I Made Betty Crocker Wish She’d Never Been Born!

Happy Super Savings Saturday! This is the day of the week when I get reaaallllly nerdy and brag about my couponing and CVSing for the week. It’s great because it also gives Emily ammunition to make fun of me with, so, you know, everyone wins. This week I was sad that there were no $$ off coupons from CVS – since my store lets me stack these and use more than one per transaction, I really missed them! However, I did have one $4/$20 “welcome” coupon from my email and one from my hubby’s email that I was able to use, sooo here’s what I got!

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These items were part of a promotion where if you bought $30 worth of products, you got $15 back in ExtraCare Bucks. This all came up to about $31.48 before tax. I used:
$4/$20 CVS coupon from my email
$5 worth of Glade Scented Oil Candles refill coupons that came in other refill packages I had
Buy 2, Get 1 free GSOC refill coupon ($2.50 value here)
75 cents off Huggies wipes coupon I got in the mail
50 cents of Viva paper towels coupon
$1.50 off 2 Ziploc coupon ( I LOVE these Ziploc containers BTW!! They are awesome!)
$19.49 in ECBs

I paid less than a dollar and got back 15 ECBs! All for stuff we need & use! (Especially those CANDLE REFILLS RIGHT EMILY?) Not bad! I then went and spent that $15 ECBs on things I would neeed for Joshua’s upcoming birthday party – plastic forks, plastic cups, etc. After that, I was a little low on ECBs, so I tried to work out a transaction to make myself some more! Here’s what I came up with:

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My total on this came up to $23 something after tax. I used:
$4/$20 CVS email coupon
4 $1 off colgate total coupons (I got these in the Colgate “smile talk” newsletter email and was able to print 2 per computer – we have 2 computers!)
$1 off Colgate toothbrush coupon (also a printable)
$1.50 of Colgate toothbrush CRT coupon that printed on my receipt on a previous transaction
$1.50 off 2 Sunsilk CVS coupon
$1.50 off Sunsilk shamppoo or conditioner coupon from newspaper insert
$2 off Sunsilk styler coupon from newspaper insert
$1 off peelie that was on the conditioner (my cashier let me use this even though I had manufacturer’s coupons already – some will, some won’t!)

I used $4 in ECBS (these were about to expire so I was glad to roll them over) and paid $1.01 cash and got back $11 ECBS!! Woohoo! $10 ECBs for all the Colgate products and $1 for the Cokes. I was thrilled to add some ECBs back to my dwindling stash! Also I would like to point out that the Sunsilk was buy a shampoo or condtioner, get a styler free, so with all my Sunsilk coupons, CVS PAID me $1.01 overage to buy those two things – that’s real money, not ECBs! YAY! I heart CVS!

All that was great fun, but my real success this week was at Meijer. Meijer had a TON of Betty Crocker stuff on sale this week and there were lots of coupons available for them both from the newspaper and printables from BettyCrocker.com, Coupons.com, and BoxTops4Education.com. Meijer also had a bunch of “Buy 10, get the 11th free” items that you could mix & match. So I bought 22 of these items and got 2 free. Here’s the result of my BIG STOCKPILING GROCERY TRIP:

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I got all this: 2 Welch’s grape juice, 7 boxes of Betty Crocker potatoes, 4 tubs of frosting, 1 cake mix, three bags of Chex mix, 12 packages of Grands biscuits, two 4 lb. bags of chicken tenderloins, seven brownie mixes, and four Warm Delights Mini (which I really need when I am having a Bad Mommy Day. Oh wait? Who has those? NOT ME!) I had coupons for all these items except the chicken, which was BOGO free. (The Grands biscuits coupons were for 50 cents off of two). My grand total was $42.43!! It would’ve been better, but at some point the register stopped taking my coupons. I have no idea why! But my cashier was about the grumpiest, unfriendliest one I’ve EVER had. She did go back and verify that I had the correct number of items for my coupons, and she forced the uncooperative ones through. BUT the ones she forced through did NOT double like the rest of them did! So I lost about $4, which made me very sad. Because every dollar I save is truly important to me! But since my cashier was so unhappy with life in general, I considered myself lucky that she forced those through. AND, a $1 off coupon good on my next purchase at Meijer also printed out on my receipt, courtesy of Pillsbury, for buying all those Grands! So all in all I was pleased! The cake mix, frosting, and chex mix will all be used at Joshua’s birthday party also. It was nice to get such a deal on those needed items!

Well that’s it for me this week! Hope you all got some great deals too! For more Super Savings, check out Money Saving Mom. She’s the reason I got started on all this coupon business, and it has been so GREAT for my family!! If you haven’t already purchased her Supermarket Savings 10 course, I HIGHLY recommend it! You can check it out and purchase it here!

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I’ve Got a Fever…and the Only Antidote is IKEA!

Emily and I have embarked on many adventures together as cousins. As youngsters, we braved the Skylab and Adventure Express rides at Kings Island. As young women, we worked together in non-profit at one of the most difficult jobs on the planet. From there, we took the plunge into pregnancy and motherhood together, having our first children within 8 weeks of each other. After we showed motherhood who was boss (ohh I crack myself up. Really. I am crying.), we started this blog together.

But we have one more adventure yet to come. And it’s a doozie.

Three weeks from tomorrow, we are embarking on an epic journey. It will take us down I-75, past Jeebus and his pal the anatomically correct Trader’s World horse, and into the depths of a swiggity-swank suburb. We are going where no cousin mommy-bloggers have gone before (probably).

Hold on to your hats, ladies. Emily and I are going to the grand opening of the new IKEA!! (No, we are not crazy enough to camp out and go on opening day. It will have been open for two days already. But the grand opening lasts all week.) Yes, that’s right, an IKEA is opening up a mere 35ish miles from our places of residence and we…are…going! You see, Emily’s baby not only has no gender, it also has no bedroom furniture. So Emily took a day off work to go purchase the baby’s furniture at the most fabulous furnishing store in the world, which coincidentally, is opening up 4 weeks before this baby is due to come into the world! Deeming it unsafe to send a 35.5 week pregnant woman into a brand new IKEA alone, and because I am pretty much the best cousin in the world, I volunteered to go with her.

So here is what I predict for our epic adventure: there will be laughter, tears, stops at the IKEA concession stand, Braxton-Hicks contractions, and many, many, many photos taken.

And there will be an enthralling blog post in it all, I am sure!

Stay tuned!

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