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!

Challenge Update

I did not actually follow my list for last night. I did try to get my van greased but my mechanic got called out and was not there. I will try again tonight. I am also going to make a run to walwart tomorrow as I have a couple of good q's expiring and I want to use them. Tomorrow I also have to go to Wags as my RR expires tomorrow and it is one of the $10 ones! I must make sure to use it!
Tomorrow at walwart, I intend to use that last of my Pace q's and get chips and salsa. I will also use a couple of my Kraft q's and if the A1 is still on sale will be using some of those as well. While I am there, I will have them price match my County Market who has Hunts Ketchup on sale for $1. I have 20 cents off q's for that. I will also check their price again on Wheat Thins as I have one more q for BOGO artisian wheat thins and also a $1 any box. I will also have them price match the kfart ad for the general mills cereals. I have q's to use for that as well. Hopefully they will not give me any problems. I don't ususally go to walwart because the staff is not friendly, and there are many brands that they carry but not the "flavor" of what I want. We will see. I will let you all know how I fared!

Challenge Update

I have sort of saved money for yesterday. I ened up having to take my van to the mechanic to get the spark plugs changed and put the new fuel filter on. I drop it off on Thursday morning. My mom takes me back to my car on Thursday evening, and the guy tells me I need more parts. He says he can put everything back together, but it will still probably not run very well. So off we go to get more parts. My mom is babysitting the girls, but they were being pretty agreeable. We get to the parts store and it is another $66.02 for the new parts. I had already spent about $30 on the first set of parts. So we take them back to the mechanic and he says he can be done in about an hour. I tell mom to leave me there, I will just wait. Then Drama Girl wants to stay and get all pouty when we tell her no. I tell her I will come over when he is all done with my van. She still pouts but says okay. I stay and help a bit on the van to hurry things along, and then pay my mechanic $40 (what a super deal- he really is cheap). I go to see Drama Girl, but she already fell asleep on the couch. Mom and I get her ready for bed, and I take her upstairs and tuck her in. She was a happy camper that I came back and tucked her in. Then on to home so I could start getting the last few things done at home before I leave tonight.
I also went with my mom to cvs. I do not have my reciept with me, but can give a recount as best as I can here. For some reason, I thought that the cereal deal was limit of two. I read the ad, and saw it in the store but was just confused. I am going to claim that it was the heat. It was really hot in my office and also the store. I got 6 boxes cereal, 3 dry idea deo that were clearanced out to $1.12, one bottle of excedrin at $6.99 because I can never have too much excedrin. I spent $1.52 (I think), used $10 EB, 6*$1 for cereal, 3*$2 for dry idea-I got the whole amount they did not change it down, $1 excedrin, $1 cvs excedrin, and a $5 off $30. No picture today as I was too busy getting my stuff ready for my trip. Not too shabby, even if I did only get back $5 in EB. I was confused all the way out to mom's car.....I think I was a bit slow yesterday!

How are you all doing on the Challenge?

Challenge Update

Wow, I feel remiss. I have not posted anything on here for days.
- did not purchase anything on Friday.
-I did get gas on Saturday. I got $2.50 worth for the lawn mower to mow my yard. Then I spent $50 to fill the tank on my van. On Saturday afternoon, I went with my sister to CVS to help her and spend a few EB. I spent $2.60 of my cash and got back $7 in EB. According to my receipt, I saved $18.69.
-I did not spend any money on Sunday. I did drive to a small town in the next state (IN) about 20 minutes away because I was told that I could get the Indy Star at the IGA there. I was out of luck. They did not carry it. But my mom and I drove past a flower stand. We definitely had to stop. Mom got a plant called a straw flower. I bought nothing, just looked and enjoyed all the beautiful plants. I think that was kind of a waste of gas because I wanted to see about getting the newspaper so that I could get the q's and came home with nothing.
-On Monday morning on the way to work I stopped at Advance Auto to get some gas treatment for my van as it is not running smoothly right now, it seems to be missing. Actually ever since my trip last time. And here I am almost ready to go again. I hope it smooths out before I have to drive down.
-Also on Monday, I took a half a day off work to go with my mom to her doctor appointment in Champaign and to go to Meijer. I found out once we were over there that mom wanted to go to Target first. I spent $1.84 there. I got a camp flashlight for my son that has interchangeable lenses with different creatures on them. It has a spider, snake, frog, lizard, and a moon. I also got a tub of betty crocker frosting for 75 cents. Then we went to meijer. I did not need a lot of groceries, just a few things. I spent $46.05 and saved $32.77. I took advantage of their buy 2 of "x" products and get a free gallon of milk. I got two boxes of wheat thins and used a bogo free q and got a free gallon of milk. I also got 2 oreo cookies and got a free gallon of milk. I planned on buying oreos already for my son and me to eat on this next trip, so I got two and a bonus gallon of milk! I love free!
-On Tuesday, I spent no money again.
-On Wednesday, I am going to buy spark plugs for my van and go to my dad's to see if he can help me change them. If we can do it, that will save me the cost of paying someone else. Hopefully that will fix the missing problem with my van. If this does not fix it, I will be having the fuel filter changed when I get back (and get paid..).

