Safeway

I went to Safeway tonight because I had coupons for the cereal that was on sale that were just too good to pass up, even though I probably have 25 boxes of cereal in my pantry! For 8 boxes of cereal and 4 boxes of fruit snacks, I paid $5.70. I was very pleased with that, but when I went to the car and looked at the catalinas I got at checkout, I was laughing out loud, I got 2 $1.50 off your next purchase and a $2.00 off of, yes, you guessed it, more cereal. So I paid $5.70 and got back $5.00 in coupons. I had figured I paid roughly .50 an item, but now I figure it's more like .05 an item!! I love great deals!

Then I ran over to Raleys to get some more juice, they had a really good deal this week and we go through a ton of juice over here. So I got 4 bottles of apple juice and 2 packages of apple sauce for $6.00.

So for $11.70 out of pocket, I got all of this! Hard to believe that full retail for this is $64.98, I can't even imagine paying anything close to that. I think that before couponing and just shopping the sales I would have thought that about $2.00 per item here was an acceptable price and probably what I paid for these kinds of things at Target or Winco, but that still adds up to $36.00.


ok, off to bed . . .

Some couponing and some discipline

Trying to get back into the routine of things around here, but still working more hours at work which doesn't help me get things on track at home! Also doesn't help with this cold and rainy weather, all I want to do is curl up under and blanket in front of the fire and watch TV all night.

Getting through all of the birthdays this month, we celebrated with Mimi & Grampie on Monday night and will celebrate Trevor's entrance into the teen world on Friday. Although we will be celebrating very low key as he will be taking his SAT on Saturday, so it will definitely be an early to bed night for him! He does not do well when he doesn't get enough sleep! So I think we will have a little party with friends next weekend.

Been doing a little catching up with my coupon shopping, didn't do as much during the holidays and I missed it! Although I loved shopping out of my cabinets all month and not needing to run out to get whatever we ran out of. My stockpiling has paid off, although my husband is convinced we have enough cereal and peanut butter to last a life time! (we don't!).

I went to Safeway tonight to pick up a few things . . . I got all of this for $14.63 + a $3.50 catalina for my next purchase. I was happy!


Even though that was a great deal, it was not near as good as my CVS trip a few weeks ago, I paid about $2.50 for 6 cans of Oust and a package of cookies (Daryl picked those out), which is a really good deal, but on top of that I got back $18.00 (yes, that is eighteen dollars) in ECB (Extra Care Bucks) to use on my next shopping trip, which I used a few days later.


Trying to be very strict with what I am buying now, since I do have so much, I'm sticking to my lowest prices on items that I don't need now, makes it a little bit more challenging but I'll end up with greater savings in the end.

I think that I've finally decided on my word for 2010 - I've debated between Discipline and Balance. I don't like the word discipline, it seems like a negative word, a word I don't want to think about for an entire year, yet it is the word that keeps coming to the front of my brain, I keep trying to replace it with a nicer word, but it just doesn't feel right, so discipline it is. And I figure with a little bit of discipline maybe I'll find some balance?? I'm hoping anyway. There are so many areas in my life that can use a bit of discipline . . .

*what I eat and what I feed my family, committing to planning and fixing healthy meals for us
*exercise . . . enough said about that
*how much time I spend on the computer or iPhone, reading blogs mostly, and mostly coupon or scrapbooking related, but still, time can get away so quickly
*to use my camera more and to be better about my Project 365 photos (it's no fun going backwards to try and fill up a week I've slacked off)
*writing a daily to-do list, and actually looking at it everyday
*documenting more stories of our life, making creative time every week
*a reasonable bed time - I hate going to bed and I hate even more getting up in the morning, but it is a little easier when I've gotten enough sleep

These are just a few things . . . I'm trying to be more in tune with what I am doing and how I am spending my time so that I can begin to get a better, more disciplined routine in place. I know it helps me to keep on tract and it helps the kids too, especially when they don't have a grumpy mom who is trying to get things done last minute or on a deadline.

Earrings and e-coupons

Last night I am at my Singing Hands class and Daryl calls, the first thing that goes through my head when I saw the call was from home was oh great, who's throwing up! Thank goodness that wasn't the issue. Meghan had come down and asked Daryl to take her earrings out because they were bothering her, but he couldn't find the backs, he calls to tell me that the skin has grown over the back of the earring! Yikes, but I'm figuring that maybe there are some crusties back there from soap and shampoo not getting rinsed out properly, not really skin. I told him to get some alcohol and a cotton ball and try and clean it up a little, we determine she is fine until morning, but I had to go and take a peek last night when I got home. Sure enough, the skin had grown over the earring back on her left ear, you could see about 1/2 of the back and that's it and you could not see a back at all on the right ear. I looked at it better this morning and I could probably work out the left ear, but I couldn't see anything in the right ear, I was hoping that maybe the right backing had just come off, but then I thought I could feel something in there.

