'm curious to hear reactions from other users besides myself.




If you're willing to give up your normal grocery shopping/meal planning routine for a bit, leave a comment and I'll send you a PDF to print off. You'll be one of the lucky ones because if I decide to carry this in my shop, you have it at your disposal and never have to buy it ;-)

I have it set up so it can be saddle stitched, but that's not really necessary. On the left you have your grocery list with two columns: items you need and coupons you have. The problem I ran into is that I would clip all my coupons, load them up in my handy mini folder and I would get to the grocery and forget the coupon offer or need to double check how many of the item I needed to buy to take advantage of the coupon. And I clipped a lot of coupons, so I had to flip thru the whole stack just to find one. So I created my own shopping list that had the coupon column where I could write down the coupon offer next to the item I needed. Some times I would use it, other times the generic brand was less expensive or there was a better deal on another brand. As you can see from my photos, I would simply cross off that coupon and I usually pulled it from the stack right then and there so I wouldn't hand it to the cashier and have them look at me funny when they couldn't apply the coupon.
I then decided that I was going to give meal planning a try. So, again, as you can see, I wrote out what we were having each nite so that I could do a quick glance in case I saw something on sale that we could either substitute or eat with the meal. I must say it's helped us eat much earlier too- at least by 6:30!

In all honesty, if you're the least bit curious, please leave a comment and I'll shoot it your way (just make sure there is a way I can contact you via email). After a month or so, I'll follow up and see how you are liking the format, the ease, etc. and see if you have any tips, complaints or suggestions.