Affording Such A Large Family Fun Edition

Feeding ducks at the duck pond.

I actually got them in order by age too!

That NEVER happens.

What do we do for fun? You name it! No, we don't have a lot of money but we are super creative. I love researching and finding free events in our area. Facebook has made this much easier.

We attend a bunch of free activities. Barnes and Nobel does story and craft times on Saturdays. Lowes and Home Depot offers building workshops. The gyms sometimes do family swim and movie night. There is always some kind of free festival going on downtown.

We go into nature. We live near the lake so we love to go swimming. We will go hiking and do a picnic. We feed the ducks (PSA: Bread is bad for them). We go on bike rides. Shaving cream fights out side. Side walk chalk. Bubbles. Races. Trampoline. We have even done backyard Olympics. Camping. Bon fires.

Family Movie Night. We have Netflix movie night with popcorn or we will go to the drive-in ($30) when they are having a double or triple feature. We look for Redbox codes. Our will just pull out an old favorite or a movie from our extensive collection. We buy movies by the box at yard sales. Unfortunately, we get a lot of scratched movies due to little hands.

Family cooking night. We will do ice cream sundae bars. We will do build your own taco bars or make your own pizza.

Game Night. We will do this as a family or with friends. We have even found an organization that will allow you to do a game (video, board or card) as a marathon fundraiser. You get donations just like you would if you were running a 5K and that money goes to our local children's hospital. We taught the kids chess, which is actually apart of their third grade curriculum, and they have excelled and kick our hind ends.

We are even go on vacations. We are currently planning a trip across country. We will travel the upper US to the west coast to visit family. Go down through California to Disneyland. Come home via the lower half of the US and visit the Grand Canyon, The Alamo and New Orleans and end with a weekend at the beach. We are saving for this trip and couponing. We will be tent camping at KOAs across the country to save on lodging. We will cook our own food, except at Disney, well because DISNEY (everyone needs a Dole Whip in their life). We are actually looking at taking a train from east to west and then renting a car to drive back (but I feel like we will miss out on stuff that way)!

In February, I took the three younger guys to the beach. Though it was to visit a dying family member, so not really a vacation or happy time, but we still made some great memories.

Check out more from this series:
Affording so many kids: school edition

Affording Such A Large Family: School Edition

Yes, we have thought about college but first we have to get through primary school. DS1 and DS2 go to public school as they live with Baby Mama during the school year. She does send them to one of the best public schools in our area. DS3, DS4, and DS5 are home school. There are costs to both public and home school. But I am only going to touch on the home school part because that is what I am most knowledgeable about.

We do have cost for school supplies, umbrella school, co-op and curriculum. We try to make it as cost efficient as possible for us. We don't have the Internet, but my parents do. They let me use their Internet, printer and computer to print school work as needed. The boys use Easy Peasy All-In-One curriculum and we love it! It is free and very interesting to the kids. Pretty excited because their science and history is going to line up with co-op this year. We buy our supplies when everything is tax free. Yes, I am a hoarder when it comes to TP rolls and scratch paper. Why throw stuff away when you can reuse it.

But in addition to reading and math, I enjoy teaching the kids life skills. We learn how to budget and coupon and how to use these skills how to help others. We are currently couponing for Operation Christmas Child. Learning these skills don't cost a thing. But it instills values we want them to have. We also let them do community activities. As they get older, they will build a community service portfolio for colleges.

We utilize the library. Most library have a large movie, cd and audiobook selection. So we can find lots of cool things here and the boys think it is a field trip so win-win.

Craiglist often you can find craft things like paper rolls and pipe cleaners. That is great! I also contact our local paper and get newspaper roll ends for free. It's great to draw on and to trace their bodies to make a skeleton.

We also can find supplement curriculum at yard sales, used book stores and the local private school hosts a yard sale and they are a dual school (both private and home school) and we find amazing things there!