I got her into the doctors this afternoon and he refers her to a Pediatric Ear Nose & Throat doctor and then over to get x-rays to determine exactly what was going on.

(I love having my iphone camera with me at all times and ready for any adventure we may encounter!)

The x-ray techs asked many questions about exactly what they were supposed to be x-raying because they had never seen anything like this before ~ and thank goodness the x-ray did not show a back on the right ear!!! I guess that must have fallen out at some point. So we now just have to deal with the left ear. I'll let you know how that goes, we have an appointment tomorrow afternoon.

E -Coupons

I have completely ignored e-coupons until recently, I won't be ignoring them anymore. I haven't saved tons of $$$ using them yet, but when you look at individual items, I'm getting great deals, making some items free and even making a little bit on the item.

You see the great thing about these e-coupons, which currently tie to your Safeway Club Card only, is that you can stack a Safeway coupon, a manufacturer coupon and then the e-coupons will come off, and depending on how many you have loaded on your account, multiples may come off, even if you only bought 1 item. Here is an example ~ at Safeway today Meghan wanted a Kids Cuisine TV Dinner, they were on sale for $1.99 each if you bought 3 of them and I only had 1 manufacturer coupon for $1.00 off of 2 dinners. So I'm figuring $5 buck for 3 is an ok price at $1.66 each, not great but ok. At this point I have forgotten that I have several of these coupons loaded from Shortcuts.com, when I look at my receipt I realize that I had 4 of them loaded! So, my TV dinners went from $1.66 each to .33 each, now that's a good deal!

I also did this with some of my new favorite snacks last week ~ here is what that looked like

On sale at Safeway for $2.50 each. If you buy 4 or more then you get $4.00 off.

2.50 x 4 = $10.00
- $ 4.00 Mix & Match Savings
- $ 1.60 Manf Coup
- $ 1.00 Manf Coup
- $ 1.00 Manf Coup
- $ 1.00 Manf Coup
- $ .40 e-coupon
- $ .40 e-coupon
- $ 1.00 e-coupon
_________
Total + .40 I love when I make money buying stuff.

At this point Safeway is the only store this will work at, but check out Shortcuts.com and also cellfire.com, when you register for this one you use your cell phone number and also your Safeway Card number. Between the 2 I've probably saved at least $15.00 in only 3 shopping trips. The cool thing with shortcuts is that by the time you get home from shopping you have an e-mail showing which coupons were applied to you shopping trip.

And since I'm talking coupons, I'm happy to report that I made my goal to save at least 70% in August coming in at 70.1%. Working towards 72% or 73% for September.

My not so good K-Mart trip

Wish me luck trying to convince a K-Mart employee that they somehow missed $22.55 of my coupons, EVEN after I asked her to double check because I was pretty sure she had.

A few good deals

Went out yesterday to grab what I thought were just a few things, but I actually came home with quite a lot of stuff. I think the best deal of the day was the cantaloupes that were .10 a pound, I got 3 of them for $1.17, can't beat that!

All in a week at Wags

I ended up with all of this after several trips to Wal-Greens last week. I spent $50.00 out of pocket and I still have $10.00 in register rewards left to spend this week. The retail value of this is $232.68, a savings of $182.33 ~ 78%!!!

Unilever and Kelloggs and Loreal were having some great register reward deals, which is why I got even more peanut butter, Ragu and Suave deodorant!!! With the register rewards factored in I came out ahead $3.22 with the deodorant and the ragu and peanut butter cost me .37 each. I got 3 boxes of hair dye, 2 bottles of make-up and some blush for $4.00. Some of the office supplies were "filler items" that were on clearance and I think we now have enough snacks for the kids lunches to last till spring time! I think that the Kelloggs/Keebler items worked out to be .50 each. I love that, no more running to the store at the last minute because there is nothing to put in the lunch box. Amazing what a little bit of planning can do for you. Here are a few close-up pictures.

Bad blogger this week . . .

Not sure why . . . getting into the routine of being back to school, been to 2 back to school nights, Trev already had school pictures on Thrusday, Meghans are on Monday. Meghan is still loving school, Trev still wishes he was off for a little longer! Meghan loves buying her lunch and asks everyday if she can . . . the answer is usually no, I figure they can each buy once or twice a week, the pantry is stuffed with yummy lunch stuff for so much cheaper than the school lunch, Trevor's is $2.75 and Meghan's is $2.50.

I spent too much time clipping/organizing coupons this week, lots of good ones in the paper and all of the internet printable reset. But it has been worth it. My goal this month is to have an average savings of at least 70%, I ended last month at a 62% savings, so now that I can be even pickier I'm working towards being at 70%, so far this month (I do realize that we are only one week in) I'm at 78%, that is for 2 trips to Safeway, 1 trip to CVS and a few stops into Wal-Greens, they had some great Register Reward deals this week, I'll post my weeks worth of bargains after my final stop tomorrow.

