I Made My decision

I decided to go ahead and get a new phone with internet access. I did my research. I checked out phones, plans, companies, etc. I am going to my current phone company and telling them that i can get a better deal from another company and that I plan to switch unless they will give me a better deal. I am going Friday which is payday. I figured out which plan that I want and will add the second line for my dad. I can actually get both of us new phones this Friday if they give me the deal that I am going to ask for. We'll see how much customer service they have. My contract is up and I can go to a different company if they aren't very cooperative. I am getting very excited now! I will even be able to write about it over the weekend too! WooHoo! This is going to be fun!

Update for Several Days (Where Have I Been?)

Wow, I feel like I have been out of commission here for a long time even though it has only been four days.

I have been to the grocery stores several times over these last few days taking advantage of sales and q's that were about to expire. I now have a completely full deep freezer. I did not fill up the freezer on the fridge as it runs more efficiently when less than full so air can circulate. I also found Parmalat milk. I was looking and asking for advice on The Pound to see if anyone had suggestions as I could not find it. Well, this weekend I found it. I bought a couple of the containers. They are not big containers, but they will be perfect for my trips. I also have been taking advantage of the Vitaminwater10 q. It expires in a few days so if you are hoping to use it-hop to it. Most of the stores here have had the water on sale for a dollar, so I only pay a few cents tax. Gotta love FREE!
I also got gas this weekend. It cost me $75 to fill my tank. The gas prices have leveled off here for a couple of days now. The prices jumped a total of $.74 in nine days. Wow. I am sure it will continue to rise.

I plan to have my May monthly totals tomorrow. I did not have time to sort everything out last night as I went to the store again to get more vitamin water, and some flours and an oven thermometer so I can start making my bread. I plan to start the bread process tomorrow night for bread in five minutes a day. I hope that goes well! I will let you know. I also was getting my van ready for the weekend trip. I pulled everything that was washable out to wash last night. I was still washing this morning and I have two more loads tonight. (We have blankets, sleeping bags, sheets, pillows, throws, left over clothes, etc in there.)

As for the update on the Yesterday's news cat litter: My cats would like to tell you
"we do not like this stinky cat litter. We will not use it and you can't make us." This is a first for me as my cats have eaten just about any cat food and have used all cat litters that I have put in the box. I think that one of my kitties tried it, but only once and as far as I can tell no more even checking it out, pawing it, nothing. But we do have really full litter boxes for the other two. I will have to dump it for this weekend so my poor kitties are not trying to go in just the two litter boxes all weekend. I don't know what to do with the other half of the bag either....

I do not do the weekly meal plan because more often than not I do batch cooking on my Sunday at home for about two weeks worth of food. This Sunday, I was out looking at a motor home. It was about two and a half hours away, and it was owned by this wonderful older couple. They were very crafty and handy and we sat for about an hour talking shop about building, sewing, knitting, painting, crocheting, and quilting. Finally we made our way home. So no batch cooking for me.

In an effort to save money by not eating out, I will not buy pizza at lunch today even though that is what I wanted. I found some leftovers in the fridge that I might have needed to throw out if I did not eat them today or tomorrow. They became my meals for today. No extra money spent on food, and no waste. A win-win! Woo Hoo!

I will be back tomorrow with monthly totals and all that good stuff. And I will hopefully remember to take pics when I do the bread start tonight. Then the baking begins tomorrow!

Walwart - from the 15th

I went back to walwart last night to exchange a few things I purchased a couple of weeks ago. I had a really good trip and will actually post my total here for you. I used up a lot of salad dressing q's in this order buying the dressings I thought my mom used. Turns out I was mistaken. So I had one bottle that was already past the expiration date and eight more that I needed to exchange. I also needed to exchange some of the wheat thins that i bought. I thought with my q's I would try the artisan wheat thins. I got the wisconsin colby, yeah, not so good. At least to me. So I had three more boxes to exchange. I got the regular whole grain kind. I then went to get the dressing. They only had three fat free bottles! The shelves were empty. So I took my three boxes of wheat thins and my three bottles of dressing and stated looking for vitamin water on my way back up to customer service. I could not find that either. Not in the water aisle, not in the drinks aisle, not in the center aisle. It was no where to be found. This is why I do not like our walwart. They have a lot of stuff but never the stuff I want. I get to customer service and she refunds the rest of my money. I am holding it aside as I will use it to get the other six bottles later. Anyway here are the totals of that trip from a couple of weeks ago:
Total purchased: $85.36
total q's used: $49.13
total tax: $1.92
Total Spent: $38.15
Savings: 58%
Not too shabby for a walwart run.

