Sometimes Even Couponing Doesn't Help

It has been a good week. Like I said I work for Residence Life, so we are gearing up to start moving in residents in a week. Part of that is training our staff and this week we started with our Hall Directors, training went really good, so that has made me very happy. But it has been a very long week, and now it is getting even longer because I am sick. My normally happy trips to the store were miserable, like, "if I have to take 5 more steps I may pass out miserable", but what are you going to do? Shopping has to get done and tomorrow starts another two weeks of training, so not much spare time coming up soon:)

Despite my misery I was able to get some good deals this weekend. CVS had the suave 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner on sale for $1.33, which was already an ok deal, and then you got $3 ECB when you spent $10 on suave products, so these were about 95 cents each with no coupons. Husband likes this kind, so now I won't have to buy it for a really long time! There were coupons and ECBs for both of the razors, I got the Bic one for free and the gillette one for 99 cents. I always get a little confused on how I am doing on these deals, but I left the house today with $10 ECB, came back with $6 ECB and spent $6 in the process, I am going to go ahead and call that even.

In one of my many trips to Walmart (please don't ask, between work trips and personal trips it is just way too many to count) I scored these for free. They are the trial pack of the cascade gel packs and they sell for 97 cents, I had $1 off coupons, hooray!

This was our trip to Publix. Husband loves pop tarts, I'm not so much a fan, but they were bogo this week and I had $1/3 coupons. That made them about 75 cents a box, which is crazy cheap for these. Lettuce was also bogo, my coupon should have doubled, but didn't, oh well I was not in the mood to fight over a dollar and $1.50 a bag is still a good deal.

We also made a very quick stop at Kroger. I've never really done the hamburger helper before, but we bought a lot of ground meat last week and I'm not so sure what to do with it all. Between sales, coupon, and a catalina these were about 50 cents a box, and I'm willing to try almost anything for that price. Pudding is on sale for 88 cents each and bell peppers were 59 cents each, the cheapest I have seen them in forever.

And then there was this deal from Earthfare. They sent us coupons for a quart of organic ice cream for $1, already a great deal. We get there today and they have sold out of that and are instead substituting this 1.75 quart container of natural ice cream or a rain check for the organic. Yeah, I'll go with the natural! Both husband and I had a coupon and we spent a whopping $2.16 cents including tax for both of these.

Quick CVS Trip

By quick I mean sudden. There was a $1.50 off skintimate cream shave coupon released this week. It is a high value coupon, but the cream shave (which is different from the shave cream, go figure) is usually much more expensive. I know the skintimate shave creams and gels were going to be on sale this week for $2.19, but I never thought that would include the cream shave (normally at least $3.50 each). Well, it was reported on sale on the blogs and I had to make a quick plan. After a little difficulties with trying to print more of the $1.50 coupons- read had a fight with my husband about it- we left for the store, because in the end is $1 really worth a big fight?

So here is the deal I got:
6 skintimate cream shave on sale for $2.19 (-$1.50 coupon) final price= 69 cents each
1 shick hydro razor on sale for $7.99 (-$4 coupon) final price= $3.99
Buy $20 worth of shick products and get $10 extra bucks back, spent $7.44 plus tax and got back $10!

I also got:
3 soft soap pampered hands on sale for $2 (-$1 coupon, I only had 2)= $4
Buy 3 soft soap and get $3 extra bucks back, plus I used $1 ECB I had from a previous wee, made it free!

We actually had to go to 4 different CVS stores to get this stuff because the cream shave was ridiculously hard to find. In case you did not know CVS tracks your ECB deals on your card, so for example if there is a spend X amount and get X amount of ECBs, you don't have to buy it all at once, you just have to buy it all during the week that the deal is offered. The best moment of our CVS trips was definitely the freak out we witnessed in store #3. I had just gotten there and got the last 6 cream shaves (I know you shouldn't shelf clear, but I needed it to make my deal work) and we had asked the guy there to check in the back to see if there were any more of the razors. When he came out he told us there were no more and this girl heard him. She was like "Are there no more shick razors?" and the guy told her no. At first she was just a little annoyed, but then all of a sudden she starts yelling, "Are you kidding me?!? At 12:30 on a Sunday!!!" and the poor guy was like, "I'm sorry, I don't think we even had any this morning. I got husband and hurried away before this crazy person could see that I had all of the cream  shave! As we were headed up to the register she started muttering about how this is all because of the coupons. Whatever girl, I don't believe you were here to buy an $8 razor, you had the same $4 coupon that I had which expires today! She looked like she was about to have a stroke. My goodness, we all like a good deal but you don't need to be yelling in the middle of a store, just try another store.

