Glory Shot #3

I made my weekly assault on Walgreen's today--was in and out of the store in less than fifteen minutes and only one transaction. Both of those might be records.Here is what I bought:

2 Olay Quench Body Lotion 20.2 oz/600 ml $7.99 ea
2 Olay In-Shower Body Lotion 8.4 oz/250 ml $4.99 ea
2 Pert 3-in-1 shampoo for men 16 oz/473 ml $2.50 ea
3 Sure deodorant for men 2.6 oz/73 ml $1.50 ea
3 Hershey's Special Dark with Almonds 1.45 oz/41 g $0.79 ea
3 Hershey's with Almonds 1.45 oz/41 g $0.79 ea
2 Knee-hi nylons $0.33 ea

Minus:
2-$2 Olay Quench Body Lotion mq -$4
2-$1 Olay In-Shower Body Lotion mq -$2
2-$4.99 Olay In-Shower Body Lotion Walgreen's gift -$9.98
2-$1.50 Pert 3-in-1 shampoo for men -$3.00
3-BOGO (Buy One Get One Free) Hershey mq -$0.79x3=-$2.37
3-$0.30 Walgreen's Hershey's coupon -$0.90
1-$10 Register Reward from previous visit
1-$1 Register Reward from previous visit

OOP=$4.34

I also received a $2 RR for a future visit and I will submit the 2 Olay Quench lotions for a mail-in refund from Olay for the full purchase price of $7.99x2. I pay sales tax and the postage stamp of 44c. In other words, after the rebate I will have paid nothing out of pocket and will have a bit extra for everything I bought.

Now my camera tells me it is really out of battery power and I still haven't figured out why the rechargeables don't work, so there is no Glory Shot #4. If there were, it would picture from Safeway:

1 Honey Nut Cheerios $2.50
3 Betty Crocker Spiderman Fruit Snacks $2.00 ea
1 SoftSoap hand soap pump $0.88
4 Blueberries $0.99 ea

Minus:
1 Honey Nut Cheerio -$1.00 mq
1 Betty Crocker Spiderman Fruit Snacks -$1/2 mq
1 Betty Crocker Spiderman Fruit Snacks $0.40 mq that Safeway doubled to -$0.80
1 Betty Crocker Spiderman Fruit Snacks electronic coupon -$0.40
1 SoftSoap $0.40 mq that tripled to -$1.00
1 -$4/4 instant coupon for the 4 General Mills products (cereal/fruit snacks)

OOP=$5.21

Good shopping day.

Glory Shot #2

Today I jumped back into food co-ops with a vengeance. When we lived in New Mexico I participated regularly with one called Angel Food Ministries. A few months ago AFM arrived in my current city and a couple of weeks ago I decided to get started with them again. Today was the first pickup for me. You pay $30 each month and receive a box of food which contains 6-7 meat/dinner items, a couple of bags of frozen veggies, usually some grain products, a carton of UHT milk, a dozen medium eggs, and a dessert item. This menu (first section) shows what I picked up today.

I went from there to the regional park near my home to volunteer for Bountiful Baskets. I visited a friend two Saturdays ago and she had just picked up her food. It looked interesting and although the website has practically no helpful information regarding the food you get, I decided to try it anyway. The price, oops, "contribution" is $15 but you have to add $3 the first time and $1.50 every time, so today's basket was $19.50 and future ones will be $16.50.
Here is a list of what I got for my $19.50:
3 lbs Bosc pears
1 lb strawberries
11 tangelos
7 Braeburn apples
16 bananas (one bunch was in return for helping with the distribution)
5 grapefruit
8 red peppers
2 cucumbers
2 broccoli
1 bunch leaf lettuce
4 zucchini
9 tomatoes

I'll definitely be doing both of these regularly. The Bountiful Baskets come every two weeks so that will keep us in plenty of fresh produce.

Oh--the "baskets" part? Our site takes up to 96 orders and it was sold out today. There were four double rows of twenty-four baskets, each just like my basket in the picture, except narrower. One was for fruits and the other for vegetables. Each order was two baskets, to be emptied into your own brought from home.

Sniffle, sniffle

I haven't had a cold for a couple of years so I guess I was overdue, but I'm still annoyed to be kind of laid up with a bad cold. Everything is running and I have a few aches and pains. I don't think it's influenza. Luckily I have my arsenal of feel-goods. Even better, the only thing I paid more than just the tax on was the Kleenex. I paid 9 cents for the box.
I'll be downing the cough syrup and sucking on cough drops today and taking it easy. You know, that sounds kind of appealing. Maybe I should get a cold more often.

Capitalism and consumerism

C has been pestering me to earn some money and I told her she could make something in the kitchen and hawk it to the neighbors. Since they were off school today for MLK day, she started in on me first thing this morning and I told her to decide what she wanted to make and just go ahead. She went to the food storage room and chose a package of peanut butter cookie mix. The only thing I did was measure and pour the oil and C & S (5 years old) did all the other measuring, egg cracking, mixing, portioning and clean up. I helped with the oven parts.

The cookies were baked to perfection. After they cooled a bit the girls put them in two bags and we put the bags, a stack of napkins, and some tongs into a small metal pan and we set off. I waited on the street a la Trick or Treating, while they went up to the doors. At 25 cents a piece or 5/$1 it took only eight houses to sell them all and come home with $5.25.