Safeway had some awesome coupons this week that matched great with some that I had, today I saved 85%, I did a similar transaction on Sunday and saved 75%. Not to bad, I don't have a picture of Sunday's trip, but it looked a lot like this one. I paid $12.60 for all of this!

Free items are:

4 Twix candy bars
Starbucks ice cream
3 bottles of Marie's salad dressing

Really cheap items are:

Pop-Tarts .49
Tortillas .99
Kraft Cheese slices 1.49
Granola bars .99
Cream Cheese .99
Cantaloupe .77 each
Cookie dough .24
Salad was 1.00/bag
Finish $1.49

For the two visits at Safeway this week I spent $34.11. The total before sales & coupons was $166.80 - for a total savings of 80%.

Since I got 3 newspapers on Sunday I have more coupons so I will make one more trip this weekend to use those coupons too.

So glad it's Friday, need to get to bed, I'm sure Meghan will be up bright and early like always on a Saturday morning, especially she has been promised cinnamon rolls for breakfast!

One more trip to K-Mart

Just had to get one more in last week and take advantage of the double coupons, did really good on the free items (4 bottles of Softsoap, 2 deodorants, and 3 Ponds face cleaners were all free) and got another Christmas gift bought. The game it basically what I paid for since it was $5.50, I was actually hoping to be able to use a $7.00 coupon I had and make my out of pocket expense less than $2.00, but since I was able to use a $5.00 off of $25.00 that I had gotten on the first trip, I couldn't use the $7.00. It's ok, I will go back and use it with the $3.00 one I got on the 2nd trip, so on top of the savings I still have $10.00 in coupons to use.

This trip totaled $8.19, saving $80.89

Between both trips, I got $256.00 worth of stuff for $60.24, a total savings of 77%

Not to bad for a weeks worth of shopping

I love double coupons!

This is the second round of double coupons I've done at K-Mart. Did pretty good today and I even got a birthday or christmas present for Meghan bought, it's not included in this picture since she does look at my blog on a regular basis! They have some toys on clearance right now and then there is an additional 50% off the clearance price, I got her a $45.00 "fur-real" doggie for $18.00.


I got all of this (61 items) for $53.05, I saved $122.00, about 70%. I'm definitely stocked for months now in the toiletries department. Many of the items here were very cheap, like .20 or free. I did splurge on a new orange ice tea pitcher, it was only $4.50 and with the $1.00 off coupon doubled to $2.00 it made it only $2.50, AND it came with tea bags in it!!! I was pretty happy with my savings. I'm only kicking myself because there is a save $5.00 coupon out there if you spend $50.00. I was planning on doing this in 2 trips and didn't think I would be spending $50.00 bucks at one time, so I didn't bring it. While shopping I decided that since I was there I would just do it all at once, and spent over $50.00, so could have been a little more savings. Next time I will print and bring, just in case! I did also get a $7.00 coupon back for purchasing a certain amount of some product, now quite sure what, but now I have to go back and use it, and I want to use it by Saturday while those double coupons are still going on!! So, I'm going back through my binder one more time to see what else I can get with the $7.00!!!

Coupons

Daryl has put me on coupon restriction! He just shakes his head when I come home with more bags and says "I hope you can find a place to put all of that stuff that I don't really think we need any more of!" He is partly right, I don't really need anything at the moment, and that feels really good. I have officially out grown my "new" pantry, I'm going to need to do some creative re-organizing as soon as it's not 120 degrees in the garage! Here are a few updated pictures ~

This is the overflow from my kitchen pantry, which is full since I made a Winco trip last week and restocked all my canned goods! And I didn't show you the inside of the garage fridge, uuummm, it's full too!

And on to upstairs for all of the toiletries ~

and finally the laundry room. I've never kept excess in laundry detergent and softner, loving that I don't have to run to the store unplanned to get something that I have run out of.


Needless to say I'm set for awhile. We will be clean and have food for several months I'd guess, only buying fruits/veggies/dairy products. Any shopping that I will do will have to be a huge savings. I have $30.00 in Wal-Green's register rewards that I will use this week, which will bring up my percentage saved. I spent more than normal there in the last 2 weeks because of a sale they were having on John Frieda hair products. I think I got about $114.00 worth of hair stuff for $36.00, almost a 70% savings. So I have lots of register rewards to use. I'm working to keep a 60% or better savings rate, I'm a little under that right now because of my Winco trip. Anytime I do a large shopping trip there my savings average goes down because I can't accurately figure out my savings, they are so much cheaper on so many things than Safeway or Raleys.

