Saturday Savings

Ahhh, it feels good to be back! The last several weekends have been so nutty, I haven't really been able to sit back and check out my savings. This week there are some killer deals on snack type foods and cheese. Considering Nick's favorite time of the year is upon us (March Madness!), it's important to have plenty of things on hand for him to munch while he watches his bracket either fall apart or remain awesome. Everything you see below cost me $67.54.

You'll notice there's no milk, bread, bananas, etc on the table. That's because I made a quick run to Aldi Thursday night (I needed baking supplies ASAP) so bought some produce, bread, rice, etc. then as well. Later today I'll pick up flour and eggs at Hen House as both are on sale for .99 this week. I'm holding off on buying more milk as the boys still aren't drinking it right now (don't want to upset their tummy's again) so why buy it just to let it go bad? Here's what's on the table...

HyVee:
Chex Mix - 3 bags
Pompeian Pure Olive Oil - 2 bottles at 16oz each
Town House Crackers - 4 boxes
Wheatables Nut Crisp Crackers - 1 box
Hyland's Homeopathic Kid's Cold Medicine
Dawn Plus Handcare Soap - 1 bottle
Dawn Dish Soap - 1 bottle

Price Chopper:
Kraft Shredded Cheese - 6 bags
Honeysuckle Turkey Breast - 6.26 pounds
Special K Fruit Crisp Bars - 1 box
Best Choice Macaroni and Cheese - 6 boxes
Handi Wipes
Lay's Chips - 3 bags
Alpha Bits Cereal
Honeycomb Cereal
Tide Laundry Detergent - 2 bottles
Guacamole Mix
Avocados - 4
Clementines - 5 pound box

The Deals: Price Chopper has a fantastic deal on Kraft Cheese through tomorrow! Shredded and chunk cheese is on sale for $1.49 each and most Price Chopper's currently have a coupon dispenser in the cheese section that's spitting out save $1 on two Kraft Cheese's coupons! If you're lucky enough to snag a few coupons from the machine you can get Kraft Cheese for .99 each (70% off). Other Price Chopper deals I really liked - Tide detergent for $3.99 each after my two coupons (58% off), turkey breast for .99 a pound, Clementines for $3.99 (60% off), Mac 'n Cheese for .33 each (47% off), Lay's chips for $1.69 (58% off) and avocados for .68 each (55% off).

HyVee also had some fantastic snack-type stuff sales. The Chex Mix was between $1 and $1.25 each (60% off) and the Town House Crackers were $1.49 each (63% off). I snagged the Dawn Hand Renewal soap for $1.28 (thanks to a $1 off coupon I got in the mail), the Wheatables Crackers were .85 and the Olive Oil for only $1.99 (67% off). Buying the Hyland's Homeopathic cold medicine for the boys at $5.88 definitely shot my total up a bit, but I need those kids healthy so I'm willing to try anything right now!

I'm sure the items I bought look a little funny to some of you, but this just demonstrates the beauty of stock-pile shopping. Because I "stocked up" (meaning I bought more than I needed at the time) in previous weeks when pasta, meat, fish, etc. was on a great sale, I still have plenty of food in my cupboards and freezer to make lots of healthy meals.

One last thing - someone commented on my post last week about The Grocery Game and wondered how it's any different then the free sites out there (like couponmom.com). Sites like Coupon Mom do match up sales and coupons and it's a great free resource, however they post every single deal whether it's the "right" time to buy or not. The Grocery Game only tells you to buy when the price is rock bottom, which maximizes your savings. It's worth it to me to just pay the $7.50 a month to have the list ready for me to glance at, select what I want and print.

Total Before Sales, Coupons & Tax: $139.03
Total After Sales & Coupons: $63.64 - 55% off

Saturday Savings

I usually do my grocery shopping on Friday, that way I can get my Saturday Savings post all typed up and ready to publish Saturday morning. Yesterday I still was feeling kind of blah after the loveliness of Thursday night, so Nick insisted on making the grocery store run. We didn't have much in the way of nutritious foods in the house, let alone anything that sounded good to those of us who had just been sick.

