More Than a Little

Walgreens (oh, how I do love Walgreens) is offering 20 free 4×6 photos, today only.  Simply upload your twenty prints and use the code ONEDAY at checkout.  Then, choose in-store pickup to avoid shipping fees.  I have been pleased with their photo quality and service in the past.  During the last free 8×10 promotion, my two photos had a line down the middle, and the lady was deeply apologetic, explained why it happened and printed them again for me. I even got to keep the two misprints, neither of which were so bad that they were unusable.

Order today, pick up when you have time, but move fast, because this code only works today.

Do you like romance novels?  I do.  I know it’s not cool but I love reading books with guaranteed happy endings.

Tell Harlequin is a site that I’ve been a member of for a few years. Ever so often, they mail two books to you for free. The only catch is that after you read them, you have to fill out a brief survey about them. They’re looking for your opinions on the characters and plot and writing, even if those opinions are negative. I have generally enjoyed most of the ones I’ve received except for the last batch. I have two more on my desk right now that I need to read. (Too bad I am currently engrossed in The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb–I am loath to read anything else right now!)

So, go sign up.  Free books! Fun mail delivered at random! You can’t lose.

Most of the people I talk to about my shopping hobby are completely shocked (and confused) at the type and quantity of stuff I buy. They look at my storage closet and think that I have lost my mind. Everyone wants to know what I do with all of the stuff I buy. I think the implied question is really not so much what I do with everything, but why I am buying mountains of STUFF. It’s hard to explain how some of these deals work to a layperson. I see eyes glaze over when I start trying to explain coupon overages and how you have to buy things you don’t want in order to afford the things you do. I can understand that. I mean, it wasn’t so long ago that I was the same way!

After they ask what I do with the stuff, they usually want to know how I do it. Most of the time, I can’t really explain how someone might duplicate any given deal because the deal is expired. Usually, the person doesn’t really want to know how to buy sixteen bottles of Robitussin, anyway. They specifically want to buy one bottle, or how to get a free bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper or how to get a $5 coupon to JC Penney or Kohl’s (hint: you can use multiple email addresses for this!) or things like that–they want to hear about the best deals that are available right now for them.

The thing is, this sort of deal-watching takes time and effort, and generally, most people just aren’t interested in doing that much research. By starting this blog, my hope is that I can sort through the tedious or mediocre deals to find the easiest, best deals for regular, non-coupon-obsessed people. Couponing for real people, in other words.  I get to help people, and you get to save money. We both win!  I can’t actually go shopping for someone else most of the time, but I can try to make it easy enough for everyone to get in on the occasional great deal, and these days, every little bit helps.

Also, on a pure geekery level, I finally have a place where I can write about the nerdy details of my shopping exploits. :)

But it’s not all about spending or saving money!  It’s about the things that spending less allows you to do–living better.  I like to cook and take care of my house (I draw the line at saying I like to clean, but there are other house-related tasks that I like, like organizing and decorating and home improvement…. well, I like it when my husband likes that one, but still.)  I enjoy crafts and I I love being home with my baby girl.  All of those things will make an appearance here.  I will probably also post occasionally about my husband (henceforth referred to as M, because that is what I call him half the time) and daughter, Evelyn. Basically, anything is fair game, but most of what you’ll find has to do with frugality and domesticity.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by, and I hope to see you again soon. :)

I make pizza from scratch pretty often, because it’s dirt cheap, healthier and my husband and I both prefer my pizza to delivery. However, sometimes you want to just throw something from the freezer into the oven, and we always have a few frozen pizzas in our basement freezer.  I have discovered that no matter what kind you get, they always need a little “dressing up” to taste their best. I think everyone puts some extra mozzarella cheese on frozen pizzas, but I have also found that sprinkling a few chopped onions and green peppers on top, and adding quality pepperoni instead of the frozen lumps of meat product they put on them, makes a huge difference in the taste.  I actually go so far as to remove the pepperoni that comes on it and throw it away, although that is not terribly frugal of me to admit. My husband made fun of me at first for doing it (he is a huge meat fan, but not terribly picky about it, either) but even he admitted that it vastly improved the whole pizza.

(Wait. Isn’t this post supposed to be about green peppers?)

The thing is, I don’t usually have green peppers in my crisper. I buy them for specific recipes, and honestly, I try to avoid buying them most of the time because they cost too much.  That means, I rarely have any sitting around that I don’t have earmarked for something else.  Last summer, I started chopping up the leftover bits–you know, that wonky piece around the stem, or any of the pepper that would just go to waste, and some of the ones given to me from my mom’s garden and throwing them in a baggie in the freezer. Ta da! Now I pull the baggie directly out of the freezer, sprinkle a few frozen pieces on top of the pizza, and put the bag back.  Instant fresh pepper goodness, directly from your freezer.

