Another birthday lunch in the office, which means I’m eating solo today. But it also means I have time to write a post while enjoying delicious leftover stuffed manicotti courtesy of my husband the master chef. Yum!

I participated in three carnivals this week:

• My post on working an unexpected raise into the budget was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance hosted by Banker Girl.

• Frugal Babe hosted this week’s Festival of Frugality and was kind enough to include my post on protecting your freezer stash in a power outage.

• And finally, my post on the unexpected expenses of a sort of emergency was included in this week’s Money Hacks Carnival hosted by Living Almost Large.

I have lots of things to share from the personal finance blogosphere this week! All of you have had such great topics lately. Here are the posts I found most inspiring (though I have to tell you, it was rough to pick just a few this week):

• Everybody’s been blogging about Amy at MotherLoad‘s list of 35 ways to save on groceries. It really is full of fabulous tips, so check it out if you haven’t already!

• Sara at On Simplicity wrote about easy ways to purge your closet. This was particularly helpful for me since I’m on a mission to clear the clutter out of my apartment this month.

• Mercedes at Common Sense with Money wrote about the recent trend of smaller packages without a price drop on certain products. Ugh, I hate this! It’s just so sneaky. Our dog food recently dropped from 20 pounds to 18 pounds a bag, but the price stayed the same. That’s two days worth of meals. I think I’d rather pay a little higher price. I’d rather they were upfront about it.

• Penelope Pince at Our Fourpence Worth wrote about the benefits of switching to paperless statements. I don’t receive any paper statements anymore, and I love online bill pay. It really does streamline the process of paying the bills, and I can access the statements online for most of my bills anyway. That’s way easier than filing them myself! Safer, too, because it doesn’t leave a paper trail for identity thieves.

• Mrs. Micah shared her online couponing method. Great tips here for people like me who can’t get the hang of paper coupons!

• Paid Twice wrote about starting the debt snowball even when money seems too tight. It’s important to remember that getting out of debt is a slow process. Every little bit helps!

This weekend I’m committed to making a dent, even if it’s a small one, in my clutter clearing mission. I haven’t decided where to start yet, but my plan is to spend Saturday or Sunday morning every weekend cleaning and organizing until it’s done. I’ll be sure to update on my progress by the end of the weekend.

I’m also looking forward to more hand quilting this weekend. I’m happy to report that I LOVE it a lot more than machine quilting. I hated being stuck behind a sewing machine. Hand quilting isn’t as hard as I expected, and I love that I can do it while relaxing on the couch with my hubby.

Hope you’re all enjoying some nice fall weather this weekend! Forecast says 90 degrees here through next week. Yuck. I don’t know if I can handle another 6 weeks of summer.

Happy Friday!