Mommin' It Up!

March 3, 2008

Dudes! Now’s the Time to Buy!

You know I can’t pass up telling you all about a good deal! And I know you may tire of me telling you how much Money Saving Mom’s Supermarket Savings 101 course has helped me, but guess WHAT?? I am telling you again!! BECAUSE IT’S ON SALE!! For 48 hours, Crystal at Money Saving Mom is selling it for only $8.97! It’s usually $17.97! But it gets better! If you buy one, she will send you a copy FREE for a friend! After you make your purchase, just email her at moneysavingmom at gmail dot com. Forward her your receipt and the name and email address of the friend you want her to send the FREE copy of Supermarket Savings 101 to! It’s the gift that keeps on giving, so if you’ve been waiting for a great deal to buy it, well here it is! Go here and click on the grocery bag to make your purchase! You won’t regret it!

March 3, 2008March 3, 2008

Confessions of a (Former) Cake Anxietist

A few months ago I confessed to you all my extreme anxiety about what sort of cake to make for Sophie’s first birthday. While the resulting cake and cupcakes turned out well, the distress and mess they caused me took a toll! Last year for Joshua’s 3rd birthday I made this over-the-top train cake and it was also a huge stressfest. So this year, as his fourth birthday loomed, I decided I was not going to sweat it, for two reasons: 1) We were having two parties – so twice the stress and 2) He’s four years old and generally thinks any cake with icing is fantastic! He decided on a Veggie Tales birthday party theme, so I found a really easy Bob & Larry Cake to make. But in order to make it even easier, I decided to – gasp! – use store-bought frosting. I know, I know, I should be ashamed of myself. But I’m not, because you know what? I wasn’t making that frosting for Joshua, I was making it for ME. I absolutely LOVE that stuff! But it’s not my darn birthday and Joshua thinks all frosting is fabulous, so, I decided to give it up. Besides, I eat way too much of it while I am making it, and it creates a HUGE mess in my small kitchen, which adds to the STRESS. SO – no homemade frosting this time. I am glad I made that decision in hindsight, cause it took me FOR-EV-AH to mix the red-orange icing for Bob the Tomato from Veggie Tales. I knew this would be a challenge so I bought the fancy Wilton food coloring. And here’s how Bob & Larry turned out:

Not too bad eh? I thought it was cute and Joshua pronounced it “cool”. I was going to repeat it for his second party that we had for his buddies (Bobby and I both have big families, so we just can’t have everyone over at once!), but the night before the party he informed me that he didn’t want another Veggie cake, he wanted a Thomas cake for this party! Now the old me would have flown into a cake-makin’ tizzy, but I just calmly said “ok”! I’d done a Thomas cake for his 2nd birthday and still had the cake topper. I didn’t want to make the exact same cake that I had made then, and I only had a few hours notice for this switch, so I did the EASIEST thing I could think of! Here it is in all its glory:

Nothing fabulous, but it did the job! Joshua had a great birthday and I was not a nervous, icing-and-powdered-sugar-covered wreck the night before either party!

So, I am officially pronouncing myself “recovered” from cake-makin’ anxiety! And I’ve discovered it’s a whole lot nicer here on the sane side of the kitchen counter!

March 1, 2008March 1, 2008

Got Hairspray?

This week at FREEVS, I mean CVS, I bought about 4 milllllllion cans of Tresemme hairspray. This is exciting because a) I really needed hairspray and b) it was free and c) they paid me to buy it!! There was a deal going on, that is still good this week, that if you buy $10 worth of Tresemme products, you get $5 ECB. You can do this deal up to 5 times. Weeelll, last week CVS put out a email coupon for $2 off any Tresemme product. It technically expired the 24th of February, but my CVS takes expired CVS coupons as long as the register accepts them and doesn’t “beep” when they are scanned. What makes this deal even sweeter is that CVS has a small size Tresemme hairspray for $1.99 and the coupon makes is FREE-99 plus they pay you a penny to get it! On my first couple of trips to CVS this week, I bought one of the $1.99 hairsprays and used the $2 off coupon. Then, because I also had a CRT (coupon that prints on your cash register receipt) for $5 off any $15 Tresemme purchase, I did this transaction:

Three large Trsemme hairsprays at $4.69 each
One small Tresemme hairspray at $1.99
Two Preparation H portable wipes at $3.99 each (these I am giving to my cousin and co-blogger Emily for after she pops out that baby in April. Yes, I am a good cousin!)

My total before tax was $24.04.
I used my CVS $4/$20 email “welcome” coupon, two $3 off Preparation H printable coupons, my $5 off Tresemme CRT, and my $2 off Tresemme CVS coupon. I used $7 in ECBs and got back $14 in ECBs!! $10 for the Tresemme (since buying that much meant I had cumulatively spent over $20 on Tresemme products, I got $5 ECBs for each $10 I spent) and $4 ECBs for the Preparation H wipes. Woohoo! Since my ECBs had been dwindling, I was happy to have a nice money-making transaction! After all, I have got to bank some ECBs to buy the plates, napkins, flateware, etc. for Emily’s baby shower next week. I mean, no way am I spending REAL dollars on her when she wouldn’t even find out her baby’s gender like I nicely asked her to!

Anyhoo, my grocery trip this week was on a smaller scale but I still got some decent deals. Here’s what I got at Kroger for $37.44:

The Propel, tuna, and Peter Pan peanut butter were all FREE with coupons. YAY! Me likey FREE! I had $14 in coupons including the ones Kroger doubled, and I got a lot of $1 items, like the 5 bags of frozen vegetables, the loaf of bread, and the frozen chicken nuggets.

Hope you all got some great deals this week! For more Super Savings Saturday show-offs, check out Money Saving Mom! She’s the awesome couponer who taught me how to do this stuff! If you want to learn how to do it too, go buy her Supermarket Savings 101 ebook here!