Day 2 - Those Dreaded Words

I woke up this morning to my husband whispering those dreaded words:  "Honey, we're out of dog food!"  Really?  That giant plastic garbage bin on wheels is empty?  Two days into my month of thrift and I have to spend $50 on dog food?  Well, when you have a cute, big dog with IBS (he can only digest salmon!), switching to a cheaper brand of dog food is not an option.  
I thought about buying the little bag, but the big bag is 25% cheaper per pound.  I decided to call the two pet stores near us and see if there was price difference.  There was!  The store at which I normally shop (Petco) was $5.00 per bag more than Petsmart!  I then decided to go online and found a $3.00 off manufacturer's coupon at the Purina Pro Plan website.  It wasn't exactly easy (you had to fill out information and download bar code software), but I figured between switching stores and printing the coupon, I would save $8.00.

I put on my game face and took the kids to the store.  No, you can't have a cat.  No, you can't have a hamster.  No, you can't have a pack of gum!  I caved and let them get a $3.99 toy for the dog's upcoming birthday.

When we got home, I decided to begin taking inventory of the pantry and started to organize the snacks.  I took out all the open snack bags and had the kids re-package them into snack-sized ziplocs.


Next, I took inventory of the cereal.  We had two half-full boxes that no one really liked, so I made a big pan of Quaker-Oatmeal-Square-Kashi-Go-Lean-Marshmallow cereal bars.  Who won't eat cereal wrapped in marshmallows?


Really on a roll, I found the last three over-ripe mangoes, put them in the blender with the last yogurt and made - 




Popsicles!