I also decided to try and not spend the Target gift cards that I've been earning from their specials and put them away safe and sound to use at Christmas time . . . I've already got $25.00, thinking I should be able to get quiet a few saved in the next 6 months.

Alone . . .

My wonderful husband took the kids, the dog and the trailer and went camping, for 4 days, without me! It is VERY quiet around here, other than the sound of Stitch squawking every now and then, and I am enjoying it very much. Don't get me wrong, I do really miss them, and after 4 days I am going to be really excited to see them, but there is something about having time alone, time to not have to do anything for anyone, well, I do have to give the bird fresh water everyday and bring in the newspaper, and I should probably unload the dishwasher that Daryl started before he left, but other than that, I'm pretty much not doing anything I don't want to do, and I'm loving it!

What I have done is gone to K-Mart, hate that store, but they are having double coupons this week so I decided to make a trip. How much would you pay for all of this stuff?

All of this before sale/coupons is $62.04

2 bottles of listerine
2 bottles of Pert Shampoo
2 bottles of Hawaiian Tropic Suntan oil, and yes, mom, one of them even has sunscreen in it!
3 bottles of Hair Gel, for Trev
1 tube of Dora toothpaste for Meg
2 tubes of mascara
2 bottles of hairspray
2 cans of shaving gel
2 bottles of hand soap

I paid $13.40, a savings of about 80%! This is all stuff that we will use, this makes me really happy! I only had time to make it through the toiletries section, I have some cleaning coupons pulled so I need to try and make one more trip before Saturday.

I also went to Wallgreens, they had another $5.00 off a $25.00 purchase, there were a few things I needed, savings not quiet as good as K-Mart, but still not to bad.

I spent $20.87, saved $22.73 and earn $5.00 in Register Rewards. A savings of 52%, both items I need. The M & M's I had to put in at the last minute because my total was at $24.87 and I needed to be at $25.00 for the $5.00 coupon to work. Darn! Mental note, gotta hide those M & M's before the family returns!

The exciting life of a mom, I'm sure years from now I will laugh at all of this coupon shopping, or who knows maybe I'll still be doing it!

Going to head to bed, can't keep my eyes open!

My week of shopping deals

(Warning . . . very long post with lots of pictures!)

Since I can't keep everything I buy out until the end of the week I've been taking pictures of my shopping trips to do a weeks summary, my husband thinks I've officially gone off the deep end, I'm not sure what he will do if I come home with another box of cereal!!! But, hey, you can't beat .49 a box and I know that we will eat it. There were some really good deals out there, I started on Sunday hitting 3 Walgreens (the first 2 didn't have what I was looking for!), Raleys and then Target.

Total spent at Walgreens was $22.96 and at the end of the day I still have $10.00 in register rewards (good as cash) for my next visit.

I made a quick stop into Raleys, this was the 2nd trip this week, the cashier did a double take when she told me my total ~ $4.64, also included 3 ears of corn that Daryl already had on the BBQ when I took this picture!


Next was Target, my favorite store, but I haven't done much couponing there. I have discovered that you can get Target coupons on-line, this makes me very happy! Since I was there alone I could actually think and I had my coupon binder with me, I found some really great deals, the best was probably the Nabisco 100 calorie snacks @ .43 a box! Great deal, they were on sale at Safeway this week, 2 for $6.00, not such a good deal!! I was happy getting out of there for about $21.00.

On Monday I stopped at yet another Walgreens, Judy gave me a hint on where the fish oil tablets were hiding, you see, those were on sale for $8.00, but then you get and $8.00 register reward back, so it's as good as FREE! Spent a little more out of pocket on this trip, $13.78, but I got back $10.00 in register rewards. If anyone needs Peanut Butter come see me, you can see I've collected quite a bit this week, but the Peter Pan was being clearanced out for .87, since it doesn't expire till March I'm pretty sure it won't go to waste!


Then I read that the Dove "to go" products were marked down more than the price on the shelf showed, and I love the Energizing deodorant, thanks to Kaitlyn, I've been hooked on it since we went to Arizona last year, it smells soooooo good! They had the box with a body spray in it for $2.99, after the coupons I only paid $1.25 each. I also got the salad dressing for .09 each and the Crystal Light for .99.

I spent a total of $12.21 for all of this stuff!

I had to make one final trip to Raleys and get some more cereal, so this was another $1.47. I got 9 boxes of cereal this week for $4.41.


Wednesday was another trip to Walgreens to use some register rewards I've collected, before my trip today I had $20.00 in register rewards. Didn't really need the candy, but I did need a few more items because I had more coupons than items.

I spent $8.00 in register rewards and $5.28 out of pocket, and earned $4.00 more in register rewards. So I still have $16.00 left.

Another trip into Target, am loving getting the 100 calorie snacks for next to nothing, I paid $1.04 today per box, didn't have a manufacturer coupon to go with the Target coupons. Still not bad considering that I had to get a few things that were not on sale. Total spent was $13.82.


