Meet Mavis…
Hi,
It’s me Mavis.
I’m your typical Seattle area housewife living in high maintenance suburbia. Only instead of hanging out at the wine bar or nail salon in the latest pair of 7 jeans… you’ll find me at the grocery store… with my coupon binder… high on coupon crack. My goal in 2011 is simple… Try and stay within a budget of only $100 dollars a month for all my family’s grocery and toiletry needs. (This includes take out and dine in restaurant meals as well) Can I do it??? Will I fail? Well… so far so good. This year I’ve only spent $277.58! So if you’re interested in how I’m able to keep my refrigerator stocked like the typical American family…
But at a fraction of the cost…tune in to my weekly “Monday’s with Mavis” post right here on Fabulesslyfrugal.com… Until then…
Stay Frugal,
Mavis
Blog Makeover Coming Tonight!!
Hey Fab FruGALS (and guys), after a month of working on this with our designer, we are sooo excited to unveil our new blog design! Just wanted to give you a heads up that we’ll be down for an indefintate amount of time later this evening… so if you stop by and things look a little funky, don’t fear… it just means a more user friendly site is on it’s way!
If we have any earth shattering news, we’ll post it on our Facebook page and also over at Boise Bargain Babes.
Feel free to leave comments at either of these places!
Announcing Our New Site
Warning… Locals Only!
We wanted a place for the locals to come where they could share their deals and inside tips. A place to go to and only see info that applies to you!
Announcing…
If you are local to Boise you will want to get in on this!
We have invited our previous class attendees and a few other special friends we have met through blogging. They are already actively posting!
If you have something to share or just want to be part of the club, send us and email fabulesslyfrugal at gmail dot com and we will send you and invite to contribute to the blog.
Our One Year Stats!
Just for fun we thought we would post our stats for our 1st year! It’s fun to see how we’ve grown!!
VISITS
October 2008: 177
April 2009: 31,358
September 2009: 54,986
TOTAL: 303,076
Blog Followers: 391
Facebook Group Members: 557
Facebook Fan Friends:449
Twitter Buddies: 160
RSS Feed Subscribers: 794
email Subscribers: 261
Comments:
OCTOBER 2008: 4
APRIL 2009: 462 (we ran our 2nd & 3rd contests this month!)
SEPTEMBER 2009: 395
TOTAL: 5888
Posts:
OCTOBER 2008: 13
APRIL 2009: 135
SEPTEMBER 2009: 128
FIRST YEAR TOTAL: 1244
Albertsons Posts: 246
Freebies Posted: 224
Our favorite run of comments: The Old Navy Weekly post one night in June. A bunch of us were talking via the comments while we (not so patiently) waited for the site to update! We got silly and had a blast!!!
Reflecting on One Year…
So, how did this all get started?
One day Cathy suggested to Monica that she wanted to start a website to help the ladies at church to find out about the good sales at the grocery stores. Monica thought to herself that this sounded like a lot of work and did not jump at the opportunity to help.
Cathy came up with the name Bargain Babes (but her hubby shot it down!). Then she came up with Fabulessly Frugal and started a cute little website – just for fun!
After a few weeks Monica started sending post idea’s to Cathy via email and Cathy would post them. Soon Monica joined Cathy in posting. Kearna and Trisha joined too, but they did not become obsessed with posting like we were (ha ha!).
We realized in January that our site was quickly building momentum and that we might have a money making opportunity on our hands. Who wouldn’t love to see their blog make a lot of money? As we talked about this, we decided we didn’t want money to become an issue. We didn’t want the blog to lose it’s integrity. We did not this to cause us to get greedy and burn our friends. Nor did we want this to get in the way of our precious children and husbands. So we haven’t taken it to the next level.
So why do we do it?
Well, we sincerely want to see other people that are struggling in this economy learn to be fabuless and live on less!
But even more than that, we like it! It is our fun little hobbie!
- We love finding and sharing deals
- We love reading email and comments from our FAB readers
- We love being the “expert” (well sometimes) on all things coupon
- We love that we have made so many awesome new friends
- And of course, we still get giddy when we leave the store paying pennies on the dollar!!!
We have met some Fab ladies in the process…
Amber: She came to help us with the yard sale for three days in a row, donating hours of her time to help people she had never met before.
Crissie: Has spent hours setting out Albertsons ads for ladies to come to her house to pick up double coupons.
Cheryl: The best at finding sweet catalina deals! She donated items to the yard sale and made the best cookies ever for the bake sale.
Amy: Gives us the inside scoop on the doubles and helps us spread the coupon love.
