Friday Follow!

Wordless Wednesday (on Thursday)

Why is he so happy you ask?

Well, because of this, of course!

Our brand new car! (that seats 6 so the boys won't be squished anymore!)

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Friday Follow!

Al's Big Buys 3/13-20

This was a good week for coupons. I got $244.20 worth of groceries for $75.73. I'm starting to run out of places to store all my stuff! There's always underneath beds..HA! I've also earned my free ham and my sisters. Here's what I got.

18 cans Chock Full O Nuts Coffee $1.99-.75 (doubled) coupon= .49 each (This isn't included in the above total because it was from last week. I didn't get a chance to post my savings for last week but just wanted to mention it.

16 International Delight Creamer .99-.55 (doubled) coupon= FREE

32 Barilla Whole Grain & Piccolini Pasta .99-.75 (doubled)= FREE

35 (yes, 35) Quaker True Delight Granola Bars $1.99-.75 (doubled)= .49 each

40 Nesquik Chocolate Milk $1.00-.40 (doubled)=.20 each

1 Huggies Overnights Jumbo Pack $8.99-$1.50=$7.49

2 Huggies Wipes $2.49-.50 (doubled)=$1.49 each

1 Frito Lays BBQ Chips $1.99-.55 (doubled)=.89

4 Mens Suave Shampoo $2.00-.50 (doubled) $1.00 each

10 Keebler Wheatables $2.50-$1.50=$1.00 each (plus I have a mail in rebate for $10.00 back on 10 so they'll be free)

2 Tropicana OJ $2.50-$3.00 off 2= $1.00 each

1 Breyers True Inspirations Yogurt $2.49-$2.49 coupon=FREE

1 Baby Spinach and 1 Baby Romaine..no coupons but worth mentioning..on clearance for .50 each and there was enough to split with my MIL.

I'm not done yet, I'll be getting 8 more pasta, 20 more Nesquik and 10 more Wheatables on Saturday. Sometimes I have too much and need to make multiple trips. The list above isn't all I got. I also got lots of fruit, dog food, soda for the hubby, graham crackers and some other stuff.

Taking Inventory

Recently I've read several blogs that list their inventory and I always find it interesting to see what other families are buying and are able to stock up on. So here's what's in my stockpile (and this is not my entire stock of food, just the items I have stockpiled)....

In the pantry:

53 boxes assorted cereal (Post, Kelloggs, GM)

7 Kraft BBQ Sauce

10 Krustaez Pancake Mix plus a giant bag from Sams Club

6 Solo Plates

2 Solo Cups

1 Solo Bowl

21 Progresso Soup

29 Lipton Soup Mix (Beefy Onion, Onion, Savory Herb & Garlic, Vegetable, Noodle Soup)

10 Ritz (Wheat, Vegetable, Snowflake)

27 Ragu Pasta Sauce

6 Wheat Thins

6 Triscuits (Cracked Pepper & Olive Oil, Rosemary & Olive Oil)

20 Hefty Trash Bags (Kitchen size and Lawn & Garden size)

11 Hefty One Zip

4 Mt. Olive Pickles

4 Mt. Olive Relish

19 Quaker Mini Quakes assorted flavors

29 Hamburger Helper assorted flavors (after these are gone I plan on coming up with

homemade versions of these not-so-healthy dinners)

7 Planters Big Nut Bars

5 Fiber Plus bars

31 Boxes Ronzoni/Barilla pasta

7 Orville Redenbacher's Popcorn (I found a recipe for homemade microwave popcorn!)

6 Cheez-Its

9 Marcal Small Steps Tissues

14 Kraft Mac & Cheese

31 Peanut Butter (Skippy)

22 Coffee (Melitta, Foldgers & Chock Full O Nuts)

6 Pepperidge Farms Goldfish

10 Wheatables Nut Crackers

15 Quaker True Delights Granola Bars

In the kitchen:

13 Finish dishwasher gelpacs (I've been working on my stockpile of this for over a year!)

33 College Inn Broth (beef, chicken, turkey, vegetable)

12 Lysol Pourable

7 Lysol AP/Bathroom Cleaners

2 AP Greenworks Cleaner

3 Greenworks Dish soap

In the laundry room:

5 Bounce Dryer Bars

10 Clorox Bleach

13 Spray N Wash

3 6 packs Fruit2O

In the bathroom:

