Odd

I find it funny how many people it takes at Wally's World to give me back 8 cents in coupon overage.

Free Food

A couple of years ago I heard that the big city near us offered free lunches for the kids during the summer. It was too far to drive to make it worthwhile.

This summer I found out our little town was being offered also. We missed a couple of days, but the days we went, the food was good and surprise, surprise, the food was offered to adults also. The biggest surprise is that each family is given a bag of groceries on Fridays.

I hope they do this again next year, it was a good reason to go to the park and play with friends.

Finally!

Coupons, coupons, coupons. I have been trying very hard to get this coupon thing to work. I haven't done too bad, a few free things here and there, but overall, I was beginning to think it just wasn't going to ever work out like on Extreme Couponers.

But . . . . .

Wait, wrong picture. I did not have a coupon for a kitten, but we did get her for free.

Someone is a photo hog.
Alright, Delilah the Cat! Move! I'm trying to talk about couponing here, not how cute kittens are.

Now for the low down. Most of this not edible, but hey, clean toilets for free is something!

28 candy bars (mysteriously, 4 are already missing) (Oh, and these are for our upcoming vacation, 10 hours one way in a van. I use anything I can to make it thru that.)

6 ct. bag of scrubby sponges

2 small bags of candy

1 jar of peanuts

1 box of toasted oats cereal

4 pounds of sugar

bag of chocolate chips

2 -2 liters of Mt. Dew

12 ct. box of microwave popcorn

2 small bags of chips

2 cans of fancy shaving cream

1 bottle of hairspray

1 bottle of fancy liquid body soap

bag of birthday ballons

1 toothbrush

2 rolls of bandage tape

bottle of Swiffer mop cleaner liquid

box of Swiffer mop pads

Airwick automatic spray dispenser

Airwick refill for the dispenser

11 bottles of Lysol Toilet Bowl Cleaner

3 bottles Lysol cleaner with bleach

8 bottles Lysol counter spray

I think that's it. For a total value of about $126.00.

$126.00

I came home with $6 in my pocket.

Let me rephrase that.

The store gave me $6 to take this all home.

I didn't pay a cent for any of this.
Thank you Lord!

I'm a Winner!

Entered a store drawing and won $25 gift certificate. Cool.

Spent it on hamburger mostly, on sale of course.

Peanut Butter

Got 16 oz. jars of peanut butter for 92 cents a piece. Best price on pb in about a year. Could only get 5 of them, but that should keep us for a month or so. I already have about 2 dozen other jars on the shelf, so didn't fret about only being able to get 5 jars at this time.

Now I have got to find some recipes that use pb that doesn't involve jelly and bread.

Funny Things In The Mail

The mailman probably thinks I am a weirdo due to the things that come to my house in the mail. Good thing my husband is friends with the postmaster. Here is an incomplete list, due to the fact I am a bit tired from my overactive summer activities.

coffee cup, complete with instant coffee, but no water. cheap company.

baby magazines for new mothers. (my oldest is 17 and my youngest is almost 7. I don't think I qualify for new.)

bees

personal mail for the previous residents. we've been here 8 years.

mail for my father in law who has never lived in this town and doesn't have the same first name as my husband and the zip code was even wrong to begin with.

Freebie Thursday

Went to Wallyworld today and got:

Secret Clinical deoderant = $ free/moneymaker after coupon

6 bars of Ivory soap = $ free after coupon

personal care products = $1.67 after $2 coupon

Most impressive of all was that I didn't get a combative cashier. Very nice.

Hamburger

Ended up at the local grocery on a Monday

Found 70/30 percent hamburger marked down to $1 a pound.

Three things were odd about this.

1. Meat is only marked down on Tuesday morning.

2. Meat hasn't been $1 a pound in a long time.

3. I actually had money.

Sooooo. . . . .

I picked up 45 pounds.

And walked around the store in shock.

While people stared at me and even said to me, "Wow, that's. . . a lot of meat."

I forgot the Manwich mix.

( I know, not frugal, but we haven't found a homemade version we like. Yet.)

So, when I backtracked to the 2nd aisle, I went past the meat section again.

The butcher was putting out more markdown hamburger.

This time it was 93/7 percent.

No.Way.

So I traded in the higher fat version I had in my cart for the lower fat hamburger.

And walked around the store some more.

Cool.

Thank you Lord.

Extreme Couponing

There has been alot of fuss about that new show "Extreme Couponers" and I was mostly suprised when my own teen voiced that "That would be really cool if we could do that." I think so too. Evidentally my years of yelling, "Stay away from my coupons," " Don't mess my coupon mess up," " Stop, those are my coupons!" have finally sunk in. Well, maybe he just wants to be on TV.

