Super Savings Saturday: The I-Got-My-Wisdom-Teeth-Pulled Edition

Have you noticed a dearth of substantive posts here this week? I sure have especially since I had a long list of posts planned to write--like our menu for this week, the next installment in the Becoming A Work-At-Home Mom series, some giveaways, and our financial update.

I got my wisdom teeth pulled on Wednesday morning and while it wasn't at all as bad as I was expecting the whole ordeal to be, I underestimated the fact that pain would take away my brain power. I don't know about you, but I can't write anything worth reading when I'm brain-dead.

The good news is that I'm feeling much better today and hoping in a few more days I'll be back to normal (and maybe able to eat something besides soft foods again!) so I'll do my best to get things caught back up-to-speed here next week as I know some of you are getting a wee bit antsy for me to get on with the promised posts. Thanks for your patience!

I did all my grocery shopping on Tuesday and here's what we bought:

Above is shown our $20 combined Target and Aldi trip. Read more details along with price break-downs and coupon links here.

And above is our Dillon's (Kroger) trip. I mostly just wanted to do a Mega Event transaction but I also found a few markdowns and used one of my $1.50/2 lbs. of cheese coupons to buy cheese. All totaled, we spent $12.61 at Dillons for the above groceries.

I'm kind of embarrassed to post these pictures as most everything is from a box this week and that's not typical for us. However, I promise we didn't subsist on baby wipes and marshmallows this week!

Since I was down and out half of this week, my family lived on dinners from the freezer and food already in our pantry and cupboards--which is the beauty of buying ahead and buying in bulk.

And me? Well, I mostly have been living on juice, mashed potatoes, yogurt, and cottage cheese--not the most balanced diet ever, but you gotta do what you gotta do when you have oral surgery. It's only been a few days but I am so very ready to eat real food again!

Next week, I hope to be back to a more balanced diet and menu-planning again!

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: Organic apples and tangerines for $0.99 per bag!

I went to Aldi and to the health food store this week. Plus, I got some farm-fresh eggs from my family.

Here's what I bought:

I got three bags of organic apples at the health food store for $0.99 each! (One bag isn't pictured because I shared it with my sister.) And the bags of tangerines were on sale at Aldi for $0.99 each, too! Looks like we'll be making some yummy fresh juice over the next few weeks.

All totaled, we've spent $25 from our $160 monthly grocery budget so far this month--and our freezer is full of meals! It's looking like we're definitely going to be able to stay plenty under-budget this month and have lots of wiggle room for some more bulk purchases.

Stay tuned for next week's menu on Monday.

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: Over $75 worth of natural/organic foods for $19!

I made a quick run into a nearby health food store this week as a friend of mine had tipped me off to the fact that their Annie's cereals were on sale for $0.99. I'm so glad I stopped when I did because I walked out with everything shown above and paid less than $20!

The Annie's cereals were on sale for $0.99 (an incredible deal considering the regular price is $5.99! Do people really pay that kind of money for a box of cereal??)! The Kashi bars were $1.99 per box and I had $1/1 coupons making them $0.99 per box. All of the veggies/fruit were reduced to $0.99 per bag/carton--even that 5.5 lb. bag of organic carrots!

Now the fun challenge has been using up all those carrots as they are nearing the end of their life (which is why the bag was so inexpensive!) We've been making carrot/apple juice--yum!--and I'm also thinking of making a whole-wheat carrot cake this coming week as we have lots of cream cheese in the freezer.

If I have any left, I think I might just whip up some homemade baby food for the freezer since Silas is almost 6 months old (sniff!) and he'll inevitably be starting solid foods before long. I've said before that I don't usually make special baby food, but if I can get organic carrots for $0.99 per five pounds, I just might change my mind on that! Or maybe I'll just chop, cook, and freeze the leftovers to use in soups. We'll see!

I spent a few dollars at both Target and Wal-Mart on deals this week as well, but I failed to get a picture of those.

All totaled, we're about $10 under our $40/week grocery budget for the month of October--and our cupboards, freezer, pantry, and refrigerators are still quite full with food.

By the way, I'm teaming up with FishMama to do a Baking/Cooking Ahead Day next week. We even got all fancy and set up a Facebook page here if you're interested in joining us. Stay tuned early next week for further details.

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: Dillon's and a trip to the Bulk Foods Store

We did something different this month in our grocery budgeting. Instead of taking out $40 each week to use on groceries like we usually do, we took out a lump sum of $160 at the beginning of the month. I was surprised, but it seemed like this $160 went a lot farther than the $40 per week usually does. I'm not sure the reasoning behind that, but that's what happened!

Motivated by my success the past two months in setting aside money from our weekly grocery budget for bulk purchases, I've been working a little harder this month to see if I could set aside a larger amount. I've been amazed at how much purchasing in bulk is helping me to do this. It seems build upon itself: the more I purchase in bulk, the more it gives me wiggle room to purchase in bulk.

This month, I was able to set aside $60 from our grocery budget for bulk purchases. Some friends and I drove to a nearby town today and shopped at a bulk foods store and I was able to purchase a lot of what you see pictured above for just right under $40. I got enough spices and herbs to last me well over a year, 25 pounds of unbleached flour, raw sesame seeds and sunflower seeds, dates, coconut, and even a big bag of turbinado sugar (a more natural sugar) and carob powder.

I'm so excited to be finding creative ways to afford some healthier foods in our budget. Buying in bulk has certainly been a big asset there. I am going to be using some of these items to make a big batch of homemade granola and I'm also looking forward to experimenting with some new and more healthful recipes. I've never used carob powder or turbinado sugar before. Have you? Any can't-miss recipes you want to share?

In addition to the bulk foods store, we also made two quick trips to Dillons this week--since the sale weeks changes on Wednesdays and we wanted to get things from both sale ads. I won't list off all the deals, but you can read more about the Nature Valley Nut Clusters deal here.

I also got 3 packages of Huggies wipes free off of Amazon using my Swagbucks.

We spent a total of $72 on groceries this week and we were able to really stock up on some things which will last us much longer than a week. We still have about $35 left to spend on groceries this month and I we should have no problem staying under that next week--especially since our freezer is still well-stocked with food.

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: A quiet week and my Alice.com order

I didn't go shopping this week. Not at all. In fact, aside from a quick day trip with Silas to Denver for the ShopatHome.com Blogger's Summit, I didn't leave the house much at all.

The girls had lingering coughs and congestion from their nasty flu last week and then Silas came down with a fever a few days ago. So we've stayed in, stayed put, and been taking lots of Vitamin C, trying to eat well, and getting extra sleep. And it's been nice! In fact, I realized that I need to make a concerted effort to go back to saying "no" to busyness and stay home at least a few full days per week. Life is so much more organized and calm when I do so.

We didn't go grocery shopping at all this week, but since we have a great stockpile of food built up, we just ate from our pantry and freezer (seeing as last week's Baking/Cooking Day guaranteed that we had plenty of food at the ready in our freezer!).

I didn't even so much as open up my coupon box until this evening. It stayed closed for almost ten days and it was a great feeling to just let it sit for awhile while I baked and cooked and tended to sick children.

Of course, I missed out on some deals, for sure, but it was good to take a break. I've found that giving myself a breather every now and then really helps me to keep things in balance and it also prevents coupon "burn-out" (see this article for more on that topic).

I did, however, get 24-roll pack of toilet paper and 8 bottles of shampoo in from Alice.com. They wanted me to try out their new service and gave me a small shopping credit to do just that. Most of the prices are more than what I'd usually pay, but the shampoo/conditioner were only $0.60 per bottle, which is about $0.10 more than I usually pay after a sale and coupons. The toilet paper was also just a tad bit more than I have been paying for it recently as well.

All in all, I spent $11.28 for everything pictured above. Not the greatest deal ever, but seeing as it was shipped straight to my door and shipping was free, it's a decent deal in my opinion.

If you live way out where there aren't many shopping options, I'd definitely recommend checking out Alice.com. Their "Best Deals" section is my favorite place to frequent. They often have manufacturer's coupons available which can further sweeten the deals--like the 64-oz. bottle of Snuggle I got last week for $0.40 shipped.

I'm planning to do a more extensive review of Alice.com as well as a giveaway in the near future so be looking for that if you're interested in trying this shopping service out.

And this has nothing to do with bargains, but a lot of you have been begging for pictures of Silas, so here's one from this past week that I took of him with his new teddy bear:

Can you believe he's already five months old? He is growing like a weed, starting to jabber a lot more, trying to scoot around a little, and he's very much a Mama's boy. I love him to pieces and feel so blessed to be his mother.

Stay tuned for pictures of the girls this next week when I'll be sharing a peek into our homeschool lessons recently. So many of you have been asking for more pictures and tidbits from our life, so as I have time, I'll be doing my best to share these. And I'll also be posting the first installment of the Becoming a Work-At-Home Mom series. I promise. :) This past week flew by and I never had a chance to finish it, but I'm determined to sit down and get it completed in the next day or two and have it posted early next week.

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: Sam's trip, Dillon's trip, green peppers galore, diapers, Snuggle, and a Baking Day!

First things first, I promised you a report of our Sam's Club trip last Saturday. Here's what we ended up buying:

48 10-inch tortillas--$4.46 (this was about the same price as Aldi, but the tortillas were much nicer than theirs)
10-lb bag of pinto beans--$6.23 (beats Aldi price by about $0.30 per pound, I believe)
72-oz bag of Nestle chocolate chips--$9.34 (beats Aldi price by a few cents per 16-oz.)
1 pint pure vanilla--$6.88 (I'm not entirely sure if this beats the store prices of vanilla since I never buy vanilla but I've been told this was a good price. Is it? Anyone know?)
1 5-lb block of cheese--$10 (beats Aldi price by $0.60 per pound)

Total: $39.26 (We used all of the leftover grocery money from September to make these bulk purchases as well as a few dollars from this week's grocery budget.)

So far, I was very under-impressed with Sam's Club. Yes, we saved a small amount of money by shopping there, got a bit higher-quality food than Aldi offers, and got it all in larger quantities. However, some of these prices I can beat with a good sale and coupon on occasion. In addition, I was very careful to only buy those items which would truly be a better deal than the prices I normally pay. I found such deals to be far and few between.

Most of the items at Sam's Club were priced much higher than I usually ever pay. And that's not even factoring that it costs at least $35 to buy a year-long membership to Sam's Club. I am not convinced at all that in our area, it would be worth spending $35 a year. In fact, I am doubtful that I'd break even in savings. However, we are blessed to live very close to Aldi and to stores which double coupons. If we didn't have either of these, I can see where it definitely might be less expensive to buy a lot of your groceries at Sam's.

I'm not giving up on Sam's Club yet. I'm going to try a few more times and see if my perspective changes at all. I'll keep you posted!

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In other savings news for this week: we had Great Flu of 2009 at our house this week and everything was a bit topsy-turvy, including shopping. I couldn't really get out to do any shopping because I was taking care of two very sick little girls, but I still managed to get some great deals without even walking into a store!

My husband went to Dillon's late Tuesday night to buy some drinks for the girls to help them stay hydrated so I also had him get a few of the deals while he was there. Here's what he came home with:

After coupons, he spent $23.54 for everything pictured above.

Some friends gave us a bunch of peppers from their garden.

We used some of them this week and I chopped and froze the rest to use this Winter. That will definitely save us some money to have plenty of peppers ready to use in casseroles, stir-frys, and so forth.