Not to mention all the FABULOUS ladies that we get to meet when we teach classes! We consider those evenings a fun GNO (girls night out)!
And there are so many more of you!
Monica here: When I started blogging on Fab frug I did not know Cathy very well. In fact I knew her husband better from playing volleyball. This past year I have gotten to know her much better through blogging, hundreds of emails, late night IM chats, and Fab Frug classes! She has become a very good friend! So on our Birthday I celebrate friendship!
Now it’s MY turn (Cathy): Aww, thanks Monica! It’s been a lot of fun getting to know Monica. We are different in so many ways… she has two kids, I have (nearly) seven. She is a natural skeptic and isn’t afraid to question things. I’m naive and overly trusting. She’s always been a frugal person, and I’ve only started to change my mindset just a little over a year ago! We balance each other out fabulously and I am so happy she is not only my blogging buddy, but a true friend!
FABULESSLY FRUGAL BIRTHDAY BASH!!
That’s right FABULESS friends. It all started one year ago this October 10th! We are going to kick things off a little early! So starting TOMORROW, we will be celebrating with TEN DAYS of GIVEAWAYS!!
And have we got some fun lined up for you!!! I can hardly wait, I have to give you a sneak peak! 
We will be doing giveaways with Studio JK Vinyl, YNAB, Shelf Reliance, Perfect Pocket Meal Planning, Doodle Beads, and MORE!
So you’ll want to be sure to check back EVERY day from October 1-10 to enter these fun giveaways! We’ll be giving you a slew of ways to enter… the more way you share the news of our 1 year BIRTHDAY BASH, the more chances you’ll have of winning! PLUS many of our sponsors are offering DISCOUNTS to our readers!
It all starts at 12:01 am, Thursday October 1st! Click on the BIRTHDAY BASH logo on our sidebar, and you’ll be able to see the most recent giveaway. Each giveaway will last ONLY 48 HOURS – so don’t miss out! (We’ll even be doing it over the weekend!!).
We’re Turning One!
In two weeks we will start a 10 day celebration of our very first post… which occured on 10/10/08 (wow, I didn’t even know how to hyperlink back then!).
We’re going to celebrate our first year by having daily giveaways, with a biggie at the end! If you have a fabulous offer you’d like to share with our readers, email us at fabulesslyfrugal {at} gmail {dot} com, as we do have a limited amount of openings for giveaway sponsors.
Your FAB Support
At our last couple of classes we have had readers say, You guys give us all of this Fabuless info and save us so much money is there anything we can do to support your website?
Well as a matter of fact there is…..
1. When you print your coupons.com coupons print them from our coupon bar, or click on our coupon bar to go and print them at coupons.com. We earn a few pennies per print.
2. When you click on our new redplum.com coupon link, we get a little change when you do that too!
3. When you buy those Fabuless restaurant.com certificates click on this banner on our site or another link on our site. Then when you purchase we will get a small kick back.
4. Some of the freebie offers that we offer help support our site, but not all of them. We look at hundreds of offers each week, but we only pass the best ones on to you. Things that we would do. Some support and some don’t. Our main goal is to pass on worthwhile savings to our readers. We are very careful about what we write about.
5. When you subscribe to the Fabuless paper deal be sure to mention Fabulessly Frugal and we will get a little kick back.
6. Tell your friends and family and about the Fabuless deals you find here!
We’ll be the first to admit that we aren’t rolling in the dough because of this blog – BUT WE DON’T DO THIS FOR THE MONEY EARNED… WE DO THIS because we are saving a LOT of money! And it only seems right that we pass this info to bless the lives of others! We did not start this blog as a business and we never expected it to get as popular as it has. Right now this is our *FUN* – our HOBBY you could say! 
It’s what we do when we have (and don’t have) free time! It is cool that we have found out how to get a few pennies here and there for posting things we would have posted anyway. So if you appreciate what we are doing for you, show us the love -and come to our site to print coupons, save money on dining, and find some FAB free offers!