This is when my subscription to The Grocery Game comes in super handy. In about 10 minutes I was able to make and print off lists for two stores, pull all the coupons and show Nick how the list works. He opted to shop just one of the stores and leave the second for me (to be done later today) and I was fine with that. He went to Price Chopper, got all the items on my list, used my coupons and picked up some "extras" that weren't on the list but were needed (bread, milk, more ginger ale, gatorade, saltines, etc) and still saved 50%!

Sure The Grocery Game costs money ($15 every 2 months for the stores I "buy" lists for), but it's been a huge money saver for me. I'm perfectly capable of going over the fliers and various websites that post deals, but it takes way longer than The Grocery Game does. I do still do things the "old fashioned" way for Hen House and Whole Foods, but that's time consuming enough for me. My time is limited with all that I try to do, so if I can pay a small fee to be able to just pull down my grocery list and be off to the store, or send my husband to do it for me, then sign me up!

If not for my Grocery Game subscription yesterday, I would have ended up just glancing at the flier (maybe), making a hurried list, not cross checking all of my coupons and sending Nick off to the store. Sure, he would have still saved some, but not 50%! And he probably would have spent far more than the $42 he spent (which included some great produce and meat).

If your time is limited or you're just overwhelmed by trying to figure out how to match up your coupons, when a price is at rock bottom or when it's just a mediocre sale, then I highly recommend you check out the Grocery Game. You can try it for a month for free! If you do give it a shot, I'd appreciate it if you said I referred you... I can earn free months that way, and so can you if you refer others. The e-mail address to put for my referral is discjockyehelen at yahoo dot com.

Seriously. Try it. You'll love the convenience and the savings. The Grocery Game.

Oh and one more thing for my coupon loving friends! The Grocery Game just came out with a fun new coupon center and you do not need to be a member to use it. On the coupon center you can run searches for certain brands, grocery items, etc. Included on the list are both internet coupons you can print and lists telling you if there have been coupons in the newspaper recently for those products. It's come in quite handy!

Saturday Savings

Decent week of deal hunting here in our household! If you missed my sweet $1.61 shopping trip to CVS earlier this week then you need click here to see those bargains! For now I'll just focus on the finds on our family (yep the whole family) shopping trip last night. Everything on the table was $57.61 and here's what it includes...

Price Chopper:
Belfante Lime Sherbet
Westpac Frozen Veggies - 4 bags
Miracle Whip
Lays Potato Chips
Cheese Nips - 2 boxes
Crest Toothpaste
Hefty Plates
Hefty Cups
All 2x Laundry Detergent - 2 bottles
Eckrich Jumbo Franks - 2 packages

Hy-Vee:
Banquet Pot Pies - 6
Generic Frozen Veggies - 3 bags
Hungry Jack Syrup - 2 bottles
Ice Cream Novelties - 2 boxes
Peaches - 2.75 pounds

Aldi:
Whole Milk - 3 gallons
Skim Milk - 1 gallon
Paper Towels - 1 roll
Napkins - 250 pack
Brown Sugar - 1 pound bag
White Bread - 2 loaves
Motts Natural Fruit Snacks - 24 pack
Saltines
Bananas - 3.75 pounds

The Deals: The Crest Toothpaste was only .50 with my coupon (78% off), the Miracle Whip was .99 (75% off) and the Cheese Nips were $1 a box (49% off). It was also quite handy the Price Chopper had cups and plates on sale as we are hosting a pizza party later today! With my coupons the cups were only .75 (69% off) and the plates were $1 (61% off). The rest of my deals were about 50% off on average.

Total Before Sales, Coupons and Tax: $109.60
Total After Sales and Coupons: $54.72 (50%)

Saturday Savings

Ahh the joys of being paid to shop! How's that happen you ask? You'll just have to read on to see. For now I'll leave you with this thought... all that stuff there? That only cost $57.15 and believe me the retail cost was quite a bit more than that.