I also got a box of diapers free from Amazon thanks to Swagbucks and I got a 64-oz. bottle of Snuggle for $0.40 shipped thanks to Alice.com. (I thought this deal was no longer available, but a reader said she was able to get it. Login/signup here and then go here to see if it shows up for you. I'll be posting more deals from Alice.com as they surface! They offer free shipping and coupons every week so some of their deals are the same or better than what I can get locally with a store sale and a coupon. But you have to pick and choose as many of their prices are much higher than most of us usually pay.)

And last but not least, I had a Baking Day and stocked my freezer. What was most exciting to me about this Baking Day was that I was able to make a lot of dinners and breakfasts and I didn't spend any extra grocery money to do so. I've just been stocking up on good deals for the last 6 weeks or so and I had enough stuff on hand to make almost a month's worth of meals--all on a $40/week budget!

All totaled this week, we spent $63.20. However, $35 of that was leftovers from September's budget so we're starting week one of October out a little under our $40/week budget again--and our freezer is filled. I'm totally loving that! It just goes to show how a little creativity can certainly go a long way in maximizing the mileage of your dollars, can't it?

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: We were $35 under-budget in September!

I'm so excited! We stuck with our $40 per week grocery budget last month and, by some creativity and hitting the bargain shopping just a wee bit harder, I had $35 leftover at the end of the month!

I'll tell you what I'm going to do with this extra money, but first, here's what groceries we purchased this week:

Total spent at Dillon's: $36.33

(And in case you wonder why I bought Jell-O and Velveeta Shells seeing as I told you last week that we don't eat food coloring, I needed 4 more items in the Buy 10, Get $5 off promotion and I grabbed those as they were only $0.20 each after coupons and the promotion. I'll donate them to someone who can use them!)

I also made another quick trip to the local grocery store running the Double Dollar Coupon promotion. They were out of most everything since it was the last day they were running it, but I still was able to get a few good deals:

Our total for the groceries above: $3.81.

We were, once again, the recipients of some produce from friends so I didn't have to buy much of that this week. I'm also trying to use up some of the meat in our freezer since it was getting pretty full, so we didn't have to buy any meat either.

I'm so thrilled that I was able to set aside a little extra from our grocery budget each week so that I had a total of around $35 to make another bulk purchase. On the recommendation of Brandy from The Prudent Homemaker, we're heading to Sam's Club tomorrow to check out the prices there. I have a short list of items I'm going to check on (beans, rice, oats, cheese, vanilla, chocolate chips, unbleached flour, among a few other things) and I'll see if I can beat some of my target prices with the Sam's Club bulk prices.

My hope is that if I'm able to stock up on a 3- to 6-month supply of items we use a lot and save money by buying in bulk, over time, this will allow us to further maximize our grocery budget. That's the theory I have, at least. But I have to test it out for a year or so before I have proof that it really works! I'll keep you posted!

By the way, things are finally really and truly slowing down around here so I promise to do better about sharing our weekly menus. And, by popular demand, my Baking Day marathon posts will be back, too. I'm planning my first session next week--if all goes as planned. Stay tuned for that!

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: My Double Dollar Coupon Shopping Trip

I planned to go shopping on Monday. But that didn't end up working out and then the whole week sped by at breakneck speed until all of a sudden it was Friday and I still hadn't gone to the store. So we ended up having an unexpected and unplanned-for Eating from the Pantry and Freezer Week.

And honestly? We didn't really seem to notice.

That's truly the beauty of having a good stockpile of food. It's also the blessing of having friends who continue to share their garden bounties with us. I've hardly purchased any vegetables for weeks now, because people just keep sharing with us. Since we had a flopped container garden experiment this year and our current landlords don't allow us to till up part of the yard and put in a garden, we've been so thankful for friends who having shared from their garden surpluses with us.

I hope we can return the favor soon. But I promise I won't leave any sacks of zucchini on anyone's porches. We grew about twenty too many plants of those the first year we moved out to the country growing up and I can hardly stand to look zucchini in the eye again as a result!

At any rate, we managed to survive eight days of not stepping into a store without any issues whatsoever. But when I heard my sister, sister-in-law, and Mom were hitting a local store's Double Dollar Coupon promotion today, I quickly decided it was high time to go shopping again.

I didn't have my coupons all that organized. In fact, I'd neglected them last week because of our trip to Atlanta so they were heaping out of my coupon box--some cut, some inserts whole, and printables strewn about mixed in. (See? For those of you who often write me thinking I have it all put together, here's proof that I'm as normal as it comes. My superwoman cape disappeared in the laundry along with some socks a number of years ago!) My sister came to my rescue and helped me scramble and get some organization in place before we left for the store.

As a result, here's what I came home with:

2 boxes Oreo Cakesters
2 packages of Reese's
1 can Dole pineapple
4 cans of Pringles
1 bottle of Ken's salad dressing
1 carton of Dannon yogurt
4 4-packs of Musselman's applesauce
2 4-packs of Dannon yogurt
3 bottles of Pert Plus
1 bag of shredded cheese
1 bottle of Dawn dish soap
3 bottles of Tabasco sauce
1 Mr. Clean Magic Eraser
1 2-pack of Olay soap
1 3-lb bag of Jonagold apples
2 other apples (We're studying apples in our homeschool unit next week, so I'm trying to buy as many different kinds of apples as I can.)
5 packages of Schick disposable razors
1 bar Johnson's baby soap
3 cans of shaving gel
1 Reach floss
2 packages of whole-wheat lasagna noodles
2 packages of whole-wheat spaghetti noodles
3 packages of other whole-wheat noodles

Also pictured are 2 dozen farm-fresh eggs we bought from my brother who raises chickens.

Before coupons, my total was almost $85. After coupons, I paid $23.58 for everything pictured! I came home re-energized to organize my coupons again and after doing so, I found quite a few more so I think I'm going to head back to this local grocery store again tomorrow to do another Double Dollar Coupon transaction and I'm also planning to stop by Dillon's for their Buy 10, Get $5 Off Mega Event.

