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 :)

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.