Coupons Make Mommy Happy

Well it’s 6:39 PM and I’m just now getting this post up, because I didn’t even have the chance to do any of my coupon shopping until this afternoon! I hit CVS and Walgreens and did not come away disappointed. It’s amazing how much a good couponing run can lift my spirits. When I got home I felt like a a real winner. 🙂 Here’s what I got!

First up, CVS:

63 cents and I made 2 ECBs!

One Touch Mini $14.99
Three Puffs tissues $2.91
CVS Vitamin D $2.99
Fusion Razor $7.99
Total = $28.88

Coupons:
$5/$25 Rite Aid q (my CVS takes competitor q’s)
$14.99 One Touch Mini manu q
$4 Fusion manu q
total= $4.89
I paid with a $4.99 ECB adjusted down to $4.89 and paid 63 cents cash. I got back 2.90 ECB for the Vitamin D and 4 ECB for the razor. Woot!!

Next I went to Walgreens, where I hadn’t been since I would guess, August or September. But the deals were too good to pass up this week!

$1.43 at Wags

Sambucol $12.99
Colgate Max Fresh $3.29
Excedrin $5.99
Two Extra gum clearance 65 cents each (filler!)
Blink eye drops $7.99
Total = $31.56

coupons:
$10 off Sambucol Walgreens q
$4 off Sambucol manu q
75 cents of Colgate manu q
$4 off Excedrin Walgreens q
$1 off Excedrin manu q
$2 off Blink manu q

Total (including tax) = $12.93, and I got back $11.50 in register rewards! $8 for the eyedrops and $3.50 for the toothpaste. Woohoo! I am going to use those register rewards on the sweet Huggies deal at Wags next week!

Well that’s all for me this week! Hope you all did great too! To see how everyone else did, check out CVS Superstars at the Centsible Sawyer, Super Savings Saturday at Money Saving Mom and Shopping Superstars at the Thirfty Mama.

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WFMW: OnceaMonthMom.com

Our friends Tricia and Cortney have an awesome new website called Once a Month Mom. They provide detailed menus, recipes, grocery lists, and – most importantly – instructions on how to cook once and eat all month.

Since once a month is about my cooking limit anyway, I decided to give it a shot. However, cooking one meal and doing “Once a Month Mom” cooking are two entirely different things! Last weekend, though, I decided I was up for the challenge.

To make OAMM cooking day a success, it’s best to have a partner. My partner was my good friend Emilie, who is usually game for whatever crazy scheme I concoct. Emilie and I work together, and we both have really limited time to get dinner on the table at night, so we were excited to give it a shot. We printed out Tricia’s handy grocery list, figured out what we already had between the two of us, and split up the rest of the items.

As I mentioned yesterday, in order to do all this cooking, I decided to buy a food processor and a can opener. Yes, I did own a can opener (Campbell’s chicken noodle is a staple at our house) but after seeing the mass quantity of can goods that were going to require opening, I thought an electric one would be a good idea. And the food processor just seemed like a lot of fun.

Because of my genius, Tricia has appended her cooking tips to include “The food processor is NOT FOR EVERYTHING.”

So my tomato and green peppers were a little soupy. How was I supposed to know that?

In any case, after about six hours and a few minor mishaps (I put all bazillion ounces of cooked pasta into one dish that called for 16oz – oops!), Emilie and I had made:
–Breakfast Burritos
–Banana Sour Cream Muffins (my personal favorite thing of the day)
–Taco Soup
–Vegetable Soup
–Chicken and Corn Quesadillas
–Spaghetti Sauce
–Lasagna
–Chicken Parmigiana
–Baked Spaghetti
–Chicken Macaroni Bake
–Chicken Ziti
–Chicken Enchiladas

My freezer is FULL. And guess what?? Emilie and I each only spent about $100 on the groceries! Do you realize how CHEAP that is for a month of meals? It is amazing. I would have never, ever, ever had enough time in the evening to make meals like this. And I would have never undertaken it on my own – the grocery list (in a spreadsheet, which made my dorky heart sing), recipes and instructions provided by Once a Month Mom did all the thinking for me.

It was a long day (Note: Take Tricia’s advice about getting the kids out of the house. Our three kids running around made it much more complicated!), but it was fun and it was so worth it.

Healthy, homemade meals all month long? That works for me!

For more WFMW tips, click over to We are THAT Family, the new home of WFMW!

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The Stockpile Has Landed

I didn’t do ANY CVSing this week. Never darkened the door! There just weren’t any sales exciting enough to get me in the door. Shocking, I know. Hopefully this coming week will be better! I did, however, hit a super-awesome sale at Meijer! Here’s what I got:

$48.01 at Meijer

It took me five transactions, but I got all of this – over $110 worth of groceries (at sale prices) for just $48.01! I got 24 boxes of Chex Mix/Fiber One bars, and at $2 apiece, those alone would have cost $48 without coupons. Every time you bought five boxes of these, you got a coupon back for $3.50 off your next order. I had coupons for $1 off (some that went to $1 when doubled) for all of these, so I’d pay $5, get $3.50 back, and then use that coupon to buy my next batch! On my last transaction I got 4 boxes, so I have a $2.50 coupon to use next time I go to Meijer. 🙂

I also got six boxes of cereal, five 6-packs of Yoplait kids yogurt, a bag of frozen chicken tenderloins, milk, pasta, frozen chicken nuggets, bananas, bread, five Lean Cuisines, Chex Mix, a fmaily size Hershey’s syrup (woot!), and two jars of Skippy peanut butter!

I haven’t had a haul this good in a long time, so I was really excited. Hope you all did great too! To see how everyone else did, check out Super Savings Saturday at Money Saving Mom and Shopping Superstars at the Thirfty Mama.

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