Finally, coupon shopping from me...

Monday's shopping trip:

Tuesday's shopping trip below:


and Wednesday's shopping trip:

Total Cost (before sales/coupons): $283.10

Total Out-of-Pocket: $109.55

Savings of $173.55


Here's the breakdown by store:

KROGER (monday)
Total: $152.52
Out-of-Pocket: 64.06
Savings of: 88.46

9 boxes of Cheerios:
- $1.17 each (usually $3.00)
- Each box had a $1.50 Pampers coupon on it - yippee!

3 boxes of Kix Cereal
- $1.17 each (usually 2.30)

4 Glade Candles
- $1.25 each (usually $2.99)

3 Dial Liquid Hand Soap
- $0.10 each (usually 1.99 each)

4 packages of Duracell batteries
- $1.75 each (usually $4.29 each)

2 Shout Laundry Stain Removal Spray bottles
- $1.25 each (usually $2.99 each)

2 Duncan Hines Frosting
- $0.62 (usually $1.89)
- Normally we don't buy this kind of stuff, but TS is having his b-day and I have too much going on to make a cake from scratch! I'm still planning on decorating it fun, though. Hopefully it'll work out!

1 Breyer's Ice Cream 1.75 qts
- $1.50 each (usually $5.19 - for TS' birthday)

3 Scotch Brite Ultra NailSaver Scrub Sponges
- $0.49 (usually $1.99)

2 Hefty Freezer Bags
- $0.45 each (usually 2.49)


All the things above were part of a Mix & Match deal. If you buy any ten of these items, you get $5 off at the register. I bought a touch over 30 items, and got $15 immediately taken off. Most of the items were also on sale in addition AND I had coupons for almost all of them. So, a sale, a coupon, and then money off - pretty good!

I also bought the things below. They weren't part of the deal:

1 Duncan Hines Cake Mix
- $0.63 (usually 1.99)

4 Glade Air Fresheners
- $0.50 each (usually $1.29)

9 Campbell's Cream Soups
- $0.45 each (usually 1.19 each)

Private Selection Angus Ground Chuck, 8.29 lbs
- 1.99 per pound (usually 3.99 lb)

Black Seedless Grapes
- .97 lb

2 Oxy Spot Treatment
- $1.85 each (usually $5.19 each)

2 gallons of milk
- $2.50 (not sure what this specific brand usually is - it's common for milk to be $3.50 or more around here)


ALBERTSONS (monday)
Total Cost: $30.74
Out-of-Pocket: $12.90
Savings of: $17.84

Oranges
- $0.79 per lb (usually $2.29 lb)

Cameo Apples
- $0.79 per lb (usually $1.99 lb)

6 Tiger's Milk Nutrition Bar
- $0.40 (usually $0.79 each)

9 Kleenex Facial Tissue w/Lotion
- $0.67 (usually $1.29 each)


TOM THUMB (monday)
Total Cost: $61.19
Out-of-Pocket: $20.06
Savings of: $41.13

4 Glade Air Fresheners (better selection than Kroger had!)
- $0.50 each (usually 1.79 each)

4 Swanson Broth
- $0.34 each (usually $1.29 each)

4 Progresso Broth
- $1 each (usually $2.89 each)

2 Carnation Evaporated Milk
- $0.50 each (usually $1.35)

4 Healthy Choice Fresh Mixers
- $1.50 (usually $3.99)

Red Seedless Grapes
- $0.98 lb (usually $2.99 lb)

Hot House Tomates
- $0.98 lb (usually $3.99 lb)

3 Campbell's Cream Soups
- $0.45 each (usually $1.50)


TOM THUMB (tuesday)
Total Cost: $25.88
Out-of-Pocket: $7.08
Savings of: $18.80

When I went on Monday, they were out of some stuff. They said to come back Tuesday, so I did:

8 Fresh & Simple Ragu Pouches
- $0.67 each (usually $2.49 each)

4 Safeway Pastas
-$0.43 (usually $1.49 each)


ALBERTSONS (wednesday)
Total Cost: $12.74
Out-of-Pocket: $5.45
Savings of: $7.29

5 packages of Taco Bell taco shells
- $1 each (usually $2.19)

1 package of Veg All Steamed Veggies
- $0.45 (usually $1.79)


Truth is I do not have the time to sit and figure out all of this! My coupon shopping almost came to a halt when Violet was a couple months old - when she stopped sleeping all the time. I no longer had time to try to figure stuff out, so I signed up with this place:
www.thegrocerygame.com.

It's really quite nice. I just print off a list per store, search for what I want, pull out the matching coupons, and off I go. I make it sound like it takes five minutes, but it actually does take a bit of time still, especially for deals like the Mix & Match thing.

They do it regionally so that you can have a list accurate for your own specific area. You can do a trial run for $1 for four weeks (I think it was). If you don't want to continue, you cancel.

Here's the breakdown:
- It's $10 for the first store and $5 for each additional store for every TWO months (or about nine weeks).
- For me that equals $20 per two months.
- That's $2.22 per week total
- or $0.74 per store per week

That $20 is earned back pretty quickly by saving so much. It also gives me some deals that I might have missed otherwise. Right now, it's either I do this or else I don't do much coupon shopping at all... For me, it's totally worth it! Anyway, check it out if you find yourself not having time to figure out shopping yourself. I personally wouldn't use it for CVS or Walgreens. There are so many blogs out there that have that info.

