Kroger Shopping

It is LINK UP Friday again. Post your links below.

I was up early this morning to watch the wedding. It was 3 am my time. I got little miss up at around 4:30 when all the royalty started arriving. She was very excited and wanted to pop popcorn and watch the wedding. So that is what we did. She was out after the ring was on the finger. I stayed awake for the whole thing and I am still awake. Needless to say I am exhausted right now.

Tom Thumb Shopping

I went to Tom Thumb to just pick up some of the mega Q items for Q’s that I had to match. Little face likes to drive and always wants to drive my car. Tom Thumb has the carts that look like a car with a steering wheel and with the TV inside. He thinks he is really driving. He has a great time while we shop. I really enjoy shopping too; since he is occupied I can look at other items to see if there are any other deals. However, Tom Thumb usually has very high prices so I just go and get the sale items and leave. 
 

I have been trying to explain to people how I do this and many say they can’t run around to all the stores and get the items. So I am showing them to make a list of the items on sale and only get those items and leave. Depending on the sales you can probably do this in 15- 20 min with no kids. It takes me 30 min, but I am trying to occupy little face’s time. I plan my shopping trip Tuesday nights after I receive my flyer in the mail. Pull my coupons and make my list. I put all the coupons in an envelope with my list and go to the store. The only detour I may do is going through the produce to see if there are any sales.

Tom Thumb sends out the sales flyer on Tuesdays. If you live in the Dallas area, you will get them in your mailbox. This is why Tuesdays are one of my favorite days to get the mail. Usually I get the paper and review the sales and also look at their super Q’s. These are store Q’s and can be combined with a manufacturer Q to make a product even cheaper. This week I paired my Cheez IT store Q with a manufacturer Q to get the price down.

Here is how I did:

Walmart Shopping

I went shopping at Walmart today. It was an ordeal. I could have saved more, but they would not accept my 9 Qs for the Degree deodorant for a $1.00 off each. I was purchasing the trial size and planning on using my overage to go towards my food items. I got the assitant manager and he said the item has to be the item on the picture of the Q. I debated that it did not exclude trial size on the Q I was using. He stated it was not what the manufacturer intended. I was pretty ticked off today. Degree is the only deodorant I can use. I did get some other great deals though. They were out of other products I wanted so I will have to go back. I will try another Walmart store though.

Here are my results: 

Kroger Shopping

I took little miss to school and decided to try to snag some of those boxed Green Giant spinach at Kroger today. This will be my third time to go. If they didn’t have them I was going to get a rain check. We eat spinach all the time. I make spinach dip and I puree it and put it in other food dishes so the kids don’t know they are eating it. I also will make smoothies for my husband and me using spinach and cucumber. If you want to lose weight these shakes are great and you can’t taste the green stuff. They are packed with nutrients and very little calories, but they fill you up.

I also found some coupons for Birds Eye vegetables that I didn’t know I had until I saw it on another blog for a different store. I have decided when I get coupon books from other stores I am going to cut them up and put them in my coupon book. I could have used these last week, but I forgot about them. Instead of 33% off I could have made them 50% off. I am still learning and still making mistakes, but also I am getting better.

Tom Thumb Shopping

It’s LINK UP Friday. Here are my shopping results from Tom Thumb and my totals for the week. You can check out my Kroger trip and CVS trip earlier this week.  I didn’t have many manufacturer Q to match up for Tom Thumb; however, they did have some good sales with store Q’s I took advantage. I am also trying to establish my lowest price to pay for certain items. If you are new to couponing these are things you need to establish. I will be writing about those later next week. Check back for more tips.

Oops I forgot to take a picture.

Here are my results:

Kroger Shopping

I switched out some toys for little face for this trip and it helped wonders. He was so good while I was shopping this time. I even stopped and played a little with him in an aisle I didn't need to go down. We had a good time.

I went shopping at Kroger yesterday to get the last of some deals they had on food items I wanted. I am heading to Tom Thumb to do some more food shopping today. I will post those results tomorrow.

Here is how I did:

CVS Shopping

Apparently little face did not want to go shopping today. So I had to try to make it fun. I brought new toys this time hoping this would help change up the shopping. Needless to say this was a short shopping trip at CVS. I just picked up a few items and we checked out. I could have come out cheaper out of pocket, but I really did not feel like breaking up the transactions. I have more to spend next time I visit.

Here is how I did:

Kroger Shopping

I packed up little face for some Wednesday shopping. We had two stores to hit to get some great deals I was going to try to stay within budget this week. Sad to say again I did not make it by $10.00. I was trying to cut back to $40.00, since I spent so much on diapers last week. When I made the diaper purchase I had enough diapers to last for a month and it was a great deal. Check out my Target trip here.

This week we went to Sprouts and Kroger for our major grocery shopping. Sprouts is a small mostly organic and fresh food store. It is similar to Whole Foods just not as big. The prices on produce are almost as good as Aldi. And I enjoy shopping there better than shopping at Aldi.

Link up is below!