On Friday I wanted to get some more of the Fish oil and toothpaste, added some more peanut butter as a filler item since I was using more coupons than items I was purchasing again, and I couldn't pass up more .87 peanut butter. Didn't use any register rewards, the machine at this store acts up sometimes and I didn't want to risk not getting my $10.00 in rr so I just paid $13.87 out of pocket and took my additional $10.00 in register rewards!


Had to go to Wal-Mart so I took a few coupons of items I thought they might have pretty cheap, I spent about $6.50 for these items. I love that V8 juice but it is $5.00 in most grocery stores, it's only $2.98 at Wal-Mart and I had a $2.00 of coupon, can't beat that!


One last trip into Target for the week, found where they were hiding the Dove clearance deodorant and it was marked down even more, I got 2 more of them for .75 each. And I found this bag with Dove products on clearance for $6.28, this will be a good bag to put in the trailer for Meg and I when we go camping. Total spent $12.75.

Saturday was one final trip to Walgreens, just couldn't let those $8.00 in register rewards go away without one more bottle of fish oil! I used $8.00 in register rewards, earned another $10.00 and spent $12.30.

After this trip I still have $28.00 worth of register rewards in my wallet! So, here is how Walgreens breaksdown:

Total retail was $154.22
Total Paid out of pocket $ 69.90
Register Rewards earned $ 48.00
Register Rewards used $ 20.00
Like paying $ 41.90 for

4 bottles of fish oil
2 boxes of hair dye
5 tubes of toothpaste
9 candy bars
12 jars of peanut butter

I'll be amazed if you are actually still reading this! This is not my typical week, but there were some good items that I wanted to take advantage of. Adding all of the cereal and peanut butter to my pantry this week, along with a trip to Winco, put it on overload. So on Saturday I decided to clean out a cupboad in the garage that I was using to store Partylite stuff and turn it in to additional storage space, here is the before and after ~


So, I estimated that all of the about totaled about $307.00 and I spent $123.00, that's about a 60% savings overall, not to bad for a weeks worth of shopping!

Where did this week go?

Somehow it's already or finally Friday, I'm not sure which. While it seemed like a long week, I don't feel like I was very productive, I hate getting to the end of the week feeling like that. I've gotten out of the habit of making a list daily of the things I need/want to get done, that makes a big difference for me, keeps me focused. And, I did not take one single photo this week! YIKES, I have some making up to do, I think I will go and take care of that right now so I can have some pictures with this post!

One thing I did do this week is dive a little deeper into this couponing stuff ~ can I tell you how addicting it is? There are so so many web-sites that tell you where the best deal are every week. Plus they will link you to some great additional coupons for even better savings. I think my best deal this week was on Got2B hair products. It was on sale 2 for $10.00, it is usually about $6.00 at Wal-Mart, I found a coupon for $2.00 off so I printed 2, and if you bought 2 you got $5.00 Register Reward back, so I ended up paying $1.00 for both of them.

I also reorganized my coupon binder. The more I'm doing this I feel like I can fine tune things a bit, when you first start it is a little overwhelming so I kept the major couponing to Wal-Greens. Now that I think I about have that mastered I realize how many coupons I'm not using when I go and do a large trip to Winco. Because their sales are not published anywhere I didn't take the time to pull coupons before I would go shop. Plus, my binder is 2 inches thick of coupons, it takes awhile to go through those. A few months ago I decided that each week I would go through the packets I got and cut out anything that I knew I would not use at the drug stores, that I would probably only use when I shopped at Winco. I found an old plastic divider and started putting the coupons in there. But, that darn thing drove me nuts! I lid doesn't stay open, I have to dig and can't see what I have, I would pull things out at the store and then they would fall on the ground. Needless to say it didn't work for me! So I decided to get some baseball card holders, some dividers and a binder and put my clipped coupons in those, by isle, so that I could easily find what I needed as I shopped, nothing to fall out or go through, I can see exactly what I have, hopefully Winco doesn't change their store layout anytime soon!!! I also got a small pair of scissors and a small calculator, there are many times I want to do the math to see if a sale item is a good price or not. So, here is my 2nd binder, I plan to try and carry it in the van so that these items are with me for spur of the moment stops too, and for those times, like today when I'm caught in an unexpected traffic jam for 40 minutes, I was able to cut a few coupons and finalize my Wal-Greens & Target stops I was planning on making.


