Survived!

Well, Christmas has come and gone again. I'm just glad to say I survived it.  My kids are all older now.  No more legos or baby dolls at our house.  :(
The shopping was for very expensive, very small items.  No, I didn't have any coupons for them.  Rats.  A couple of them were on black Friday, tho, so that did help.

Anyway, on to today's shopping!

The Glade sprays were $3.19, 50% off, and I had a 55 cent off coupon, too!  That made them $1.04 each.  The garbage bags were just on sale, $2.99 a box. 

M&Ms, daughter needed...they were only  50% off.  Same with the sprinkles. 

Sally Hansen buffing blocks (I can use these in scrapbooking, too) were 37¢, but I had a 50¢ off coupon, so the gal wrang it up at 50, making them free!

The clippers I had a coupon for, too, for 50¢, making them 79¢.

The Hershey Kisses were the BEST!  Before Christmas, I got a $5 off any Hershey's product catalina at Walgreens.  I took it in today. The candy was again, 50% off.  I got all 3 bags for TWENTY FIVE CENTS!!!  I was very very excited about that one!   

All totaled, I spent $7.42 and that was on a gift card I had. So really...woohoo, no money spent at all!

My daughter got some make-up.  This was all clearanced, and I had $1 off coupon, and she found a $2 off coupon in the Walgreens monthly book, too.

She got all of it for $7.25.

Merry Christmas to us ala coupons!  LOL!

Sunday, November 27

One more Walgreens trip to post.
I saved over $80, and spent $23.63, and used all of my register rewards, too!  I am always concerned that I will forget to use them, they will expire, and I'll lose out!

Anyway, here is my haul.  I forgot the lip glosses, so had to take a 2nd picture:

The 5 softlips were free after register rewards.

The rest of my goodies are:

2 Tone body wash

6 Dawn dish washing soap

12 votive candles (for a friend, but they made great fillers!)

4 Pantene shampoo and conditioner

2 foot rehab creme

and a digital camera.

The camera alone was $20, so I got all the rest of it for $3.63  WOW!

Saturday's Shopping

I'm still playing catch-up on my postings.  This past few trips to Walgreens has been phenomenal!

I spent $30.87 and saved over $110!  I just love doing these things!
1 bottle of foundation (make-up)
3 boxes of hair color
3 razors
1 memory card (Christmas present!)
3 lip glosses
4 deodorants
and 4 laffy taffys. 

Thanksgiving Day at Walgreens

Our family had our holiday meal on Wednesday, because of grown children's schedules.  That left me free to do what I wanted last Thursday.  Of course, I went coupon shopping!

Sadly, I can't find my receipts to tell you how much exactly I spent or saved.  I looked at my bank account, and I spent around $27. 
Here's a breakdown of what I got:
4 boxes of Kleenex
6 rolls of paper towels
9 tubes of toothpaste
10 bottles of asprin (donated)
1 Thanksgiving Day newspaper
5 toothbrushes
4 thermacares
8 packages of hair ties
and 3 laffy taffys.

I really wish I had been more organized after this shopping trip, so I could have posted it sooner, and listed the amount of savings. Oh well..can't have everything I guess.  :D

I have 2 more shopping trips to post tonight, too.

Catch up! (but no ketchup)

Yep, I did it again....went MIA.  Working 2 days a week, going to college, caring for family plus my 89 year old dad, and running my own small business...no idea why I don't have time to blog!  LOL.  If you notice, none of the above listed couponing or shopping.  Wow, I am busier than I thought!

Anyway, onto the important stuff!
Last Monday, Labor Day, I did a Walgreens trip.  I took my son with me.   He had never been before.  It was definitely an adventure.  "Are we done yet?  Why does this take so long?"  Sheesh!  I won't take him again any time soon.  LOL
I didn't do near as well I as think I should have, but oh well.  I can't find the picture, I guess I didn't take one?  Anyway, I am sharing the info from this trip to let you know each one doesn't go as well as things on tv.
I spent $58.87.  That's the most I have spent in a loooong time.  I saved $149.96.  Not awful, but not my best either.   :)  I got boatloads of shampoo, conditioner, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and I am sure other things....I can't decipher the receipts very well.

