As I’ve mentioned before, my 6 month old triplets haven’t been exclusively breastfed since they were a few weeks old. I’m a lactivist at heart, but a realist since I know that each family has to make it’s own choices based on very individual circumstances. I am, however, always on the hunt for the best price for organic infant formula, and I imagine I’m not the only one!

Here are the best practices I’ve found for saving on this incredibly expensive product, that you can use whether you are full time formula feeding or supplementing just occasionally:

• Know your price per ounce (PPO). If you don’t know how much you pay on a regular basis, you can’t really tell if you are getting a deal when you are talking about multiples of 25.7 or 12.9 ounce containers. Because I am an absolute dork, I devised my own spreadsheet:

By calculating your everyday best price (in this case, I was basing it off of the Diapers.com price for a case (4-25.7 ounce cans of Earth’s Best, highlighted in purple) divided by the total number of ounces, you determine the price to beat (again in this case, $1.05/ounce).

• Use your online resources wisely. Armed with your everyday best price, look for anything that will help you cut that cost. Visit Baby Cheapskate for the weekly diaper and formula specials updates. Bid on lots of formula or checks/coupons on eBay. Trade formula checks you won’t use for brands that you will on craigslist.

This is where knowing your PPO is essential. It doesn’t make sense to bid up a lot of formula beyond the price you could get it in the store (and don’t forget to add shipping!). With my spreadsheet, you can plug in different prices to determine what your maximum bid on a lot should be. If $1.05 is your standard, you can determine what PPO you’re willing to pay. You might then bid up to $1.00 PPO, and if you get outbid at that point, you know it’s just not worth it.

• Love your manufacturer. Get on Similac’s mailing list for formula checks. Email Baby’s Only and tell them how much you love their product. I have gotten the most, and the highest value, coupons from contacting companies directly. Give it a shot, you have nothing to lose!

• Ask your retailer. I am currently paying less than $90/case for Earth’s Best formula (about $0.85 PPO!), before coupons (of which I have many, from contacting Earth’s Best, buying them for pennies on the dollar on eBay, and by being at the right place at the right time for a pile of store coupons). How am I getting organic formula for the price of conventional? Whole Foods special orders for me by the case! If you talk to your store’s grocery buyer, they might be able to help you out. At Whole Foods, it’s standard practice, and you get a 10% case discount to boot.

Want the spreadsheet? Shoot me an email and I’ll send it to you. (It’s a Google Doc, so no software necessary.)

Want to get started swapping formula checks to save money on your own? I have a small pile of Enfamil checks (4 x $5, nothing earth shattering!) that will go to a random commenter. Of course, you could use them for yourself, or, preferably, as currency for a trade for Similac checks to buy Similac Organic. Comments will be open until 9PM central Friday (Oct 3) and then I’ll use the random number generator to pick a winner!

I can’t even describe to you how crazy behind I am with all matters domestic and blog-related right now. Apologies!

What we’re eating:

Sunday — We went out! With friends! And no children! We even stopped at a second location for dessert!

Monday — Chicken Chili (not traditional, I know, but we needed something quick)

Tuesday — Rosh Hashanah dinner with friends at our house. Honey chicken, apple slaw, mashed potatoes, and whatever they bring to pass

Wednesday — White cheddar corn chowder

Thursday — Quick Enchiladas (recipe below)

Friday — Pizza night!

Saturday — Stir fry veggies and frozen sesame chicken from Trader Joe’s

* * *

Quick Enchiladas — my very own recipe

• 1 8-10 ounce container of fresh or jarred salsa
• 1 6-ounce container of plain yogurt (can substitute cream cheese or sour cream)
• 1 tablespoon low sodium taco seasoning
• 1-2 cooked chicken breasts, shredded or in cubes, or one can of pinto or black beans
• 1 package shredded cheese (cheddar, taco mix, jack, whatever you prefer)
• 6 fresh tortillas

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Mix all of the ingredients except for 1/2 of the cheese and the tortillas in a large bowl. Spray a pyrex baking dish with oil spray. Fill each tortilla with the filling mixture and place in the dish rolled up and with the ends folded over.
2. When the dish is full, sprinkle with the remaining cheese and bake with foil on top for about 20 minutes, or until the cheese it melted and tortillas have gotten crisp.

