October Grocery Challenge

October is almost over and I just have one more shopping trip on Wed. to Pick N Save which I already have mapped out. This month I realized God has blessed us with an over abundance of food from all the good deals. I decided we really needed to try and use up as much as we could without buying too much extra. I only took out money for the first half of the month for groceries which is $120. After my trip on Wed. I will still have $3 left. Now mind you, I did get a few rebates back this month from food I bought previous months so I may have gotten more than $117 worth of groceries but for me the real point is that I spent half our budget. We still have quite a bit of food so I'm going to see how well I can do in November as well. One big thing, besides couponing, that has helped me is to menu plan. Since I do the envelope budget, I will take out money for the first half of the month and put in the food envelope. I will make a list of meals for the first 15 days, that way I can look through the cupboards and freezers to see what we already have and base meals off that. Then I may only need a few items from the store. I can save the budget money to continue to stock up on great sales.

Fun Shopping Trip

So I've kinda hung back a little in coupon deals. There haven't been a ton of awesome ones lately. I had a pretty good shopping trip this Saturday afternoon. After unloading everything, I decided it was worth a picture and post. After a mail in rebate of $15 and then a $4 off your next purchase coupon, I spent $34 for all this:



25 Puffs tissues
4 9pks. Quilted Northern toilet paper
1 gallon whole milk
10 pk. Bagel Chips
8 pks. Ore Ida Easy Fries
10 pks. Pillsbury cookie dough
2 boxes Ritz crackers
3 boxes Honey Maid graham crackers
5 boxes Saltines
1 Gillette razor
4 bananas
4 Zantacs
2 bags Lifesaver gummies
4 Glade Sense & Sprays

It was about $175 worth of stuff. So a savings of 81%. I was glad to get a good stockpile of crackers and bagel chips as John and the kids loooove crackers.

Marcus Theaters Cheap Movies

My mom got these great coupons at the movie theater the other day and passed some on to me. Apparently Marcus Theaters is celebrating 74 years and are running a promotion. The week of Mon. Nov 2-Thurs. Nov 5, you can go to a movie for $4 with this coupon. It's good for up to four admissions. There is also a coupon on there for a $4 Popcorn & Drink combo for those same days and also good for up to 4 people. So for less than the cost of a regular movie ticket, you can see a movie and get a popcorn & soda. Check your local Marcus Theater to see if you can get your hands on these coupons.

How to Save on Printable Coupons

Here's a great post with some tips on how to save on ink when printing out coupons.

Pick N Save-Other Good Deals for today

If you didn't care to have a whole bunch of cookie dough, the following would also work for the same deal I mentioned: Pillsbury cresent rolls, dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, or pizza crust. Those are priced at $1.66 ea. and since you must purchase 6 to get the $4 coupon and the $5 coupon here's an example:
6 Cinnamon rolls $9.96
-$3($1/2 coupons here and here)
$6.96 get $9 in coupons
or if you had enough other groceries to get the coupons doubled you'd pay $3.66 and get $9 in coupons back. If I didn't already have a refrigerator full of cresent rolls and cinnamon rolls(from another deal that wasn't this sweet) I would get some. It's a great moneymaker.

Okay, here is a little peek into what some of you might think is out there but stick with me. If you had acess to two computers for printing out coupons(i have a laptop as well as our desktop) then you'd be able to print off enough cinnamon roll and cresent roll coupons from the two sites to be able to do this:
30 cinnamon/cresent rolls(i'm not sure if it would work to do them all together, i think you'd need to split them up by 6's) $49.8
-$15 coupons
$34.8 you'd spend out of pocket but then you'd get $45 in coupons for future purchases.
This would be a $10 moneymaker! (or if you had tons of other groceries to buy and got the coupons to double it would be a $25 moneymaker)
*Disclaimer-I'm not showing you this so that you'll go out and do it(although I would be tempted to if I didn't already have so many of them) but just wanted to show you how my type of couponing(and stockpiling) can get you lots of good(okay maybe not healthy but yummy) food for free or even get paid to take it home.

Pick N Save-Free Pillsbury cookie dough

This deal is only good today as it's double coupon day. When you buy 6 packages of Pillsbury cookie dough(I like to put mine in the freezer so I don't feel like I have to eat them all right away, even though I still do, lol) you'll get 2 different catalinas to print out. There will be a $5 off your next purchase of flowers and a $4 off your next purchase for a total of $9 off your next purchase(and like the milk coupons they always have you don't have to spend $5 on flowers you could spend less and the full $5 will come off). Pillsbury cookie dough is on sale for $2.50 this week and there are $1/2 printables here and here. So make sure you spend $25 and use 3 of the $1 coupons that will double and your transaction will look like this:

6 Pillsbury cookie doughs $15
$10 in other stuff
$25
-$6(doubled coupon)
$19 and get back $9 in coupons to use towards your next purchase so it's like you didn't pay anything for the cookie dough.

Freebies

Incase there is anyone out there who might be trying for a baby, you can get 10 free pregnancy tests or OPK. Check it out here. Although it seems like most of my friends already are pregnant so I can't imagine who would need these, but you never know.

Cheap Carpet Cleaner & Free Movie Ticket

* Updated- My mom told me this stuff worked really well for her so I decided to give it a try on some of the spots on the rug in the girl's room. I was impressed! It got the stain out. I was planning on looking into having some one come to clean to rug because it was disgusting but now I'll just have to set aside some time to scrub away at those stains. I'm going to call the company to tell them how happy I am with the product. So if you haven't already, I would REALLY urge you to do this deal. I think it's definitely worth it!


Spot Shot carpet cleaner is currently running a promotion where you can get a free movie ticket. Just purchase a spot shot product(I found some priced for $2.99 at Target) and the click here to fill out the form to mail in. It will say a movie ticket for the move Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, but it will be a generic movie ticket that you will be able to use for any movie. You can also find a $1 printable coupon here(you may have to search around for it). Then you could pay $1.99 and get a carpet cleaning product and a free movie ticket. My husband and I just went to the movies the other night and noticed that it costs $8.50 a ticket to see a movie. Luckily we have free tickets from some other deal.

Target-Apple Juice/Sauce

Target has a pretty good deal on Mott's Apple Juice and 6 pks. of applesauce. When you buy 5 of them priced at $1.75 ea. you get a $5 Target giftcard. After factoring in the giftcard, it's like paying $.75 ea. You can keep using the $5 giftcard to purchase more and get a new giftcard. My kids can't get enough juice(even with watering it down) so I will be stocking up big time at this price.

Redbox Code

Here is the free code(sent on the first monday of the month)
QNGJ7KD
good only today(10/5) until midnight