Here is how I did at Sprouts & Kroger:

Tom Thumb Shopping

Just read this log into Cellfire today to receive a coupon for $0.50 - $3.00 off your next Kroger shopping trip before noon Pacific Time. 
 

I went shopping on Tuesday to get a few things at Tom Thumb. Mainly I went to get the Kettle chips since they were on BOGO sale and I had a $1.00 coupon. So far this is my best price for chips. I have noticed with a lot of the blog sites I visit our prices are around $0.20 or so higher than everywhere else. I thought I was going to get them for $1.19 a bag. I get to the store and I start shopping only to realize I didn’t put the Kettle coupons in my envelope. I still had coupons for the Wesson and mustard, so I decided to shop and buy those things. My daughter had a school function that night, so I could come back after that and get those items plus I could pick up another Wesson and Mustard.

Here are my results:

Walmart Shopping

I had a great weekend this weekend with my daughter. We went on a Girl Scout camping trip. We spent Friday and Saturday at camp. It was more like a two night sleep over for the girls. They had fun and little sleep. We walked all over camp. I was so exhausted by the time we got home on Sunday. Whew! I took Monday off. :) I learned so much about Girl Scout traditions I never knew. I can't wait to go again next year.

Our Bunks

Dangerous Little Miss

 

Yeah I almost got a bullseye!

With all that, I have been really busy shopping this week. I have barely had time to write about it. Many great deals I can’t wait to share. I went to Walmart, Tom Thumb, Sprouts and Kroger. I will post all those later. Today I am starting with Walmart.

I have been having problems checking out at Walmart, since the cashiers don’t know about the new coupon policy as of yet. I meant to print it out and bring it with me this time but I forgot. I had a few items that were under the amount of the coupon and she had to go ask her manager about them. I also had to make sure she gave my overages because she was only going to give me the value of the item off. So I am printing a copy of the coupon policy and placing it in my Walmart envelope today. I purchased other non related food items at Walmart so I am just going to list the food items here.

Here is how I did:

Kroger Shopping

Today little face and I headed to Kroger to do the weekly shopping. I have a few staples I needed this week even though I don’t have coupons for them. I brought my coupon file this time to see if I could find any deals not advertised. I always have my phone ready to take pictures of items I might be interested in and compare them to Walmart prices. Some tags have and end date when the sale is going to end. Even though they are not mentioned in any ad, they may be on sale for a while. I have to say looking through my file while shopping is more difficult with little face. I have to concentrate and look for coupons and he gets frustrated I am not paying attention to him. But a song of ABC’s and itsy bitsy spider and that usually calms him down. It is called mommy multi-tasking!

I had quite a few good match ups this week and these were not posted on any website. They corresponded with the awesome Kroger eCoupons also to get an even bigger savings. I did go over my budget of $50.00 this week with my diaper purchase on Monday. Plus I bought a lot of meat this time at the store. So I will need to cut back the next couple of weeks to compensate for my overages.

Here is how I did:

Target Shopping

Monday was Money Making Monday for me. I was so excited. There is a site I visit to surf the web, participate in small surveys and watch short videos to get points. The points vary for each, but I got enough for a $5.00 Amazon gift card from Swagbucks.  You can just sign up and start earning points.

After getting $5.00 Amazon gift card, I headed over to Target to pick up some diapers. I had a $3.00 off Huggies and a $2.50 off Target coupon. I had two of each to combine with a coupon for a $5.00 gift card for buying two boxes of Huggies diapers. So I got $11.00 off Huggies diapers to make them around the same price as Walmart. Plus a $5.00 gift card.

CVS Shopping

Yesterday I needed coffee. The thunderstorms rolled in at 3:00 am in the morning. Which normally would just wake up the average person, but... we purchased a weather radio several years ago that makes a louder beeping noise than an alarm clock when it goes off. You can absolutely forget about going right back to sleep after that. It scares you have to death when you hear that sound and I sit up in bed to hear what it has to say. Fearing the worst, praying for the best. I kept getting up checking outside to see what size hail we were getting. Pea, marble, golf ball, quarter….. it depends on if you are using the money scale or the ball scale. It is not official which one to use.

We had a very busy Sunday needless to say. We went to church, then Brownies after that and a pizza birthday party after that. Even though I was super busy I managed to sneak in some CVS shopping between events. I took little miss with me to show her how I do this CVS shopping thing. She was very excited to see mommy in action. Also I saw two people there trying to decide what kind of toothpaste to by. I decided this is a learning opportunity and showed them if they bought the same brand, but the one over on the other shelf they could get money back through ECB’s and buy something else. And I showed them a few more items they may want to pick up that were on sale also.

Milk was on sale this week at CVS. I am so excited about this since I have a coupon for the brand of milk they sell at CVS. So this makes it as much as it is in the store. I didn’t have a plan, since I was just going in between events. My goal was try to get the milk for free or close to free.