Tuesday night I talked with my friend. She was telling me some of the financial difficulties her family is having right now. They own a farm. They have crops from last year that they have not sold yet. She is happy that her husband is no longer working a full time job on top of running the farm, but now they do not have as much money. She told me that they did shop around and found that they can save a little over $200 a month by bundling some of their services for internet, cells, and satellite. Her big expense that she did not know how to lower was groceries and household and health items. I am going over there next week to hang out for a while, have dinner and borrow some books. I did not tell her but I put a bag together for her and the family with some items out of my stockpile. I put in all kinds of stuff for her. I am so glad to be able to help her like this. I also told her the same thing I told my sister (who did not do it), which was to make a list of the most commonly eaten foods, the items for HBA that they can use if they have preferences. If they don't have specifics that have to be used to let me know that. I will then make a list for her the same time I make mine and get all the corresponding sale ads and then go to the store with her. We would go to walmart so they can price match. She does not go alone as she has three kids and it is too much to try and match sales to coupons, and keep an eye on three kids. I offered that I would go with her to cvs as well to get the really good deals there as well. She was really excited and told me she would most definitely do that. She would really appreciate all the help. I think it would be lots of fun, and I would be helping a friend that has helped me alot in the past. I hope this works out for all of us.

CVS Deal

I was not going to go to CVS this week in an effort to spend as little money as possible. However, I called my sister and she started telling me how she really needed to get to walmart, and remember while she was there to get some bw for her and the girls. My sister has really dry skin and both of her girls have eczema (sp?). They really like to use some of the bw I gave them at christmas but it breaks their skin out to use it every day. I asked if they use Aveeno, and she said that they love it, but it is really expensive. Weeellllll, do you want some then? obviously she would love some. So off to cvs. I did pretty good last night with all the tips from Rebecca and Frugalsuz. So here it is:





3*6 aveeno bw


1*7 aveeno lotion


1*5 cvs tp


1*.59 cvs pocket tissue


2*.99 cvs almonds


1*2.50 addidas deo (I had more q's but promised them to nasagreen so I just used one)


1*1.32 cvs baby wipes

1*1.29 cvs tissues

-5 5/30

-4 4/20 beauty

-2 2/10 cvs brand

-10 10/3 aveeno

-2 any aveeno

-1 addidas

-1.98 off any nuts

-4.99 eb

-5 eb
My total was $2.60 which included tax! I got back a $10 and a $2 eb!
I will probably do this deal again this weekend to get more bw that my sister and the girls can use all the time.

Knee troubles

Well, I had to go to CVS last night to get a knee brace. Fortunately for me, they earn EB. I had to spend $15, but that was not a problem. The brace was $15.99. $5 EB for me! I decided while I was there to take advantage of a few sales going on. I bought five 12-packs of diet pepsi (this is a daily must for me!), four bottle of Sobe water, one knee brace, two sure deodorants, one softsoap, one Nivea BW, and four Nivea lip treatments. My end total was less than I would have paid for the knee brace alone. I paid $7.44 including tax and got back $16.99 in EB. I used 5*-$1 nivea, 1*-$1 for softsoap, 2*BOGO free for sobe, 1*-$1 for sure, 1*-$.75 for sure, free diet pepsi flavor q, and the diet pepsi was on sale buy 3 get one. I also used the $4 off $20 of beauty cvs q, and the rest was EB. I used about $32 in EB and only got back $16.99, but that would have happened even if I only got the brace and used my EB to pay. So, I got all of this for less than I would have paid for the brace and diet pepsi!

I then stopped to get gas on the way home. I did not pick up any extras while I was at the gas station, only gas. The cheapest I could find was $1.99 a gallon. So that is where I stopped. I stopped at $50. I do not think it would have taken too much more, but I decided when I pulled in the station, I was only putting in $50. Then I drove home at a slow steady pace to help with gas mileage.