I currently have almost $75 in grocery money left to spend in September on our $40/week grocery budget so I'm excited to see how far I can stretch the rest of that. As I mentioned earlier this month, I've been trying to stay under budget like last month so I'd have some money left over to put towards another bulk purchase. It's looking quite feasible at this point.

But I just have to figure out what I want to stock up on... Oats? Frozen Fruit? Butter? Cheese? Coconut Oil? Oh, the possibilities!

I'm even seriously considering investing in some vanilla since so many of you suggested we really shouldn't live without it!

We'll see what I finally narrow it down to! One thing I do know, it has to be something which we'll use a lot of and which will keep well for at least a few months--if not more.

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: This week's Wal-Mart, Target, and Dillons trip

We were traveling back home today from Atlanta so I didn't get the opportunity to post Super Savings Saturday until now. Here's what we bought at the grocery store this week:

Wal-Mart (plus a bag of organic carrots some friends gave us): $19.73

Target trip: $6.72, used gift cards earned last week to pay plus earned a $5 gift card back = $0.00 out of pocket (I was planning to get 10 Kashi items, but they were out of the Honey Sunshine Kashi cereal so I just had to improvise!)

Dillon's trip: $7.22

So all totaled, we spent $26.95 on groceries this week. It's looking like I'm going to have some extra grocery money at the end of September to invest in a few more bulk purchases, which I'm excited about. Now I'm just figuring out exactly what I'm going to use the money to purchase! I'll let you know when I decide.

Stay tuned for our full menu for next week which I'll post on Monday. We've had so much going on recently that I've not done as great of a job of menu-planning and it's definitely made mealtime run a lot less smoothly and made meals much less interesting and varied. So I've determined that I'm jumping back into the swing of following a meal plan starting Monday morning--and I think my whole family is going to be very grateful!

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday

We're busy with birthday celebrations this weekend, but I'll be back later this evening sharing some deals from my bulging inbox and our regular Saturday evening deal posts. Until then, here's our weekly installment of Super Savings Saturday...

I only went shopping once this week, thanks to a well-stocked fridge and freezer and cupboards (and some friends sharing some more fresh produce with us!):

I spent $5.82 on everything pictured above. Read more details on this shopping trip here.

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: Two weeks of grocery shopping

I skipped posting Super Savings Saturday last week because I was still trying to catch my breath and recover from our garage sale. So here's what we've purchase in the way of groceries in the last 2 weeks:

Week 1 our local grocery store was running their Double Coupon promotion so I stopped by there to pick up a few good deals. We then discovered later that night that we were entirely out of diapers and our shipment from Amazon.com hadn't come in yet (I usually purchase the majority of our diapers through Amazon using Swagbucks). So my husband made a quick run to the store for diapers. 

Our total for groceries last week was $26.15

This week, we hit Dillons and Target and bought all of the items pictured above for $30.81. But we also got back $10 in Target gift cards. (See more details on the Target deals in this post here.)

I'm considering hitting Target one more time this week in order to roll those gift cards and buy more Edy's ice cream and Special K bars. We love ice cream at this house--especially for $0.50 per tub--but I'm wondering if having all that ice cream around might counteract the good thing I've got going in the weight loss department here?! (By the way, I've now lost 5 pounds in two weeks and I'm pretty confident that it is a direct result of drinking the Acai Juice!)

In case you're wondering where the produce is in these pictures, we were the recipients (again!) of more fresh fruit and veggies from friends who had some excess. In addition, we've been eating some of the frozen fruit and veggies we have which need to be used up.

And don't forget that I shop using the Buy-Ahead Principle so we're definitely not just living off the food pictured above for two weeks--otherwise that'd be a pretty sorry diet!

I'm excited that we're underbudget again this month. I'm trying to set aside a little extra grocery money every week to make another bulk purchase and it looks like that's going to be feasible quite soon. Now my problem is just settling on exactly what that bulk purchase will be as my head is swirling with ideas! Stay tuned for more details, as they unfold!

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: This week in groceries (and a $30 Kroger gift card giveaway!)

We're heading out the door early this morning to go to fun family festival in a nearby town, so I don't have time to break all the prices down for you. However, here's the groceries we purchased or were given to us this week:

When we got home from vacation last week, my husband made a quick trip to Aldi and Wal-Mart to pick up some lightbulbs and milk, bread, cheese, and fruit since our refrigerator was pretty bare.

Pictured above was my Dillon's trip on Tuesday plus some corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, and eggs from local farms/friends.

Pictured above is my Target and Walgreens trip that I made on Wednesday. More details on my Walgreens deals are posted here. You can see more details on the Target deals here.

I stopped at Dillons to hit the Mega Event and found these packages of beef sausage marked down to $1.59 each. So I stocked up with some of the extra "wiggle room" in our grocery budget.

And finally, Kroger (in conjunction with MyBlogSpark) sent me a gift card for $30 with a challenge to see how much I could buy for that amount with the Mega Event specials they were running. I bought 40 items and split up my transaction into two orders so I could roll the $3.50 Nature Valley catalina to my next order.

I tried to mostly buy stuff we actually eat, but since 3 varieties of Hamburger Helper were marked down to $0.45 each (after the Mega Event discount) and I had coupons which gave me $0.33 off each of them, I went ahead and picked up nine boxes. We don't eat Hamburger Helper, but I can probably find someone to give it to, or else I can use the noodles in other recipes.

We also don't usually eat canned biscuits/crescent rolls, but if I can get them for next to nothing, I buy them and then make them into cinnamon rolls.

I'm pretty sure you can guess that we'll be eating lots of yogurt over the next few weeks! :) My girls think the Yoplait Kids yogurt was the best stuff ever invented so I was so excited to surprise them with an abundance of it. You should have seen their faces when I came home from the grocery store with 8 packages of it!

You can check out more details coupon match-ups for the Mega Event here.