As for college, our state offers free tuition for the first two years at a community college. There are also grants for home schooled kids. DS3,4&5 will have their dad's GI Bill as well. They can do work study programs while in college. They all have savings account, which don't have a lot of money, but we ask for CDs for them instead of gifts (or experiences if people insist on getting them gifts). They will have jobs as soon as they are able to work. We want them to have a work ethic and we will be teaching them how to save their money instead of just blowing it. We also hope for scholarships. There is always the FAFSA as they will probably qualify for the Pell Grant. There is always job corp too. Which we encourage all of the kids to go to.

Affording Such A Large Family: Clothing Edition

Our kids must all be wearing clothes with holes in them and ratty shoes. There seems to be an idea that clothing children is expensive. And, yes, I guess it could be. That depends on you. We chose to shop yard sales, thrift store, clearance aisle and totally accept hand-me-downs.

Yard sales are great to find mostly springs and summer clothes. At least around here, you don't find a lot of pants and long sleeves a lot. But you can find crazy amounts of shorts and t-shirts and the occasional new with tags shoes. I buy our clothes here as well. Two of our kids are in "teenage sizes." I do have trouble finding trendy young men clothes at yard sales but that's where thrift store come in.

Thrift stores are awesome for finding non clothing items as well, but that's not what we are talking about. I find handbags, shoes with tags, teenage boy clothes, junior miss clothes for me (too young to wear misses and too old to wear juniors... the struggle is real!), I have even found make up that is still seal and in date.

Clearance items are amazing. I don't have a lot to say about this but use coupons and store rewards to make it last.

Hand-me-downs. I am very lucky to have some amazing friends who pass their kids out grown clothes on to us. We do the same in return. We hold the outgrown clothes out until the next kid can wear them and when DS4/5 out grow them. We see if we have any friends who need them. After our friends pick through them the rest we put in a yard sale and what doesn't sale goes to Goodwill.

Gifts. We ask family and friends for Christmas and birthdays to please not get the younger guys clothes because they honestly have so many. For the bigger guys we ask for gift cards so they can buy their own clothes (they are at that age).

On average we spend about $200 clothing and shoes.
Here are a few of my tips:

• Find a good stain remover!
• If stains don't come out or the idem cant be fixed, throw out, repurpose or compost if you can.
• Fix small things like missing buttons.
• Vacuum bags are amazing.
• Repurpose clothes into cloth grocery bags, cleaning rags or even family cloths.
• Look for events at local thrift stores... a couple times a year our thrift stores will do free or donation "fill-a-bag" events. We each get a bag to fill so we often end up with more than we can use so we donate it.

Toys R Us Pre-Memorial Day Event

Sunday, May 21 from 1-3 PM Toys R Us is going to be a having an in store event where you will go home with a FREE collectible Radio Flyer mini wagon. There will be a couple drawing for NERF guns and a bike blinker.

Teacher Appreciation At Cicis

Today is teacher appreciation day at Cicis Pizza. Bring your school ID and get a free adult buffet. Thank you to all the educators out there for making this world a better place.

Thanks, MoneySavingMom!

DIY Planter Boxes

Brad has spent the weekend building planter boxes for our deck. Where we are renting we certainly do not have the room to put out a garden... so we are doing an urban garden. We are really strapped for cash so we are going about this the cheapest way that we know how. This past week we have been blessed with being able to gather supplies for free.

Brad was able to get lumber out of the throw away pile at work and a 3 gallon bucket. He is going to fashion the lumber into a vertical garden. I was able to get some planter pots from bushes that my parents had purchased for their flower bed.

My mom just purchased some plants for her garden and there were multiple plants in the pots. She is going to give me clipping and extra plants to start our garden.

I am so excited to save money on our grocery bill and not to mention teach the children new skills and have a little more control over what we put in our bodies. I feel so blessed that we have some skills that will allow us to do extra things that we otherwise wouldn't be able to afford.