Aldi:
Whole Milk - 2 gallons
Skim Milk - 1 gallon
Grape Jelly
Bread
Dozen Eggs
Bananas - 2 pounds
Gala Apples - 6 pounds
Pure Vanilla Extract
Chocolate Chips
Brown Sugar - 1 pound

Hy-Vee:
Hunts Ketchup
Kraft BBQ Sauce - 2 bottles
Miracle Whip Lite - 2
Old Orchard Juice
Triscuit Crackers - 2 boxes
Wheat Thins Artisan Crackers - 2 boxes
Ice Cream
Ball Park Hot Dogs - 2
Ziploc Easy Zipper Bags - 2 boxes
Potatoes - 10 pounds
Dole Salad
Kiwi Fruit - 10

Price Chopper:
Robert's Sour Cream
Honeysuckle Whole Turkey Breast - 7 pound
Kellogg's Raisin Bran - 2 boxes
Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats - 1 box
Krunchers Potato Chips
Elbow Macaroni - 2 pounds
Thin Spaghetti - 2 pounds
Bar S Jumbo Franks - 2
Blackberries - 11 oz
Tomato on the vine - 1.5 lbs

The Deals: Ok, I know you're all wondering about this being paid to shop thing so I'll cut right to the chase on that one! I had printed 2 coupons each for a $1 off a bottle of Kraft BBQ sauce. This week Hy-Vee had said sauce on sale for .78 but after my coupon I actually was making .22 on each bottle! Sweet! Other Hy-Vee deals included Miracle Whip for .99 each (that's 77% off), Potatoes were only $1.58 for the 10 pound bag, the Ziploc Bags were marked down to $2 a box and there were tear off coupons on the display for $1 off a box, the Wheat Thins and Triscuits were each just .99 a box (that's $2 off each, or a savings of 67%) and the Ball Park Franks were $1 each (70% off).

Price Chopper also held some sweet deals if you printed off those Kellogg's cereal coupons that were available online last week! I paid just .78 a box for the Raisin Bran and Mini-Wheats - that's 78% off. The blackberries were .88 a container (78% off), the tomatoes were .88 a pound (65% off) and last but definitely not least I paid just .18 a package for the Bar S Jumbo Franks! They were on sale for .68 a piece and I had a save $1 on 2 coupon which brought my savings to 91%.

Notable at Aldi were the Gala Apples - 3 pound bags were $1.29 each so I snagged 2.

Total Before sales, coupons and tax: $130.81
Total after sales and coupons: $54.34 - savings of 59%

Saturday Savings

A lot of shopping happened this weekend, but it's the beginning of the month (which means a trip to Sam's Club) and I was out of virtually all baking supplies! As you can see, I had to break it into 3 different pictures... The first is what I bought at Hy-Vee and Price Chopper. The second is what I bought at Sam's Club. The third is what I bought at Aldi (I forgot to include the Hen House items!).

Total Spent was $97.29 (which is great! Usually the first weekend of the month we spend closer to $115)

Here's what I bought!

Diet Dr. Pepper - 2 lt bottle
Cream Cheese - 2 packages
Margarine - 2 packages (this stuff is great for baking with and it's cheap!)
Chocolate Chex cereal
Fiber One bars - 2 boxes
Premium Saltines - 2 boxes
C & H Sugar - 4 pounds
Del Monte No Salt Added canned tomatoes - 3 cans
Dole bagged salad
Black beans - 1 pound bag
Angel Hair pasta
Baking chips (chocolate and peanut butter) - 2 bags

Sargento Salad Finishers - 1 bag

Cameo Apples - 3 pound bag
McCormick Grill Mate Seasoning
McCormick Vanilla Extract
Crystal Light - 3 boxes
Ritz Crackers - 3 pound box
Cheddar Cheese - 5 pound brick
Apple Juice - 96 oz bottle, 2 of them
Canned pineapple - 6 pound can
Canned peaches - 6 pound can
Quaker Quick Cooking Oats - 9 pound box
Whole milk - 3 gallons
Skim milk - 1 gallon
Bread - 2 loaves
Eggs - 2 dozen
Frozen Veggies - 2 bags
Flour Tortillas - 2 packages
Lemons - 2
Flour - 5 pounds
Jelly
Bananas - 3.5 pounds
Pork chops - 3.8 pounds