In the winter, green peppers are pretty expensive, so when my last batch of diced peppers ran out, I bought a bag of pre-chopped frozen peppers on sale. Luxury convenience food, cheaper than the alternatives of dicing it myself.  They work just as well and you don’t have to clean up pepper seeds.

This trick also works in many other green pepper applications, but I mainly use it for pizza, both frozen and homemade.  You can also do it for onions, but I always have an onion in the fridge, so I don’t use frozen onions as much. (If chopping onions really hurts your eyes, though, it may be a wise investment for you. I am the designated onion chopper in this household, and although it does make me cry, it doesn’t usually bother me too much. My husband would enjoy having some in the freezer, though, so perhaps I should make him a batch for his special meals.. but his cooking projects really deserve their own post. Let’s just say that there’s a reason I do most of the cooking!)

I meant to post this yesterday, but I had a serious case of the lazies. I sat down in the afternoon and flipped through a  magazine, of all things. (It was my first issue of my All You subscription, so I was thinking of coupons anyway, but still!)  I momentarily felt guilty until I remembered that I don’t actually have to DO something all the time.  I know! Even moms get to relax a little sometimes!

Meal Plan
Monday: Quesadilla for me, an omelet for the husband and pasta for the baby
Tuesday: something in the crockpot involving chicken, salsa, corn and cheese.. whatever it turns out to be
Wednesday: grilled cheese and tomato soup
Thursday: Dinner at Longhorn!
Friday: macaroni and cheese, unknown vegetable

I signed up recently to do mystery shopping for Longhorn.  They reimburse up to $30, plus payment of $10.  I have to order a beverage, appetizer, entree and dessert. Longhorn is pretty expensive so I’m guessing we’ll end up just getting a free/cheap meal out of the whole thing but that is more than enough for me! I love it and we almost never go there because of the cost.  It’s even conveniently located near Valentine’s Day so we can tack it on as a bonus celebration. :)  If you’d like to do some mystery dining at Longhorn, you can sign up at Focus on Service. I had this job scheduled within hours of signing up. You can go up to two times per year.. can’t beat that. :)

The baby and I headed out on Monday for a round of shopping at CVS and Walgreens.  I considered myself extremely extravagant to buy two packages of Pampers and one bottle of Dawn at near retail prices (only using a $1.50 coupon for each of the diapers and no coupon at all for the Dawn! argh!) in order to buy Madagascar 2 for $2 after coupon.  Funny how perspectives change.

Sadly, no picture available.

Walgreens ($43.96)
Ensure, $6.99
Fructis styling product, $3.99
6 Progresso Soups, $1.25 with ad coupon
2 Gilette Fusion Gamer razors, $8.99
2 Scrubbing Bubbles wipes, $2.50
Drano, $3.50
Windex, $1.50

Coupons Used ($24.60)
Gilette Fusion, $4
Scrubbing Bubbles, $3/2
Drano, $1.50
Windex, $1.50
Progresso, $1.10
Fructis, $1
Ensure, $3

Easy Saver Rebates ($7.99 + 10% = $8.79)
SC Johnson products, $4
Fructis, $3.99

Register Rewards ($12)
2 Gilette Fusion, $6/ea

Other Rebates ($6.99)
Ensure Rebate, $6.99

Total Profit: $8.42

CVS ($45.85)
2 Pampers Cruisers, $9.99
Madagascar 2, $4.99 (after $15 savings for purchasing $20)
Dawn Ultra, $.99
CVS Chewable aspirin, $1.99
Gilette Fusion Gamer, $7.99
8 CVS Cotton Makeup Remover pads, 25 count, $.99
1 CVS Ibuprofin, 10 count

Coupons Used ($13.99)
2 Pampers, $1.50
Madagascar, $3 printable
Gilette Fusion, $4 (really, I should have saved this one and used it at Walgreen’s in a third transaction)
Free CVS 10 count Ibuprofin coupon
$2/$10 CVS brand purchases

Extra Care Bucks Received ($13.99)
CVS Chewable Aspirin, $1.99
CVS makeup remover, $8
Gilette Fusion, $4

Total Cost: $17.87

That leaves me with a total cost of $9.45 for the day.  It’s not as good as I’d have liked but it’s certainly not bad, considering!

What do you do with this stuff?
Madagascar 2 will be a Valentine’s Day present for my baby, and the diapers will be applied to her posterior. (Elmo! Diaper! She’s a big fan.)  The aspirin I gave to my mom. I shall endeavor to clean my house and keep my pipes clean with the Walgreens cleaners, and I also plan on taking a can of the Scrubbing Bubbles wipes to my grandfather’s house. The soup will get eaten, the ibuprofin is already in my purse. (That coupon came from the  magic scanner–love that thing!) My husband was thrilled with the makeup remover pads and promptly stole them for use in his woodworking–he’s going to use them to apply stain to the mandolins he builds, if they aren’t too linty.  Everything else will go into the stockpile and either be given away or put in the yard sale.

