I have six followers~

Thanks so much ladies.. it is nice to be followed. I do so enjoy reading your blogs and learning from you.

New items I purchased today~

I was ON IT today!
I was working and there was an accident so it prevented me from coming off the island until it was cleared..so I utilized my time wisely by shopping and getting some 'deals'...

CVS
2 gillette shampoo's for BIGboy (manbear is bald)
used coupons and ecbs
oop $3.63 but got $6 back in Ecb's...

At publix I bought:
2 salad mixes (one for salad and one for nacho night tomorrow)
bread
2 quaker oatmeal B1G1F and had .60 coupons~
2 Kraft shredded cheese 2 for $4 and there was a blinkie for .75 off.. yippie!~ can we say dinner another night...
2 kraft velvetta cheese B1G1F plus $1 coupon
2 planters honey roasted nuts $1 off two coupon
2 packages of tortilla (no coupons :( )
spent $18.12 but SAVED 21.89

Then off to HT where I bought:
10 grow it dinners for my friends baby boy (hey Charlie, getting hungry for food yet?)
Orange crush (I was thirsty and I have given up caffeine)
a bag of ricework (felt sorry for the lady sampling them out and it was 1.50 a bag)
total oop was 2.81 but saved $21.38 (between vic savings and coupons)

Also adding in the $5 check I gave for the odd and ends I bought at the pie shop (see blog below)...if they have a website I will post it for you later on.

So NEW totals are:
savings $250.83
Left to spend $1409.03
spent $90.97

FREE pies~

Last night I was sitting in my cozy house, wearing my cozy sock monkey slippers and waiting for 9 pm so I could go to bed... when the unimaginable happened. I got a text.. FREE PIES! Free pies? Oh yeah, I was on it then!~ I threw on flip flops (note to self when it is 40 outside you might want to take the time to put real shoes on) and raced out the door. I knew the approximate location of the store and called the person who texted me (NOT TAMMYF~still mad at you for not telling me) andgot details what the 'deal' was. YOU know there is nothing ever free in this world. Well it is..or was~ I got to the location and received a case of free pies. What this place is a place for the homeless and it seems that companies (grocery store, pharmacies, etc) must sell their opened and crushed items to somewhere and this is one of the places it ends up. They are selling items that are opened or in boxes that are unsaleable. Anyway they had been given pies and a LARGE amount of them when they had no freezer to store them in so they gave them away...for free.. NO STRINGS attached. While I saw people grabbing up the boxes of crushed colgate and open boxes of cascade like there was no tomorrow I also saw where I would have gotten 'that' for free, or less than .50.. and while it is a good deal to most consumers I saw it as expensive... I however did buy a 24 pack of zepherylis for 2 bucks~! I gotta support people who give away free pies! I met the owner and got the speal on what they do...It is a nice way to help her help others (they will have a foodline for the homeless and will help the elderly with their power bills, eventually). They have only been open for 3 days.. what a nice thing to do. Anyway... back to the free pies. When you get a case there were literally got 6 unbaked Sara Lee pies.. apple cranberry and apple/ruhbarb/berrie pies.. somehow I ended up with 2 cases of the ruhbarb and one of the cranberry.. I split some with a few friends and then I brought the rest home. MY freezer (small one) is full of pies and even my upper freezer on the refrig is full! Too many pies....hehehehehe... I even had to bake two of them last night because they wouldn't fit into my freezer. I am sitting here with a small piece of each of the pies and all I can say is YUMMY! I figure pie isn't anything but a fruit filled poptart right? Nothing wrong with pie for breakfast at 5 am.. come on now.. As my groggy son just stumbled into the room and said 'can I have pie for breakfast too?' (does the boy have a nose detecting gene or what)... oh what am I teaching my kids? hehehehe... Of course you CAN son, here have another piece...So it was a good way to end a good day... yummy pies anyone?

No thank you I prefer to pay full price....

