Monday, August 23

Give and Get is Here!

Give and Get is Here!: "Enjoy 30% off from August 26-29 at Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy and we'll donate 5% of what you spend to a non-profit."

Sunday, August 22

Where are the deals???

I am so dissapointed. I love Sunday mornings because that means a brand new week of deals, but not so much this week. I went through all of my fliers, did a quick look at my favorite blogs and have not found anything worth leaving the house for. Darn! I hope we find some good stock up prices next week or perhaps there will be some good in store clearance/ mark downs this week- I can hope anyways :-). I am coming up on my 1 year anniv. of couponing and either I was just so excited to find out how much money I could save or I entered the world of coupons at a good time because I remember saving some pretty good money and finding some deals that I just haven't really found lately- maybe next week??

Monday, August 16

Carr's Part 2

So after scoring what I felt like were some pretty good deals at Carr's on Sat. I decided to go back and stock up on more. I often feel like I am buying a ton of items only to run out within a few weeks or a month and then I can't find the items for a good deal again. So, I went back last night and bought more cereal- I paid A$1.75 (averaged it) a box and I know there are coupon shoppers out there that can do better, this is one of those items that I often run out of and then end up paying over $2/ box and sometimes even $2.50- so $1.75 was stock up price for me. I will still look for better cereal deals and won't hesitate to pick up more since we seem to go through it like water. I think I ended up with about 20 boxes but they aren't the big boxes and I am curious to see how long that really last around here.
I also bought more ice cream products - for 2 Dreyer's and 1 skinny cow ice cream sandwiches I paid $13 (not a good price) but I did get a $4 on my next order which brings it down to $9 and the averages to $3 an item and a pretty good deal. I actually like to pay around $2.5o for the ice cream so I didn't really "stock up" - but I have enough for a month. I also bought more fruit roll ups- these averaged out to $.75/box with coupons and money for your next order coupon and definitely a stock up price for us- especially with school coming. I purchased about 9 boxes of these over the 2 days and would have bought more if I had more coupons. I also picked up mayo for $1.50 (22oz) with newspaper coupon and mfr coupon's found by the meat dept. in the store.
When I first looked at the ad last Wed,. I didn't see anything that great but when I really took my time and started pairing it up with the coupons (in store and mfr) it made for some deals that will really help save on breakfast and school lunches as the school year begins.
I hope this info helps!

Saturday, August 14

My Carr's trip

I had a fun, short trip to Carr's this morning. What made it fun was while I was looking for the fruit snacks and cereal deals another lady was shopping the same deals and she noticed (I was with my 3 youngest and they are NOT quite- so hard to not notice us!) that I was using coupons and offered me 1 of hers and also let me know where I could find some of the coupon booklets. I love other coupon people- there seems to be a sort of sisterhood :-) - I also noticed when she was checking out with my not so favorite cashier that she was getting a bit of a run around with her coupons- thankfully the manager came out and pulled me into another lane and I had no issues but I sure felt "coupon ladies" pain. I picked up a lot of cereal and several fruit snacks. I also took advantage of the buy $12 in certain frozen treats then get a $4 on your next order- I had a $1 ip coupon for the skinny cows and was going to purchase 2 of the Dreyers anyways- so that worked out well. In the end my order came to $115 and after coupons and sales it went down to $43! Yae... The women behind me was pretty impressed but quickly started making excuses why that wouldn't work for her- I hadn't even encouraged her but I guess she needed to justify why her bill wouldn't go down 60% LOL! I really just bought the sale items and stocked up on the items for the beginning of the school year, so that was by no means my groceries for the week, just a fun Carr's trip :-). And by the way there are lots of coupon books near the middle cheese cooler and near the meat/pharmacy area at the Wasilla Carr's.

Thursday, August 12

Free Target Items

After not 1 but 2 trips to Target today, I managed to find some pretty good deals using the new Target.com coupons You can get free bic pens using this coupon and free Sticky notes using this link this is a PDF file and there is no limit to how many you can print. I have been to Target 4 times this week and just pick up a few each time I am there. They are starting to get low at the Wasilla store. I also used the $3 on men's merona shirt to get a free t-shirt for my son tonight. They were already cheap, actually only $2.50 but free after the coupon. I found a pair of women's jean shorts marked down to $5.50 and used the $3 off of men's or woman's jean product to get a pair of jean shorts for $2.50! I also found a cute pair of merona sandals marked down to $4 and used the $3 off coupons to get a $16 pair of sandals for $1. My final deal was on a new pillow- only $2.50 to start but with $1 off I have a new pillow for my dad when he comes to visit in a few weeks :-). So for a recap I spent $5.00 and got 1 pillow, 1 pair of jean shorts, 1 t-shirt, 2 packs of Bic pens, 6 sticky note pads, and a pair of sandals! There was also 50% off of some of the dollar spot items and I picked up some Dora items for my daughters 2nd b-day coming up next week. FUN!

