Spare Recipes

That pun was intended because this is about pork spare ribs. I'm going to post recipes on my other site that used on sale ingredients. I recently cooked these ribs and they were on sale so my husband and I ate for $3.50 a person.

www.triedandtruerecipesbytiff.blogspot.com

Enthusiasm and Happiness

Let me just tell you how excited I am. Maybe it's the increase in temperature outside from 25 to 60, or maybe it's my new haircut or maybe it's because I am excited to shop and save!! I don't have a picture of me showing the correct amount of enthusiasm and excitement that I feel, so here's one of Olivia. She's super excited too but has a hard time showing it.

So, it's Wednesday and tomorrow I get to go to my bible study at my church. That always makes me happy. They have free childcare for 2 hours so that makes everyone Super Excited!! There are good deals at the grocery store this week, especially HT and Publix and I'm super excited about setting up my list.

I made a great Shepherd's Pie and Pork Ribs this week and good food always makes me happy. I'm making seafood alfredo tonight and our neighbor's are coming to dinner, so again, more reasons to be happy!!

I hope all of you readers have a happy week too!!

Re-Group

There's no picture to accompany this, but I felt the need to re-group. I finally feel that I've come up with a good system for me in regards to groceries and drugstores.

I spend probably an hour cutting coupons, filing and getting my grocery list together. I've been winging it at CVS and Rite Aid and have done pretty well. So,here's how my week generally goes:

Tuesday / Wednesday:
I print my list off of Southern savers for any combination of Bi-Lo, Publix and Harris Teeter. Publix and Harris Teeter are my favorites, but sometimes Bi-Lo has really good deals on cereal and baby items.
Then I compare coupons to make sure I have them all and see what I don't.
**I don't clip ALL coupons anymore. I clip the ones I'll definately use and then ones I will use if it's really cheap (i.e. makeup)**

My mother in law is very generous and watches the kids for me on Wednesdays so I can shop. It takes me 2 hours because I take my time and compare coupons with the products to make sure I'm getting the right thing. And also, I check out the deals in produce and meat. There's a neat site out there called e-mealz and they make weekly food menus based on certain store's sale prices. I really enjoy putting my meals together myself, so I might not use these sites.

Harris Teeter is my favorite for watching the prices drop: When I'm there, I like the cashier to ring up everything, THEN I give her my VIC card, THEN I give her my coupons. And just like that...I'm happy!! but the cashier isn't always so happy because they usually ask first thing if you have a VIC card and then I have to give it to them. They don't understand why I want to wait. Maybe they get in trouble if they don't ask right away.

I've also gotten in the habit of freezing my meat. Sometimes I just don't cook it all and then it goes bad. And I really don't like that. Especially ground beef. It seems as though that goes first and only has a 2 day time limit on it...Any suggestions other than to use it right away?

And that's how it goes with me right now. On the first 3 weeks in January, I've spent $438, Saved $483 on a value of $920 - 52%. Not too bad...My goal is 50% on average. This includes groceries and drugstores.

Oops, I did it again...

I went back to CVS. I just loved the lip gloss I got and I had more coupons so I just HAD to get one more!!! I also HAD to scrounge around in Rite Aid's 90% off Christmas section for $.19 light up pens and $.99 rice krispy treat decorating kit....Can't go wrong there. So, my savings percentage was 90% which made me super happy!

Also, I've been keeping an eye on 12 pack diet cokes or diet pepsi. The lowest we see for them is $2.50 for the 12 pack, but it hasn't been that low for a while. Any of you who know my husband, knows he lives on diet coke more than I live on coffee. So, we've been slumming it and haven't had diet coke in the house for a bit now. Well, CVS has Diet pepsi's on sale for 6 / $20 and you get 10 ECB back. So, you can use the 10 ECB's to buy another 6. So, 12 for $30 ...$2.50 each!! I have to go back this week and stock up!

Will you try it?

If it costs $1, will you try it? Is it worth $1 to you to try new makeup?? For me, Yes! I made a run to CVS this morning with 6 ECB's just dying to be put to good use. Items on my list included Cottonelle Flushable Wipes, shaving cream and Aussie Shampoo. All on sale and most with chances to earn more ECB's. However, when I looked through the makeup section, there was a deal for L'oreal. Spend $10 (before coupons) and get 3 ECBs back. I checked my stack of coupons and sure enough, I had many coupons for L'oreal products. To make this even better, there were select items that were 75% off!!! So, I scrounged around till I found a few items 75% off, then matched up with my coupons and headed to check out. I had $58.45 worth of cosmetics, which was 2 eye shadows, 1 lip gloss and 2 Age Defying foundations (orig. $18). All of these items were 75% off, making the cost $14.60, then I had coupons totaling $10, so my Out of Pocket cost was $4.60. Then I got $3 ECBs, so essentially I paid $1.60 on $58 worth of stuff!

The Aussie shampoo and hair products were $2.88 and I had $1 off coupons for each. The Dial body wash was 50% off and the shaving cream gave me 1 ECB. So, I left CVS with 1 ECB, spending $20 and saving $90 or so.

Success at Harris Teeter

I've been very, very, very patiently waiting for Harris Teeter to do their Super Doubles again. That is, they double all manufacturer coupons $1.98 or less. The math is much simpler than the triples program and the savings is much bigger, I think. this is a picture of just a portion of the shopping trip. What makes me feel the best, is that I purchased actual, food we can live on, groceries. Sometimes during these fun promotions, I end up with lots of Pillsbury crescent rolls or fruit snacks, but not a whole lot of substance. This time, there weren't many snack items on sale but the meat selection was great!

I purchased 2 London Broils (B1G1 - $10), 3 pkgs of chicken breasts (B1G2 - $9) and 6 pounds of frozen shrimp for $26 = less than $5 a lb). So I saved $81.49 on meat alone. Not too shabby! I picked up a few items, like blistex, dish soap. I also splurged and bought my favorite Brianna's salad dressing. I've also stocked up on our favorite popcorn - Pop Secret Homestyle. Yes, it was on sale and I did have a coupon. The Stacy's chips weren't on sale, but the guacamole was free!

So, I spent $120 and saved $136 - approximately 53% savings.

J. Crew..Really?!

I typically don't venture into J. Crew, especially in downtown Charleston on King Street. Just a bit too fancy for me. But when given the opportunity to have an hour without the kids and head out with the girls, I couldn't resist.

Not expecting to find any item less than $20, I began my search. All sale items were an additional 30% off so I did some quick calculations and saw $16 pants and $18 Shirts. Good, but not great for this extreme couponer. Then, I saw this tag. $9.99. Hmmm. That sounds good. $7 sounds even better. Yes, that's right. I found jeans and khakis for $7!! And at J. Crew no less!! So, I bought both pair of jeans and one pair of green khakis for $21!!! Yes, it was a good day on King Street. Turns out $98 jeans do fit quite nicely :)