After that, we headed to Home Depot for some Mr. Clean erasers.

 9 of them for $4.50 plus tax.  (no idea where that receipt is.)  I used the $1 off 1 coupon and bought the individual erasers.  Today at Walgreens, I saw 2 for $3.89.  Woot to me!

Today's Walgreens trip:

Please excuse the mess around the stuff.  I guess I am feeling more comfortable...

I didn't clean for you this time!    :D

This trip was MUCH better.  I spent $3.23 and saved $65.45.

8 9 ounce bottles of Dawn dishsoap, 9 toothbrushes, 3 tubes of 

toothpaste, and 3 washclothes for Operation Christmas Child.

We used a LOT of register rewards and got a lot back, too. 

This all does take some time, but the savings are so worth it to me!

Til next time,

Jeanne

$20 in, $22.50 out!

Today was an awesome trip to Walgreens!!  I walked in with a $20 bill, and walked out with 1 huge sack, and 2 regular sized sacks. I also walked out with $22.50 in Register Rewards!!  So, really, I got paid $2.50 to take this all home!

 

I got 6 boxes of kleenex, 8 tubes of Crest toothpaste (for Operation Christmas Child), 6 packages of floss (I left one at the store...already called them and they said just bring in receipt.  Gotta love small towns!), 5 carmax lip balm, 12 bags of M&Ms (these freeze well), 2 carmel candies (fillers) and 5 pens (again, fillers),

I am just so excited about this trip.  I don't think we will need to buy kleenex til Christmas!  Good thing, I was down to my last box. 

I did do a lot of "rocking" of my register rewards.  At one point, I was buying the Crest for $1.06 out of pocket, and they were giving me $3 register rewards.  Gotta love it!

Til next time,

Jeanne

Score!

Tonight, I have 3 trips to tell you about.  No, make that 4.
Last Wednesday, my daughter moved back home from living in the city all summer.  Right after moving in and having supper with the family, she said, "Can we go coupon shopping?  I've missed it."  What kind of mom would say no to that???
We made a trip to Walgreens with great success!

We spent $25.21 and saved $59.54.  That's over 60% savings! 
We got: 3 bars of Dove Soap, 2 packs of gum (1 extra, 1 mist), 1 tube of Colgate Sensative toothpaste, 8 tubes of Crest 3-D White toothpaste, and 6 bottles of Dawn dish washing soap.

We also got (in the same trip) 4 bottles of Axe body wash for my daughter's boyfriend.  He was leaving to go to college the very next morning, so those didn't make it home for a photo shoot.  LOL.
The Axe was the best deal:  It was buy one, get one 50% off at Walgreens.  I had buy one, get one free coupons.  So, I bought 2 bottles of Axe for 1/2 the price of 1.  Each set of 2 bottles was $3.21

On Saturday, I went back for more Axe for my son.  Six bottles, $10.54.  They should have been over $36; they are $5.97 each before tax.

Well, that's all this shopper has to report...oh, wait!  I also did a HyVee run (local grocery store) on Saturday.  I got 10 half gallons of Silk Almond Milk for $1.99 each, instead of the normal $3.29.  We are keeping 2 and giving the other 8 to friends.   :)
With all the coupons and sales Saturday, we saved over $20 on our grocery bill.   Rockin'!

Solo shopping at Walgreens

I am so excited about this shopping trip.  Usually I take my 20 year old daughter with me, but she wasn't available yesterday.  I only bought a few items to keep it easy on myself.  I had $12 in register rewards that were going to expire, and I didn't want to waste them.