This morning when we went to get coupons, which were pretty sucky this week, we also made a quick stop at Kroger because they had an awesome cereal and milk deal. When you buy 4 participating general mills cereals you get 2 free gallons of milk. This deal didn't get a lot of attention on the blogs and I'm not sure why. Milk was $3.19 each gallon, so that would cost me almost $7 just for milk, well some of the cereals were $2.50 a box, so you could spend $10 and get 4 boxes of cereal and 2 gallons of milk, that is already a decent deal without coupons. I made it even better with $3 worth of coupons, so I spent $7 and get all of that, so basically my cereal was free because I would have bought the milk anyway (husband is a milk-a-holic). We also found a really good meat deal. These 5 lb rolls of ground meat are usually $10, but since they are close to their sell by date they were on sale for $7, making it $1.40/lb, which is a great deal. All you need to do is freeze it in smaller portions and take it out on the day you are going to use it. We also got some ingredients for these amazing sandwiches:

 

It is hard to tell, but it is grilled chicken with onions, bell pepper and zucchini with red sauce and provolone cheese...fantastic!

Mmmm...Twice Baked Potatoes

I usually ask husband to post about recipes, but he is such a perfectionist that it would take forever to get him to do this, so I am going to give it a shot. This is our awesome dinner that we had tonight. The steak is the ribeye that we got from eathfare a while ago and to go with it we made one of my favorites- twice baked potatoes. They are actually pretty easy and you can make a bunch and freeze them for later.

Step 1: Wrap desired amount of potatoes in foil and preheat oven to 450 degrees

Step 2: Put potatoes in oven and bake for 1 hour or until soft

Step 3: Slice potatoes lengthwise and scoop out all of the stuff out of them- we have found that an ice cream scoop works really well

Step 4: Add butter, sour cream, salt, pepper, milk and some shredded cheese to potato stuff and mix until creamy, we recommend kraft with a touch of philly three cheese blend,it melts really well

Step 5: Put mixture back into potato skins, we just made a quick pipping bag out of  a sanwhich bag

Step 6: Top with additional cheese and bacon bits, bake for about 15 minutes and enjoy!

Like I said these freeze really well. We put them in a large tupperware container so that we can just pull a couple out as well need them. They do not take long to defrost and they just need to go in the oven for a few minutes to heat them and melt the cheese. If you are one of those people that need an act recipe with exact ingredient portions check it out on allrecipes.com- http://allrecipes.com/recipe/ultimate-twice-baked-potatoes/detail.aspx

Stockpiling...

It really is just amazing how much stuff you can accumulate in a few months. I look back on the first couple of pictures of our fledgling stockpile and smile when I think about how much stuff we have gotten and how very little we have paid for it. I sometimes really just can't believe that we have only been doing this for about 5 months. Today I thought I would show you some updated pictures of our stockpiling spaces. This space above used to just house our items like shampoo, body wash, etc. However, we are running a little short on space in our kitchen so husband finally convinced me to start putting some food items back there as well. We also have lots of stuff stored in those drawers.

I absolutely love this. I don't even like cereal, but husband does and so I have been able to amass this great wall of cereal for him, in case you are trying to count that is 20 boxes. I know that seems excessive, but he really does eat it like everyday and it stays good for a long time.

It seems like not long ago (maybe a month!) our new little freezer was almost totally empty, well not anymore! On my trip home my mom made us a ton of food (mmm... meatballs and spaghetti, yummy!). You can't see it really well, but we also have a half-gallon container of real New Orleans chocolate snoball, because what they call a snowball here is so not even close.

Speaking of being back home in New Orleans, it was a great time to stock up on shrimp. That whole left side of the freezer there in those ziploc bags- that is shrimp. I found them at home for $2/lb, this week in the Kroger ad a comparable size shrimp that were previously frozen were "on sale" for $6.99/lb and the websites were indicating that was a good price! My mommy also bought a lot, I mean a whole lot, of shrimp because they had some gorgeous larger ones, so she gave me some of those as well as what she had left in her freezer to make room for her new ones.