Here is how I did:

Time Saving Tips

We all went to a crawfish boil yesterday. It was benefitting the LSU alumni associations’ scholarship fund. My husband went to LSU, I did not. We couldn’t have asked for more perfect weather either. It was around 87 and breezy. I loved it. The crawfish were delicious and the kids had a great time. They all fell asleep in the car on the way home and we were pretty tired too.

Freebies

NEW LINK: FREE Sample Orville Redenbacher’s Pop Up Bowl

FREE Sample of Orville Redenbacher’s Pop Up Bowl, go to the Walmart FREE Sample Site to request your FREEBIE!! Allow up to 4 weeks for delivery!  Also, you can print a $1/1 Coupon.

Kroger Shopping 03/31/11

I had a great time yesterday sitting with my friend Natalie. I was trying to teach her what I am doing and show her how she can save money on her grocery bill. She was very excited to get started. We had a printer glitch, but I did show her how to load the e-coupons at Kroger. Very exciting to think you are saving money and what you can do with that money.

I went to Kroger today to go shopping. I needed get the free items I won during the March madness game before they expired. I had a few things I knew I needed to buy and I was going to check on some items to see if they had good prices or sales on items for coupons that were about to expire. My Kroger changed their official coupon policy to accept e-coupons with manufacturer coupons. They did this anyway just now it is official. I was so excited to hear this. I wanted a copy of their coupon policy, but they didn’t have one they could hand to me.

Here is how I did:

Recipe - Tequila Chicken

Last night I was trying to figure out what we were going to have for dinner. I wanted something Mexican, but I didn’t want tortillas. Since I didn’t have any. I was planning on going to the store Thursday, today. So I remembered I made Tequila Chicken. This is also a very healthy meal. If you don’t drink or opposed to alcohol you do not need the tequila for this dish. We didn’t have any last night and it was delicious.

Tequila Chicken

I forgot to take pictures so here is the recipe:

1lb Chicken (I use the breast)

1 tblsp cooking oil

1 12oz of chunky salsa

3 tblsp fresh cilantro

1 tblsp tequila

1 tablespoon lime juice

2 teaspoon lime zest (zest of one lime)

1 teaspoon sugar

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon red pepper

¼ teaspoon garlic powder

2 cups cooked rice

Cut chicken into ½ inch strips.

In a skillet brown chicken in oil until a light brown, drain cooking liquid from skillet.

In a bowl combine the salsa, cilantro, tequila, lime juice, lime peel, sugar, cinnamon, red pepper, and garlic powder. Pour over chicken in skillet. Bring back to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 10 min until chicken is thoroughly cooked. Serve over hot cooked rice.

This is the actual recipe, but if you don’t have some of the ingredients that’s ok too. I didn’t have cilantro last night and I wasn’t going to run to the store just for cilantro, but it still tasted great. If you don’t have a lime you can always substitute a lemon. I never actually measure spices I just eyeball them. A dash here a palm full there. It tastes great. I usually use fresh garlic too when I can. For this recipe I used one clove and cooked it with the chicken. I also added one medium onion for extra flavor and an extra veggie when I cooked the chicken.

I had a nine year old girl, 19 month old son and a husband at home last night and they all loved Tequila Chicken. It has a classic salsa taste, but the cinnamon really makes it. I just love the flavor of this dish. Try it out sometime and let me know how it turns out or if you do anything different to the recipe and it tastes great.

I would love to hear from you.

Target Shopping

Today is a yucky cold and rainy day here in Dallas. I am not complaining, since we need it. But it does keep us indoors and little face pointing at the door saying “Outside. Outside.” With his cute little puckered lips and then I have to tell him, no because it is raining and yucky outside. He just loves to play out there.

Rain aside I had been checking out some Target deals and I decided it was time to make a trip to Target. I shop there about once a month once I get enough deals for me to go. This week with there were a lot of Target coupons of buy three get one free and I was able to do quite a few match-ups  to make it cheaper.

Overall I spent $25.79 and saved $19.12.

Here is how I did it:

CVS Shopping

CVS Shopping

I was excited to receive our Free Friday paper again this week. This week was lucky since it had 3 Smart Source inserts. However, the paper doesn’t always include all the ads. There was no CVS add in the paper for me to plan my Sunday shopping trip. So I went to Simply CVS for the weekly sales flyer. She always has it posted early.

There wasn’t a lot I wanted at CVS this week. I went there without a plan in mind and I brought extra coupons to see what I could work out. I was excited I had $6.99 in ECB’s to spend from last week. Shopping was more difficult, since they had not put up the sales tags yet. I had to take the sales flyer with me and go to the scanner to see if some of the items qualified.

Here are my results:

Walmart Shopping

I went to Walmart today because I wanted to buy some table wine to restock our small wine fridge. We drink the cheap stuff for our casual house table wine. I have up graded a little to Lucky Duck it is $4.00 a bottle. I really like their Chardonnay better than Oak Leaf. But I like the Cabernet Sauvignon Oak Leaf better. Since I was going to be at Walmart I decided to check to see what other deals I could find before I headed out. Spent $0.19 for 16 items.

Here are my results: