Friday Deal Round-up: Christmas in July!

I don't want to post a pic to spoil any birthday/holiday surprises, but I made some GREAT finds at the Target toy clearance. All told, I spent $97 on nearly $442 worth of toys. Stella is all set for Christmas and we should have a nice stockpile for kid's birthday parties this coming year. I'm planning on making this an annual event thanks to the savings. I even used coupons on 4 items! You may be able to still find some great deals there thanks to mismarkings and misplacement of clearance items. Use the price check scanners on the endcap to find out what each item will total- you may be very pleasantly surprised! And always be sure to watch the register carefully- I had three clearance items ring up at full price this morning. If I hadn't been paying attention, I would have paid way too much for these!

Also wanted to give local shoppers a tip about Kroger- they have paper school buses with great coupon pamphlets and the Kellogg's $10 Fuel for School rebate form. Be sure to pick up a few copies next time you're in there! I also snagged a good pile of 55 cents off Propel hanging off the Propels at Kroger- these are on sale at Harris Teeter right now for 4/$5 so you can get these for a measly 15 cents each after coupon.

Thanks to some $1/off produce winetags I recently spotted, I bought $20 worth of groceries (including bananas, plums and blueberries, 6 Propels and a small bottle of Trop50 oj) for $3.90- an 80% savings for an order consisting mainly of produce.

Heads up too that CVS will be having more free school supplies after ECBs from Sunday through Tuesday. I'll be there bright and early Sunday morning! There are also other great deals on Electrasol, Blink & Visine (the Blink is a moneymaker with mfg coupons). You can find all the details on http://www.southernsavers.com/ under the CVS tab- be sure to check out comments section for the post because readers often post additional tips & deals.

Super Doubles are Supa-Fly

Check out my goodies from the second HT Super Doubles trip I made this morning. Thanks to my newfound hobby of coupon trading, I had some great extra finds. Here is a list of my steals along with info on coupons used:

1 big bag of Grande Tortilla Chips (used traded insert coupon)

4 6-packs of 1/2 litre Deer Park Water (used internet coupon)

2 boxes of Velveeta Mac n Cheese (used internet coupon)

2 boxes of Kraft Deluxe Mac n Cheese (used internet coupon)

2 boxes of Success Boil in Bag Brown Rice (used internet coupon)

3 Buitoni refrigerated Angel Hair Pasta (used traded insert coupons)

6 trial size containers of Skintimate Raspberry Rain Shave Gel (used 3 $1.50/2 insert coupons)

3 10 pks of Mission Plus tortillas (used internet coupons)

Grand Total would have been $58.50. After coupons & VIC savings, I paid $3.33 AND received a $3 off my next order coupon from Kraft- so it's as if I paid 33 cents for the order.

I should mention I had coupons for 2 of the Mission tortillas and bought 2 thinking they were $1.99 each (so free after coupon). They were mismarked at the tortilla station, so the ones I first picked up were $3.79. I didn't notice until looking at the receipt on the way back to the car, so I went back in, exchanged the 2 I bought for the 2 that should have been $1.99 and received an extra pack for my troubles!

I *heart* coupon shopping. If you'd like to get your hands on some of the internet coupons I used, the easiest way to find them is by joining Hotcouponworld and utilizing their coupon database to find, click and print.

Friday Deal Roundup

I've decided to add a new feature to the blog - a weekly round-up of great deals I've found this week. Those of you with the same stores nearby can try to take advantage before these deals end- in most cases, this will be the following Tuesday. I've already posted some good finds during the Kroger Mega 10 event- I hear this will continue through next week.

It was a great week for healthy/whole foods deals! Kroger has organic cherries on sale for $2.99/lb (their regular cherries are on sale for the same price!) and organic cameo apples on sale for 99 cents/lb. I don't typically buy organic due to the higher cost, but I couldn't resist on these deals...and the cameo apples are super yummy! Very crisp and sweet. Kroger also has split chicken breast on sale for 99 cents/lb. You can make this an even better deal by using the Tyson $1/off coupon that's been in Sunday circulars TWICE over the past few months.