While Waiting. . . .

While waiting to pick up a teen from her new job, I got to spend 3 hours in Walmart.

By. My. Self.

It was late evening and there was not a whole lot of people there. I took my whole coupon collection in and went round and round looking for good deals. I finally found some things, and enjoyed myself completely. Some of the good deals:

20 packages of taco seasoning for 11 cents each.

4 trial sizes of deoderant, making 3 cents on each, after coupons.

1 large bottle of body wash for free.

12 disposable razors for 97 cents

1 bottle of baby formula, making $1.16 after coupons

1 bottle of steak sauce, free

And somehow I got out of there paying a total of 57 cents. Cool.

Seeds! Seeds! Seeds!

Got the 25 packs of seeds today from the Seeds of Change company!

Sorry, but it was a big disappointment.

I was thinking that I would get 25 different varieties of seeds. Maybe even 12 different varieties, of 2 packets each or something.

Nope.

5 variety of seeds.

Corn

Lettuce

Hot Pepper

Eggplant

And wait for it. . . .

9,yes, NINE packets of radishes.

What the heck am I going to do with 9 packets of radishes?

I hope the chickens like radishes. They may be eating alot of them this winter.

Cereal Deal

Finally got a good deal on cereal. I won't ever get to be an Extreme Couponer here where we live, but I got four boxes of cereal for 75 cents a piece today. It was on sale for $2.50 (reg. $3.59), I had a coupon for 25 cents off a box (which couldn't be doubled) and the store had a Catalina for $6 off when you buy 4 boxes. I couldn't get another $6 Catalina coupon until the next day, but I managed to get a rain check on some of the cereal, so now I can go back and get another 4 boxes. Whoo hoo!

update: when I went back with the raincheck, the cashier doubled the coupons, which brought the price to 50 cents a box. Double Whoo Hoo!

Day 25: Freebies

Another slow week in the freebie mail department. Got a pretty Italian food calendar, some vitamins, and personal care products. I did manage to use coupons to get free nail tips. Only problem is, I don't wear nail tips. Or know anyone who does. Maybe I will put them in the kindergarten's treasure box. You know, kind of payback for who ever put the whistles in there. I know I am odd.

Mail Call

What a bummer, nothing good in the mail today. Probably has something to do with the holidays and companies taking time off from offering freebies/samples. That's ok, I was called into work last night and might have been too tired to open samples. (NOT !~hehe)

(p.s. oops ! did get something, some free address labels!)

Mail Call

I love it when my hubby gets home and throws me a bunch of samples he found cluttering up the mailbox! Today was a dog day, the little guy got a sample of lamb and rice dog food, an engravable dog paw tag for his collar and a Kong! I priced out Kongs at the feed store and they seem to go for about $6.99 minimum. It claims to be indistructable, but we'll see. (This dog eats wood as a past time, wood as in stairs, table legs, chair legs, baseboards. . . . )

Gift Card

Received a $10 gift card for McDonalds today. I found a postcard in a box I was unpacking at work and I guess the people at the factory were tracking where their boxes ended up at. So I filled out the postcard and they sent me a $10 McDonalds gift card. Cool!

Day 5: On-line Freebies

Am a big fan of signing up for free samples online. It used to be that "samples" were a little quarter ounce of shampoo, but lately I have gotten some really good ones. I signed up for a free "sample" of coconut oil, and was suprised to get this 16 oz. jar in the mail. Much later I was really suprised to find out this same jar sells for $25 online. What a "sample!"

Last week alone I got a free calendar, 6 oz. bag of lamb and rice dog food, address labels, 1.75 oz. bag of Seattle's best coffee, and a very small container of Burt's Bees lotion. Not bad for just surfing the web while watching some mindless tv!

Day 4: Clip Clip

Coupons. Yes, I am starting to cut coupons again. In what seems like a previous life, I had two boxes of coupons I would take every trip to the store and use them. I must of had a stalker back then because once while I was in the checkout line, someone actually stole my whole file box of coupons right out of my cart. I now take a much larger box, in hopes of deterring a theft.

Back when the kids were really little, I could get triple coupons at most places, but not anymore. And some stores around me now do not even accept computer printed coupons, so I don't know how much I can really save with the coupons. But I will try. My big deal of the week so far is that I got a roll of packaging tape for 25 cents after using a $1 coupon. Whoo hoo!

Can't eat it, but at least we won't run out of tape for awhile. I have a hard time keeping up with the expiration of coupons. The coupons used to last 6 months or more, but I just cut out some from a Dec. 20th dated magazine and the coupons expire on Jan. 11th. I cut them out just in case.