Grocery Gaming Again

So I went shopping at Walgreens on Sunday night, while Mike was putting the boys to bed. I think this may be my new favorite time to shop! Other than the fact that the store had already run out of several of the items I was planning to purchase, which were free after rebate.

Here is a rundown of my shopping trip.

I spent $76.69.
My total before any coupons, discounts or gift cards was $169.10
I saved $92.41, which is %55. Hooray!

I had $48.60 in coupons, $22.92 in store sales (some advertised, some not) and a gift card worth $20.89 from July's rebates. I didn't shop there in August (I had a lot on my plate and didn't devote time to my Grocery Gaming for a month), but now I'm back!

My Latest Shopping Trip

Well, now. Let me tell you about my shopping experience today.

I'll keep it short and sweet.

I walked into CVS armed with 6 coupons, $24 in CVS Bucks from my last trip there, and The List.

I walked out with:

32 lightbulbs

8 rolls of paper towels

6 toothbrushes

2 packages of pads (sorry to any guys who may be reading this)

1 stick of deodorant

1 tube of toothpaste

1 bottle of mouthwash

1 ($20!) blood glucose monitor

I paid (don't hate me): $4.86

I actually paid $6.75, but then I realized that she had charged me for two extra boxes of lightbulbs, so I ran back to the store to claim back my $1.89.

Yeah.

Good stuff, Maynard.

Weekly Savings for July 12th

Shelf Totals: $375.00
Spent: $228.45
Saved: $146.55
Savings of: 39%

This week I shopped at HyVee, Walgreens and Hen House. My biggest savings was at Walgreens -- I saved 53% there. I don't think I'm going to keep going to CVS. My savings are the greatest there, it seems, but I have to wait until Monday evening for the list to come out for that store, so that means I either have to wait until a weeknight to do my shopping there, or go the Saturday after, when many of the great deals have already been wiped off of the shelves. Three stores is enough for me, thank you very much!

Weekly Savings for July 5th

So here I am, once again, reporting on my new pastime. :) It has obviously affected my blogging! Actually, the thing that has affected my blogging the most is my OTHER new pastime, training my kids to obey me the first time, every time. Which is a whole other blog.

This week's totals are:

Hy-Vee:
shelf total: $109.71
spent: $65.39
saved: $44.32
savings of: 40%

Hen House:
shelf total: $53.84
spent: $44.50
saved: $9.34
savings of: 18%

Walgreens:
shelf total: $185.11
spent: $83.41
saved:$101.70
savings of: 55%

I won't shop at CVS this week; there is no time! It would have made my savings percentage even better, though, so it's a shame.

Mike worked a half day yesterday, and we went to TGI Friday's for a birthday party yesterday evening (Happy "21st" Birthday, Caleb!! *wink, wink*), and then watched the Grand Finale (yeah, we got there a bit late!) of the fireworks display at a local place, and today Mike is helping said "21-year-old" Caleb with some trees/branches in his yard, and then he will work on our dryer vent. Tomorrow we will go to church in the morning, and then visit Mike's parents after the boys' naps. We usually get home at bedtime when we go to their house, so that will be our day tomorrow!

Oh yeah. About the dryer. It sounds so easy. "Work on our dryer vent." HA!!

He has been working on it on and off for the past month or two. Pull out the dryer, empty the "tube" going from dryer to outside the house, put dryer back. The dryer never seems to get all of the clothes dry, and one cycle takes almost 2 hours, so we run it twice, which means I only get one or two loads of clothes done every day. Not Good!! I have had to buy extra shorts for the boys this summer because of it. I wish our homeowner's association allowed clotheslines, because I would definitely have one if they did!! I might get one anyway. What can they say? I'd be helping the planet out. ;)

So, the dryer... the lint has not been collecting in the lint trap, but in the tube which goes all the way from the laundry room, under the entire kitchen floor, then out the back of the house at the level of the backyard deck. I was SURE it was something wrong with the lint trap itself, and that a new dryer would solve the problem. But Mike was sure that it is a problem with the "tube" (not the technical term, I know) itself. Sure enough, Mr. Technical was right once again!

There were holes all over in the "tube", so we now have a 5' x 1 1/2' hole in our basement ceiling to accomodate installation of the new "tube". He has almost completed the excavation of the old, wimpy "tube", and is installing a new, fresh, galvanized steel "tube" that will hopefully work much better and provide our dryer with many more nice, happy, lint-collecting years.

Anyway, after all of that, here are my averaged Grocery Game totals for this week!

shelf total: $348.66
spent: $193.30
saved: $155.36
savings of: 45%

Much better than last week, and my stockpile is almost completed already! Such a good feeling to have on hand the things you use on a daily basis. No more running to the store for things at the last minute, and having to buy it at whatever price they happen to be selling it for that day!

