How many family members will be coming to your house to celebrate Easter this year? Are you cringing at the amount of money you will have to spend to feed everyone? Did you buy enough Easter candy to make the kids happy? Now is a great time to take advantage of the sales that are starting to pop up at grocery stores.

Plan ahead and you can save some money on Easter Dinner. Make sure you have room to store the food, and freeze what you need to so it will last longer. Don’t forget to use your store loyalty card for more savings!

Sales at Meijer – these sales will last through March 20, 2013:

* Frozen Veggies – Get Meijer Frozen Vegetables (16 ounce size) or Steamables (12 ounce size) for $0.99. It includes corn, green beans, broccoli, or peas.

* Hershey’s Easter Kisses (10 to 11 ounce sizes), Reese’s Easter Eggs (10 to 12 ounce sizes) or Cadbury Easter Eggs (10 ounce sizes) are 2 for $6.00.

* Hershey’s or Reese’s 6 -pack Candy (5.7 – 11.1 ounce sizes), or Cadbury Easter crème Eggs (3.8 – 4.8 ounce sizes) are also 2 for $6.00.

* Brach’s Easter Eggs (7 – 18 ounce sizes) or Whoppers Easter Eggs (10 ounce size) are 2 for $4.00.

* Lindt Easter Chocolate Gold Bunny or Mini-Eggs (3.5 ounces) or Lindor Assorted Chocolates or Truffles (5.1 ounce size) or Ghirardelli Easter Eggs (3.5 – 4.58 ounce sizes) are 2 for $6.00

Sales at Jewel Osco – these sales will last through March 20, 2013

* Egg Innovations Eggs (1 dozen, Cage Free or Omega) $3.79

* Egg Land Best Grade A Large Eggs (12 count) 2 for $5.00

* Imported Asparagus – $2.99 a pound

* Bob Evans Side Dishes (12 to 24 ounce sizes) 2 for $7.00

* Pillsbury Grands Biscuits (16.3 ounce sizes, select varieties) 10 for $10.00

* Handi-Foil Bakeware (2 to 5 ct sizes, select varieties) 10% off

* Little Debbie Easter Seasonal Snack Cakes (6.7 – 12.5 ounce sizes, select varieties) 3 for $5.00

* Cadbury Mini Eggs (10 ounce size) or Hershey’s Chocolates (10 – 12 ounce bags or 5.7 – 7.2 ounce 6 – packs) 3 for $8.00.

* Easter single serve candy (1.2 – 1.5 ounce Cadbury or Hershey’s, select varieties) 3 for $2.00. In other words, this is a sale on those tasty Cadbury Eggs!

* Nestle NestEggs (10 ounce size) 3 for $10.00

* Starburst Jelly Beans (13 – 14 ounce sizes) 2 for $4.00

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Looking for ways to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with your kids? You can do it without having to spend a lot of money. It doesn’t matter if you happen to have Irish heritage or not. As they say, everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day! Here are some ideas to celebrate the holiday in a frugal, and kid-friendly, way.

Make Your Own Shamrock Shakes
Every year around this time, the Shamrock Shake reappears on the menu at McDonald’s. They are elusive, and there is potential that they will run out before you arrive. A more reliable, and less expensive, way to enjoy a Shamrock Shake is to make one yourself with a copycat recipe.

I found this one at Food.com. The best part about this recipe is that you can easily substitute soy for milk (and make a safe treat for those who have milk allergies or lactose intolerance). Buy some ice cream (or soy ice cream), use some milk (or soy), add some mint extract and some green food coloring. You will be able to make several Shamrock Shakes, and it will cost less than if you got all of them from McDonald’s.

Watch a St. Patrick’s Day Parade
Parades are something that people can watch for free. Just show up and enjoy! Check your local newspaper (or their website) for information about where and when a St. Patrick’s Day parade will take place. In some cases, there may be a fee for parking, but you might be able to around that by walking there or taking public transportation.