Monday was a good mail day for us, I love happy mail. Meghan has been wanting the "Butterfly Treehouse" for awhile now. We looked at a few stores last week and couldn't find one, so I finally broke down and told her I would order one on-line. In the catalog from her teacher they were $25.00 + shipping, I thought that was a bit pricy so I searched and found the same thing on Amazon.com for $15.00. And with Amazon if you order $25.00 you get free shipping, so I figured it was a good time to order this book I've been wanting, and all for what I would have paid if I had bought from the original source! Now we both win. Anyway, both of those items arrived along with a little package from Papa & Gigi for Meghan. It was the cutest little dress, I was laughing as I took it out because it looked so familiar, it is the exact same dress I bought for Meghan for Easter! They obviously didn't see any Easter pictures, because I didn't take many, and I still can't believe that out of all of the clothes in Target, they picked out the exact same dress I did!!!


Ok, well, I have now blogged, taken my pictures for the week, and started a list of what I want to accompolish tomorrow, it's National Scrapbook Day! Steph and I will spend the day scrapping, I plan to do some paper stuff and some digi stuff, and in general hopefully knock a few things off of my Scrapping "To-Do" list. Crossing my fingers that little Miss Meghan will cooperate with us and not make me crazy! I did a little bit of bribing when we went to Target today (is that bad?) So, Trev should be helping me out and Meghan picked out this little book to she could "scrap" with us. Wish us luck!



Time to go and make Daryl some coffee before he heads off to work, only 5 more weeks at Longs! Exciting and scary, hoping that a new job will come his way very soon and that it will be a day job, will be nice for us to all be on the same schedule again.

Couponing . . . Part 2

Half way through yesterdays post I realized that it was getting much to long so I thought I'd finish off today after everything from yesterday had a chance to settle in!

When I first started using this site it was like learning a new language. What the heck is a RR, or an Easy Saver Coupon, an Ad Coupon, then there is the RP or the SS and PG. The first part of this applies only to Wal-Greens, as there are a lot of ways to make the most of the sales at this store. And I will tell you that I really really dislike this store, I almost never shopped here before last October and I don't really look forward to going there, but, for the amount of $$$ I have saved there using the sales/coupons and the fact that I save money because I'm not going to my favorite store, which has everything under the sun that I could possibly not really need but think I do. The good thing about Wal-Greens is that I have my list and I very rarely get something that is not on my list (unless my daughter is with me that is!), it is nice to go in there and know about what you are going to be spending.

Wal-Greens has a weekly newspaper ad, within that ad are coupons good only for Wal-Greens, you must have the coupons to get the sales, and usually those coupon items are not marked in the store, sometimes making it interesting to figure out exactly what is on sale, but . . . it's worth it to figure it out, and if you get the wrong item, the coupon won't work and then that's alway fun for the cashier to figure out why!

On top of cutting out and using the Wal-Greens coupons you can also use a manufacturer coupon, one per item if you have multiple coupons, thus increasing your savings. This is what coupon mom does for you and that is where the RR and the SS and PG come in. RR stands for Red Plum and SS stand for Smart Source, these are the weekly coupon inserts, once a month there is usually a PG for Procter & Gamble.

Wal-Greens also has a montly rebate book, in this book are instant rebate items and also mail in rebates, I personally like the instant rebates best, but I'll take the savings any way I can. And it's not just mail in rebates any more, you can do your shopping, come home and enter your rebate items in your account on-line, accumlate them over the month and then submit on-line at the end of the month, pretty easy, I just got my first card with some rebates on them. The rebate items are usually marked in the store, making it much easier to find the items your looking for.

The rebates work just like a coupon, again you can double up the rebates with a manufaturer coupon for additional savings, one of the best items I've gotten doing this is razors, for almost nothing. The mail in rebates obviously you get after you submit the required information.

RR stands for Register Rewards. These are like little refund coupons that can be used for a future purchase, usually they are good for 2 weeks, so be sure to not let them expire before you use them. You can get Register Rewards for buying certain items that are shown in the weekly ads, like the toothpaste. These rewards print out once you have finished the transaction, be sure to get them. The very first time I did this I got to the car and relized that I didn't the $5.00 RR that I earned, so I had to go back, which is a pain, but was worth the $5.00.

According to my print out's for Wal-Greens this week I should save about 70% on my 2 trips, I think that is definately worth my time spent printing the list and finding the coupons.

The grocery store coupons work the same way, it is just much simpler since there are not so many ways to save. Although, since I've been watching the Safeway ads lately, they have been having additional coupons in the ad that you have to actually cut out to get the savings, in addition to using your club card. But it's the same principle, find the items that are on sale and then find any additional coupons for more savings, it really does add up.

I hope this make sense, if not let me know and I will try and clarify. I'd love to hear about your deals too!

A little more on couponing . . . Part 1

The house is still WAY to quiet, I can't wait until tomorrow and Trev gets home. I'm sure he's having a great time and I can't wait to hear (and then blog) all about it!

