Because I'm awesome....

Just wanted to share a couple deals I got today:


A couple weeks ago we got a coupon in the mail for $10 off at Lowe's. It was in some flyer about spring projects, and it didn't say that you had to spend any certain amount in order to get the $10 off. It expired tomorrow, so I took it in today to pick out some flowers for my bed in the front yard. I got all of the flowers in the pictures below for a grand total of four cents. Yep, you read that right. The cashier's tone was funny, because she had to double check the monitor a couple times to make sure she was right. Gotta love practically free!

Dillon's is having another 10/$0 sale, and there were a lot of really useful things this time. One of them being MILK! Milk has gotten to be so dang expensive, but $1 for a half gallon is a steal! I got three, because I knew we could go through those just fine before their expiration date. I also had a coupon for the Pringles, so the grand total for everything in the picture, after tax, was $9.82. 

Super deals!

I went to Dillon's tonight with the sole intent of snagging a good deal on toilet paper and paper towels. I was a good thrifty shopper and came out with only what I went in for. :) And I must say, I got myself some pretty good deals!



My first steal is this Bounty 8 pack of paper towels. If I were going to buy them at Walmart (where I usually shop) I would spend a good $8 on this. The sale price on these were $5.99. I had a digital coupon for $2 off, making my total $3.99. That's a little over half off what I would normally pay. I was bummed when I got home and realized that I had a $1 coupon for Bounty in my coupon booklet from P&G, but I think I'll live. We have an abundance of paper towels now (we still have 4 rolls left from the last good sale I hit) so I'll just hold onto that coupon until I see another good deal. 

Second steal was a 12 pack of Charmin toilet paper. Now, I'm not stuck on any one brand of toilet paper. I will buy any toilet paper that's reasonably priced, as long as it's not the texture of sandpaper (yowza!). This would run me I think around $8 at Walmart. The sale price at Dillon's was $5.99. I had a digital coupon for $3 off, plus a paper coupon for $1 off. So yes, I got a 12 pack of toilet paper for $1.99. And that is how I roll my friends (pun intended - ha!)

Week 2 of shopping with coupons

So last week I was excited to lower my grocery bill by shopping sales and using coupons, and was looking forward to doing the same again this week. I ended up making a food purchase on Tuesday that bumped my total from $76 to $84, but that's still quite a bit less than the $100-$125 I usually spend, so I'm still pretty please with that.

This week I ended up spending $92. $8 more than last week, but still less than my average, so I'm still okay with it. I had a couple expenses this week that brought my total up: a refill for the Diaper Genie ($7.35 after tax!), and Pepsi and Dr. Pepper products were on sale at Dillon's again, so I stocked up on those. (Luke goes through a LOT of pop, and I mean a L-O-T, so if pop is really on sale I will always buy it!) Walgreen's had Ajax dish soap on sale for 79 cents for a 16 ounce bottle, so I bought four of those, which means we won't need dish soap for awhile. I also spent $5 on a South High sweatshirt that was on clearance at Walgreen's, because hello super cheap hoodie sweatshirt. Can't pass that up! So really, if you take out the two extra expenses of the Genie refill and the sweatshirt, I actually spent LESS on groceries and household supplies than last week ($81 vs. $86). So yay me!
I found some really good coupons in the newspaper insert for today, and hopefully my coupon booklet from P&G gets gere pretty soon. My goal is to be regularly spending only $75 a week on groceries and household supplies by March. It's kind of like a game for me (can I beat my high score from last week?!) so I bet I'll bet able to meet my goal.

I also discovered that I can save money on those dang Genie refills by ordering them through Amazon with my Subscribe & Save discount. If I order them in three packs, I'll only be paying $5.98 per refill. I'm also going to be keeping an eye on Walgreens because I have a coupon that I picked up at Walgreens today that's good for $1 off 2 Playtex products (which is what a refill is). I might be able to get a good deal if they have a sale or Register Rewards at some point.

The other cool thing that I realized just the other day when browsing Amazon (because someday I would really like to have a Kindle) is that I can use my 15% off and 2 day shipping with anything** I order off of Amazon. I only get the 30% on select diapers and wipes, but that 15% and free shipping is good for anything and everything on Amazon. Awesome!

**Well, anything that can needs to be replenished once every month or two. Obviously I'm not going to be ordering a Kindle with Subscribe and Save. Yes, please send me a new Kindle every two months. lol 

Miscellany Monday

1. Saving money
I am slightly obsessed with websites that gives tips on how to save money or pay off debt, if you couldn't tell from my last post. Like, all of my web surfing tonight has pretty much been on The Saved Quarter, Penny Pinchin' Mom, Money Saving Mom. I guess it's getting me away from Facebook for awhile, which I was sorely in need of a break from.

2. Parent teacher conference week
I am doing 24 parent teacher conferences between tomorrow and Thursday. I don't think I really need to say anything more about this miscellany, now do I?

3. Snow
Just for the record, I do not want a snow day tomorrow, or any day this week. See #2 for my main reason why. Honestly, I'm just tired of snow. I want it to be spring. I want to wear my favorite capris and play outside with Raegan. I hope that Phil was right about spring coming earlier this year!

4. Annual review
I had my annual review at work today, and it was pretty good. I don't take compliments well, so it's weird for me to sit there and read and hear good things about myself. But it is nice to know that my hard work is noticed. :)

5. Shoes

I bought these beauties at Target last week. Aren't they fabulous?!?! They pinch my toes just a smidge, but are a lot better than high heels, but cuter than my other black shoes with no heel. This miscellany doesn't quite tie in with my desire to save money I suppose. :) Eh, I don't have to penny pinch all the time, right?