THAT is what someone actually told me yesterday while I was working. My inskin friends know my 'real' job (I can't post it here but lets just say it is NICE~) and part of my job yesterday was putting up some coupons around a display at a grocery store that was having some crackers as buy one get one free....I couldn't get them to stay on the paper so I just started handing them out and one lady actually handed me one back and said 'no thank you I prefer to pay full price'... like a coupon was nasty or something. I tell you that I was shocked, AND the lady beside her said 'i'm not proud, give me hers'. I still tell you I was like shocked, open mouthed wide eyed, I must have looked like a freak... I can't imagine WANTING to pay full price...but to each their own.

soy sauce

Thursday is trashday here in our neighborhood so I TRY to clean out the refrigerator on Wednesday.. however I was very busy with other stuff and I didn't get a chance to do it yesterday... so if was pushed off until today. BUT I got sidetracked.. with what you ask? We are HUGE soy sauceaholics here at the house, well really we are really bad stirfryaholics and use soy sauce as the seasoning. ANYWAY.. needless to say we usually always have a bottle, or two or three, on hand. But lately I have let the stash run low, and to be honest it is 2 days before payday and there is too much week to not enough $$. So what did I find? I am the world's worst about taking 'extra' packets at place.. extra creamer, extra splenda, extra duck sauce.. not alot just normally 2 or 3 .. so anyway today I spent about 20 minutes taking the extra packets I have of soy sauce and filling our little soy sauce jar. It was amazing how many it did take (I way over guestimated how many it would) and it only took me about 20-25 minutes... so does that make me cheap or frugal?? I would like to hear what you think?! Email me or leave me a comment... thanks so much!
Blessings,
Mari

Adding more purchases

Today has been a productive day!~ I have done a bunch of laundry, mopped all my floors, scrubbed all my kitchen counters and rearranged my kitchen decor. I am realizing less is more these days with decorations. (agree with me, amen!)
I also have spent about an hour searching for online coupons and ordering some samples...
I also ran across a purchase receipt that I made Monday at walmart when I was shopping with my sil. Now, I KNOW that at HT the electrosal was B1G1Free however purchasing two of them came to $1.41 or 70cents apiece (I gave coupons to sil to use last weekend) however the local HT is over 15 miles away and since that would be the ONLY thing I would be going over for it isn't really economical for me to drive all that way when I could buy them at walmart for $1 a piece.. and it only cost me .30 more~ So I bought 2 elec gelpacs and 4 johnson and johnson bath buddies. Total oop was only $2.64 and I saved $9 in coupons. Awesome!~

Hey Tammyf when are you going shopping again? Have you been buying a paper on Sunday? Call me sometime and let me know how your progress is...

New totals~
YTD savings $198.77
Left to spend $1438.58
money spent $61.42 (previous addition error)

forgot to add

that I bought some porkchops and hamburger meat to cook some dinner for a church member that was recovering from surgery.. that totalled $8.87... should I include food that isn't for my family? Let me think about that one.. since that purchase was totally for someone else.. let me think on that one...

Have you been to

www.walmart.com
for the free samples?
They currently have
Always Infinity pads (comes with a $1 coupon as well)
Crest advance seal whitening product
Poise pads (think of older people who could use this sample, Marks towers can always use the sample if you don't have anyone else in mind)
Prilosec sample

Remember that if you don't use the sample to think of who you know who might... There is usually someone who would welcome a sample or even a nursing home who would love the sample sizes. Sometimes I will throw them into my 'homeless' bags.. which are baggies that I make when I have samples of items and give them out to the people who are begging on the street (holding signs for work, food, etc). I feel that this is one way to show them love without giving them $$ to spend on unwise choices.
Blessings!~
Mari

CVS shopping

I went to CVS on Saturday evening with a good friend (thanks TK) and we had a good time just talking and freezing outside..hheheheheh..anyway my purchases were:
2-CVS brand 5ct allergy meds
3 heath bars (filler and they are gurl's favorite candy, major mom points)
2 lysol sprays (my local store is moving to a bigger store so there is lots of goodies marked down 75%)
a LARGE container of Gain laundry detergent(75%)
2 dawn
2 colgate toothpaste
3 razors gillette (75%)
3 packages of tena pads(75%)
2 colgate shaving creams for my manbear (75%)
AND a great b1gif containter of lysol wipes that were only $1.50...also (75%)
BEST thing was my favorite cashier was working so she let me use coupons too~ so my total oop was very very very low...
for all of that my oop was only $3.52
Oh yeah~ I felt like I hit the jackpot!
THEN yesterday I went to Harris Teeter to work and they were doing a reset (btw watch at alot of the grocery stores, they are all doing their spring resets and there are amazing sales).. Here HT is resetting the breakfast isle. So I bought 7 (YES SEVEN) boxes of rice krispies for $5.. amazing! I also bought a local newspaper and a box of brown rice (I didn't have my coupon box since I was working) all that was only $8.28... awesome!
So shopping for the last week only cost me $11.80~best thing was my savings were $107.26~
how cool is that?

YTD savings $189.77
Left to spend $1441.42
money spent $58.58

Bringing this to the top....

YTD savings $82.51
Left to spend $1453.22