I changed my headlight that was out when I got home to save the cost of someone putting it in for me. Of course it was not hard to do. I do the things on my car that I know how, which sadly is not much. I am learning though. I will purchase another headlight to keep in my van to save the expense of replacing it on the road somewhere, which could end up costing me more. I always keep a few tools and extras of a few parts and fluids just to be safe with my constant traveling.

I did eat dinner at home, although I did not end up with enough time to cook extra food. I plan on doing that tonight now. We'll see I guess....

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.

Super Duper I Love My Wags Trip

I had a wonderful super duper trip to wags last night. Let me tell you, if this is how my Wags trips are going to go, it totally makes up for crappy grocery store selections! Sorry the pic is so blurry, I am not so good with a digital camera yet. See one of my kitties in the back?

Here is what I bought:

4 * 12 pack diet pepsi

4 * Glucerna Cereal

4 * Glade sense&spray (raincheck-he wrote $3.99 instead of $7.99)

2 * Reynolds aluminum foil

2 * bag of jelly beans

2 * bic soliel razors -they did not have any refills

The absolute best part was my total. Are you ready for this?

$7.23 AND I got a $7 rr for my next trip! YIPPEE! I did the happy dance all the way home. I was actually so excited I forgot to go to the grocery store to look for shelf stable milk!

My wags will apparently allow overage to the max! I used the wags 7 day q's for the foil, jelly beans and the free 12 pack wyb three. I used two bogo free glade's. I used the rain check to get the glades for $3.99. I used the esc q's for the bic, glade (I was really surprised she allowed this! I did not think she would), and I used mc for the foil-2*$1, the bic-2*$2, and the glucerna-4*$5. Then as she was done scanning those before I actually gave her the esc to scan, the cat machine spits out a q for $3 off my next purchase of glucerna, so she scans it! I did not even know what it was for until she had already scanned it and entered the price manually because it beeped! So my total went from somewhere around $80 to $7.23. She was just as excited as I was! Then I had to get a rain check for the sambucol because they were out. She said she could not put more than one on a single rain check, so she gave me two separate ones. This was one way cool trip. I paid less than the cost of two cases of diet pepsi for all this stuff! Happy dance, Happy dance!!!

CVS'n

Well, I went to CVS last night. Twice!

The first cvs I stopped at is my favorite store. I usually do not have a problem finding the stuff I want in stock. The sales staff are super helpful and friendly. I had a vague idea that I wanted to get the Irish Spring, but that was about it. I also had $16 in EB that had expired a few days ago and wanted to get in and use them. I could not find my copy of the monthly catalog, so I grabbed one, scanned my card and started shopping. I did pretty good if I do say so myself. I got a 5/25 when I scanned and figured I might as well work from there. In the end I only used my $10 EB and not the $6 one. I asked if I could still use it later or did I need to use it right then, and she said no go ahead and save it if I wanted and I could use it up to a month after it expired. I do not know if this is for all EB at all CVS's or if they are just my new best friends now! Here is what I got! I am going from memory as I have misplaced my receipt. I am going to look on the counter where I was clipping q's and clipping my EB off the bottom of my receipt. I also showed to my sister after she picked me up to go with her to cvs. And yes I did another deal!

CVS store 1
1*4.99 Irish Spring
1*2.99 vitamin D
1*2.99 colgate toothpaste
3*2.99 dry idea deod
2*1.29 tissues
2*.99 tootsie rolls
1*6.29 afrin
Total before sales and Q's: $28.51

Q's used:
-5 5/25
-.50 Irish Spring
-2 dry idea
-2 dry idea
-2 dry idea
-6.oo try me free afrin
-.22 cvs candy on sale with card
-.80 tissues on sale with card
The original total left was less than my $10 EB so that is why I added the candy. The total after using my $10 EB was 42 cents!
And even better was I got back more extra bucks than I used and spent. I got back $4.99 for the Irish Spring, $2.99 for the vitamin d, $6.00 for the dry idea, and $2.99 for the colgate toothpaste! I love it when deals go together like they should!