19 Olay Body Wash

31 L'Oreal for kids Shampoo

11 Softsoap Handsoap

2 Softsoap Body Wash

9 Colgate Toothpaste

18 Colgate Toothbrush

10 Garnier Fructis (Hairspray, Shampoo, Conditioner)

17 Lysol Bowl Cleaner

26 Shampoo/Conditioner (Citre Shine, Finesse & White Rain)

4 Edge Shave Gel

12 Schick Quatro Titanium Reusable Razors

4 Speed Stick

6 Lady Speed Stick

106 rolls Marcal Small Steps Toilet Paper

13 Wetones Canisters

20 Nesquik Chocolate Milk

In the freezer:

40 Oscar Mayer Bacon

36 Birds Eye Steamfresh Veggies

3 NY Texas Toast Lite

6 NY Garlic Bread Sticks

4 Butterball Turkey Bacon

8 Butterball Chicken/Turkey Strips

13 Tony's Crispy Crust Pizza

19 Birds Eye Boxed Veggies

Keep in mind when you read the numbers that I do have a family of 5. I also donate to the food pantry at my church and often give items to family and friends. I can't pass up a great deal! My stockpiled items are all either free or very close to free!

Share your stockpiles and comment back so I can read it!

Strawberry Bandit!

Today I was on Facebook chatting with my sister as I often do. Today I noticed it was unusually quiet. Having a toddler around that has 2 older brothers to mimic doesn't make for a quiet household by any means. This is what I saw when I turned the corner from the living room to the kitchen.

*NO* I didn't even hear the chair move. I swear. *YES* I left him on the chair so I could get my camera. He's my third, what can I say.

Just look at those little bites. Cute right? I guess he had to taste each and every one to make sure they were okay.

And at almost 20 months he was even smart enough to pull off the stems and leaves! (Now if I can teach him to make it to the garbage.....)

I guess this was the winner since it's half gone!

UGH, so sick!

My husband works at a school (germ city), the same school that my 2 older boys go to. He came home Thursday from work complaining of a sore throat. By 7pm he was down and out on the couch with the shakes and a fever. He only got about an hour's worth of sleep all night. He went to work the next day much to my dismay. By noonish he was home and having his mother take him to urgent care. $45.00 later he was home toting his giant horse pills. I never understood that! You have strep throat, can barely swallow your own spit and they expect you to take these giant pills the size of a small child!

Yesterday I knew I was getting it. Midday I started feeling my glands swelling and by 8ish that night I took my turn on the couch. What a horrific night! I haven't been that sick in a long time. Fever, sore throat, swollen glands, bad bad headache, chills, body aches, nausea..you name it I had it. I barely slept. One thing I do often when I have body aches and can't seem to get warm is to let the hot shower beat on me. I did that 3 times last night. Then I'd get into bed and cover up with my 2 comforters (on top of my flannel pj's) and wake up in a cold sweat. It was miserable.

Today I went to urgent care myself. I was hoping I could just go in and tell the doc that my husband had been in the day before and he wouldn't do a throat culture and charge me an extra 20 bucks. No such luck. He said to me after looking at my throat that he was giving me an antibiotic either way. So why do the culture? I don't get it.

I just have to say that WITH health insurance if we all get this that co-pays and antibiotics for 5 of us would be $225! OH DEAR LORD! Please God, don't let the kids get it. Not only do I not want them to feel this way, that's a LOT of money! How ridiculous is that?

Oh well, I'm going to shower and lay in bed.

Conversation Starters!

So it's been a very long time since I've done a conversation starters with Zobmondo so here goes.

Here's the question:

Would you rather...

For the rest of your life, choose the same drink and the same meal to ingest every time you eat

OR

have someone else always choose what you eat?

My answer?

I've gotta have some variety folks! Let them choose what I eat. I'll just have to learn to be more adventurous. What's your answer?

KitchenAid..such a love-hate relationship

I broke down a couple of years ago and bought myself a KitchenAid Professional 600 6 quart mixer. I was so excited I couldn't stand it! If you know mixers, you know that I paid a pretty penny for this baby. I didn't mind because I wanted one so badly.

For an entire year I was thrilled with it aside from the volume of it. Lets just say you can't talk on the phone next to the machine when it's running. It's claim to fame is that it can mix up to 14 cups of flour at a time. I'm a huge homemade bread/roll/cinnamon bun/pizza dough/soft pretzel fan...anything involving yeast, really. My mixer gets a workout but it's okay because it's a KitchenAid, right? Heavy duty, right? Huh! That's what I thought. Literally 2 weeks after the one year warranty was up the stinking thing stopped working right in the middle of mixing dough. The motor ran but the mechanism wouldn't spin. Gears stripped. PERFECT! *SIGH*

I called KA customer service and much to my surprise they replaced it with a new machine! I was very impressed and my faith in the company was renewed.