All totaled, we spent $55.59 on groceries this week, plus I used the $30 gift card that Kroger sent me. Since we only spent $5.04 on groceries last week, I had extra room to do a little stocking up on the great deals this week while staying within our $40/week grocery budget. I decided to include the $30 gift card purchases in my grocery budget totals, just to be fair. So I'm only going to spend $30 total on groceries next week, to even things out.

Would you like to win a $30 gift card from Kroger? They have provided an extra one for me to give away, so if you have a Kroger-affiliated store near you, just leave a comment on this post within the next 24 hours and you'll be entered to win it! One winner will be randomly drawn from all the entrants and posted shortly after the giveaway ends. Comments will be closed on this post when the giveaway has ended.

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: $5.04 Walgreens trip

Since we were staying in cabins equipped with kitchens on our vacation this past week, we all pitched in and brought food for the trip and then cooked mostly all of our own meals, instead of going out to eat. I brought extra food from our grocery stockpile so I didn't spend any extra on groceries for this week.

We did end up eating out three times this week--which is two times more than we normally do--but we used our vacation cash envelope to pay for it, so this also didn't cut into our grocery budget at all.

As soon as we got home from our vacation, we found we were completely out of baby wipes and laundry detergent so my husband made a quick run to Walgreens to do the Huggies wipe deal and pick up the cheapest laundry detergent they sold.

I didn't get a picture, but he got:

Off-brand laundry detergent--$2.99
3 64-count tubs of Huggies wipes--$2.79 each, used $2/1 Walgreens coupons, used 1 $0.50/1 manu. coupon--$0.29 for one and $0.79 each for the other two

Altogether, he paid $5.04 for all of that.

I usually try to stock up ahead of time on laundry detergent but I've apparently missed all the recent deals on it so we ended up paying $2.99 for a bottle of it--not too bad, but definitely about $1-$1.50 more than I usually pay per bottle. Oh well!

I'm excited about all of the upcoming deals available next week at our local stores and am hoping to have some great shopping trips. Stay tuned for details on those!

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: Changing things up in my shopping routine

Since we've started officially homeschooling, I'm finding that doing one big shopping trip per week has become more of a challenge to fit in. I'm trying to have a consistent daily schedule, but working in a once-a-week 2-hour shopping trip around naps and nursing and homeschooling is just not working for us.

So I'm considering breaking up my shopping into 2 or 3 one-store trips throughout the week. Depending upon how good the deals are each week, I'm thinking it might work something like: one night I'll go out and do a quick trip to Dillons after the little ones are in bed, on Tuesdays I'll take one of the girls to Aldi with me while my Mother's Helper is here, and, if the deals are really great at Target or some other store, I'll take all three little ones with me after afternoon nap time one day each week.

That's just what I'm tentatively thinking might work right now. I know it flies in the face of my previous stance to only go shopping once a week, but I'm also a person who tries to keep an open mind and never say "never". Different things work at different times and different seasons of life, right? And since we live where all the stores are so close to us right now, there aren't really any added fuel costs to split things up.

We'll see how it goes. I'm known to easily change my mind so if I try this for a few weeks and it's worse than before, I'll put my thinking cap on again and see what I come up with!

At any rate, I split up my shopping trip this week into two parts. I took all the children with me to Aldi on Monday and here's what we bought:



And I did a quick shopping trip at Dillons on Tuesday night after the children were in bed:



I spent a little over $36 at Aldi and $5.44 at Dillons (see details on that trip here) bringing my total for groceries this week to right around $41.50. I had a little leftover money from a previous week that I was under-budget which I used to cover the extra $1.50 so we're still within our $40/week grocery budget right now. I've actually surprised myself that this low budget is still cutting it for our family.

We're still using meat from our freezer and meals from our After-The-Baby-Freezer-Stash so I know that helps. We've almost cleaned our freezer out, though, so I'm gearing up for re-stocking it soon. I'm considering trying Once-A-Month Cooking but I haven't decided yet whether or not I'm going to take the plunge or if that's feasible for our budget. I'll keep you apprised.

We're headed to Arkansas tomorrow for our annual week-long family vacation at the Bull Shoals Lake with all of my extended family so I won't have to do too much cooking this coming week. We're all sharing the cooking load, but I didn't have to buy anything extra as I'm only bringing food I already had in my stockpile. The benefits of using coupons and buying ahead are practically endless, aren't they?

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: The "Weekly-Report-Postponed-for-a-Wedding" Edition

As most of you know, my sister is getting married tomorrow so blogging has been on the very back burner the past few days as I'm knee deep (or maybe up to my eyeballs?!) in helping with wedding preparations, decorations, and so forth. I'm loving every minute of it, though!

We just got home from the rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, and last-minute decorating/organizing and I'm heading to bed since I need to have myself and two of my little ones at the church bright and early tomorrow morning to get ready for pictures.

I had planned to write about a big purchase we were able to make from an Amish bulk store this week using the money we saved by not doing our regular grocery shopping trip, but I'm going to save that to share early next week in favor of getting a little bit more shut-eye tonight.

Stay tuned for my full report on our savings from this past week after the whirlwind wedding weekend is over! I'm also hoping I can have my sister guest post on how she pulled off a beautiful wedding on a dime--but I'll let her life settle down a bit first!

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: We're under-budget for the month!

I went shopping this past Tuesday with only my two-year-old and we were able to hit three stores in two hours. It felt like a vacation to just take one child with me as I have been taking all three and it's still a bit of a juggling act--especially with a nursing baby who likes to eat on the clock every two hours for 30 minutes!

It is funny how your perspective changes as you add more children to your family; I well remember when I only had one and taking her grocery shopping seemed like quite the challenge!