Monday, August 9

Another long day of shopping

I have never been a big back to school shopper. I try to buy things the kids need throughout the year and then just a few new items for the school year. This year was different. It just happened that all 3 of my boys needed clothes, especially jeans to kick off the school year. Yesterday it was shoe shopping- not my favorite thing to do with the 4 of them and you will notice by my post title for yesterday that it did not go all that well. However, by the end of the day yesterday I did have multiple new shoes for all the kids and did not break the bank either. I found some clearance and sale items at Target. I am also accepting that with a teenager in the house I have to give a little and perhaps spend more on some of his clothing and shoe choices since he cares a lot more about style and making a good impression. I also think he dresses very well and respectable for a teenage boy and don't want to discourage this in any way :-).
So back to today... I loaded up the kids for day 2 of torture and we drove into Anchorage in hunt of pants and any other "can't pass up deals". At kohl's I found some great 80% off clearance items on summer clothes. I purchased new swim suits for the little boys and lots of shorts priced between $1.75 and $4.00. We also found a few nice shirts for my oldest son. One of my fun finds was Transformers were on clearance from 12.99 to $4 for the large ones and the small ones were only $2.50. I bought several for Christmas gifts and the kids didn't even notice ;-). I was also able to use a 20% off of all kids clothing coupon and a 15% all other items. I spent less than a $100 and had 4 large bags of clothes and toys when I left! We also made it over to Old Navy and I was able to buy jeans for $10 for the younger kids and $20 for my teenager. We also found a few clearance cargo pants for the older one- marked down to $12. So all in all I am very pleased with all that we were able to purchase today and more than anything, I am glad to be done with the shopping!! Bring on the first day of school...

Good deals, bad kids

I had a long day of shopping with 4 unruly children. If you happened to be out and about today and saw a mom with 4 bratty kids that were acting horrible, that was probably me! Ughhh... However I did manage to find some great deals at Walgreens and Target. I'll start with Walgreens
2 womens's nivea body wash B1G1 (5.99) and used an ip $4/2 plus a paper coupon buy 2 women's nivea body wash get 1 men's was free (saved $7)- so for $2 I got 3 large nivea body washes. I also bought a Dial Body - pay $4 and get $3rr plus I used the IP coupon for $1 off= FREE :-) The other great deal is Secret Soothing Effects on clearance for $2.69 and it produces a $3 rr as well! I hear this is a rolling deal but I have never tried to "roll" a deal so I can't varify that but I can tell you that it did produce a $3rr. There were several and I only bought 1- will probably go back tomorrow and get another dial and another deoderant and just use the RR's from today.
Now for Target- I bought 5 post it sticky notes that are on sale for $1 and was able to use the IP coupon for $1- oh- gotta go - babies crying- more tomorrow

Saturday, August 7

I'm back! :-)

After a wonderful family vacation we are safely back in rainy Alaska. We enjoyed warm, humid, sunny days in the Midwest and loved every minute of it, knowing it would be cool and rainy upon our return. I made a few interesting observations pertaining to couponing and saving money while on this trip that I would like to share. The most obvious is that food (and just about everything) is SO much cheaper in the Midwest. Items that I purchase on sale and with coupons up here where priced at that cost to start with :-(. I did take some coupons with me... yup, I'm a geek. Thanks to Life in my land blog I won a coupon organizer that is perfect for traveling and came in very handy. I still found myself wishing I had my big binder because boy I could have cleaned up with some savings a few times but then I would have had to ship another suitcase back and the fee for that would have eaten up the savings LOL.

Perhaps my biggest disappointment was with shopping at the outlet malls. I was really looking forward to buying clothes for the kids and maybe some household items at deep discounted outlet prices. Boy was I wrong. What I actually discovered was I could get better deals with sales up here or online. Maybe I was there on the wrong week but I think the outlet stores are hoping that just by putting the term outlet in the name we will be dumb enough to think we are saving money. I went to Coldwater Creek in Chicago (not an outlet) and found 2 blouses on sale for $10- I then went to 2 Coldwater Creek stores in Indiana and MI and both of those stores had the same blouse at a higher cost- Hmmmm???? Again, this was not really a bad thing since I was able to use the same luggage we went with and did not ship anything extra back.

My final dissapointment on an otherwise fantastic trip was my own fault. I forgot to get the Sunday papers!!! I did get the insert from my MIL for one week but the next Sunday I was planning to purchase a few papers but had an extraordinarily busy day with my daughters baptism, son's birthday and a large family picnic. I should have known better than to plan all of that on a "coupon Sunday" LOL! And darn if it wasn't the P&G insert day :-). Oh, well. It did give me time to reorganize my binder when I got home and I am ready for my double papers tomorrow. I am thinking about using a coupon service to get the inserts from the lower 48 but not sure if I am that hard core just yet- any thoughts???