The deals: Hooray! Milk prices have dropped yet again! Nick just picked up milk for me at Aldi and whole milk is down to $2.20 a gallon! The Crystal Light was a nice snag at an average of $1.32 a box. Normally it's $3.22 a box which means I saved 57%. The Vanilla Extract was a nice .88! It was already marked down from $3.33 to $1.88 and I had a $1 off coupon, saving me 74%. The Chocolate Chex was $1.25, which was 64% off. The saltine crackers were .99 each which was 65% off the regular price of $2.89 a box. The pork chops were 46% off at only $1.89 a pound.

Pretty good deals this week!

Total before sales, coupons and tax: $152.94
Total after sales and coupons: $91.55

Sunday AM - I can't believe in my haste to post yesterday evening that I forgot to say the Diet Dr. Pepper was FREE! Watch the deal posts on sites like Money Saving Mom and Frugal Freebies and Deals and you too could be swimming in freebies :)

Time With Ty

Last night at the triplet moms dinner the topic of spending one on one time with our kids came up. The conversation intrigued me, especially when I heard moms of some "older" kids (2 and 3 year olds) talking about how excited their kids get when it's their "day".

The only one on one time I've spent with any of the boys was to take them to the doctor. That's not exactly a fun memory making event! After last night's discussions I decided to take action, so this morning after we made a family trip to Sam's Club I moved a car seat into the Neon and took Tyler grocery shopping with me!


The little man did great considering I dragged him to 4 different stores. I had hoped to take a picture of the two of us before we came home, but by the time we got back to the car after store number 4 he'd had quite enough. Lesson learned: if you want a cute picture do it at the beginning of the trip!

Not only did I enjoy spending time trying to make just Ty laugh but I so enjoyed the comments we got! Typically when out with the boys I hear things like: "are they triplets?", "wow, they look a lot alike", "aww they're so cute!", "where did you get that wagon" and my favorite "are they close in age?". Today I heard comments about how pretty Tyler's eyes are and what a cute smile he has! I loved hearing people compliment Ty on such simple little things rather than the focus being his tripletness. I can't wait to do one on one time with Chase and Jackson!

Jackson Update: Speaking of Jackson, here's an update on the little man. I took him to the doctor yesterday afternoon and the mystery of why he looked so terrible was finally solved. He has a sinus infection. The doctor said that's rare in a kid his age. But wait, there's more! The sinus infection also caused an eye infection. His right eye is all puffy and constantly tearing up. AND he has an ear infection... in both ears. Poor guy! He's on a 10 day stint of amoxicillan now and should be perking up by tomorrow! Hopefully we'll all be healthy by next weekend. Thanks for the prayers!

Saturday Savings... on Sunday!

Normally my grocery shopping is my "me time" and it happens on Fridays. This weekend however I couldn't do it until Sunday. I had hoped my sister would be able to come over to watch the boys while I shopped (Nick works on Sundays of course), but she called me at 9am to say that she was sick and didn't want to infect the boys.

I looked at my lists and looked at my boys and decided to go for it. I'm proud to say we went into 3 different stores, got everything on my lists, had zero melt-downs and had it all done in 90 minutes! Yeah, I felt like superwoman by the end of it.

So what did I buy and how much did I spend? Today I spent $64.86 before tax and got all this...