At any rate, I really enjoyed shopping this week and realized that I'd forgotten how much fun shopping can be! I'm thinking perhaps I should try just shopping with one child more often in the future. :)

Here's what we bought (click on the picture to enlarge):

Dillons (Kroger affiliate):

Lettuce--$1.58
2 cans mandarin oranges--$1.10 each--used 2 $1/1 coupons--$0.10 each after coupons
2 Chiquita bites--used free coupon and peelie B1G1 coupon--free after coupons
Pita pockets--reduced to $0.69
4 ears of corn--on sale 4 for $1
Dole pineapple--reduced to $1
4 Sobe Lifewaters--priced at $1.59, used 2 B1G1 coupons plus I got $0.50 off each for buying 10 items in the Buy 10, Get $5 off promotion--they ended up being free plus overage since the B1G1 coupon took $1.59 off two
6 Kraft cream cheese--$1.39 each, used 3 $1/2 coupons plus I got $0.50 off each for buying 10 items in the Buy 10, Get $5 off promotion--$0.39 each after coupons and promotion

Total after coupons and sales: $6.99

Aldi

3 cartons of cherries--reduced to $1.69 each
Foam plates--$0.99 each
2 8 oz. bars of cheese--$1.29 each
Chocolate chips--$1.69 each
16 oz. Shredded cheese--$2.59
Milk--$2.30
Cherry tomatoes--$1.59
Bananas--$1.14
Bananas--$1.09
Bag of Gala apples--$2.99
4 Braeburn apples--$0.35 each
Frozen broccoli--$0.95
Frozen peas--$0.95
Frozen corn--$0.95
2 packages of tortillas--$0.99 each
2 lemons--$0.29 each
Tomatoes--$1.99
Baby carrots--$0.99
Prunes--$1.99
2 cartons strawberries--$1.69 each
Toilet paper--$0.89
3 cucumbers--$0.59 each
2 cans refried beans--$0.69 each

Total: $43.83

We also stopped in the local health food store to see if they had any can't-miss deals or reductions but I didn't find anything worth getting so I walked out empty-handed. :)

So altogether I spent $50.82 on groceries this week--and we're still under our $40/week budget for this month!

I'm thinking of having an Eating from the Pantry/Freezer week this next week since I have a lot of odds and ends I need to use up and there's not much we need to buy. Stay tuned for my menu on Monday to see if this is what I decide to do.

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: The "I-Cut-Myself-Some-Slack" Edition

I had a hard week this past week, for a variety of reasons, so I cut myself some slack in the area of grocery shopping and just made a quick trip with the children to the health food store and Aldi--mostly to replenish our produce stock.

Here's what we bought:

Health Food Store (I had to run in there to get some supplements, so I checked the mark downs):
1/4 organic watermelon--marked down to $0.99
1 tub Brown Cow organic yogurt--marked down to $0.99 (too bad I didn't know about the printable coupons yet!)
Total: $2.10

Aldi:
A dozen nectarines/peaches/plums--$0.29 each
1 bunch of bananas--$1.06
1 bag baby carrots--$0.99
5 lb. bag of sugar--$2.34
5 cartons of strawberries--$0.99 each
2 cantaloupe--$0.99 each
2 8 oz. packages of cheese--$1.29 each
1 bag chocolate chips--$1.69
1 jar natural peanut butter--$1.79
Total: $22.17

So all totaled, we spent $24.27 on groceries this week and we continue to be well below our $40/week grocery budget and our cupboards and refrigerator/freezers continue to be full. In fact, I'm thinking on doing an Eating From the Pantry/Freezer week in the next few weeks to challenge myself to clear some of it out before it goes bad!

One of the great benefits of stocking up on sales and good deals for the future is that when unexpected things arise and you just don't have the energy or time to do much shopping, you don't have to starve or eat fast food. In a sense, it's just like our Emergency Fund only it's edible!

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: Stock-up shopping trip

I had planned for this week to be a stock-up week, since we had spent less than $20 on groceries each of the previous two weeks and, as a result, I had accumulated over $80 in grocery money to spend. So stock up we did!

Here's what we bought:

The above is the combination of what we purchased in a trip to Target, Dillons, the local health food store, and Whole Foods Market (which we stopped by when we were in Kansas City).

At Whole Foods we bought: 8 ears of corn (on sale 4 for $1), fresh green beans (on sale for $0.99/lb.), a little fresh-ground peanut butter (not pictured since we ate it on sandwiches before the picture was snapped!), and close to 5 lbs. of organic spring wheat kernels (priced at $0.69/lb.). All totaled, we spent $6.75.

At the local health food store, we bought Newman's Own Fig Newtons (reduced to $0.99), Health Valley Graham crackers (reduced to $1.29), organic spinach (reduced to $0.99), tortilla chips (reduced to $0.99), and 4 half-gallons of organic milk (reduced to $1.59 and I had 4 $1/1 coupons so they were only $0.59/half gallon!). So I spent $7.04 there.

We stopped by Dillons (our Kroger affiliate) and purchased: spinach (reduced to $0.99), 2 cartons of Breyer's ice cream ($1.99 each after coupons), Digiorno Flatbread Melts (free after coupon), 2 cartons of strawberries ($1.88 each, 2 boxes of Wheat Thins ($0.97 each after coupon), BBQ sauce (free after coupon), sandwich bags ($1.85), butter ($0.85 after reduction and coupon), baking powder ($1.25), mozzarella cheese ($1.15 after sale and coupon), 2 cantaloupe ($1.67 each), one Asian salad mix ($0.79 after reduced price and coupon), one gallon milk ($2.50), Purex laundry detergent ($2.30 after sale and coupon), 2 pounds of turkey sausage (reduced to $1.49 each), chocolate chips ($1.40), yogurt 4-pack ($1 after coupon), 2 Reach toothbrushes ($0.37 after sale and coupon), and cottage cheese (reduced to $0.79). I spent a total of $35.61 at Dillons.

And then we stopped by Target and did this transaction which I outlined here spending just shy of $6.

I wasn't planning to do anymore shopping the rest of the week, but I had to run out and get a few things at Target later on in the week, so I decided I might as well get a few more grocery bargains while I was there. So here was my second Target trip of the week:

After coupons, I spent $3.65 on everything shown above. You can read more about these deals here.