Weekly Savings

So I know you all are just dying to hear how much I saved with The Grocery Game this past week. You're NOT!? Too bad, you get to hear it anyway. Tee Hee!!

But first...

I shop at 4 stores. Hen House, Hy-Vee, Walgreens and CVS. Not all on the same day.

Hen House sells a TON of local products, and I am in the CSA (community supported agriculture) there, so I go every Saturday morning to pick up my canvas bag full of yummy, healthy, super-fresh food. Today there were 3 huge cucumbers, 3 gigantic hydroponic tomatoes, a box of red new potatoes, a loaf of fresh asiago ciabatta bread, a bison chuck roast, and a pack of sliced marble cheese. Yum! Hen House is the one place I don't have The List for, so I mostly buy specialty and/or local foods from there. I bought some local plums today that were so juicy sweet, they just melted in our mouths!

Hy-Vee has the best customer service around, so I'm glad there is a List for that store. I go to Hy-Vee on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday.

Walgreens and CVS... well, what can I say? I save the most money at these stores. Especially CVS. Walgreens is easier to shop, but CVS has a much longer List, and I save more there. It's worth the extra time and effort I spend getting ready for my shopping trip.

Anyway, on to my totals!

The shelf totals were: $536.30
I paid: $332.06
My savings: $208.22
Savings percentage: 39% (I got 2/5 of my groceries and household items for free!)

Keep in mind, when you see how much I spent, that I am building up my stockpile. For instance, right now I have 7 bottles of laundry detergent to use in the coming months. After this 12-week sales cycle is over, my stockpile should be almost complete, and I won't be spending nearly as much, but I will be saving a lot more because my arsenal of coupons will just get bigger!

And I am only buying things I know we will use. I will NOT buy something just because it is on sale, has a coupon, and is a great deal. Even if it's almost free. We don't need clutter!

I have seen people who have been Grocery Gaming for months and years who are saving more than 50%, some closer to %60. I hope to be there soon!

Actually, I achieved 54% savings at CVS today. The cashier was so surprised when I handed him my stack of "money" and he chuckled his way through all of my coupons and CVS Extra Bucks (I had $31 from last week to spend this week). I watched my total go from $241.95 to $111.95, and my smile got bigger with every coupon he scanned. I also have $22 in CVS bucks to use on next week's shopping trip! Gotta love it.

My second biggest savings amount was 47% at Walgreens. I have come to know the cashier there, and she likes to see how much I'm going to save each week. SO fun! The shelf total was $103.18, and I spent $54.48. How cool is that?

Can you tell I'm having fun with this?

The Grocery Game

For the past several weeks, I have been playing The Grocery Game. Sounds like fun, right? Well, it is! And it really feels like I am pulling one over on the grocery stores and pharmacies in our area. Go to http://www.thegrocerygame.com/ for more information or to sign up for a 1-month trial for $1.

This is my notebook. Yes, it is pink. I love the double layers of pockets it has on the inside covers!

I use this big velcro-close pocket to hold the coupons that the pharmacies give me that are actually just money off of my next shopping trip, and I also keep restaurant coupons and paper clips in here.

My "Tally Sheet" where I record this week's purchases and savings at my "List Stores".

I use baseball card pages to keep my coupons so that I don't have to flip through a packed coupon file every time I want to find one. LOVE it!!

My "Toothpaste Page"... I have yet to label my sections, I need to get on that!

This week's flyer from CVS, and at the very right of the picture is "The List" for CVS, which is copyrighted or I would show the whole thing. I pick the items on The List that I will buy, then print out The List, then go through and mark how many of each item I will buy. Basically, The List tells me all of the items in the store that week that are at their lowest prices, and it combines them with coupons to give me Rock Bottom Deals on all of the things I would normally buy. Then I stock up on these items (it takes about 12 weeks to go through one full "sales cycle"), and leave the store chuckling about all of the great deals I got.

A new weekly activity... clipping coupons! I never thought I would do it, but I'm totally addicted. It's like taking extra money to the store!

Did everyone else already know this stuff, and I am just now figuring it out? I feel like I am finally on top of my shopping. It will never be out of control again! Hallelujah!

It is fun to watch my stockpile grow. We will be taking a closet which we never use and putting shelves in it to hold some of the stockpile too. So fun, and I feel like we are prepared in case anything were to happen and I couldn't make it to the store for a while.

