The blessings of thriftiness

I don't know if I've mentioned in earlier grocery shopping posts, but one way I save money and have fun while shopping is by using the day-old bakery rack at my store. Not all stores have one, but usually hidden somewhere in the back is a rack with day-old goodies that are half-price. Pastries are sometimes kind of gross by the next day or two, but I usually don't buy them anyway. I love picking up some fun, fancy bread to eat with dinner or a nice loaf of French bread to turn into french toast. Most breads are still fine for a few days after the sell-by date, and if they're getting a bit stale I just butter them and toast them under the broiler. This afternoon I got a loaf of some fabulous rosemary bread from La Brea Bakery. It was so yummy, I could have eaten the whole loaf myself.

Also we had another great experience at Deseret Industries today. I've been meaning to get the kids new coats for a while now since theirs are both starting to get small. I had planned to pick some up at the after-season sales, but I waited too long and we haven't seen much in the stores. Today we had a few items to donate, so I thought we'd check out DI while we were there. I still can't believe it. We found a beautiful, light blue coat from Land's End in S-Boogie's size and a cute Columbia jacket in Little Dude's size. The coats are both in great condition, are good quality, and just the sizes we need. Plus we picked up an adorable red dress coat for S-Boogie. For only twenty dollars we have cute, warm children for the next winter or two (S-Boogie's coat is actually a 5/6 so it's on the big side for the moment). I was going to post this tomorrow because I don't think my decision to go to DI today was pure coincidence. I've been stressing about money for the last few months and just the other day actually thought "do people really get blessed for paying tithing?" I guess sometimes they do.