Can’t find one near you? Check out a recorded video of one. I highly recommend you take a look at the parade that Chicago has every year. They die the river green shortly before the parade starts. That is definitely something to see (even if you can’t go there in person look at it). Search through YouTube for a good video of the dyeing of the river. This won’t cost you a cent!

The Wearing of the Green
It is traditional to wear something green on St. Patrick’s Day. Help your children search through their closet and dresser drawers for green clothing to wear. Little kids, who are in the stage where they insist upon dressing themselves, may find this to be especially fun.

Don’t have any green clothing for your kids to wear? No problem! Kohl’s has a sale on St. Patrick’s Day t-shirts, sleepers, and top and pants sets for kids and babies.

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Have you signed up with EcoBonus yet? It is free to sign up and really easy to do. EcoBonus is a rewards program that allows people to collect points and earn rewards for purchasing natural, eco-conscious, or socially responsible products. It is also a good resource for coupons from eco-friendly brands. It is a bit different from iBotta (which can also help you to save money on groceries) because EcoBonus doesn’t offer you money. I am finding the points, rewards, and offers to be very helpful.

How it Works
First, go shopping. You are going to have to get groceries eventually anyway, so this part is easy. As you shop, look for products that are connected to EcoBonus. The packages should have an EcoBonus logo printed on them. Next, (after you get home) log in to the EcoBonus website and enter the codes for the products you purchased. Just like that, you will have earned some points. It does not matter which store you shopped at, either.

How You Save
There are several ways to save money through EcoBonus. Members get access to coupons for the products that are involved with EcoBonus. You are probably already buying some of these products anyway, so why not grab some coupons for them?

Another way to save money is by collecting points and then exchanging them for eco-friendly products. Some of the bigger items include solar powered outdoor lights and compost bins. Smaller ones include school supplies like EcoBonus Newspencil Pencil packs and Crayola Classpacks of 256 Broad line markers. Use your points instead of spending money for the same items!

Use Social Media
Visit the EcoBonus Facebook page to learn about special offers and deals. Follow EcoBonus on Twitter to find links to coupons for brands that are good for the planet, are organic, are GMO free, or are gluten free. Check out their Pinterest page to see images that show exactly where to look for the code on specific products.

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Are you the family member who typically cooks and serves Easter dinner to your loved ones? This can often include not only the people who live in your household but also extended family. How are you going to afford to feed everyone? The trick is to plan ahead and stock up. Don’t wait to do your shopping for Easter until the day before the holiday.

Plan Ahead
One way to save money on Easter dinner is to plan ahead Figure out what you will be serving for dinner, and pay attention to sales on those foods. Use your store loyalty card for extra savings.

You can’t have Easter dinner without a butter lamb! The Polish Art center has a butter lamb mold for $19.95. It takes about 24 hours to ship. It is reusable. Instead of spending money on pre-made butter lambs, make your own!

Use Coupons
The biggest part of Easter dinner is the ham! Honeybaked ham has some coupons that you can use that will help with the costs of Easter dinner. The coupons are valid through May 19, 2013. The coupons are in-store specials (which will work out great if there happens to be a store near you). They are:

* Get $3.00 off a Boneless Ham

* Get $5.00 off a Bone-In Half Ham

Now is the time to pay close attention to the weekly ads from the grocery stores that you have loyalty cards with. There will be special deals on the foods you are looking for that will be offered only to the shoppers that have the store card. You will also see sales on things like ham, eggs, butter, and dinner rolls. Check the store’s bakery for large packages of dinner rolls, cookies, and Easter cakes that are on sale.

Place an Order
Sometimes, it costs less money to place a catering order than it will to make the same foods at home from scratch. It also saves time! Here are some places to consider for catering:

Baskin Robbins will let you customize an ice cream cake. You can order one that is in the shape of a bunny or a baby chick. (There are also more traditional options if you prefer).

Boston Market has some Easter dinner catering options. Some feed 4-6 people, which would work nicely for a small family. Those of you with large families might want to check out the Banquet options. One of them serves 12 people for $79.99 – which comes out to about $6.67 per person.