Sites to Save You Some Moo-Lah

This is an e-mail I sent out earlier today:

-------------------------------
I just wanted to let you all know about some websites that I have found to be very useful in my quest to save money. With gas prices being so high, I am trying to not spend as much in other areas that I can control. Also, I was inspired by Angela over at www.thepaintedhouse.blogspot.com to "share the love" and do something nice for other people. I know this isn't much, but this has worked for me so I thought I would share it with you all! Go check out Angela's blog; she is having a contest!! You just have to do one nice thing for someone, and tell her what you did on Monday. She'll pick a name out of a hat on Monday, and the winner gets $50 in gift cards to Whole Foods and two reusable shopping bags! How cool is that? So go do a good deed, and share the love!!

Here are the websites:

www.hotcouponworld.com (forum)
www.afullcup.com (forum)
www.couponmom.com (tons of great deals)
www.angelfoodministries.com ($30 for $65 worth of food, once a month, pick up at local churches)
www.thegrocerygame.com (this one you pay for, $1 for the first month -- worth it! -- combines your local grocery/pharmacy store sales with coupons from your local Sunday paper so that you get Rock Bottom Deals)
www.priceprotectr.com (money back from stores if the item you bought goes on sale after you buy it)

Some of these have links to websites that have printable coupons. The first three were listed in the Kansas City Star a few days ago in an article about two women who have made it a priority to save money on their groceries. They spend about two hours a week clipping coupons and shop at a couple of different stores every week, but if you don't have that kind of time to spend each week you can still save lots of money. I am signed up at The Grocery Game, and every week there is a long list of awesome deals at several stores in my area. It's a great way to stock up on Christmas presents or just things you know your family will use.

Anyway, go check out the sites, and start saving some money!

Okay, so I know it's not a big thing to tell people how they can save money, but that was my small way of showing people I care about them. Also, for another "good deed," I gave away one of our "Free DVD Rental" coupons for RedBox last night. The gentleman in line in front of me was asking where the lady in front of him got her coupon from, so I gave him one of mine. He said "Wow, thanks, that's awesome!! That's so nice of you!"

It does feel good to do good... so go do some good!

What Day Is It, Anyway?

I have been confused since Wednesday of last week, and have been a day ahead since then. This wasn't so fun last week when I thought it was Friday and it was actually Thursday, but it did work out to my advantage today when I woke up and was going about my morning getting ready and playing with the boys. Then I saw the clock and went to wake Mike up. It was 9:06 and I knew that if he wanted to come home from work at a reasonable time, he'd better go in soon. So I woke him up and told him the time, and he was like "OH, I forgot to set my alarm!" and was about to jump out of bed when all of a sudden I realized that it was Sunday. Oh. Yeah. WHEW! One more day of freedom.

 Anyway, this weekend has been so much fun for me! I discussed it with Mike, and he has given me the "go ahead" to make Saturday mornings my own. I love going to the farmer's market, so I got up at 6:30 (I know! ME!!! Up before 7! It was amazing.) and headed on over to see what goodies I would come across. There was a lady selling jars of jelly and preserves that I just couldn't pass up, so I grabbed an orange marmalade for us (yeah, okay, for ME) and a sugar free strawberry for Bonnie, which she let me taste, and it was fabulous!

I also picked up a big bunch of green onions and a marvelous-looking bunch of asparagus. Oh yeah, and a basil plant. It's just a baby, but it already has a bunch of nice big leaves on it!

No pictures from the farmer's market trip, but here are a couple we took when we went up to bed on Friday night.

Griffin has been making his way into our bed almost every night while we are busy doing other things before we go to bed. We almost always find him under the covers, snoozing, but this time he was sprawled out in a very uncomfortable-looking position, and I just had to get a picture of those dirty toes.


Anyway, back to Saturday... After the farmer's market, I came back to our subdivision, where the yearly garage sale was in full swing. It was almost 8am, which anyone who is an experienced garage "saler" knows is almost too late to find all of the really great deals that the garage sale giver has unsuspectingly undermarked. You know, the stuff that is actually worth (to you!) a LOT more than what is being asked for the item. So here are some things that I found.




The wall hanging is called a French memo board, and I'll slip pictures and other memorabilia under the criss-crossing ribbons. It was $1.50.

A Little Tikes "mountain thing" that the boys are having SO much fun racing their Hot Wheels on. Mike even went next door to talk to the neighbors who were participating in the garage sale, and they had some Hot Wheels they were going to give the boys when they found out that Mike was about to go buy some, but Mike had the boys pay 5 cents for each Hot Wheels car so that they could learn about money. So cute! And it cost me... $2.

I got a big pile of books ranging from The Magic School Bus to Tonka Repairs to The Fuzzy Porcupine to The Puppy Tales Collection to The Fairyland Storybook to Where Fish Go In Winter... and that's not all of them! All for $5.