The Faces Behind Fab Frug
etty awesome kidlets, ages 13 to newborn. In addition to (trying to) cooking, 11 loads of laundry per week, changing diapers, and being a mommy cab, I have a small bookkeping job for a local non-profit youth football organization. When I’m feeling indulgent (because I never have “spare time”), I enjoy reading, digital scrapbooking, photography, videography, working in the yard, and going to dinner and a movie with my hubby of 15 years. I’m a thrill seeker and would love to one day go skydiving!As my family grew, grocery shopping became a dreaded chore. I would go do my 2 week shopping and easily spend $300. And of course, I’d always have to go out again through out the two weeks to pick up a few things I forgot, needed, or ran out of. Then I started noticing grocery prices increasing – not to mention the cost of fuel! We were running out of money every month, and I couldn’t figure out what to cut. We had already cut out satellite TV, land line, and were limiting our date night spending. Then in the spring of 2008, I fell into the world of blogging. Oh yes, that was a whole new world to me. So many great ideas and tips I was finding! As I was blog jogging, I started running into these money saving/frugal living/coupon blogs. I. Was. Amazed. People were REALLY saving a LOT of money using coupons! Prior to this, I felt that coupons were nothing but clutter and if you used them, you may save .35 here, or .50 there. Big whoop, right? Not any more. When I realized what it meant to STACK coupons, and that you could actually have a coupon for every item in your cart, I was floored! And to top it all off, there were blogs and websites that would tell me WHAT coupons to use, and WHEN to use them! ALL FOR FREE!!! So I started collecting coupons and printing them. My first shopping trip, I got about 20 boxes of cereal for .87 each and I was hooked. I learned to fill my pantry, and then plan my meals from what was in there, because the items in my pantry were things I got at a great price! I still have some Cream of Chicken soup that I purchased in the fall of 2008 at a great price. I won’t purchase it again, until I see that great price again!
Now here I am. Couponing and stock piling has become a way of life for me. I can confidently say I’ve cut my grocery budget in half (if not more). I’m so grateful for this blessing, because in April of 2009, thanks to these economic times, my husband lost his job. Needless to say, it was such a blessing to have the the nice stockpile of food storage AND I am grateful that I had learned the art of couponing and had incorporated it into my weekly shopping.
I’ve enjoyed sharing what I’ve learned with other people. There’s nothing quite like “sharing the couponing love”! I know it can bless the lives of others too!
Hi, my name is Monica. I am a mother of two little boys. I am also a dental hygienist and work 2 days a week. My husband and I manage our own rental properties. We are a busy family, and have always made it a priority to be careful with the way we spend our money. I like photography, good food, digital scrapbooking, love volleyball, like to play out doors, ride dirt bikes, white water raft. Although I don’t get to do those things as much since I had children.At the end of the summer of 2008 I started to stress. The stock market was falling, the housing market had fallen and I felt on urgent need to save more money in case we lost our jobs. What was I going to cut? We don’t have cell phones, don’t have cable, no car payment, no more student loans, I buy generic at the store, and buy in bulk, I shop the store ads, no gym membership, I never go to the salon, I shop garage sales for kids clothes and toys, we always try to fix things ourselves, we only eat out 1-2 time a month. I am so glad I found restaurant.com. The only thing I could come up with was getting rid of the Internet. Who lives with out the Internet? I can do it right? Heck I live with out a cell phone. Can you believe it? I decided I really did not want to go to the library every time I wanted to check my email. I would live with out if I had to, but I was not ready to give it up. So I decided to try the coupon thing again. I got coupons from my mom’s paper and they sat in a drawer. I found out about coupon blogs and I put about 6 in my google reader. From time to time I would look them over and see if there was anything I needed or wanted. First of all I was not sure what they meant with all of this $1/2, WYB, 9/5SS and I did not have the coupons or didn’t want to take the time to get only a few items. Well I kept reading and trying to figure the whole thing out and Cathy started this blog to help out some of her friends and family save. By this time I had been browsing blogs long enough that I thought I could try it. I started doing some of the things Cathy wrote about and even emailing her a few deals I had found. In November she invited me to write on the blog and I got a little organizer for coupons and decided to dive in. Give it a month and if it did not work for me then, oh well.
Well it totally works for me. After only a few weeks I was getting things for free and I was ready to upgrade my organization to my binder. For months I felt anxiety that the store employees would get annoyed, or that coupons would not print at check out. I still feel that way from time to time, but it has gone way down. I have become more organized and a little more choosy about the stores I shop and the checkers I pick.
A New Writer
We are so excited to have Amber joining us. She is a wonderful writer. In college she wrote for the school paper. I love to read her personal blog. She tells the best stories, makes the best points and never fails to make me laugh. How lucky you are that she invited you to take a peek.
Back in January I tried to get her to do the coupon thing and she had a laundry list of excuses. About a month ago she took our coupon class and dove in head first with couponing that very weekend. She has learned fast and saved lots of money.
Now all of my dreams have come true because now we will all get to read about her couponing adventures right here on Fabulessly Frugal! Welcome Amber!