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Carrots are in season and at their lowest price right now! Many families think of carrots as something healthy and easy to throw into a lunch as a snack. That’s a great idea, but it can get a bit boring after a while. What will you do to use up the carrots that you got on sale? Try some of these recipes that are different enough to keep your family from getting tired of carrots.

Carrot Ribbon Salad
Better Homes and Gardens has a lovely variation on the typical garden salad. Instead of using baby carrots, or cutting up a large carrot into chunks, make it into a ribbon instead! Use a vegetable peeler and peel the carrot lengthwise into strips. Visually, it looks more like a pasta than a vegetable when presented this way. Add some fresh peas, sliced green onion, honey, and some seasoning. The recipe makes 12 servings and takes 20 minutes to prepare.

Roasted Root Vegetables
Food.com has an awesome recipe that uses several of the vegetables that are in season in March. Use them all up in one simple, tasty, dish. The recipe calls for a total of 2 pounds of root vegetables, cut into 1 inch pieces. Throw in some carrots, parsnips, turnips, rutabagas, potatoes, and beets. You also will need a medium onion, some olive oil, garlic, balsamic vinegar, salt, and rosemary. The recipe is designed to feed 5 people.

Cabbage Carrot Casserole
In the past few months, I have become a big fan of cabbage! This recipe comes from AllRecipes.com and it says that you don’t actually have to like cabbage at all in order to enjoy this casserole. (By the way, cabbage is in season in March, too!) To make this dish, you need 2 pounds of cabbage (sliced into thin strips), 2 large carrots, cheddar cheese, 2 cubes of chicken bouillon, all purpose flour, milk, water, butter, and a little paprika. You will also need an 8×11 inch casserole dish. If you’ve made any kind of casserole before, this will be incredibly easy for you to make.

Creamy Carrot Rice
Leave it to Martha Stewart to make carrots seem like an elegant ingredient. This recipe uses carrot juice, chicken broth, long grain rice, an onion, (and a bunch of seasonings). It is tipped with Parmesan cheese. The rice takes on the bright orange color of the carrots, which turns a simple rice dish into something exciting!

Carrot Raisin Salad
There’s nothing wrong with making a traditional dish with your carrots! Taste of Home has an easy recipe for this sweet and crunchy favorite. You will need 4 or 5 large carrots, plenty of raisins, some mayonnaise, sugar, and milk. Serve it with dinner instead of the usual type of salad. Your kids will love it!

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Easter is a just a few weeks away. Parents of small children might need some easy and inexpensive holiday themed crafts to keep the kids entertained with. Give them something fun to do after they found what the Easter Bunny brought them, or while they are waiting for Easter dinner to be ready. Plan ahead, and you won’t be left searching for ideas the night before.

Easter Coloring Pages
You can’t go wrong with coloring pages! Kids of all ages can find it fun to sit down and work on a coloring page for a while. Attention spans will vary, so you may want to go ahead and print out a bunch of these!

Oriental Trading has 18 Easter coloring pages to choose from. Some of the images are secular (eggs, chickens, bunnies). Others have religious imagery for your children to color.

Crayola.com has 16 Easter coloring pages. Some are just to color and others are intended to be colored and then turned into a craft. One or two are puzzles. There is a Palm Sunday coloring page. I’ve never seen that before!

Educational Coloring Pages has 8 Easter themed coloring pages that include characters from Disney’s Winnie the Pooh. It also has 2 coloring pages of great big eggs with detailed designs that bigger kids might enjoy.

Cotton Ball Lamb
You can’t let Easter go by without having your kids make a cotton ball lamb! This concept has become an Easter tradition. There are several different ways to make one so feel free to experiment. Kaboose has a super simple one that requires a paper plate, lots of cotton balls, some glue, and some black construction paper (for the lamb’s head and feet). You probably have most of that stuff at home right now!

Bunny Tangrams
Spoonful has printable bunny tangrams for older kids to play with! They can cut out the tangram shapes themselves, and spend time trying to fit the shapes into the bunny shaped patterns. It is also possible to “think outside the box” and use the tangram shapes to create other types of Easter related designs. This one is a craft that turns into a series of puzzles.