Target has lean ground beef on sale for $2.99/lb- another great price for 93% lean beef. We're running low in our freezer from the last Food Lion batch, so I restocked 12 lbs of this at Target. It's not everyday you find such a great deal on meats at Target.

I believe these deals (Kroger produce/meat and Target) end tomorrow so you'll need to act fast.

And since split chicken is on sale, I figured I'd include a quick and easy recipe for baked chicken (one of Jon's favorites). As in my turkey cutlet recipe, no need to measure. Just put your chicken in a baking dish sprayed with Pam, season it with salt, pepper, poultry seasoning, onion powder, garlic powder, lemon pepper seasoning and parsley flakes and depending on your diet, either top it with little slivers/slices of butter or liberally spray with a butter substitute, put it in a preheated oven at 425 degrees and bake for about 45 minutes. We usually serve this with steamed broccoli and some wild & brown rice. Easy peasy and delicious!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Summer of Fun..and Savings!

Summer is off to a sizzling start- with the beginning of the new school year, the tail end of a smashing spring season with Spencer's flag football team (GO UNTOUCHABLES!) and gearing up for Kaila's fall soccer season. Spence will be playing in the championship game on Saturday so wish him luck. He took a really rough hit during a game this past weekend. He got right back up and playing immediately after - he's a tough kid!

We've volunteered as team managers for Kaila's team so that's kept us busy these past few weeks getting all the uniform orders together and organizing a team meet & greet for this coming weekend.

And I've been dashing about taking advantage of some great deals this week. CVS is running a 3 day sale in which you score some free school supplies...unfortunately too late for this school year thanks to the year-round schedule, but I'll be storing these away for next year. You can get free pens, rulers, glue, 1 subj notebooks, 3 subject notebooks and scissors thanks to the wonders of rolling ECBs.

For those not in the know, ECBs are Extra Care Bucks that you earn for certain purchases by using a CVS ExtraCare card. You can use these as a form of payment for future CVS purchases. I had $6.50 in these when I went shopping early yesterday morning and by breaking my entire purchase into 5 separate transactions, I ended up spending just a few actual dollars on these school supplies and a Gillette Fusion Razor. It's basically a math game but if you go in with a plan & some ECBs already on hand, you can come out with a few bags of goodies spending little to no money at all. I love my ECBs!

They're also running a deal on 6 x 8 photo books. These are on sale for $7.99 and you get $7.99 in ECBs back when you buy one. Although the circulars and the store signs indicate a 1 per household limit, I've found that you can actually buy 5 and get the $7.99 ECB back for each of the 5. Great Christmas gift idea or, if you're a Mom to a baby/toddler, you could also take pictures of your baby's favorite things and enter in text for each and make a cute little reading book for baby. Organize your pics, save them on a CD, USB/flash drive or what have you, take them into CVS and make a nifty book gratis!

Kroger is also running another one of their Mega 10 sales- this is where you get $5.00 deducted from your overall order when you buy any 10 of the items within the sale. Pair this deal up with coupons and get even better savings. I spent a little over $25 on an order consisting of 4 Sobe Lifewaters, 4 Healthy Choice frozen meals (Jon's lunch of choice for work), 6 Deer Park 3L bottles, 2 big containers of fat free cottage cheese, bananas, blueberries, a box of Kroger oatmeal, box of 200 Kroger sandwich bags, 6 bags of Cheerios and Chex snack mixes and a box of Kroger active bars (these are a knock-off of Fiber One bars)- thanks to mfg coupons, internet coupons and the 10 item event savings, I knocked $37.13 off the order.