Great Deals!

So in my quest to start eliminating debt, I've started clipping coupons and checking out various blogs for ideas on how to save money. I thought I would just share a couple of the gems I've come across in the last few days.

First of all, if you go to P&G's Facebook page and "like" their page, then click on the Special Offer tab at the top, you can sign up to receive a coupon booklet for over $110 in coupons for P&G products. P&G products include Bounce, Charmin, Pringles, Crest, Pampers and Luvs, to name a few, so I'm pretty excited for my booklet to come in the mail. Surely there will be a few coupons that I'm going to use in there, right? Apparently the website is running a little slow because of all of the interest in the offer, but if you persevere, you should be able to sign up eventually. I actually got through with no problem, and after I signed up as a member for P&G and filled in my address, they said my booklet would come in 5-10 days. I'll let you all know what I end up with.

My second find in the last week (and I am SUPER!!!! excited about this one) is Amazon Mom. If you click the link, it will direct you to the page that explains the whole process, but let me sum it up a little for you here. Basically, you sign up for this completely free program. (And I went over the whole thing with a fine tooth comb - it is 100% free.) You get three free months of Amazon Prime (which means that you get free two day shipping). For every $25 you spend at one time in the Baby Store, your free membership in Amazon Prime is extended for another month. THEN, you sign up for Subscribe and Save (which means that you are just setting up what you've ordered to be delivered to you on an ongoing schedule) and you will save 30% on whatever you've ordered. If you decide you don't want to do the Subscribe and Save bit anymore, you can unsubsribe at any time at no penalty. At that point you will only save 15% on what you order because of your Amazon Mom membership. So as long as you spend more than $25 a month (and that's $25 before your discount), your free two day shipping will continue for a whole year.

So here's what I'm ordering: diapers. Gonna need 'em, right? With this fabulous deal, I'm able to get a box of 204 Luvs diapers for only $24.18. After tax, $26.16, which comes out to about 13 cents a diaper. Before I found this deal, I was buying a box of 96 diapers for $15.97 which is almost 17 cents a diaper. Biiiiig difference. I'm pretty sure that 204 diapers isn't going to cover a whole month, but it should come pretty close, and if I buy a box of 96 at Wal-mart, it should last me several months with only having to take some out to supplement the big box from Amazon. Granted, the amount of diapers I get will go down when Raegan goes up to a size four, but it would go down in the box I would get from Wal-mart too, so I anticipate this continuing to be a money saver. I priced Diaper Genie refills, another necessity in our house, and we would save money by ordering a three pack through Amazon with the 30% discount, so I'm going to start that subscription for awhile also. If you don't use disposable diapers, I saw that Amazon also sells all forms of cloth diapers. I don't know enough about cloth diapering to know if you are saving any money by going this route, but it wouldn't hurt to check it out, right?

I feel kind of silly to say this, but you cannot imagine how freakin' excited I am for my huge box of diapers to show up on Wednesday. :)

In other savings news, I took some advice from Penny Pinchin' Mom before I went grocery shopping. I looked at the sale ad for Dillons (and compared them to what I knew some of those items cost at Walmart - Walmart is usually cheaper, but not always with a good sale!), organized my coupons, and figured out what I already had in my cupboards and freezer. With a little planning around what was on sale this week, I managed to get away with only spending $76 on groceries (plus paper towels, shampoo and a couple other non-food items). Normally I spend about $100-$125 a week, so this was pretty big. I know we won't be able to save that much on groceries every week, but it was a nice start to keep me motivated.

So to anyone reading this blog: What websites do you read with advice for saving money? Or what strategies do you use that have worked? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Sweet Deals!

Got Raegan's 9 month portraits done at Sear's this afternoon. They turned out really cute. As always, we ended up picking totally different pictures than what I thought we would. Girlie always surprises us! You can follow this link to see all of the shots she took. We ended up getting #7 to share with all of the family, #11 to put in the frame on the coffee table, and a collage to hang on the wall with #15 in black and white as the main picture, then some of the other bathtub pictures in color at the bottom (one of them being #19, which I LOVE!). I was really impressed, because Sear's wasn't really that much more expensive than Wal-mart, and we got a much better selection. Plus, she was a nervous, shy gal so she didn't try to push a whole bunch of poses and backgrounds on us like they always have at Wal-mart. It probably helped that I went in knowing exactly what I wanted?

While I was waiting for her to upload all of the photos so we could pick out what we wanted, I wandered over to the baby clothes, which are strategically placed right next to the portrait studio. Completely on accident, I'm sure! They were having a MAJOR sale on clothing, and I found a couple really cute outfits. Raegan certainly doesn't need any more summer clothes this year, but I found a couple outfits for next summer. The price tags said one was $6.99 and the other was $5.99, which I thought was great. They ended up ringing up for $4.89 and $3.49. Very cool!

I LOVE the colors in this outfit. If they had it in 12 months, I probably would have bought it even though she really doesn't need it. I love plaid!

Olivia, doesn't one of your daughters have this outfit?

After we got done at Sear's, we went over to Old Navy. I had seen a commercial for men's cargo shorts for $15 and Luke has been wanting to get another pair. He couldn't find any he liked in his size, but he was able to find a pair of board shorts for $8 that he will use as a swimsuit. I also found this swimsuit for Raegan for $10:

Raegan has one already (thanks again, Olivia!) but it's still a little big for her and she keeps basically undressing herself because she can slip out of the straps so easy. We figured it would be worth it because we have out blow up pool up now, so she should get plenty of use out of it.

I love good bargains!