The weather was so wonderful on Sunday that my husband and I decided to go get a little ice cream and do a little shopping. (It is not so helpful for the frugalista that Baskin Robbins is just next to Rite Aid…) Rite Aid is my least favorite of the drugstores, partially because my particular RA is kind of cramped and not very friendly, and partially because their sales are not as good as Walgreens or CVS, in my opinion, and they’re usually out of stock anyway. Plus, I shop with a toddler and the whole experience is just not as positive for me as the others–they’re now done to one buggy that actually has the child safety strap still on, which bugs me. There’s a RA on the other side of town that is spacious and clean, though it seems the sales items are out of stock even more often than “my” Rite Aid. Still, I’m thinking about starting to incorporate the other store into my CVS run once a week and limiting how often I have to deal with the people in this store. CVS is also on the other side of town for me.

Anyway, this particular store gives me a really hard time about using my $5/$25 coupon on purchases that involve diabetes testing kits. I see people do it online all the time. I’ve done it at their store in the past, and I’ve done it at other stores without a problem, but apparently, they think that because I am getting something for free, I am doing something fraudulent. Hello, they still get paid for the monitor. Anyway, I tried it again on Sunday but it failed, so I should have made another $5 profit. Oh well.

Purchased
1 OneTouch UltraMini monitor, $19.99
1 Garnier Fructis hairspray, $2.99
3 Bayer aspirin, $1.99
1 Durex condom, $6.00
1 Finesse shampoo, $2.99

Coupons Used
1 OneTouch monitor, $20 (which of course they adjusted to $19.99)
3 Bayer, $1
1 Finesse, $0.75
1 Durex, $2

Single Check Rebates
Bayer SCR, $10 gift card
Fructis, $2.99
Finesse, $1.99
Durex, $6.00

Total SCR: $20.98
Total Out of Pocket: $13.28 after tax

Total Profit: $7.70.

What do you do with this stuff?
As a bonus, I gave the Bayer to my parents, who both need it. The condoms will probably go to a younger cousin and the rest will be either used by me or put in the yard sale stash.

I bought four packages of Kroger diapers (Comforts for Baby) tonight for $2.99 each! That’s a pretty good price for diapers, I think. (Not as good as free, which is my favorite price, but it’s good nonetheless!)

They’re on sale for $5.99. There’s a $3 printable coupon to use with it.

I printed two more coupons from my husband’s computer, and I might print a couple more from my mom’s house this weekend. We’re going to be leaving Evelyn with them so we can go on a Valentine’s Day date. Don’t you think it will be ever-so-romantic to pop into Kroger to buy diapers for Valentine’s Day? Yeah, I thought so. We are SO old and married.

I just hope that they work for us. At that price, though, I’m pretty sure I can stick them in the yard sale and make my money back, so I’m not too worried about it.

Thanks to Southern Savers for the link!

Maybe I just have a short attention span, but I am always forgetting if I have used the last of the money on my Walgreens gift card. Since it gets reloaded for the next month, I want to keep it in my wallet, of course, but then I try to use it and I feel like a big dork at the checkout. (Even more of a big dork, that is.) I had a wild and crazy idea today, though–when I scan it and it hits a zero balance and asks for another form of payment… I stick it back into my wallet backwards. Instead of seeing the pretty front part of the card, I’ll see the plain white and know that it’s empty. That should save me a little bit of hassle for the next few weeks.

By extension, putting the card in backwards could work for any card (gift card or credit card) that you wanted to keep handy but not use for whatever reason. Of course, if you’re really never planning on using it, then you might as well throw it in a firesafe box at home and reduce the risk of it being lost or stolen.

When I make meal plans, I don’t necessarily plan on making every item on the exact day I listed. IMy real goal is to make sure that there are ingredients for every meal, every day.

I did pretty well last week–I made everything on my list except pizza. I’ll put it on the list for this week. I also did not come up with the meal plan in time for our shopping trip yesterday, so I am creating the plan around things I know we have.

The Meal Plan for the week of 2/8
Monday: Mexican rice (seasoned rice with ground beef, corn, tomatoes and cheese)
Tuesday: homemade pizza
Wednesday: fettucini alfredo with spinach
Thursday: grilled cheese and tomato basil soup
Friday: broccoli casserole and mashed potatoes
Saturday: Valentine’s Day, and it’s rumored that my parents will be keeping Evelyn so I can go out on a date! Yay! :)