I had some errands to run yesterday and P (our 3.5 year old) happily came along with me. One was to take advantage of the coupon and Tom’s of Maine deal at Walgreens. P needed a new Silly Strawberry toothpaste anyhow and we seem to go through a tube of toothpaste every 6 weeks, so having a few extra on hand (and for an end total of $2/tube) seems pretty reasonable.

We stopped at two garage sales on our way home and got some really nice things! One of the few plastic toys I’ve found that are durable and not too intolerable are the baby toys by Leapfrog, so to pick up the Learning Drum for $2 was a treat. P selected the Thomas puzzle set (3 49-piece puzzles and a story book) for $0.75. Not pictured, because at the moment I can’t remember where I stashed them, are two adorable Aborsba girls outfits that are in perfect condition. I’m adding them to my HUGE resale pile because I know I will get more for them at the consignment store than the $1 I paid for both. Throw in the teething toy and we paid an even $4 to our neighbors.

Down the street, I grabbed a bag full of work clothes for $10 –  2 pair of pants, 2 awesome cotton sweaters (always a plus for those of us allergic to wool!), 2 button down shirts and 4 knit shirts — in that pesky size 14. Someday I’ll be a 10 again, but until then I’m not going to spend a lot of money on clothes.

The real pick-up for Saturday was at the farmers market, though. Some Whole Foods marketing folks were there putting $30 off coupons on cars. We got to talking to one guy and he handed us a whole stack! Now, you have to spend $50 to get $10 off and $100 to get $20, so 7 of those coupon (expiring 10/31) would be a little excessive for most families. Not ours! I work a few blocks from the store, so it’s not out of my way to visit frequently, and if I am in for our regular grocery purchases, the formula we special order each week, and a little stockpiling, I will use them all, for sure!

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, starts at sundown on Monday. It is a religious holiday in nature, but like most Jewish holidays (and holidays in other traditions), it’s steeped in routine and symbolism related to the environment, spiritual nourishment, and food. All the more reason celebrate!

No matter what your background, there are simple, inexpensive aspects of Rosh Hashanah to participate in that kids love and that can contribute to a conversational about pluralism, community, and more.

• One very popular observance is eating apples dipped in honey to symbolize a sweet new year. With the preponderance of apples available at this time of year, it’s a great time to go picking at a local orchard or to score some cheap at the farmer’s market. (In fact, a lot of popular dishes for this holiday are farmer’s market friendly… grab some carrots and sweet potatoes for your tzimmes, too!)
• On Tuesday afternoon, many will also head down to a river or other flowing body of water for the Tashlikh, or casting off. By emptying our pockets, stuffed for the occasion with stale breadcrumbs, it symbolically casts off our spiritual baggage welcomes the new year. All the better if we feed some ducks, too!

If nothing else, you can wish your Jewish friends “L’shana Tova,” your wishes for them to have a good year!

I mentioned the Whole Foods “whole deal” flyer before, but this week was the first time I saw one in the store. It was the same edition as I read on line, but I noticed the very prominent text on the top reading, “Looking for Mambo Sprouts? $36 in Coupons Inside!” So, of course I picked up the flyer and indeed, there are some great natural grocery coupons inside.

But what was this “Mambo Sprouts”? Well, it turns out that it is also a site with printable organic grocery coupons!!! There are freebies, recipes, and more. Glad I thought to check!

(As an aside, if you are like us and have a Co-op Advantage store near you, a lot of the coupons in the Mambo Sprouts insert were also in the Co-op Advantage book this month, but only to be used at the co-op, while the Mambo Sprouts coupons are manufacturer’s coupons. You could certainly try using both, or so called “coupon stacking”, at your co-op for additional savings. I’m going to give it a try and see if it works.)

By now, you know there is a $5/$20 Wallgreens coupon for today and tomorrow.

What you might not know is that there is actually one of the coveted Register Rewards deals on Tom’s of Maine products. Buy 3 (toothpaste, mouthwash, or deodorant) and get $5 in Register Rewards to use on your next purchase. Buy 5 and get $10 in RR!

Want a little prod towards holiday planning? The Organizing Junky points out that The Household Helper has a *free* ecourse to help you prepare Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve, featuring weekly emails giving you action steps and recommended resources.

Attention Target Shoppers shares two coupons for Horizon Organic Milk. Get a $1.00/1 Target Q here. Also, get another $1.00/1 manufacturers coupon. Target allows “stacking” coupons, so you can use your store coupon along with the manufacturers coupon for additional savings.