Tissue Paper Egg
The best part about this craft is that it takes a really long time to complete! It is perfect for bored elementary school kids who are on Spring Break and complaining that there is nothing to do. The Apples for the Teacher website has directions.

Instead of buying thick art paper, I would suggest using the inside of an empty cereal box. Trace a big egg shape onto it. Buy some packages of tissue paper from a Dollar Store. Kids can rip the tissue into small pieces, and bunch it up before gluing it onto their egg. Hours of fun!

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How does your garden grow? It may be too early in the year to answer that question. Soon, the weather will be warmer and you will want to make sure that your garden is ready to go. This doesn’t have to be an expensive process! Here are some frugal ideas that all gardeners can use, from beginners to experts.

Seed Starters
There is one thing that all families will be able to find plenty of in their homes – empty toilet paper rolls! They can be turned into biodegradable seed starters. Start growing your seeds now, and tiny plants will be ready to put into your garden when the weather warms up.

I recommend taking a look at the SimplyForties blog for a step by step guide that shows you how to do it. Best of all, you won’t have to remove the plants from the toilet paper rolls in order to plant them. Cardboard will break down on its own.

Get New Garden Tools Now
March is generally too cold for people to start thinking about their gardens. Demand for garden gloves, trowels, watering cans, and other garden tools is low. You can pick them up right now from the gardening section of your favorite department or hardware store for a very low price. Get what you need, and save money while doing it.

Kill the Weeds
Be honest, there are parts of gardening that you enjoy much more than pulling weeds! It probably isn’t anyone’s favorite way to pass the time. The reality is that the weeds are going to have to be removed before you can start planting your garden.

Lifehacker suggests that an easy way to do that is to repurpose an old piece of carpet. Place it directly over the spot that you plan to garden in. The idea is that the carpet will block out the sunlight and the weeds that are underneath it will die. Don’t forget to remove the carpet piece later (or it could erode and mix into your garden).

Commenters on the Lifehacker blog seem to prefer to use a large piece of cardboard for this purpose instead of an old carpet. Others like using newspaper. These options sound like a greener choice than a carpet might be. Either way is going to prevent the need to use a lot of weed killing chemicals.

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Little kids look forward to two things at Easter. They want to visit the Easter Bunny, and they want to see their basket filled with lots of candy! Looking for ways to save money on Easter candy? The trick is to buy in bulk, to use coupons, and to plan well so you won’t have to figure out what to do with the leftover candy after Easter.

Use some Coupons
One of the fastest ways to save money on Easter candy is to bring a coupon with you when you go to the grocery store. Here’s a few to get started with:

Target has a coupon that will save you $1.50 when you purchase 2 bags of M&M’s chocolate candy. The coupon is for the 9.34 or larger sizes. Open the bag and split up the M&M’s into small amounts that will easily fit inside plastic eggs.

Coupons.com has a coupon that will save you $1.00 when you buy any 2 bags of Dove Promises chocolates. The coupon is for the 8.0 to 9.5 ounce bags. They aren’t specifically intended for Easter, but they are individually wrapped pieces of chocolate.

Do you have the CVS rewards card? They have tons of Easter candy right now. Visit CVS, and put your card through the coupon kiosk. When I’ve been doing this lately, it gives me a coupon for a certain dollar amount off on my purchase of another dollar amount. Use that coupon on Easter candy.

Get Free Shipping

Lindt is the company that makes those adorable little chocolate bunnies in the gold foil. They also make chocolate foil covered eggs, chocolate foil covered chicks, and more. Make an online purchase of $35.00 or more, and you get free shipping. Use the Code: FREESHIP35 when you are ready to checkout.

Buy in Bulk

Oriental Trading is having an Easter sale. Get up to 60% off over 375 items. Here are the best Easter candy deals I found in that sale:

Jelly Beans are on sale for $2.99 for 140 pieces.