After the garage sales, I met up with Bonnie and we went on a little Saturday morning adventure. We drove up "to the city" to a very unique restaurant that has 66 different omelets to choose from, and 3-inch-tall biscuits, and crispy potato chunks, and good gravy! It was all so yummy, and I ate too much, but it was such a good meal, and the atmosphere in the restaurant is so fun... it's like an old-time diner. They even sell cakes there that are like a foot and half tall. Amazing! The food there is just delicious.

After breakfast, we went back to Bonnie's so she could feed Diamond, who had been silent as a mouse the whole time we were driving and eating. She went from silent to screaming really quickly while we were on our way out of the "big city," though, so we hightailed it home. After Diamond was happy, we went to get drinks at the gas station and headed over to our original destination: Antique Mall Heaven. Not its actual name, but it could be. There are hundreds of individual booths set up, and it would take literally all day to look at everything in the store. We had a time limit, because we were both headed over to a birthday party in the afternoon, so we looked only at the things we were interested in. I ended up with this:





I will use this beauty to hold all of my ribbon in my scrapbooking room. I was planning on using it to hold utensils in my kitchen, but it is too tall! I hadn't factored in the height of the jar versus the height of my cooking tools, but I LOVE the jar, so I'll put it to good use. It would make a great cookie jar except for the fact that the jar's lid has a unique scent to it that I fear may affect the scent of any cookies that were to go inside. I won't need to use the lid if I use it just for ribbon! It was $18... the most expensive purchase of the day.

Then today, which, it turned out, was Sunday(!!!), I got to meet Christy at Children's Orchard, one of our favorite children's resale stores, and go shopping for some shirts for Sammy. I ended up with quite the selection of shirts for him, as well as three pairs of sandals, one for Sammy (he has a pair of Griffin's from last year that were passed down) and two for Griffin. They are about to outgrow their beloved KU crocs, and I don't want to get to the middle of summer and not be able to find a pair of sandals for them. Because that's the way it usually happens around here. I wait until the boys really NEED something (usually something seasonal, like mittens or coats or... sandals) and then go looking for it, only to find that my only choices are everyone else's castoffs. Well, not this time! This time they got "cute" sandals -- at least that's what Sammy has been calling them all afternoon. "Cute, Mommy." He really likes his lime green Speedo sandals. I must admit, I think they're cute too.


Most of the shirts I got were $2.00 to $4.00, with the vast majority of them being $2.99. I just love the Orchard!! Their motto is "Find a Treasure, Save a Fortune" and it's so true! They also have lots of toys and games and puzzles, movies, cribs, bedding, swings... anything you might want! Oh, yeah, and we also found some great little baby girl things for Diamond. The cutest little hot pink sandals, some dresses and some shoes that she might fit into by the time she's 3 years old. Tee hee. But they were so cute! Actually, they were only a size 2, so she might be in them when she's... 6 months old? I'm not sure how baby shoe sizing works. Griffin wears a 9, and Sammy is in a 7 or 8. But they have really wide feet.
Anyway, I got 19 shirts, 3 pairs of shorts, a pair of Hot Wheels pajamas, and 3 pairs of sandals... oh, and this beauty...

I call it the "two-fer chair"... it's like it was made just for Griffin and Sammy! They are actually sitting in it right now. :)
So all of that for the grand total of $130!! I couldn't believe it when she told me my total. That's less than a week's worth of groceries, for all of that stuff!!!!

Did you notice that I was excited? Yeah... it's been a good weekend. :)

A Trip to Goodwill

I love Goodwill! I always find a treasure when I go there, and usually it's something I've been looking for for a long time that the retail stores just don't have quite the right one of. Today I found:

A picture to go above our bed. Isn't it just adorable? And the boy has brown hair and the girl has red hair... couldn't be more appropriate! I think they even look a little like Mike and I did when we were growing up. -- $12.97

A big pile of red ribbons. Mike has been patiently listening to me talk about my favorite Christmas decorations, and I must have mentioned that I love Christmas-type greenery with red bows on it, oh... maybe 20 times. Now I can use them instead of just talking about it! -- $2.98

A Christmas present for a friend. She's gonna love it! -- $.99... that's cents, not dollars!!

Two little backpacks for the boys, because Griffin mentioned tonight at dinner that he wanted to carry a purse, and we thought we'd better steer him in a different direction. -- $8.48

A whole bunch of books for the boys. I found some fun ones! -- .49 or .99 each

A "Kitchen Prayer" to inspire me when I get bogged down in the day-to-day. -- I have no idea, it wasn't marked.

A blue jumper dress with little aqua flowers stitched around the waist -- $4.95

A pretty new floral print nightgown (I think it is supposed to be a dress, but it is stretch cotton and looks like a nightgown to me!) -- $4.95

Total cost of everything -- $47.00