I was starting posts on the upcoming holidays (Jewish High Holy Days and some Green Halloween stuff) when I read Living Cheap and Green’s post on staying green in this economy. A lot of very good points, and it got me to thinking…

I started sage because I am an incurable bargain hunter (my husband claims I will buy something we don’t need when it is on sale before something we desperately need at full price, and he’s totally right) but I couldn’t find a consistent source of deals, coupons, and specials that catered to my green leanings. But in addition to the bargain hunt, we’d been living on one income since I went on bedrest last year, and I’m always going to do everything I can to keep organic and natural products in our household. I guess what I’m saying is that I started out here because I wanted to stay green in our household’s new economy, so hopefully what sage has to offer will be even more useful now nearly everyone finds themselves reevaluating their personal finances in one way or another.

With that in mind, I’m going to focus even more on green frugal how-to (like re-nest’s 7 simple tips for a greener kitchen) over green items that lean on semi-conspicuous consumption (also from re-nest, a $26 eco-friendly cleaning kit you could put together yourself for a lot less money). You definitely do not have to spend more to live within your values!

If you’re anything like me, you love magazines. And if you’re really like me, you feel super guilty about buying them. Coverleaf seems like the start of something good: the ability to read magazines online. If you don’t have a subscription to a certain magazine, you can thumb through it and then purchase digital access to that issue for much less than the print cost. Use a popular Firefox addon like ScreenGrab! and you can save recipes, projects, design ideas, and parenting tips, all without touching a tree. (Thanks to Freebies4Mom for bringing the site to my attention.)

How about 50% off any regularly priced item at Michael’s craft stores? They are carrying a number of greener supplies these days, from bamboo yarns to recycled scrapbooking papers. (With all of the various ditch the disposables challenges out there, if you need my knitting pattern for scrubby dish towels, let me know…)

There’s a new CVS coupon out, too, also useful for the staples as well as thinking ahead to Halloween and beyond.

My pal Kelly at Almost Frugal is having the kind of give-away I can totally get behind: her size 1 cloth diapers! Head over there if you need some fluff for a newborn to 20 pound baby (and a cute wet bag from her Etsy shop, too). Since my boys are ~16 pounds already, I’m going to sit this one out.

Speaking of boys, did you know that fewer of them are being born, and it might be linked to endocrine disruptors and other environmental chemicals? I wish the FDA would do the right thing and ban BPA already.

Treehugger also reminds me how much I want an iPhone (except that our neighborhood has notoriously poor AT&T coverage) with a feature on how some downloadable programs can help you save gas, time, energy and money. All good things to hang on to!

Crafting a Green World details an upcoming Craft Swap. I would love to go to something like this. I went to a Swaporamarama in my neighborhood awhile back which was too much fun and I imagine it would be just as useful to clean out the craft supply closet and trade for some new things. I think a Soup Swap is in my future, too. The cooler weather just calls from group activities like these, doesn’t it?

I was very fortunate to be chosen as a regular blogger over at BeCentsAble! I hope that you’ll join me (and my fellow thrifty green mama Katherine) on Tuesdays for the Organic & All Natural feature. And if you’re visiting here for the first time, welcome! Please take a minute to look at my regular features (sage finds, sage reads) and other posts about parenting green on the cheap. In celebration, I’m going to do a little site redesign tonight, so check sage out for a new look tomorrow, and thanks for stopping by.

EDITED: Redesign is up! Let me know what you think. I’m going to reorganize the sidebar (again) in the coming days to make everything a little cleaner. I’ll update the sage links page (above) as well.

Friends, somehow my Google reader is down to 0 and I only have 5 extra tabs open in my browser. To celebrate, I’m going to do a small post of all of these good things and then end the day on top of my virtual to do list, for once!

A little too late for us, Born Free is out with these cute pacifiers that are, of course, BPA free. Of course, the other companies will follow suit, as they did with bottles, but it’s nice to support the company that is out there ahead of the curve, isn’t it? (via Cool Mom Picks)

Nesting, the Cookie Magazine blog, points out Kroom. It’s flat-packed, environmentally friendly reinforced, recycled cardboard furniture that’s customizable and cute. I’m adoring the idea of some of these pieces, but am I the only one who can’t find a price or purchasing information anywhere on the website?

I’m finally, finally ready to buy a new (to me) sewing machine. Not sure what I’m going to make first, but these projects caught my eye:

• Halloween owl treat bag at Ohdeeoh
• Reusable sandwich wrappers at Tiny Choices