Preparing For the Weekend

Tonight I am going to stop at Wags to get some ice cream. I love love love Bryers ice cream. Just most of the time I refuse to pay what they ask for it at the store. But you can't beat BOGO free and a MC to boot! I have a couple of MC to use on the ice cream. In my neck of the woods, it is $6.29. So I will get two for the price of one, which will be even cheaper with my coupons! So $4.29 for two with 1% food tax=$4.34 ish. I can totally handle $2.17 for a quart of Bryers! I have some leftover christmas candy (the old fashioned kind) that I am going to break into little pieces for a topping. What a tasty treat! I am also going to get some goodies to make s'mores. We love s'mores and S (my son) has been asking for them. We will get to roastin' those marshmallows and makin' some gooey goodness. Right now at Wags, they are 2 for $6 for the graham crackers and Hershey's bars, and get a bag of marshmallows free. I also have a q that if I get chocolate and marshmallows I get $1 off Honey Maid graham crackers. I will hope for it to go through. My favorite cashier should be there tonight, so I most likely will be in luck. Hopefully for less than $10 I can get all of it. I do not have any RR to help offset the price, but these are pretty good deals for my area and I do not want to miss them just because I am out of RR.

When I get home, I have to check in the super messy garage to see if my mom's folding table is still in there from my yard sale last fall. If it is I will load it into the van. I also have to wash/dry a load of clothes, wash the dishes, sweep the floor in the kitchen, and then take out the trash to get ready for the weekend. I will also try to remember to dump one of the litter boxes. I am going to try out some new litter. I got some Yesterday's News litter a while back. I am going to dump it in there and see how it does while I am gone. If it can hold up to the "weekend gone" test, then I know that it is good litter. I will let you all know what I think of it and how it held up, and more importantly, what my kitties thought of it. They are totally laid back on litter choices and will use just about anything without protesting. My favorite litter was Swheat Scoop. Unfortunately there are never any q's for it and it is super expensive. So back to Tidy Cats.

I had my mom order me a book the other day. I am super excited to get it. It is called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I could get the basic recipe off the internet, however, I prefer to make whole grain bread. I could not find the recipe for that. I also would like to see the variations and directions to make lots of different styles and types of bread in an easy fashion. I read over on Mary Hunt's Debt Proof Living where she is joining the BYOB challenge. It stands for Bake Your Own Bread, has nothing to do with beer! I am hoping that this is another challenge for me to try! I will let you know when the book comes in. On the Debt Proof Living blog there is a link for the bread book authors. It is artisanbreadinfive and is the official website. I will let you know if it is as easy as it sounds.

If you are participating in the Challenge, how are you doing? Got any good ideas to pass along?

Challenge Update-The Weekend

I went to walwart on Friday night after work. I do not have my receipt with me today as I need to return/exchange some of the Kraft dressings that I bought. I was buying it up for me and my mom to use as marinades, and it turns out she will only use the fat free ones. So, I will take it back to get fat free.....I will post my actual totals when I am done with that reciept, but my savings were somewhere around 50%. Not too shabby for walwart.

Saturday morning I took my van in to get the windshield replaced. I went to the used parts junkyard which has an agreement with a local company to put windshields in at a reduced rate. Yeah, it's reduced cuz they do a lousy job. There is a gap on the outside molding at the bottom of the windshield. I called and they contacted the guy who did the replacement and he said it should be fine. Just take a hose to it to make sure it does not leak. But surely it will be okay. Oh we shall see, with my luck it will leak. He already had informed me Saturday he did the best he could and to leave the tape on the window for at least a day or two to make sure the glass did not come out. Let the glue and all that dry.

Since I could not use my van on Saturday, I did not get all my errands done. I called my sister to borrow one of their vehicles. I got to use their car. Compared to my van, it feels like I am sitting on the ground in the car! It feels really weird driving something that low and small. So I first go to wags to see if they will let me use my rr which expired the day before. NO we will not. So I leave. I will try tomorrow with my favorite cashier. She is really nice and does not complicate orders by arguing about my q's.

