Life's Pickles

I am beginning this blog as a way to learn for myself the ways and steps getting to self sufficiency. My husband have seriously sat down, looking at our budget and our food storage thinking up ways to start saving more money to put away for the life's little pickles and to be ready for whatever comes.
Ideally I hope to chronicle our own journey with help from others around the web, to get to a 3 month supply and onto a year and beyond.
It's so hard for me to think up recipes that want me to get into the kitchen to cook. I hate cooking, it's just not my passion, but for my 2 boys, my husband, and myself I hope to be better and using what we have instead of taking the easy way and going out to eat and just using that money to put toward our food storage.

I am not a couponer, I do not use coupons unless I find them, but I don't use them for everything and have a stockpile in my basement. I have recently discovered a doable way for me to save money (and have) by price matching at Walmart.
Just this last weekend, my husband and my boys went to Walmart and shopped for what we needed, earlier last week I sat down with all the ads and went through each writing down what we needed and the prices from each store. At Walmart, we took labels and every time we had a price matched item, I would write on the label what the price match and where it was, then placed it right by the bar code, our checker loved us!! I think to make it easier though, my hubby suggested I type them all up onto return labels (2 to each) and then print, and cut them, so that I would save time by not having to write each. Love that idea and will be doing that from now on.... we spent $150 for about 2 weeks of groceries. I have budgeted $400 for the month for groceries, but I do this again, I'll have cut $100 dollars off the budget!!!! Which will go to food storage and to savings. GO ME GO ME!! You're asking where I go this awesome idea?

Here's the post that talks about the price-matching!! Great ideas!

The Fun, Cheap or Free Queen suggests another website called Deals to Meals, this website goes through all the ads in  your area and compares then for you to take to Walmart. I haven't tried it but it looks interesting enough to do so for $5 a month! For about $1 a week, they scour the ads, tell you where the best deals are, plan your week's meals, and create your weekly grocery list. SWEET!!