Need a toothbrush or 2 or 34?

Meijer is doing a promotion on their health and beauty products which mean lots and lots of toothbrushes and lots and lots of fun. Here is a picture of my last six transactions---

8 kashi pizzas

19 toothbrushes

8 hand soaps

1 tweezers

4 bags of flossers

1 pair of gloves for Lula

2 boxes of organic tea

Total out of pocket 6 bucks and some change. Yippie!!!!!

So here is what you do. Buy 5 meijer toothbrushes priced at $1.09, they will give you a Catalina for $8 off your next purchase. So go buy five more toothbrushes or other meijer products. The meijer milk and honey hand soap, or flossers, shave gel, cottonballs all work, I even got 5 nail polishes clearanced to $1.12 each. Throw in whatever maybe a clearance's kashi pizza to get your total over $8 pay with catalina plus some change and do it again and again. I did 12 transactions yesterday. Total was probably close to $20 but a half gallon jar of olives made that so high. And I still have a cat for $8 off my next purchase. Hurry deal ends on the 11th.

Anyboby wanna buy a pizza??

My thoughts on couponing and running deals!

(Okay a lot of this will be the pot calling the kettle black. Maybe if I publish it I'll practice what I preach more.)


Here are my humble thoughts.


Simple tips on keeping it real:

1.If you don't need it don't buy it. (okay I'm totally a sucker for FREE stuff.)

2.Have a limit on how often you go. (ex. I try to only go to CVS once a month)

3.Don't look at the ads unless you are already going to that store. (I look at the Meijer ad because I'm going to go there anyways, I never look at the mall ads it makes me discontent with what I have)

4. Take it with a grain of salt how much you are really saving, CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid are so over priced. (I'd take the number they give you and divide it in half.)

5. Set a budget on deals, mine in $5 a week.

6. Make sure it's okay with your hubby, an obvious one yet probably the most forgotten one.



Now I step onto my soapbox: Here is a little hypothetical story.



If you were to buy a new washing machine (with a coupon or price match of course) you would not take it home and try to use cow manure in place of detergent. No that would be dumb and simply unwise. Same with your car, you don't add apple juice to the gas tank and expect it to run now do ya.



So why oh why do people fill their sweet babies up with crap food that you can't even pronounce. OK if you and your hubby want to eat crap you are adults and can make up your own mind, your children can not.



Okay I'm stepping down now.



Save money other places if you can before it effects your food. Write out a menu and stick to it. Real old fashion oatmeal or homemade granola is quite comparable to a box of cereal bought on sale with a coupon. Diced up potatoes are much cheaper that bagged fries with twelve gazillion things added to them. Buy real fruit in season, skip the sugary drinks, even juice, drink water. The key word here is REAL!

Yes I too am a sucker for a nice haul of crap, almost all of which I have to give away because it's not REAL. I love to ask the hubby when I get home how much he think it all cost and then have him ask me how they can keep their doors open, it's fun. But not at the health of my family.

End of humble thoughts. Have a good one.

Need socks? Need underwear?

Okay the boys have enough underwear to last until they're are least 12 but who can resist a deal.

Meijer's this week:
Buy 3 Hanes products get $10 off instantly!

I bought one pack panties for Lula, and two packages of socks, one for the boys and one for Lettie, for $2 and some change! ($3.99 a pack) Can't beat that. I might go back tomorrow. Deal end 12/6 so hurry.

CVS Madness!

Three CVS stores 7 transactions---
#1 4- $2 off kashi
1- $2 off 10 cvs coupon
$1.19 total


#2 1- $2 off kashi
1- $2 off south beach
5-$1 off buddies
1 $2 off 10 cvs
$1.??? sorry can't find that receipt

#3 1- $1 off crest

1- $1 off mouthwash

1- $1 off deodorant

1- $2 off dr scholls

a bunch of ebc's

$12.50 not great but hubby REALLY wanted the Dr Scholls

#4 1 ECb for $4 got back $6 ecb, 0 out of pocket
#5 Another Zero out of pocket and zero ecb's used--nice!

#6 1 $1 off huggies

1 $2 off 10

a bunch of ecbs

.07 out of pocket


#7 1 $1.50 off litttle swimmers

1 $2 0ff 10

rest of ecb's

.09 out off pocket

I started the evening with $13.98 ecb and ended -with $10 ecb's and spend just over $15 not terrible seeing how just the pack of diapers would cost me that.