The Deer Park and the Sobe's were the best deals in the mix. With the 10 item mega event, each was only 49 cents. I bought ten total for $4.90 then knocked another $3.38 off this by using an internet Buy One Get One Free coupon for the 4 Sobe Lifewaters (the coupons rang up at $1.69 each- the non-sale price of the Sobes). So, I actually paid $1.52 for 6 three-liter Deer Park bottles and 4 20 oz Sobe Lifewaters. Sweet! Here's a link to the coupon for my fellow Kroger shoppers:

http://bricks.coupons.com/Start.asp?tqnm=qdcnfeh65041990&bt=wg&o=56053&c=SL&p=dP7JSciC

I am officially addicted to coupon shopping!

HT Super Doubles Tally

I meant to post this sooner, but life got in the way. After multiple trips to various Harris Teeters during their inaugural Super Doubles week, I managed to snag $585 worth of groceries for a grand total of $107- representing an impressive 80% savings. I could have done better too if I had managed to find more freebies during the latter portion of the week after the Sunday circular (Pert Plus and Playtex disposable gloves were cleaned out fairly quickly). Here's a rundown of what I bought for $107:

1 box Eskimo Pie Dark Chocolate bars
2 Minute Rice single serve Saffron rice
11 Starbucks Mocha frappucinos
10 bottles of Lawrys 30 minute marinades
2 bottles of Smart Balance oil
10 bottles of Garnier Fructis shampoo & conditioner
3 multipacks Playtex disposable gloves (perfect for bathroom cleaning)
3 Borden fat-free American cheese slices
4 packs of Trident spearmint gum
9 containers of Blue Bunny ice cream
4 Sargento light string cheeses
2 Hefty One Zip quart-sized container (for Spencer's 5th grade class)
2 La Brea fresh petite country bread (used these to make 2 batches of french toast)
2 Jello multi-pack Dark Chocolate puddings
1 can of Reddi Wip
1 bottle of Filipo Berio extra light olive oil
3 containers of Uncle Ben's wild & brown ready rice
5 bottles of Pert Plus shampoo/conditioner
3 Kraft light shredded cheeses (mexican, mozzarella & cheddar)
1 Danactive 4 pack
1 bottle Kraft light Italian dressing
1 bottle Jack Daniels' Honey BBQ sauce
2 cans of Lysol Neutra Air spray
2 boxes of Archway cookies (brought these to Isabelle's end of year ice cream party)
7 large bottles of Dawn Pure Essentials dish soap
11 boxes of Kellogg's Frosted Mini Wheats
5 cans of Hot Shot ant/roach/wasp killers
7 bottles of Garnier Fructis hair styling products
1 Sure for Men deodorant
20 containers of Dannon Light n Fit Yogurt
7 bottles of Fruit 20 Essentials fruit-flavored waters
6 boxes of 100 Calorie Oreo mini-cakesters
3 small containers of Bumblebee Tuna
3 boxes of Kashi frozen waffles
1 box of Eggo Twist N Bake Strawberry
1 large California Pizza Kitchen Sicilian Pizza
2 boxes of Oscar Mayer light hot dogs

I'm still not quite sure if I'd prefer super doubles over triple coupon weeks- I'm hoping HT will alternate between the two. It was a double-edged sword for me in that it was nice to use some $1 and up coupons, but not so nice in that I hadn't really clipped with this in mind for the months leading up to this...so my binder did not include some of the coupons that would have led to even more freebies & near freebies.

I'll be clipping with this in mind going forward. I've learned some more tips & tricks too- I'll be buying up additional copies of Sunday papers on weeks where coupons are aplenty (or if there are a few of our staple items within the mix). I've done this for the past several weeks (hence the multiple boxes of Free Frosted Mini Wheats & Starbucks frappucinos!) and will continue to do so. I'm also hoping to get more space cleared up in our garage shelving to allow more room for stockpiling nonperishables. One of the moms I met at a recent coupon swap just had their new home custom built to include 2 in-home pantries and additional stockpiling space in the garage!