I've had some people ask about this whole coupon thing, since I just finished making my list for the week I thought I spell it out here, there are some great deals to be had this week at Wal-Greens and some at Safeway, although I'm waiting until Saturday to go to Safeway because there are a few items only on sale Saturday & Sunday. I will be making 2 trips to Wal-Greens this week, I try not to do that because I want to waste my time going back and forth, but there are a few things worth making another trip for this week and since they are coupon items I can't do it at one time.

The first thing I did was find a cute binder, and yes, it has to be cute to make me want to look at it over and over every week, but I'm weird like that! In the binder goes all of the weekly coupons that come in the Sunday newspaper, we get the Contra Costa Times so when I started doing this I figured I was good, but what I found was that the SF Chronicle has much better weekly coupons, strange as they are the same ones, just a different version I guess. So every Sunday we are on a mission to find a Chronicle, which we usually do, sometimes it just takes more than one stop. I thought about getting a Sunday only subscription but it was more than just buying it at a store, and I am buying the paper to save money not spend more than I need to!

I take those weekly coupons and mark the front page of the packet with the date and which paper it came from, three hole punch it and put it in the cute binder. Sometimes I thumb through them to see what's in them but usually I don't, I rely on couponmom to do that for me at a later time, I'll forget by the time I need them anyway! This process makes couponing work for me. I love saving money, but I hated clipping coupons, filing coupons, finding coupons once I got to the store if I actually remembered to take them with me, and then usually once I did, they were expired! So, taking the whole packet and filing it in the binder is so simple and no little coupons to keep track of.

Although there is another web-site that I do print individual coupons from, it's www.coupons.com. There are usually good cereal and yogurt coupons and some snack stuff. These coupons are replenished on the first of each month. I guess each coupon can be printed so many times, once it's reached it's limit it's no longer available. I have figured that out the hard way, I wouldn't print the coupons when I saw it, thinking I'd wait until I needed it (therefore not having to keep track of it and file it!) and then I would go back to it and it would be gone. Well, now I know, print on the first of the month anthing you think you might need and file it in the binder. For those loose coupons I get from printing on-line or ones that are inside a package, I got some photo album pages at the office supply store, you can see in the picture of my binder. I have a real casual filing system with those pages for anything loose I come across.


So now that everything is organized and has a home, I log on to www.couponmom.com
and bring up the list of the weekly ads on her site, just a little disclaimer: it is not always 100% accurate, but considering it's a free service I don't stress over it. She has the Ads for Safeway, Wal-Greens, Wal-Mart, Target and probably a few more, but these are the ones I use. Target and Wal-Mart don't seem to have big savings as a rule, at least on the items I use. I find great savings with Wal-Greens and Safeway.

I scroll through the list usually with the weekly ad also in front of me, I'm more of a visual person and I want to see the little picture of what is on sale, not just the words telling me what it is. I check the little box of anything I think I might be interested in and then print the list. Now this is the great part about the list, first you have your list ready for when you go to the store, and second, it will tell you which ad and which date there are additional coupons. Having kept the coupons in order by date in my binder, it is now very simple to locate a coupon that I want want.

Here are a few examples of items I'll be picking up this week. Without this process I would have NEVER been able to get these deals.

Wal-Greens

Colgate toothpaste, the cost is $3.29, if you buy one you will get $3.29 back in register rewards (more on that later) making the toothpaste free, + I also have a .75 off coupon that I will be using, so now, Wal-Greens is actually paying me .75 to take this toothpaste.

Nabisco Crackers, on sale buy one get one free @ $1.99. So with the sale that is a $1.00/box. There is also a newpaper coupon for $2.00 off 2 boxes, so now my crackers are also free, love that! And we eat a ton of crackers in this house. The best part is that because I get 2 papers each week, both of the ads actually had that coupon, so I can now get 4 boxes of crackers free.

M & M's, I can never have enough of those! The are on sale 2 bags for $7.00, there is an easy saver coupon (more on this also later) for $3.00 off, making it 2 bags for $4.00, pretty good deal. But there is a newpaper coupon for $1.00 off of 2 bags, so now I'm paying only $1.50/bag of M & M's. And I have 2 of those coupons too!

So, you get the idea? I know it all sounds a bit overwhelming, but after a few weeks of doing it it actually goes pretty quickly, the first few times I did this it probably took an hour or so to get through it. I've been really paying more attention to prices too. In general Wal-Greens is more expensive than Wal-Mart or Target, so it is helpful to have an idea on prices to make this work the best.

Couponing Part 2 tomorrow!

All this for $44.00

Sorry for another picture of my groceries, but I am still amazed at what a little bit of pre-planning your grocery trip and actually reading the ads can do. I used to see the Oprah shows where people would pay 50 - 60% less on their groceries after the sales and coupons, but I just didn't see how that could happen with the few .25 and .50 coupons I would get! Now I understand that it's not just going into the grocery store and buying whatever you need, it's going into the grocery store armed with the sales and additional coupons to make the sale items even cheaper. Before the Safeway Club Card, weekly Ad coupons and the regular newspaper coupons the cost of this was $106.80, I walked out paying $44.00, I like saving 60% on my groceries!