After doing much research about my problem, I found TONS of others with the same problem! I guess they started making the gear box with plastic parts rather than the all metal that they claimed. At this point I figured it's all good because I've got a new one coming and another full year warranty on it.

Here we are 1 year and 3 months after I received this new mixer and guess what happened? Yup! Right in the middle of a batch of pizza dough. I cannot express to you how aggravated I was and still am. Not realizing it was 3 months past the warranty date I called KA again. The lady in customer service was very pleasant. She allowed me to explain what happened, put me on hold and when she came back on the line she explained to me that they would send me a refurbished model with a 6 month warranty.

Now am I supposed to be happy? afraid? I guess both? I'm very happy that they are sending me another one knowing that the warranty was outdated. I'm very scared that the gears will strip again. Part of me wants to sell it on EBay and buy a different brand. I just don't know. I do know that this should NOT be happening. It's not like I bought some cheesy floor model from WalMart! I suppose what I'll have to do is mix my dough and then knead by hand? I'll have to think of it as therapeutic.........

Al's Big Buys 3/2/10

So I had planned on taking a picture for you of my groceries this week and completely forgot. I don't know why, but I find it interesting to look at people's grocery pics. Here were the deals I got this week. SR is doing "dollar days" this week so they offer money towards your next shopping trip when you buy specific items plus free reusable shopping bags.

I want to first start by telling you of the opening conversation with myself and the young cashier. He said "Hi, how are you?" Me "Good, how are you" Him "Good and you?" I just thought it was slightly amusing. Then as he was scanning my coupons he called me a coupon warrior. That's a first..ha!

Oikos greek yogurt was on sale last week from $2.49 to 1.00. My store only had 3 kinds, plain (bleck), vanilla and strawberry. I was only able to get 8 because they didn't have enough in stock, so I got a rain check. Yesterday I used the rain check and got 32 more for free with my $1.00 off coupons. So in all, I got 40 of them for free.

Motts was the first dollar days deal I got. Their juice was 2/4, buy 5 and get $5.00 off your next shopping trip. I got 6 for $12.00 minus the $5 off my next trip = 6 juices for $7.00 plus a free bag.

Lysol toilet bowl cleaner on sale 2/4. I had coupons for .75 off each making them .50 each. I checked them out in 2 batches of 5 so I could get 2 dollar days deals with them. In all I got 10 for $5.00 and got $10.00 to use on my next order and 2 free bags. They paid me 5 bucks to take the cleaner and bags!

Green Works cleaners on sale 2/5. I got 3 dish soap and 2 all purpose cleaner minus my .50 off coupons, making them $1.50 each. Then I got $5.00 off my next shopping trip plus a free bag making them .50 each.

Perdue Turkey Meatballs (my favorite) on sale for $2.21 minus my .75 off coupon making them .71 per box. BTW, I used Perdue ShortCuts Chicken coupons on these.

Clorox bleach on sale for $1.69 minus my .50/2 coupon made them $1.19 each, plus a $5.00 off your next order coupon making them .36 each and I got another free bag.

Bounce Dryer Bars on sale for $4.00 each minus my $1.50 off coupons made them $2.50 each. Then I got a $5.00 off my next order for a total of $1.50 each.

In all I got $160.27 worth of groceries for $60.58, a savings of 62%!

High Speed and a Shiny New Laptop!

So here on my road (you'd think I was in the middle of absolute nowhere!) we JUST got hooked up to cable last week..right in the middle of our blizzard. If you've recently switched from dial up to cable internet, you know exactly how my family and I feel. I can say honestly that it used to take me 20 minutes or more to upload ONE photo to the internet! I'll admit that we've been a little obsessive since it's so new to us. It still feels strange when I'm on the internet and the phone rings.

Anyway, we're elated and I can't wait to get my projects started that required high speed internet. I've stumbled upon digital scrapbooking and I'm looking forward to trying it out. I've always loved the way a well-put-together scrapbook page looks but lets face it, scrapbooking can be ridiculously expensive! Never mind storing all the tools, glues, marking pens, paper, embellishments...the list goes on and on I'm sure.

One of the things I need to get started in my new endeavour is a better laptop. I'm working on a laptop that was given to my son by his Aunt Heidi and it's good for surfing the internet and whatnot, but isn't good enough for the programs I want like Photoshop. Sooo....my husband being a LAN tech, helped me pick out a new one on a budget.

I searched for days and days and went from buying refurbished with only a 90 day warranty to getting a really good deal from OfficeDepot.com. I'm very excited to get my new one. Anyone looking for a good laptop for the money check out this deal from OfficeDepot.

Who knows? Maybe I'll start blog design!