My Coke Rewards

I love my soda, but I am way to cheap to pay full price for it if I can avoid it. I use my coke rewards to help get some discounts. My whole family is coke people not Pepsi people. They do not use my coke rewards however. They save their codes for me and I go pick them up and enter them in as much as I can in a week. We enter codes religiously. We save up and order coupons. I like to order them 4 coupons at a time, because most sales around here are 4 for $# so that gives an even bigger discount.

I advise using my coke rewards even if you don't want to use the discounts or coupons. You can donate your points to your child's school which is wonderful! I love finding ways to give back, especially when it doesn't cost a penny!

MyPoints

Earn points and redeem toward gift cards. I have redeemed for CVS gift cards to coupon with in the past. BzzAgent is a word of mouth marketing sight that will reward in MyPoints points. So it is a win win. You can watch videos, shop online or do searches to earn points. Who doesn't love free money? This website is very similar to Swagbucks. You can print and redeem coupons for points. Of course, redemption of coupons does take a little while to get your points added to your account. You can earn points by participating in sponsored deals or trials. So do cost money, but if you are interested in trying the product anyway, you might as well go through their site and earn points too! You can earn points through referring a friend.

Disclaimer: The links are my referral links and I will receive points for sign ups through my links.

Pinch Me

I love freebies! Who doesn't? It's a great way to stretch your budget and even a great way to give back. If we don't use a product we get a sample of, we will donate it. Local animal shelters take pet food, food banks will take food items, we do blessing bags with hygiene items. This year, we have chosen two organizations we really would like to help... Operation Christmas Child and Standing Rock Water Protectors. So any hygiene items we get will be distributed between the two. But I digress...

I have stumbled upon Pinch Me. I am in love with this site! They often times give full sized samples just for reviewing the product. So far I have received tomato paste, foundation, eyeliner, lipstick, baby butt paste, and two dish cloths. I would recommend this site to anyone. The surveys are quick and painless, as is ordering the samples.

I can't wait to see what I get in my mailbox next!

Drugstore Game

For many years now, I have tried to save my family money. I love couponing. I have actually became quite good at it in the past. I have friends who call me and ask me to teach them to coupon and I am happy to do so. Who couldn't use extra money in their budget? I know we certainly could. Since learning that I won't be able to work fulltime due to my health, it is more important than ever! Couponing is overwhelming and hard work. It requires dedication and planning to make sure that everything goes according to plan. It seems like a simple concept, but I am here to assure you that everything you think you know about couponing is probably not the whole truth. I am not saying that you are wrong in any form or fashion, but maybe that you are not using the full potential. And to be honest, I have not been using my full potential savings either.

Last week, one of my dear friends called me asking me to teach her to coupon because the expense of diapers was drowning her family. I had to be honest with her, that couponing for diapers is unchartered territory for me. We cloth diapered and so that was not something that I needed to do, but I would be happy to help her in anyway that I could. The first thing I encouraged her to do was to play the drugstore game. It is a simple way to coupon and to gain your bearings in the couponing world before moving on to the extreme couponing way. I referred her to ladies a bit wiser than myself on this topic: Money Saving Mom, Southern Savers and The Krazy Coupon Lady.


Here are some things I have learned from many years of couponing:

• Baby steps are important. Start small. One store.
• You will be buying large quantities
• You will buy things you don't need but you can donate
• Follow people smarter than you
• It's an adrenaline rush

Veterans' Day

It is Veterans' Day. To those serving or have served or have given us their loved ones... Thank you! Thank you for the sleepless nights, the pain and the sacrifices you have made to serve your country. Here is a list of places participating freebies for Veterans:

• Applebees
• IHOP
• Chilis
• Krispy Crème
• Red Robin
• Olive Garden
• Golden Corral
• Red Lobster.

I often found myself asking for a military discount when travelling, making purchases or using services. It never hurts to ask. I personally offer a 15% military discount on my services, if I can get healthy enough to get my business to take off. I am sure there are more places but take advantage of as many as you can.