I did six transactions. 
I bought: 1 Glade air freshner, 4 Revelon tweezers, 4  black dry erase markers, 100 pencils (for Operation Christmas Child) and 170 PaperMate ink pens.  We lose ink pens like you would not believe around here!  That should keep us enough til next August.  LOL.

I spent $2.61 total.  Total savings?  $85.89. 

Not bad for being worried I wouldn't be able to do this without my daughter!  Woohoo for me.

Two Days in a Row?!?!?

You mean I am posting two days in a row?  Holy cow, pigs must be flying tonight.  LOL.

I had to share what we got at Walgreens today.  I was tempted to skip church to go shopping, but I was a good girl and went after.  I even allowed the family to have lunch before we went shopping!

The pics aren't very good, sorry.  I guess I should have split them up into smaller groups of things.  

We got 9 boxes of Ecotrin with a raincheck that was going to expire tonight.  We'll add those to 5 others we got and give them all to a friend whose church is going to Haiti on a mission trip and they are looking for more of these.  They were free.

8 packs of Cottonelle toilet paper, 12 rolls per pack.  With all the register rewards we had, we only spent $1.33 on each pack!  Woohoo!  We are set for a while now.   :)




11 folders for 11¢ each.  These were "fillers" and will be used by all the college students in our home.  


5 packs of glue sticks for my business.  12 packs of Crayola Washable Markers.  These we rocked register rewards on with the hair clips.  (That means that we bought one pack of markers, got the $2 register rewards, then bought the hair clips with those rewards, got $2 more in rewards and back and forth and  back and forth)

 A bottle of Dawn dishsoap for 50¢.  12 packs of aformentioned hair clips, 6 packs (pic only shows 4...dd took 2 to work with her already) of dry erase markers.

 We also got 4 bottles of Head and Shoulders and 6 bottles of Pantene.

And 4 boxes of cereal.














Now the big question is: How much did we spend?  We started out with the register rewards we had from last night: $33 in those.  Then we added $12 cash.  That's it.  And we walked out with $8 in register rewards, too!  I really like walking away with as few as possible, so I don't have to worry about them expiring.

Today was a great shopping day!

Hiatus

I think I'm done with my hiatus now.   :)
I took the month of July off from couponing to work on my daughter's graduation open house.  Yes, we didn't have it til July.  But now that's done.  We have returned our too many purchases (thankfully, I kept the receipts!) and have the house sorta kinda back in order.  Ok, so not so much, but that isn't what this blog is about.  LOL

Anyway, I wanted to share with you my purchases this week.
Older daughter and I went to Walgreens today.  We walked in with $7 cash and a $7 gift card.  We walked out with all this

and $21 in Register Rewards!  How cool is that?!?!?  I am so impressed with myself.  Especially after taking some time off from the bargains.  I was concerned it might take me longer to get back into the swing of it.  Nope!

Then we went to WalMart and got these 4 items for -12¢.  We had to buy a candy bar (had a coupon for that too) to get the 12¢, but hey!  It works!


The bad thing about going to Walgreens on Saturdays is that a lot is picked over.  But that's ok, the toothbrushes are going to Operation Christmas Child.  What we get, we get.  It's all good.


PS, daughter just called.  She picked up more toothpaste for 25¢ a box at other Walgreens.  Yes, same thing as is pictured above.  Oh, and while we were getting floss at WalMart, we saw the 25¢ toothpaste for $3.14.  We are saving billions!


Oh, and I got my first coupon teaching job.  It will be Oct 6 in West Des Moines, IA.  Leave a comment if you want more information. 
Thanks for stopping by!

Coupons aren't just for food and tolietries!

So you think that coupons are only for use at the grocery store?  Think again, my friend!  Tonight, I went scrapbooking.  I love that people think that hobby is ever so expensive.  It's not, if you do it right.  <grin>

I ordered three 8x10 collages from Walgreens and four 4x6 prints.  The collages were FREE with an online coupon code.  I paid 59 cents for all the pictures.  I did have to do 3 orders, but big deal, right?  It was only one transaction to pick them all up.  While I was there, I got an extra $10 using my debit card, to limit my spending later in the evening.