Then on the way home I called my sister to brag on myself a bit, and she said she wanted to go to cvs too, but did not want to take the girls by herself. I told her to give me about a half an hour after I got home, come pick me up and I would help her with the sales and the girls.
So off to cvs again! This time to the store closest to our homes, not notoriously friendly, but we lucked out the manager on duty and the teen-age boy working were very friendly and helpful. My sister wanted to take advantage of the dove deal going on at cvs right now, but only had a couple of q's. Since I stopped on the way home from my trip this time and bought papers, I had plenty of q's for her to be able to use. She also got a 5 off 25 q out of the scanner so we started with that. She got one bottle of dove something, soap or shampoo, I don't remember, and two deo's. I had q's for all of them. Then she picked up one of the little bitty deo's to get to the $15 mark. She then said that she wanted to see if they had the Irish Spring which they did, and next I gave her a glade q for the sprays of BOGO and she got a $1 off any glade out of the scanner, so she got the glade. I know that she got something else but do not remember right now. In all, she got a little over $25 worth of merchandise for around $16, and got back $11 in EB of which she had none of to begin with.
I did another Irish Spring deal on my second card. I do not usually do too many deals on this card because I do not want to try to keep track of two cards all the time. I mostly use it for the really good deals with a limit of one. I used a Q and a $1 EB and paid $3.75 including tax. I then turned around and bought 3 boxes of tissues, and 3 bags of jelly beans, and 2 of the mini dove deos which I had a $1 off one for both of them. I had a total of 35 cents of which 3 cents was tax. Not too shabby for a day of hounding.

I was having a conversation with my new best friends at my favorite store last night. I was telling her how much I liked shopping at that particular store because they were friendly and did accept my expired EB for so long. She said they would be happy to do that for me. I told her that I would keep shopping with them at that store because then they get the credit for the sales. I may get good deals and not pay a whole lot, but her store is moving the products and getting the sales on their bottom line. She said she knew that too, and she was glad that we (meaning my mom and me) come there. I love friendly stores!

I Could Hound Last Night

I got my van back last night. That is super duper. I have been without a running vehicle since Wednesday last week. So I took my expired as of the 22 EB to CVS to see if they would let me use them. They would and so here is the deal that I got at the first store:

1 colgate toothpaste 2.29 sale .88
1 cvs High def face wash 8.49 sale 5.49
4 cvs cotton rounds .99 each total 3.96
2 gillette shampoos 5.99 each total 11.98
1 nesting jars package 3.79 total 3.79

I used the following q's:
.75 off any colgate
4*$1 off cvs beauty
1*$1 off cvs High defining
$5 off $25
$2 and $10 EB

My total was 3.67 cents and I got back $12 in EB! Not too shabby with a savings of 88%! I can handle that!

The second store had the gillette gamer razor so I got that and a bag of jelly beans, used $4 off gillette razor, and a $2 and $3 Eb and paid tax of 18 cents. I got $4 of EB back, so I lost one in the deal, but am okay with that as I love jelly beans and really wanted some.

Kmart Doubles

I went to Kmart with my mom last night. I had to go with someone, because I still do not have a vehicle that runs. I did not have a super duper deal, partly because I had to buy antifreeze. I bought two gallons because apparently my van did not have any antifreeze. No wonder it was overheating. The guy that is looking at it will try putting it in and see if it leaks out anywhere to see if that is why I did not have any in the radiator. He thinks that the last folks that I had look at it just did not put enough in because there was no evidence at my house or his that the van was leaking. Antifreeze is really expensive. It was on sale for $10 a gallon, and I needed two! So that is part of my expense at Kmart last night. Here is what else I got:

2 Secret deoderants at 29 cents each= 58 cents
3 Sure deoderants at 29 cents each=87 cents
7 bags of Goodlife at 79 cents each==$5.53
3 bags of Goodlife at $1.69 each=$5.07
1 valentine candy at 89 cents (splurge but just needed it last night)=.89
1 Kotex pantyliner FREE=$0
4 boxes fruit snacks at $2.00 each=$8.00
2 boxes fruit by the foot at $2.00 each=$4.00

The last two sets of items should have been cheaper but my coupons stuck to the inside of my box and I did not realize until I got home which q's were missing. I counted 15 when I gave them to the cashier, and she scanned 15, I just did not notice the fruit snack ones were missing. I plan to go back tomorrow and see if they will let me price adjust and add the q's if I get my van back. I buy the fruit snacks and fruit by the foot because my son and drama girl both love them.

So my total was $51.14 of which $4.82 cents was tax and $20 was antifreeze. I also had them price adjust because on my reciept it said the goodlife cat food was $4.99 and it should have been $4.79. They made a mistake in refunding I think because I wound up with $2.80 back. Also, if I can get them to take the three extra q's I had for the fruit snacks it will save another $3.00. I can only hope.

And a final total of $51.14-$2.80=$48.34. Certainly not one of my better trips. Drat those car repairs.

EDIT: I also got a $3.50 cat oyno! I may go shop doubles again.