Whole Milk - 2 gallons
Skim Milk - 1 gallon
Maple Syrup
Bread - 2 loaves
Bananas - 4.5 pounds
Brown Sugar - 2 pound bag
White Sugar - 5 pound bag
Baby Carrots - 2 one pound bags
Saltines
Graham Crackers
Egg Noodles - 1 pound
Coke Zero - 2 ltr bottle
Deli Ham - 1 pound
Edy's Ice Cream
Frozen Veggies - 3 one pound bags
Honeycomb Cereal
Coco Pebbles Cereal
Kraft Salad Dressing - 2 bottles
Taco Seasoning packet
Ketchup - 1 bottle
Avocado - 2
Fresh Blueberries - 18oz
Gillette Shaving Cream
Dozen Large Eggs
Lite Sour Cream - 16oz
Cocoa Puffs Cereal
Golden Grahams Cereal
Trix Cereal
Triscuit Crackers
Wheat Thin Crackers
Hand Soap
Red, Seedless Grapes - 3.3 pounds
Red Leaf Lettuce
Roma Tomatoes - 1.32 pounds
Whole Chicken - 2 of them for a total of 9 pounds

In addition to today's shopping trip, we also went to Sam's Club yesterday for our once a month stock up on a few select items. While there we bought the following: 9 pound box of oatmeal, 4 pound box of Goldfish, 6 pound can of pineapple chunks (the boys LOVE these!), 5 pound brick of cheddar cheese, 2 large bottles of apple juice and a large box of french toast sticks. We spent $42 at Sam's and that will be the only time we go there this month.

So between yesterday and today I've spent about $110 of my $310 budget for the month. This isn't too bad considering much of the stuff bought at Sam's will last us the whole month and I have such a good stock pile of stuff here at home already (thanks to The Grocery Game) that it should be fairly easy to spend only about $40-50 on my future shopping trips. It is typical for me to spend 1/3 of my budget at the beginning of the month, due to the Sam's Club stock up.

My biggest thrill of the weekend was buying the Triscuits and Wheat Thins for only .88 a box! That's right... 88 cents! Normally these boxes retail for $3.49 a piece, but they were on sale for $1.88 a piece. Plus I had a coupon for $2 off 2 boxes, saving me 75% off regular retail!

Total cost before tax, sales and coupons: $110.46
Total paid before tax: $64.86

I noticed a couple of you have signed up for the Grocery Game and used me as your referral! Thanks! I'd love to hear how the Grocery Game is working for you. If you are interested in trying the one month trial for $1, please consider saying I referred you! discjockeyhelen(at)yahoo(dot)com.

Great For Day Cares

Normally on Wednesday I would have The Video Clip of the Week, but I'm experiencing technical difficulty with that today. Hopefully it'll be up tomorrow morning!

One night a month we load the boys up and head down the street to Sam's Club. We only pick up a few select things that I have done a careful price comparison on. Some things definitely are cheaper to buy at Sam's, but the bulk of our groceries and paper products are actually cheaper if you shop the sales, use coupons or buy generic at a regular grocery store.

While wandering Sam's club the first time a few months ago I started noticing that a couple of the things we were buying were being advertised as "Great For Day Cares". I guess it would make sense that we would be buying these same items... looking at our home you would think we were running a day care. So what "day care" items are we buying? Giant boxes of Goldfish (of course!) and 6 pound cans of fruit. Yep, fruit. Typically we go with good old fruit cocktail, but this month we changed it up and went with pineapple, which the boys love too!

It got me thinking, what other things in our home could be advertised as "Great For Day Cares"? Probably our Choo Choo wagon could. A woman who runs a day care once asked me where I got it. I'm willing to bet our Little Tikes Slide or Step 2 Coaster could be to. In fact, they probably are advertised as that somewhere! I wonder too if our Pit of Despair would be "great for day cares". Ahhh the life of a family with multiples!

As a quick side bar, I know many people are fascinated by our tight grocery budget and probably are wondering what it is that we do buy at Sam's... We buy a 5 pound block of cheddar cheese, a 9 pound box of oatmeal, a large box of French Toast Sticks (the boys love these for breakfast) and the aforementioned box of Goldfish and 6 pound can of fruit. All of that typically lasts us the whole month. We also occasionally feed Nick's gum chewing habit by buying a box of his favorite gum - usually works out cheaper than buying it in a regular store, but not always.