Next stop was some supper.  I got a Subway sandwich.  I didn't have a coupon, so that was $4.51.  I bought a bottle of Cherry Pepsi at Walgreens while I was there, knowing I would get more pop for less money, and have a screw top container to help me avoid spills while scrapping.

Then I headed over to Archiver's, a national scrapbooking chain of stores.  It's $5 on Friday or Saturday nights to crop there, from 5-11pm, but you buy $5 worth of merchandise and the crop fee is forgiven.
I bought 11 sheets of 8x11 cardstock.  2 of them were for a project I was working on, and the other 9 are for my Christmas cards this year.  The paper is $.49 each piece.  That made my total $5.39, before tax, and canceled my $5 crop fee.  Then I produced a "buy 5 sheets of cardstock, get 5 free" coupon.  That made my total, including tax, $2.82.  Woohoo for me!  I spent less than $10 for an entire evening, dinner and 6 hours of cropping!  Bonus, I got a lot of work done on my dad's Father's Day gifts!

I'd share pics, but I ate the sandwich and the paper I have already cut into cards...Sorry.    :D
I came home with money in my pocket, and that is so sweet!

I love couponing...

Leave of Absence

How do you like that?  I start a brand new blog and then vanish for over a month.  Sorry about that.  It's just the usual...life getting in the way! 

Sales lately haven't been much to write about, I guess.  
I will go back in time and share with you what we got on May 29.

We got all this at Walgreens, the Sunday before Memorial Day.
Here is what it included: 2 packs of cat food, 2 packs of dog food, 5 dry idea deodorants, 5 right guard deodorants, 4 colgate max white toothpaste, 1 reynold's wrap tinfoil, 2 icy hots, 5 rolls of packing tape, 4 boxes of skinny cow, a tube of sun block, a bottle of tanning lotion stuff, 2 bug sprays, 2 boxes of ritz crackers, 3 wheat thins, 2 ritz crackerfuls.
We got over $175 worth of stuff. So, how much did we spend???



Ok, enough guessing.  LOL!  We spent a grand total of $5.32.
This was one of our biggest hauls, but most of these items went to Joplin, MO, for tornado victims.


What is your latest haul?

Coupon Class!

I taught my first coupon class last night.  I think it was a success!  I am going to teach another one tonight.  That will be the decision maker.  I am teaching friends, and the fee I am "charging" them is to let me know if they think I can do this for things like continuing adult ed and parks and rec. 
I am really excited about it and hope it goes well!  Woohoo!

Shopping-May 1

My daughter and I went shopping yesterday afternoon at Walgreens.  Here's what we got:
3 bottles of Head and Shoulders shampoo, 3 of conditioner. 4 cans of nuts, 8 dry idea deodorants, 7 packs of Noxema ladies' razors (4 per pack), 3 packs of large envelopes (8 per pack) and one pencil sharpener.
We spent $26.44 and got $108.84 worth of product. The $108 price does not reflect full price, but rather sale prices. So we really saved even more than approximately 75%.



I'd say that's pretty good, huh?  In the weeks to come, I will share our shopping ventures.  In between times, I hope to be on here, sharing past shopping trips to encourage you to save huge money with coupons and sales.

Meanwhile, keep saving!

Welcome!

Welcome to Love's Couponing!  I started couponing in January of 2011 after watching Extreme Couponing on TLC.  Let me start out by saying I am NOT like those people on tv!!!  I love getting a good or even free deal, but I do not have a whole room full of stuff.  I don't buy 79 packages of croutons at once.

I love couponing, and the thrill of the hunt, but I don't spend more than my budget can handle.  And when I get a surplus, I donate!  That's the best feeling of all.

I am starting to teach coupon classes in central Iowa.  If you want me to come teach your group, please drop me an email!

Til next time,
Jeanne