My First Stockpile!

After my trip to CVS yesterday and a trip to CVS and Walgreens today,I finally have a need for a place to keep it all....Check it out! Oh on the shelf above I have 24 rolls of cottenelle toilet paper that I got for $3! :)

Publix, CVS, and Aldi Savings!!

Today was all about shopping! I hit up the usual, Publix, but then I also hit up CVS and Aldi! The other day I saw some people posting about the produce at Aldi being pretty good, I have never been there so decided to try it out today.  Check out what I got in the pictures below (sorry for the poor picture quality, the lighting was horrible and I had to take the picture quick before the cold stuff went bad!)

Publix
I didn't do better than last weekend because I had to get some steak and some lunch meat :)

• 6 boxes of Poptarts that were BOGO and I had two Target $1 off 3 and two Manufacturers $1 off of 3 printable so they came out to around .60 each!
• Muellers Pasta were BOGO and I had a $1 off coupon so they came to about .20 each!
• Go-gurt was BOGO and I had .75 coupon off two
• The rest was BOGO except the steak (was on sale), the hot dog buns (on sale),  the lunch meat(on sale), cherries (on sale), and the pretzel thins (full price...eeeek!)

At Publix I spent $54.69 and saved $45.34...not bad for buying steak and lunch meat too!

Aldi

 

Since it is hard to tell from the picture, here is what I got...

• Plum tomatoes
• Grapes
• 1lb ground turkey
• milk
• eggs
• broccoli
• green peppers
• red and orange peppers
• 3 limes
• 2 cucumbers
• 2 haas avocados

At Aldi I did not use ANY coupons, however I only paid $20 for all of this!

CVS

Now CVS was pretty exciting for me since I knew there were lots of deals but I have been so intimidated by the process of doing separate transactions and using extra care bucks.  Check it out!  (the one box of Kotex I have to return tomorrow, I noticed when I got home that I got the wrong box so spent $9.35 for that box! So will be taking that back tomorrow)

 

In total (after I take back the Kotex) I spent $13.72 for all of this...a savings of over $32! Plus I have $2 in extra care bucks to use next weekend :)

Saved 60% at Publix!

Couponing round two went well...I got all of this for $36.88 and saved $56.47, that's 60%!

• Publix had 50% all Kellogg's cereal this weekend only, and I had coupons for 0.75 off each box
• The yogurt was BOGO and I had a coupon for that
• The pens were 2/$1 and I had a coupon for $1 off so got all of them for FREE!
• The pencils were on sale for $1 each and I had a coupon for $1 off two so they were just $0.50 each.
• The hamburger helper was BOGO and I misplaced my coupons so *only* 50% savings there
• The chewy bars were BOGO and I had a target coupon and a manufacturers coupon (I found out yesterday by calling that a Publix by me accepts Target coupons, score!) so they ended up being less than $1 each.
• The cottenelle wipes were not on sale but I had a manufacturers coupon and a target coupon so they ended up being about $1 each and the trial size was FREE!
• The candles were BOGO (I already have one lit so it didn't make it into the picture) and I had a $1 coupon.
• The cherries were on sale and cheese was on sale and I had to buy two newspapers of course ;-)

So all in all a pretty good trip! I'm excited to be getting a good stash of coupons in my collection for future weeks.

Homestyle Meal

I've been out of town for work this past week so have been slacking on the posting!  I did some research on some good couponing opportunities today, but haven't made it out just yet. Have to make sure I have a plan ;-)  So for dinner tonight I wanted to make something since I have been eating out all week...but after searching the kitchen I didn't have many options.  So I decided to make meatloaf with mashed potatoes.  I typically like making meatloaf with turkey but only had ground beef. I typically don't follow a recipe, so check out my recipe below for meatloaf and garlic mashed potatoes!

Meatloaf

1-1.3 lbs Ground Beef or Turkey
1/2 cup Breadcrumbs
1/2 Small Onion chopped fine
1/4 cup Ketchup
1 clove of garlic chopped fine
1 egg
2 tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
2 tbsp water
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven at 350 degrees.

I first saute the onions and garlic in a pan with a little oil (whatever kind you have, I used canola) just until the onion is translucent. Then I set it aside to cool a little. Put the meat in a bowl and on one side of the bowl add the breadcrumbs, ketchup, egg, water, worcestershire, salt and pepper, and the onion and garlic when it cools. I like to mix together everything except the meat first with a fork to get it well combined then mix it with my hands. Then form into loaf and bake for 45 minutes to an hour. (45 minutes if you used 1 lb of meat and an hour if you used 1.3 lbs)

Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes

4 large red potatoes peeled
1/2 stick of butter
1/4 cup chicken broth
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
3 cloves of garlic
salt and pepper

Put the garlic in aluminum foil with some oil and salt and pepper and add to the oven with the meatloaf.

