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!