The part that touched me was that E was completely uninvolved with the project, yet once C & S had taken in $3, C said, "Oh good, now there's a dollar for each of us!" I really hadn't planned to share the spoils with E because she didn't do any of the work, but that thought never occurred to C. Sweet girl.

They each came out with $1.75 (I donated the raw goods :-) ), paid 10% tithing, then we all headed to the grocery store and Walgreen's to do some shopping.

S bought a bag of miniature marshmallows and E bought some papaya spears from the health food section. C waited until we got to Walgreen's and bought a Twix bar, as did S.

It was a great lesson all around. I have the feeling I'll be hit up for another adventure like it on the next day off school. I must remember warm cookies 45 minutes before lunch sell well . . . .

What to pay for things

I came across this interesting blog entry:

http://melziemomsbargains.blogspot.com/2010/01/thrifty-thursday-what-im-willing-to-pay.html

I like it (other than trying to get through all her Google money ads) because I agree with her pricing. I'm not able to get quite the food bargains she can because double/triple coupons happen here in cycles and aren't available all the time. For personal items, I have the same limits she does--free on most of it because I shop the same stores and sales she does.

I have a couple more limits:

Laundry detergent--10 cents a load
Dry cereal--10 cents an ounce

Glory Shot #1

A Glory Shot is a picture of my great bargains. Trust me, I don't post a glory shot on everything I buy, but I could . . . . Hmmm, I'll have to think about that. Hehe.

Here is what I bought at Albertson's today:

Kellogg's Froot Loops $1.99
6 Marcal toilet paper (only 4 are shown here) $1.00/ea
Albertson's yogurt (impulse item) $0.44
O Organics yogurt $0.88
Broccoli $0.90
2 cucumbers $1.00
1 2-lb package of carrots(not shown)$1.29
Bunch of radishes $0.79

Minus coupons:
O Organics $1.00
Kellogg's (Albertson's coupon) $0.49
Kellogg's (manufacturer coupon or "mq") $1.00
Marcal toilet paper 6x$1.00=$6.00

Total:
$5.19

I'm co-hosting a baby shower tomorrow and the veggies, along with some celery I have in the fridge, will go into a veggie platter with some dip.

This is crossposted at The Grocery Cart Challenge.

When flying was fun

http://www.life.com/image/53367148/in-gallery/38402/when-flying-was-fun

Here is a wonderful retropective of how air travel used to be. I can vaguely remember a few of these things. I also liked the picture of the toiletries and remember a few of those as well.

Wednesday Deals

Have I mentioned how much I love a deal? LOL, of course I have! Tonight at Walgreen's I bought:

8 6 ounce boxes of Chips Ahoy
3 9 ounce packages of deli-style ham and turkey
2 20-ct. boxes of dishwasher detergent
2 boxes of salt
2 cans of Progresso soup

My out of pocket cost was a hair over $9 and I left the store with $4.50 in Register Rewards ($2 and $2.50 coupons toward any purchase) in my wallet.

Happy New Year from Korea

No, I'm not in Korea, although I wish I were! Well, except for their temperatures which are expected to hit 17F (-8C) while we enjoyed 74F (23C) today. We pay for it in the summer though . . . .

This picture was taken Tuesday in Korea and the main part says HOPE 2010. The banner says, "love farm village, smile farmers" according to my student who is standing as part of the first 0. Isn't the picture beautiful with the snowy trees and background?

Annual Ritual

I was taught to write thank you notes and I have taught my children to do the same. Tonight for our Family Home Evening activity we sat down and wrote thank yous to the grandparents and to my aunt for the Christmas gifts they sent.
We really appreciate others who think of us at this time of year and we know it's not always easy to put together gift packages, but they were warmly received and enjoyed. Pictures soon of the quilts my aunt made for the girls . . . .

The end is coming

The last "first tooth" came out tonight. S is absolutely delighted with the loss of her tooth and immediately started getting instructions from C about how to put the tooth under her pillow and what to expect from the Tooth Fairy. This is really fun!

Better late than never, right?

Last Fall we took a Saturday and went to an apple orchard that was highly recommended. My favorite parts were . . . this cute picture and the ropes the girls got to make with a contraption that twisted and twisted twine until it became rope.The apple picking? Highly, highly overrated. There were hundreds of people milling about and when we were dropped off at the end of the row of Gala apple trees, we found only tiny apples left. All the big ones were back in the shed near the cash register and the price for the tiny ones we picked was only 10 cents a pound less. We let the girls each pick a few apples, but dh and I really weren't interested in the tiny little ones and didn't want to pay a premium for them vs. what we would have paid in the store for nice ones.

The food available there looked nice, but for our family would have cost us more than $30 so we didn't bother. We had good Mexican food in a nearby hamlet for less than burgers at the apple farm. Everything was over-priced and this place was a LONG way from town. I don't know why so many people were there because it was completely not worth it to us. Maybe being farm/country/rural folks ourselves, it just wasn't that exciting to us.

Oh, I guess there was one other item of interest. The closest house to the orchard (off-property) was a derelict-looking place on a country crossroad. But there was a sign outside that said "Fresh Sausage." We could see hog sheds. We briefly debated and decided to stop in and see what they had. Dh said the guy who came to the house door was wearing overalls with one strap hanging, kind of keeping with the look of the place, but was very nice. We bought a one-pound package of sausage and wondered what we'd gotten ourselves in for. Guess what? It turned out to be fabulous sausage and probably the only reason to go back to the apple orchard area!