All of my shrimp will go very well with all of this pasta roni we bought today at Kroger. I can't even believe the price of this stuff! They have it included in the mega sale this week and after savings it is 49 cents a box- that is ridiculous! We use 2 boxes of the pasta and one bag of shrimp to make shrimp fettucinni, that makes dinner $3 which is awesome to me:) We also grabbed a couple of other things while we were there. We are going to make these amazing stuffed potatoes tonight, I'll post about that later, so we grabbed some stuff for that. I don't know if you have tried to buy bacon lately, but that stuff is super expensive. They had carolina pride bacon on sale this week for $2.50 and I had a coupon that made each pack $1.50, which is about half the price of what I normally consider to be a deal!

Thanks Ruby Tuesday, We Think You Are Awesome Too!

I am back home after a week and a half away. I loved having some time to be back at home with family and the conference I went to was awesome. But now it is time to shop! We hit Publix and Kroger today, but before I show you that let me tell you about our trip to Ruby Tuesday. I saw online today that they were giving away burgers on Facebook, so I got one for me and one for husband. We called RT and asked if we could use both at the same time and they said yes. We found out when we got there that this wasn't just their regular burger, you could use it on ANY burger. Also, it came with two sides! So we both got a prime burger and husband got one with bacon, we got soft drinks and also each got the salad bar and our bill was $11.62 plus tip. The best part about RT is that you can eat the salad bar there and then take your food home, so it is really like two meals in one! Awesome coupon RT, we enjoyed it!

Ok, now on to shopping. It was a pretty decent ad at Publix this week. The cereal was bogo and I had some great coupons that I got with a sample, so they were about $1.20 a boxand one of them was free. The IBC rootbeer is actually really expensive- $4 for 6 bottles, but this week they are on sale buy 2 get 1 free (b2g1 in couponing terms) and there was a Publix coupon for $3 off Publix ice cream ($4.50) when you buy 2 IBC rootbeer, for $9.50 we got 3 packs of rootbeer and some ice cream. The lettuce was free since I had a coupon for $2 off Publix produce and I also had a free coupon for the cheese, which I don't think you can really see in the picture.

Next we headed to Kroger where there is a mega sale going on, buy 10 participating items and save $5 (which is 50 cent savings per item). After savings the mountain dew was 89 cents each and we had $1/3 coupons, so they were around 60 cents each. The honey mustard sauce was between 26 and 50 cents each bottle. We didn't have coupons for the velveeta/easy mac or pringles, but they were all really cheap. There are 42 items here and we paid $27; at Publix we got 20 items for $23, so a pretty good day as far as I am concerned- that free burger didn't hurt either:)

Last Post for a Little While

I am heading out of town for a week and a half, partly for vacay and partly to go to a conference for work, so I won't be posting during that time. But before I go I thought I would share a Publix shopping trip from today.

This was fairly expensive, about $45, but we did save over $65 so pretty good percentage wise. We also got a huge seedless watermelon and a 2 liter of nestea. I had an earthfare coupon for $2 for a watermelon and they had hangtags for a free nestea when you bought a watermelon. This trip to Publix exemplifies why I love their store more than any other. We were walking around with this giant watermelon in our basket, and this Publix employee came up to us and told us that you get a free nestea with the watermelon, and then went up to the front got it and brought it to us. Where else can you possibly get customer service like that, certainly not Walmart!

Let's see, humus was bogo and we had $1 off coupons, so they were $1 each, the pita bread to go with it was a little over $1. The wanchai ferry/romano's macaroni grill meals were a good deal, they are bogo this week and with $1.50 off coupons for each they were about $2.75 each. I'm really not sure what the cashier did because I only had 3 coupons, but 6 showed up on my receipt- not complaining! The mustard was a great deal, also bogo and with coupons they were 40 cents each. The veggie oil was on sale and with coupons they worked out to about $2 each, which is about what you can get them for at Walmart, but this way we didn't have to go to Walmart! We have been eating less fried food lately so those should last us a long time. The waffles were bogo (seeing a theme here?), and with coupons got them for about 80 cents a box. The foil was a pretty good deal, they were bogo and with 75 cent coupon I got them for about $1.50 for 75 square feet. The other stuff is just random things we grabbed while there- husband really liked the ribs last time we got them so we grabbed a pack for about $8, he got the vienna sausage to eat while I am out of town (yuck!), the rotel was bogo, and we got shake and bake to put on the yummy porkchops we had for dinner tonight.