I pretty much shop at Winco so it has been years since I have even looked at the weekly sales ads that come in the Tuesday paper, (now if they came on Sunday I would have probably looked at them more!) Winco has some great prices overall, some things really cheap, some average, I figured it all balanced out, and I would still try and buy what is on sale and use a coupon here or there if I happened to be able to find it, before it expired and it actually made it to the store with me! But lately I have really been seeing the benefit of checking the ads for the more expensive stores! This week Safeway had coupons for $10.00 off if you spent $50.00 or more, a coupon for .99 for a pound of butter, a free liter of Pepsi (not show, left in the garage fridge), and a coupon for a box of Raisin Bran or Frosted Mini Wheats for .99. All great deals, plus I had a coupon for .70 off of the cereal, so I paid all of .24 for the Raisin Bran, now that's a great deal!

I matched my Safeway ad with coupon moms site to locate my weekly newspaper coupons with Safeways weekly sales. This site will bring up the weekly sales and then tell you were to find the newspaper coupons, you can then check the box of the items you want, print your list and then cut out your coupons (I save them every week in a binder, but that's another post). The trick to all of this is to only buy what is on your list, (well, unless you find a great deal that you might have missed!) otherwise I think that the effort to save some money will go out the door. Oh, and the other trick is to go to the store alone, so you don't have little helper asking for things that are not on your list!

Now I am getting a nice little stock pile of pantry items and some extra meat in the freezer, and I am finding that we don't need as much week to week, I have items in the pantry/freezer to pull from and I can continue to buy what happens to be on sale each week.

It's Monday again . . .

Had a nice weekend, didn't do a whole lot which I enjoy a lot! Daryl took the kids to the show Saturday afternoon to see Mall Cop, they all really enjoyed it, even Meghan, although she really wants to see Hotel for Dogs, so I guess that will be next on our list. Although for as much as we go to the movies (and the for the price of actually going to the movies) we should just buy the DVD when it comes out, I'm sure it will only be a month or so until it's released!

Sunday afternoon I even got a nap in, I love Sunday afternoon naps, or any day naps for that matter. Daryl took Meghan to go to the pet store to get food for Max and stopped by his sisters house and ended up hanging out over there for several hours. Meghan was having a great time playing outside with her cousins and the little girls that live in their court, until the down pour anyway, but I guess all the little ones were huddled under a huge umbrella while it poured rain, then they were back to playing. Two afternoons of some quiet time, it was very nice and needed.

I've been officially released from the oral surgeon, finally. I was back and forth to the dentist all last week for them to pack my gums. When I went in on Friday she said it was my choice as to weather or not she packed it again for the weekend. Well, after my last weekend I decided to pack it one more time for good measure. She said not to worry if it fell out and I was to go back in today for them to pull it out. So yesterday it was bugging me and I figured if they were not going to re-pack it on Friday I'll just help it along and avoid one more trip to the surgeons office. Well, they didn't seem very happy that I had taken matters into my own hand and still made me come in, to make sure I got all the packing out, (duh, it's a strip of gauze all sewed together, trust me, it's all out). So I get 32 questions on how it fell out and that I could have used my little syringe to poke it back in, lalalalala . . . so the assistant looks at it and says she'll clean it out and re-pack it, NO!!!! I'm done having gauze in my mouth! So she cleaned it out, poked around a bit (ouch!) and decided to take an X-Ray, just to make sure there was nothing left . . . ok, whatever, I'm telling you, there is NO GAUZE left in there. The X-Ray confirmed what I had said all along, but hey, what do I know! So the doctor came in, suited up (cracks me up, they put on gowns, maskes, googles, gloves, all to look in my mouth for 11 seconds) and confirms that I am not in a lot of pain and that we are good to not re-pack it and that she is closing my file ~ yipee! Now I'll just continue to gargle with warm salt water (apparently I should have been doing this all along) and wait for the whole in my gum to fill up, should only take about 2 months.

Had another successful coupon trip to Raleys, it is worth it to read the ads, and a friend sent me the link to sign up for special on-line coupons from Raleys, I ended up saving 52% on what I bought today, I got all of this for $42.00

You can't tell that I had 2 gallons of milk, 7 cans of frozen juice, 4 cake mixes (those were free for buying 2 tubs of frosting), 2 boxes of cereal, cheese sticks. Even the checker commented on how much I had saved using on-line coupons and some special coupons that they had in the newspaper.

ok, time to get off the computer fold some laundry and head to bed, maybe I can get up on time and get me and Meghan out and not be late for work, yea, we'll see!