A few months ago, my husband and I took a class called Financial Peace University. This class is a video class we took at church led by Dave Ramsey, radio personality and financial guru. He had it all, lost it all, and got it back and shares his experience and advice daily. We learned a lot, it was EYE opening and we’ve changed our lives. We plan things out more now and think before we BUY.

I was contacted by E-Mealz to host a giveaway and when I saw that it was a “Dave Ramsey Recommended” product, I was quite happy to put my name behind it too. E-Mealz relies on a team of experienced meal planners, writers and editors to create new dinner menus every week that are designed around grocery store sales, seasonal specials and diet preferences. For $5.00 per month, subscribers download a recipe plan for the week with a matching aisle-by-aisle grocery list. The easy-to-follow recipes usually contain fewer than seven ingredients to allow for prep times of less than 30 minutes. It also helps families stay within a predictable budget by being prepared with a detailed list to use at the grocery store.

The E-Mealz program provides a consistent and reliable approach to food budgeting by factoring the weekly cost of ingredients into each menu plan. Menus are created around a budget of $75 per week for families and $35 per week for couples.

E-Mealz was created by sisters Jane DeLaney, mother of four, and Jenny Cochran, mother of three. The sisters were frustrated by the challenge of coming up with healthy, budget-conscious meals for their own families and inspired by their own mother’s frugal ways, they launched the program in 2003.

The generous people over at E-Mealz have offered us a Discount Code:code MOMSTART for 10% off.

They have also offered us a giveaway.

All rules can be found under giveaway rules.

Springpad is free to join and seems quite complex in all that is has to offer. It reminds me of facebook because you have your own homepage and followers. It is different because it isn’t exactly a personal social site but more of an organizational site. You can use Springpad to ad applications on your phone, so you have your organization with you everywhere. It’s hard to figure out what a Springpad actually is without joining.

Basically a springpad is an on-line notebook that you can share with friends on-line and take with you on your phone. There is a large variety of notebooks or applications as they are so called. They range in variety from gifts, organization, travel, and food. One of the first applications I added to my account was the Meal Planning application.

The Meal Planner springpad lets you save a list of recipes and you can put them on a calendar. Then you can print a grocery list from the ingredients listed in those recipes. The whole system can be as simple or as complex as you make it.

Without joining the application you can view other lists. You can see wine guides, Entertainment picks, and favorite holiday recipes. So if you’re still in need of a holiday gift guide you can go over to springpad and click on Gifts under 30.00. There is quite an assortment of ideas.

At First:

When Relish.com contacted me and asked me to review them and post a giveaway on my site I thought, why in the world would someone pay for this service. They told me they were a meal planning service I didn’t  understand that they also have are a grocery list maker. You can pick meals and then create a grocery list. Well, I can do that.

It is the Simple-ness that is involved and the speed of the list creation and the fact that you can change your mind and pick something else. You’ll find a whole lot to choose from including freezer meals, vegetarian menus, super-quick and slow cooker recipes.  And you’ll find tons of kid’s friendly meals.

For subscriptions at $7 a month, you’ll end up with five complete dinners for a family of four running you less than $95. Between the money savings and the anxiety savings, you’re coming out way ahead. Can you put a price on the time you will save? 7.00 a month is not very much. Can you give up Two Lattes? Or one and a half?

How It Works:
Once a week depending on which day you sign up, you will receive an email from RELISH! with a quick link back to the site where you can choose the dinners you’d like to prepare. Simply download your week’s menu, recipes and easy-to-follow shopping list. You do NOT need an email to access the site. Just log in anytime.

Weekly Menu:
Each week choose up to 5 items you’d like to make for the week plus a dessert. When you have a menu that you want to make again, put it into your Favorites Folder and you can have it any week, just put in into the weekly menu and it will go into your grocery list.

Freezer Meals:
We offer monthly freezer meals to help supplement the weekly menus. Go to the freezer tab, choose your menus, shop and come home and cook for a couple of hours. You’ll have great meals always on hand. And, they provide the freezing labels too. You can also add recipes you’d like to prepare again in your favorites folder.

Enter Your Own Recipes: 
If you like to enter some personal recipes into the Relish! system and enjoy them any time.  Simply go to the My Recipes tab and you can enter your recipes.  Allow 5-7 days for the recipe to be formatted and placed in your favorites folder. Remember, the ingredients for your recipes will go into your grocery list, that’s the best part.

Creating the grocery list is the best part. I like to create meals and cook but sometimes when I’m going down the ingredient list in the cookbook something gets forgotten. I also enjoyed how the lists were organized. My lists are never organized. I do think this service is worth paying for if you have a little extra money to help you save time.

You can enter to win a one year subscription.

To Enter:

Visit Relish and tell me a time saving idea for your family.

Extra Entries:

Advertise this giveaway on any giveaway site and tell me where you advertised it. 10 Extra Entries
Subscribe to my blog
Follow me on twitter tell me your twitter ID
Blog about the giveaway include a link to me and to the sponsor for 10 extra entries
Tweet the giveaway (every time you tweet you get an entry) Link to the giveaway please!!!
Comment on any other non giveaway post and come back and tell me you did
Use any of the Share options at the bottom of this post: Dig, Stumble, or fav me on Technorati (two entries for each one)
Add my button/blog to your blogroll/friend list 3 extra entries
You can vote for me too for five entries:

Leave a comment for every entry

The contest will run until November 16th 11:59 pm Pacific. The winner will be selected by www.random.org