Then off to cvs. I was not sure about going as I lost my extra care card. The cashier told me to call 1800 shop cvs and see if they would help me out. I do plan to call today. I am not making any phone calls as I am still waiting for the return call about my windshield. She gave me a new card to use temporarily. I did pretty good.

For my first order, I used my rain check for the command strips 2 for $5 and get $5 when you buy $15. I bought my six and used my six $2.50 off q's and also purchased the bayer meter. I had one q for it and got my $5 for that. I only pay 1% tax on the monitors. I pay 7.75% on the general merchandise. My subtotal was zero and my tax was $1.31! Not too shabby for getting $10 in EB back.

On my second order I got four boxes of the Kellogs cereal which were $2.00 a piece. I also bought three ragu pasta sauces. I only had three q's for this, and did not have any q's for the peanut butter as I had already used them. However the 3 for $5 on the pasta sauce is a good price here anyway. I found CFL bulbs on sale for $1.49 which is a super price! I got two of those. I can always use light bulbs. I am trying to replace all my old light bulbs with the cfl's as the old ones burn out. I used four $1 off cereal q's, three 30 cents of ragu, and my $10 EB from the previous order. I paid $1.14 total on the second order. No EB but I was not sure if I would keep this card as my cashier said if I call the 800 number and explain what happened, they may be able to print off the eb again and send them and a replacement card. That would be cool if they can.

So my total cvs purchases this weekend was $2.45 for $143.21 worth of merchandise. I can live with that. I gave some of my purchases this weekend to my mom. I have not donated the monitor yet as my mom was recently diagnosed with diabetes. Her doctor wants to wait and see if her numbers change after being on the sleep machine at night. If they improve, then I will donate it. If they do not and she has to start checking her blood sugar, then she will not have to buy the machine. I also shared some of my q's with my sister at walwart this weekend when we went shopping together. She used the q's and did some price matching and she saved around 50% as well. Not too bad for either one of us this weekend. I added to my stockpile relatively cheaply, and my sister started hers.

Here are a couple of pics of my deals this weekend. The first is the walwart run and the second is the cvs run.

After I went to cvs I decided to run to walwart again to get more diet pepsi as it was marked down to $4.98 a case. On my way there, the check engine light comes on in my sister's car! I call to tell her, run to walwart and then run by Advance auto so they can see what is wrong with it. I take it back to her because it is something to do with the emissions but it will run okay for now. I swear at this rate no one is ever going to let my use their car, I can't keep any of them running!

WAGS & CVS

I wish that I could remember to take pictures of my haul!
Here is my deal from wags:
1 softsoap $3.99
-$1 MQ
Total: $3.30 and rec'd a free softsoap q.
I used the free q for a second bottle and paid tax of $.31.
I got another free bottle q. I then went out to my van and counted out 31 cents *4. Then I went back in and got four more bottles. So for 6 bottles of softsoap I paid $4.85, and I still have one more free bottle q left. No more rolling, but at least I will get one more.

Last night I went to CVS. I bought a bit of stuff and paid $1 OOP. Here is how it went down:
M&M's 2*1.5
jelly beans 4*.88
Glade S&S 1*5.99
glade spray 2*1.89
cvs wheat crackers 1*1.99
johnsons buddies 6*1.19
total $25.42
-$5 5/245
-$6 EB
-$4 glade S&S
-$3 johnsons wyb 3
-$2 johnsons wyb 2
-$1 johnsons buddies
-$1 cvs crt glade
-$1.89 bogo glade spray
-$1 m&m's wyb 2
My reciept however says that I saved $32.31 instead of the $25 that I ordered. I guess that is because they are counting the actual sales savings as well.
Subtotal was 53 cents then add 47 cents tax for a total of $1 OOP! I only got back $2 of EB. But I have a lot that are expiring and need to get used. Hopefully we get some good EB deals soon. Come on CVS.
My mom did really well too. She got about $16 or $17 worth of merchandise for $1.58 and got back $1 of EB.

I know that I do not post too much about deals really, but I have to mention to anyone reading this that there is a $500 walmart gift card give away over at deal seeking mom. Get over there and try for your chance. Just think how wonderful that would be to win and just in time for christmas!