But since I'm using The Grocery Game, I won't be posting any of my deals until after they are over since I'm sure they wouldn't be happy if I did that.

Teresa

Need Glasses?

TS got a hold of my glasses and broke off one of the arms (legs?). So, for the past few weeks I've been walking around at home with my one-legged glasses on. If anyone bumps my face, including myself, my glasses fall off. Though it makes it really easy to rub my eye on that side because I don't have to work around the arm/leg/thing. I've also noticed it kinds of messes up my vision because my glasses tilt funny now making it so I'm not seeing through the correct spot on my glasses.

Basically I look REALLY cool wearing my glasses.

I really wanted to get new glasses, but my prescription is too old. So, I'd been trying to work out an eye appt, which isn't the easiest thing with a 3 month old, who very muchly still wants mommy.

Luckily I have contacts...kind of.

They are dailies. I went to see how many contacts I had left, and I apparently have no contacts remaining for my right eye and five for my left eye. Gee, that makes sense. How does this happen? For some reason my right eye contacts kept ripping, so I went through them faster. Very annoying. They'd sometimes rip just from being put in my eye. They were Focus Dailies, and I'm hopefully switching to get Acuvue Oasis (doing a trial pair right now and I like them MUCH more!).

So, I'd been wearing my one-legged glasses at home. When I went out, I'd been wearing my left contacts in both eyes. It's been great. I like always having my vision slightly messed up.

Now for the main reason I'm telling you my story...

I kind of also wasn't too happy about having to buy glasses, as well as contacts. It gets kind of expensive! Our insurance gives us some money we can use, but it doesn't come close to covering glasses AND contacts, and I really do prefer both.

My solution - an $8 pair of glasses that my not-real-sister-in-law told me about. Before you laugh at me for getting that color of glasses, I would like to specify that I got one of the brown ones - you can see a photo of it if you scroll down to the bottom of the page of the link above. I did not get the color of the one in the main photo.

I'm sure it will look horribly ugly on me since I haven't been able to try them on, but really - it's EIGHT DOLLARS! Plus, I only wear my glasses at home, so if the kids aren't afraid of me when I'm wearing them, then I don't care. Tyler thinks I'm a hotty no matter how grotesque I look (something is wrong with him).

My not-real-sister-in-law, who we will call Jay, since that's her name, has ordered two of these little babies. She likes both of them. You can read her review here. And she posted pictures of her beautiful self wearing them here.

So, if you're in need of glasses, and want some cheap ones, there are a ton of options here:
ZENNI OPTICAL

Teresa

Weekly Total

I don't typically post my weekly totals but I had such a nice week of couponing that I thought I would share. The nice thing about this week is that it's been almost completely Albs deals and lots of useful stuff too! I hope next week is so nice! :-)

Total OOP: $34.17

Total Savings: $182.62

Becca

Albertsons....again

I went to Albertsons for another deal today.

I ended up with:
5-All small & mighty detergent (MFC: $1/1)
4- Dove sham/cond (MFC: $1.50/1)
2- Club crackers (no deal, just needed some)
4- Carefree (on clearance for .94) (MFC: $1/2)
1- baby wash (no deal, just needed some)
6- strip yeast packet things, clearance (MFC: BOGOF)
6- yogurt (MFC: $1/3)


Total OOP: $12.25

Total Savings: $102.84

I also earned an unexpected $3 CAT. The yeast strips are on clearance for $1.60. I used my BOGOF coupons for it. For each strip I got, I got a .50 CAT. I think I might go back and get some more since I still have more coupons. There are also coupons for .65 off the same brand of yeast but if you use the BOGOF coupons, it's cheaper. So if you live in the area, check it out at Albs, it should be with the other yeast and/or in the front with all the other deals they have for the week.

Becca

Albertsons

I'm glad Albertsons finally had some decent deals this week. Here was I got:

4- Ragu
1- 4 pack of muffins
6- chicken broth
2-spaghetti noddles
2- 2lb bags of flour
1- box of oat cereal
2- frozen veggie stir fry
1- 1 pkg bean sprouts
2- Dove deodorant
1- Suave lotion
3- pkgs of flour tortillas

Total OOP: $15.52
Total Savings: $57.52

Part of what made this deal fun is that if you bought $30 worth of specific items, you get $15 catalina. So the first transaction we did all the coupon deals and got it down to about $14.00. Today we went back and used our $15 doing some coupon deals but mostly just good deals to buy food that we eat, like stuff for Thai pizzas.

I think tomorrow I'll go back and do another deal but get different stuff, of course. It's hard to get real great grocery deals so it's nice when one presents itself.

Becca

October

October really wasn't a great month for deals, I think. There were a few good things going on but overall it wasn't too impressive so I didn't do that much shopping. But here is what I spent and saved for October (this includes all grocery and household items).

Total OOP: $148.96

Savings: $289.63

Unfortunately I totally forgot to get my free stuff at Walgreens for October. I remembered about 2 days too late! Hopefully next month.

Becca