So, after coupons and sales, I spent $58.99 on groceries this week. Considering I had a little over $80 I could have spent (and still kept within our $40/week grocery budget since we've been underbudget the past two weeks), I was thrilled. I am beginning to hope more and more that we just might be able to consistently stick with our $40/week budget again for awhile even with our growing family. We'll see. But as of right now, our freezers, pantry, and refrigerators are quite full and we are over $20 under budget for the month!

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday (or should it be Super Splurging Saturday?!?)

We're in Kansas City this weekend enjoying a refreshing mini-vacation so I'm skipping my usual Super Savings Saturday post today. Instead, I thought I'd share a few pictures from our dinner tonight at one of our most favorite restaurants in the whole wide world--The Cheesecake Factory!
 

 

While our bill for dinner and dessert ended up being just shy of what we usually spend on groceries for a week, it was worth every penny of it. Besides, who says you can't splurge sometimes, especially when you do it with cash?

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: This week's $13.56 shopping trip

Okay, so I'm pretty sure that this week's shopping trip would win the award for the most-percentage-of-processed-food-and-packaged-items-I've-ever-purchased-in-one-trip, but I'm going to post the picture anyway. I promise that we're not eating a diet of Eggos and Pringles and Mac and Cheese this week. Really, I promise. :)



The truth is, that after scouring our pantry and freezer and refrigerator, we just really didn't need to buy anything. So I decided to just hit some of the best deals and do a bigger stock-up trip next week.

Most of the items pictured were from my shopping trip on Friday to a local store which was having Double Dollar Coupon Days. I was actually planning to buy quite a few more items, but after scouting out the sales, piling my cart high with great deals, and getting ready to check out, I found out that they no longer accept internet coupons for the Double Dollar Days. Apparently, I missed that bright orange bold note at the top of the ad in my excitement of planning my shopping trip. Oh well!

On the bright side, I still came out spending $6.66 and saving $43!

And then my husband dropped by Target and picked up the Kashi GoLean Waffles (These were priced $2.50 at our Target so after the $1.50/1 coupon, they were $1/box) and 6 boxes of the Eggo BakeShop products ($0.50/box after coupons--see details here.). All totaled, he spent $6.90.

I'll post our menu for this coming week on Monday to validate my statement above that we are eating something besides food straight from a box this week! :)

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: Stock-up shopping trip

I'm a little late in getting this posted today but for a good reason--I slept in until 9:30 a.m. this morning! And I went to bed before 10 p.m. last night so that's what you call one good night's sleep. Of course, since I have a nursing 7-week-old, I was up at least 4 times to nurse him during that stretch of sleep, but I still haven't gotten anywhere near that kind of sleep for at least a few months. Needless to say, I feel great! :)

I hit Aldi and Dillons last night for the weekly shopping trip. I had discovered when planning our shopping trip that I had quite a bit of wiggle room in our $40/week budget since I'd been under budget or we'd skipped shopping a few weeks in the last two months. So I decided to use a bit of that extra money to stock up on some of the good deals.

All in all, here's what I bought at the two stores:

I initially had gone to Aldi to pick up strawberries since they were on sale for $0.99, but they were all out. So I just got the blueberries (on sale for $1.49/pint!) and cantaloupe (on sale for $0.99 each!), plus cheese, apples, bananas, cucumbers, chocolate chips, tortillas, carrots, baking soda, tortilla chips, refried beans, and frozen veggies. All totaled, I spent $24.84 there. I'll likely freeze some of the blueberries and the apples and cantaloupe will last us two weeks, likely, since we still have quite a bit of fruit in our refrigerator from last week.

At Dillons, I mostly just hit the good deals. We bought more Santa Cruiz Strawberry Lemonade at $0.66/jar since it was still on sale and we found we really liked that kind. We also bought milk (on sale for $2.50/gallon), Kraft BBQ sauce ($0.08 after coupons), Kraft salad dressing ($0.19/bottle after coupons), Texas Toast croutons ($0.69/bag after coupons), Daisy sour cream ($0.65 after coupon), round steak (reduced to less than $2), Capri Sunrise Drinks ($1.11 after coupons--a splurge but my girls love these on a hot Summer day!), Barbara's cereal ($1.39/box after the clearance price and a coupon), Sara Lee bread ($0.99 after coupon), yogurt ($0.06 each after coupon), and Wheat Thins and Ritz crackers ($0.87/box after coupons).

In addition, I stocked up on quite a bit of shampoo and conditioner. I usually don't like to buy Suave, but our stock is running low and I've not found any exceptional deals on higher quality shampoo and conditioner, so I think Suave will just have to do for now. It was $0.50/bottle after the sale and coupons. Plus, I had a store catalina for $4/$20 any health and beauty items so I bought some free Suave deodorant, Skintimate and Edge shaving gel ($1 each after coupons--my target price for these), and hair gel which my husband needed. All of these items helped push my total spending (before coupons) to over $20 on health and beauty items, so I got an additional $4 off these already low prices!

One of my uncharacteristic expenditures of the shopping trip was buying the Shout. It was not on sale and I didn't even have a coupon for it. However, if you follow me on Facebook, you know that we had a few major catastrophes this week--including 4 bottles of finger paint spilled on our carpet (we found out that the "washable" label is a misnomer!) and neon orange silly putty running through with a load of laundry (it bedecked an entire load of laundry with permanent bright orange polka-dots!). Due to these mishaps, we managed to go through close to an entire bottle of Shout in a week. So, since we cannot seem to live without Shout--otherwise we have all sorts of ruined laundry--I decided it was worth paying full price for!

My total at Dillons was $27.42. Altogether I spent $52.26--and I still have quite a bit of extra grocery cash left. But seeing as our cupboards, refrigerator, and freezer are so well-stocked right now, I think I'm going to get to funnel some of that into savings. I'll wait until the end of the month to see how things pan out.