Stretchable Candy Bunny Bracelets are on sale for $1.79 per dozen. (Note: these are made of candy wrapped around an elastic string, and can be a choking hazard. This one is for the older kids.)

Easter Shaped Swirl Pops are on sale for $2.99 per dozen. Each is an egg shaped 2” sucker on a 4” plastic stick.

Chocolate Easter Eggs are on sale for $3.49 for 88 pieces. They look just like the name brand foil wrapped egg shaped chocolate candies.

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March is the 30th annual National Frozen Food Month. Now is an excellent time to stock up on the frozen foods that your family loves. There will be sales, coupons, and even some sweepstakes going on. Here are a few tips that can help you save the most in Frozen Foods Month.

Take Stock
How much room is there in your freezer right now? If it is already stuffed full with a stock pile of frozen foods then you may have a problem. Buying more will make it difficult, if not impossible, to properly store it. In this situation, it is best to stick to buying just a few boxes of the frozen foods that your family goes through the fastest.

Is your freezer empty? Take a close look at it. You don’t want to end up overestimating how much it can hold. Smaller shopping trips, scattered across the month of March, may be useful for preventing an overflowing freezer.

Use Coupons
Frugal shoppers know that using coupons is a great way to save money on groceries! Browse through your favorite coupon website and print out the ones for frozen food products. Shop at the grocery store that you have a customer loyalty card with in order to maximize your savings. Don’t forget to look on the back of the grocery receipt for more coupons! Now is a good time to sign up with companies that send coupons for frozen food products through email.

Plan Meals
Those bags of frozen vegetables need to get eaten. What are you going to do with them all? Start planning the meals that your family will eat this month. Pair a frozen veggie with a main course. Corn on the cob goes nicely with hamburgers. Frozen broccoli is a nice addition to a stir fry. Having a busy morning? Frozen waffles to the rescue! With careful planning, you can avoid having to spend money on fresh vegetables (that are often more expensive than the frozen ones).

Check Social Media
Companies that make frozen foods are likely to participate in National Frozen Food Month through their social media accounts. Look for the brands that your family enjoys. “Like” them on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, see if they are on Pinterest. This is a good way to stay informed about their latest coupons, special deals, and whatever sweepstakes or contests they are holding in March. Stay connected after March is over for more savings!

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Savvy shoppers quickly learn that there is a best time of the year to purchase just about anything. If you wait until the right month, you could end up saving quite a bit on the things you want to buy! Here is a list of things that you should consider buying in March, (instead of waiting until later in the year when it will be more expensive).

Small Consumer Electronics
Consumer Reports says that March is a good time to buy a digital camera, an MP3 player, or DVD and Blu-ray players. The demand for these items has dropped since December, when people were buying them for Christmas gifts.

Gardening Tools
March weather is generally too cold to be a good time to plant a garden. That is exactly why now is the best time to buy garden tools! The demand will be low, and so will the price. Get yourself a new pair of gardening gloves, and replace any garden tools that have become worn out.

Luggage
Not a lot of people plan their vacation to take place in March. Part of the reason must have to do with the fickle weather the month brings. You never know if it will be nice out or snowy! March is in between the two biggest travel seasons of the year: Summer vacation, and the Christmas holiday season. You can find sets of luggage in March for the lowest price of the year.

Frozen Food
Did you know that March is National Frozen Food Month? It is time to stock up your freezer! Be on the lookout for the extra coupons, point of sale coupons, and special grocery store sales on frozen food. Plan well, and you can avoid paying full price for the same kinds of frozen foods in April.

China and Flatware
People tend to buy a new set of dishes around Christmas time (if they are looking for holiday patterns). Another common time to buy it is for a wedding present. For whatever reason, March doesn’t seem to be a big month for weddings. If you have been planning on replacing your china and flatware, or are looking for a really nice set, March is the month to make that purchase.

Perfume
The biggest time of year for perfume sales is Valentine’s Day. It also sells well at Christmas and Mother’s Day. Valentine’s Day is over, and it will be months before those other two holidays roll back around. March is a good time to buy the perfume that you didn’t get for Valentine’s Day.

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