$100 in Clothes= $75 in Gas

It's almost Father's day and Sears and Dockers are running a clothes/ gas deal. Buy $100 in men's dockers clothes and mail in your receipt and you will receive $75 gift card to Shell gas. So its kind of like getting $100 worth of clothes for $25 bucks. For more details so here. The hubby will be getting some new pants, the great thing about dockers are that they are a classic type of pants and can be worn for years!

Craiglist oh how I love thee...

Leather sofa and love seat $250.
Minus the $200 bucks we got for the old sectional (which sold in three hours!) $50 for new to us furniture!
Not paying Art Van every month for the next three years- priceless!

The thing about craigslist in it have everything and no shipping costs, besides gas. $275 worth of formula for $140 bucks! Yes $275 -it's all allergy thing. This should last about 5 months and hopefully by then she can be off of it.

Blog Worthy CVS Trip

A grand total of $1.82!! Yippee! I was going to give up the CVS thing for the summer but this got me to rethink that idea! All things we use minus the chex mix but the poor starving bro of mine will gobble them up.

4- toilet paper

8 toothbrushes

1 razor

3 packs of gum (filler)

6 bags of chex mix

2 buddies soaps

2 boxes of band aids

1 flosser thing

1 9 volt battery

!!!Garage Sale Season!!!

I love this weather and this awesome weather (I'm ignoring the fact that it is supposed to snow next week) means garage sale season has begun. All the kids but Lula are set for the summer. Lula only needs a few things so it makes garage saling more fun when we aren't on a set mission to find one particular thing. Here a few of our deals.

One lamp to replace the ones the kids broke last week $1.75
6 sets of shutters for my bro's house $10 (only one set will need to be trimmed down 2" the rest are the right size!)
Winter coat for Lula for next year $2 and it's all pink
A bike for Lula $25 bucks not the cheapest but it's a Schwinn and in very good shape.
1 superman costume to replace the beloved superman hat that Racky misplaced $1
Lettie 2 outfits $3
Biggie 2 shorts .50

$33.25 total. Not to shabby I have to say. How about you bag any good deal yet?

Chocolate!!!!!!!!!!!

I love me the Money Saving Mom! $7 and some change! It would of been less but one of the bags of chocolate rung up at 3.49 and not on sale, oh well it's still an awesome deal. (Two bags are missing, hubby took them to work this morning.) If you count that's 22 bags of free chocolate and they didn't hassle me at all. Plus 8 boxes of cereal-free. One Benadryl, glide floss, lip gloss, mouth wash, deodorant, hair clips of Lettie, one onion and two tomatoes. Gotta love cheap thrills!

Free Cereal!

We can't eat the stuff but you might be able to. Meijer has honey bunches of oat chocolate clusters on sale this week for $2 go over to Crystal blog and get 8 coupons for $2 off and go and get 8 boxes for free. My local Meijer had them this morning too bad I forgot my coupons, my brother loves free food;)

CVS to the Rescue!

One cure for the urge to shop is well, to shop! Crystal posted yesterday that these cotton swabs were on clearance for $2.99 and that they were still generating 2 ECB's each. Well this morning I noticed we were down to our last four q-tips so that the perfect excuse to make a CVS run. Well when I got to the check out with three of them I asked how much they were ringing up at, $2.49 so I ran back a grabbed a fourth one. The toothpaste was on sale for $1.99 and generating 1 ECB. So I got 4 twin packs of q-tips (that's 4000 q-tips) and one toothpaste for:

.26 cents OOP (out of pocket) yippee!

I used one $2/$10 CVS coupon and one .75 coupon off the toothpaste and 9 ECB. And I left there with another 9 ECB for next time. I'm loving this CVS thing my two transactions before this were .85 and .47 cents. Gotta love it.

Cheap Summer Movies!

Here's a heads up on Cinemarks Summer Movie Clubhouse! I went to one last year and it was packed but it was also cheap so go early. I don't know how many we'll make it to this year with the new baby but it's nice on those rain days or "we're bored" days. Christian Spotlight on Entertainment is a nice way to check a movie out before you spend your money. Enjoy!

Penny Pinching

I ADORE the second hand stores around here. This morning me and the kids had some time to blow between appointments so we hit up the second hand store. We were in need of some more winter hats, they seem disappear as fast as the mittens do. Here is what we got-
3 winter hats, one for each kid
2 watches, I made the mistake of throwing out the 3 year old spider man watch and he keeps asking and asking so I caved. One watch for Racky and one for Lula
1 pair of Lands Ends snow boots for Racky size 2 should fit a little better than his 13 that he has been wearing, his shoe size is a normally a 1.
I got all of this for $6.10!
You can't beat that let me tell ya. Garage saling in winter gotta love it!