Today’s guest post is from one of southeast Michigan’s busiest bloggers, Laura Webber, a regional coupon class teacher and hostess of Sharpen Your Scissors and Clip and Cook:

Little did I know, nearly two and a half years ago when I first began spending coupons, that spending pennies on the dollar for our most often consumed household and grocery items would also develop other healthy personal qualities in myself.

I will never cease to be amazed by how powerful an influence these little scraplets of paper that we call coupons can have on a grocery budget. Week after week I clip coupons, match the coupons to sale items and bring home bag after bag of inexpensive grocery and household items to care for my family. I have been training myself to skip over most of the bargains for heavily processed and already prepared foods, and I am enjoying enhancing my culinary skills, which is by far, my best fringe benefit of spending coupons!

Spending less, via the use of coupons, allows me to keep inexpensive food staples in my fridge, freezer and on my pantry shelves while allowing me to guilt-free splurge on pricier items for family favorites, like the nine pound bucket of Feta currently chilling in my fridge!

About a year ago, I started sharing the recipes that I have been experimenting with on my blog, sharpenyourscissors.net, in a picture tutorial format. Weekly, my Tutorial Tuesday posts share in great detail, an easy and inexpensive tasty recipe. I’m constantly on the lookout for recipes that allow me to recreate my favorite recipes at home!

I now enjoy cooking, and even baking at home these days!  If I happen not to care for a recipe that I’ve made, or if I botch the directions, the little bit of money that I’ve spent on the ingredients allows me to chalk-it-up to a lesson learned instead of a fear to continue cooking!  And so it seems that going out for dinner, for our family, has become more of a treat than a standard these days.

My collection of recipes can easily be accessed by visiting clipandcook.blogspot.com.  The most popularly visited recipes are the make your own chicken stock tutorial, homemade spaghetti sauce tutorial and the Alfredo sauce tutorial.  And if you happen to make the Alfredo sauce, be sure to also make my Alfredo Lasagna with spinach and chicken- you’ll never purchase another jar of Alfredo sauce again!

Laura’s coupon and savings blog is Sharpen Your Scissors; and her recipe blog is Clip and Cook. You will want to see the statistics that she tracked as she got started on her family’s money-saving routine in 2008!