Cut the potatoes into pieces that are roughly one inch in size and place into pot, fill with cold water covering the potatoes. Boil about 10-15 minutes until cooked through. Once the potatoes are cooked, take out the garlic from the oven, strain and add the potatoes back to the pot.  Add to the pot the butter, chicken broth, milk, cheese, and the garlic and mash.

That's it! Check out a picture below, it was delish!  :)

Week of Couponing!!

This week has been great for saving money, it started with a groupon that I bought two weeks ago for Fandango, it was buy $12 in fandango money for $2, I bought 2 of them so when we bought the tickets for Harry Potter this week it only cost me tax!  Then Today I had my first successful couponing trips!

For the past few months I have been watching that show on TLC about extreme couponing and wanted to get in on the action!  Last week I bought the sunday paper and clipped a couple coupons, but still none of them were "great" deals.  Since I have not been able to find any great deal on my own, yesterday I started searching online for some blogs.  I shop at Publix down here in Florida so I wanted to see if there were some specifically on savings at Publix and found a ton!  This one in particular is a keeper http://www.iheartpublix.com/ where she actually does all the hard work for you.  They all list where they got the coupons (sunday paper or online or even in-store) so all I had to do is see what products I wanted then follow what they did!  A few of the deals I couldn't do since they had sunday coupons from a few weeks ago that I did not have (another tip I have learned is to hold on to the coupons until they expire even if I don't use them that week!). Check out my receipt, I paid $48.34 and saved $43.96!

Oh!  And I also went to Winn-dixie since they have been having these deals every week where you buy something and you get 3 or 4 things free...this time was my first time doing it but they had buy 2 for $11 Red Baron frozen pizzas and get the following for FREE: Orville Redenbacher Popcorn, 2-Liter bottle of Coke, Winn-dixie bread sticks, and Blue Bell Ice Cream Cups, 12 ct.  I am sure that if I did some more research that I could have gotten more deals at Winn Dixie.  Check out my receipt I did end up buying milk, eggs, and celery and onions that I needed and were not on sale of course, but I paid $31.86 and saved $23.36!

It was a great experience although I forced my boyfriend to come with me and he was embarrassed when I had all of my coupons out ha-ha.

Some tips that I have for beginners like me:

• Buy the sunday paper and KEEP the coupons every week
• Pick up any special coupon books that you see in your grocery store (publix has them by the shopping carts with the weekly ads)
• Check the coupon rules for stores by you, some take competitors coupons, some double coupons under $0.50, some places allow you to buy one thing for half price when it is BOGO (meaning you can use two coupons)
• Find some good blogs for the places that you shop and check it often, printing out any online coupons, multiples when you can!
• Make a good list when you go to the store and stick to it!

• And lastly- don't get discouraged if you don't find deals right away, it took me a couple of weeks!

That's it! Oh and in my search I also stumbled upon this site that has a listing of the prices of tons of essential products all organized by each store (Aldi, Publix, Walmart, Target, and Winn Dixie) and it is updated often! Here is the site http://www.aldispot.com  I'm sure that other people have made similar lists for other regions, I know I'm going to refer to it before I go shopping next :)

Happy Shopping!

Harry Potter!

So here we are with our Harry Potter 3D glasses ready to go, lets do this!  Kind of crazy to think the first movie was TEN years ago, yikes!

Remix!

So since I had some leftover soup from last night, I decided to use it as a base for tonight's dinner!  Since the boyfriend isn't too keen on having just soup for dinner I added some chicken and tortellini to make it more hearty.  Growing up there was an Italian dish that I loved but did not get to eat often....it was a pasta dish with spicy tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, baby peas, and small ditalini pasta.  I think it is simply called pasta and peas but I will have to research that dish and make that in the future and post it here. That pasta and peas dish is what inspired me tonight, check out the changes I made below....

First I added about 2 cups of chicken broth and a 15 oz can of diced tomatoes and some salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to give it a kick.  Once that was at a simmer I put in 3 chicken tenders that I had in the freezer.  I let that all simmer on low for about 20 min then added about 2 cups of frozen peas and some frozen tortellini (since I did not add pasta to the soup last night) then let that simmer for about 10 minutes, that's it!

It was simply delicious and a definite keeper!

First Post!

Well here goes nothing!  I have a bunch of different topics I want to share but I will start off with just sharing a fab recipe from my new favorite food blog skinnytaste.com.  I literally have made a dozen things off of her site so far and loved each one. Today I noticed her Pasta Fagioli recipe and realized it is very similar to the one I make!

Here is the original recipe Gina's Pasta Fagioli

The changes I made were:

• I rendered some bacon, then removed the bacon and cooked the veggies in the drippings
• I added garlic  and some red pepper flakes to the veggies
• After the veggies cook I add the tomatoes and a dash of Worcestershire sauce
• I added some fresh baby spinach since I had some in the fridge
• I cooked the pasta in a seperate pot and add to the bowls when I serve, otherwise it gets mushy overnight 

 I think that's about it, here is the finished product with some freshly graded Parmesan!