Stay tuned on Monday for our menu plan for this coming week!

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: This week's $41.40 shopping trip

I'm so excited to be more back into the swing of coupon-shopping again; how I've missed it!

This week, we just hit Dillons. I'd planned to hit Aldi, too, but we didn't get out of the house in time. However, I was very happy with what we ended up with from our Dillons' shopping trip and we likely really wouldn't have saved much more to have taken the extra time to hit Aldi, too.

Here's what we bought:

My favorite score for this week was the six bottles of Santa Cruz Organic juice that I got for $0.66/bottle (they were on sale for $1.66 and I had coupons for $1/1 from organic coupon booklets I picked up at the health food store). {Edit: I just found out from Lorrie's blog that there is a PDF coupon available here, too! So if you have a Kroger store and your juice is on sale and you didn't get any of the organic coupon booklets, you can use that coupon to pick up some juice very inexpensively!}

All in all, we spent $41.40 for all the groceries pictured above. According to our receipt, we saved $76.92. However, I pretty much never pay full price for most anything, so those numbers aren't exactly accurate. But it's still fun to think how much using coupons and stocking up on the sales really does save us money compared to paying full price.

We're under budget for this month, even though I went a little over our $40/week grocery budget. We've spent less than $40 for the past four weeks, so I still have some surplus to work with.

And speaking of our grocery budget, as many of you know, we raised our grocery budget to $60/week while I was pregnant to accommodate for more splurging, quick foods, and buying extra protein. There are seasons of life when you just need to cut yourself some slack when it comes to couponing and budgeting and much of this past year (with moving, a big job change for my husband, pregnancy, and a number of other factors) was definitely one of those seasons.

But now that I'm almost recovered from pregnancy and the birth and am feeling much more energetic, we've decided to lower our grocery budget back down to $40/week--at least on an experimental basis. I wasn't sure if we'd be able to do it, since we've moved to a new town with fewer stores to choose from and no CVS at all, but I'm enjoying this new challenge! And so far, it's going a lot better than I anticipated!

I'll post this coming week's menu on Monday so stay tuned for that! And if you're new here and wondering how on earth we'll get a week's worth of meals from the groceries pictured above, be sure to read my post here which explains more how I grocery shop.

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Note: Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

Super Savings Saturday: This week's $33 shopping trip

I made out the menu this week and realized there was very little we needed to buy. Our cupboards, refrigerator, and freezer are rather full and the sales were pretty sparse. So my hubby just made a quick trip by the store on his way home from work to buy milk, cheese, chicken, and produce--all which were on sale.

My husband also surprised me with a few special treats, too, since we had some extra wiggle room in our budget (we don't always completely follow our "only buy what's on sale rule"--just most of the time!). He bought my favorite-in-all-the-world Milano cookies, some delicious Pepperidge Farm cookies, and whipping cream (for homemade strawberry shortcake--yum!).

All in all, he spent $32.86. Somehow, we've managed to stay significantly below our $40/week budget most of the last four weeks--even with some splurging! I'm curious to see if we can continue to keep with our $40/week budget now that we're feeding five people. So far, it's going quite well, but only time will tell.

Check back on Monday for details and specifics on this coming week's menu plan.

In other frugal news, I had the privilege of meeting three frugal friends in the last two weeks whom I've gotten to know through the blogging world. Amy and Laura and I met up two weeks ago and then Amy and Carrie and I met up this past week.

(photo from Laura)

We managed to totally forget to take pictures with Carrie, but Laura and Amy posted some fun pictures of our meet-up here and here. It's always such a boost and encouragement to get to chat face-to-face with other frugal moms!

And in other completely unrelated news (but because this is my blog so I guess that means I have license to post whatever I please!), after four weeks, I finally got a few pictures of all three of my precious little ones together...

There is never a dully moment around here and most nights I go to bed quite exhausted, but feel incredibly blessed to be the mama of these darling little ones. They bring so much joy into our lives!

Enough of my biased mama ramblings, for now, though. :) Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below.

Note: Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.

An exercise in juggling: Our first coupon-shopping trip with three little ones

Whew! Don't ask me what my hubby and I were thinking when we decided to take all three little ones (4 years old, 23 months old, and 16 days old) out to visit Great-Grandma and then to Dillons, Aldi, and Target for groceries. We're typically a little overly-ambitious and I think today was no different.

That said, we did make it through all four stops, plus a stop at Sonic for Happy Hour half-priced drinks. But I wouldn't say it was the smoothest outing ever. And I certainly don't think I'm quite ready to tackle three stores with three children all by myself--at least not until Silas gets a little better nursing schedule (he's currently nursing every two hours for 30-45 minutes--which adds up to a lot of time spent nursing!) and I'm a bit more back to my normal stamina and energy!

It's funny, though, how your perspective changes. I remember when taking one child out seemed like a big undertaking. Now that seems like a vacation! So, hopefully soon, juggling three little ones and coupon-shopping will be old hat. Maybe. :)

At any rate, it was a fun adventure and we scored some pretty good deals. Here's what we ended up with:

All totaled, at Dillons, Aldi, and Target, we spent right at $31 for all of this! Of course, I did have $9 in Target gift cards that I used (earned from previous deals), so our total would have been $40 had it not been for those.

I was especially excited with the deals we snagged at Target:

All that pictured above was only $3.06 after the coupons and $9 in gift cards. Sweet!

After not grocery shopping myself for quite some time, I was happy to have a successful shopping trip--even if I haven't quite mastered the art of juggling three little ones, nursing every two hours, and my coupon box. I'm hoping I'll eventually get that all figured out... maybe?

What are your tricks and tips for shopping with multiple little ones? I'd love to hear!

Super Savings Saturday

I just finished planning our shopping trip to Target, Dillons, and Aldi. Now we're off to navigate the stores and deals with three littles in tow for the first time. It should be an adventure!

I'll post an update when we get home... stay tuned!

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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below.

Note: Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.