The Kellehers

Rite Aid:
3 Jumbo packs of Pampers diapers
1 Dove Mens body wash
1 box Raisin Bran
1 KY Intense (yes, embarrassing to admit this, but it was originally thirty-some dollars and between the sale and my coupons, I got it down to $0.99, so that’s just an awesome couponing feat!)
Total: $15.70 (after rebates which come in the form of cash – doesn’t have to be used in store) 

Walgreens:
2 packs Kotex maxi pads
3 John Frieda Shampoos and Conditioners
1 Gilette Fusion razor
1 Dove Mens body wash
Total: $3.23 (when you count my $12.00 in register rewards that I walked away with. I will use these to pay for my deals next week!) 

Target
2 30-page baseball card pages ($10! – got these to organize my coupons)
1 mini maglite ($8.89 – for the paper route)
3 boxes of Quaker instant oatmeal
2 boxes True Delight Quaker granola bars
Total: $9.16 (using coupons, leftover gift card -$13.01- from last Target visit, and received a new $5.00 gift card). It’s kinda like I only bought the maglite. 

CVS
5 packs Trident Layers Gum
Total: $1.20

Stop & Shop
7 Bananas
1 Green pepper
2 Oranges
1 Marie’s Chipotle Ranch dressing
1 pack pepperoni
2 Hillshire smoked sausages
6 Stop & Shop beans (3 kidney, 3 black)
4 S&S canned corn
1 Ritz crackers
1 Wheat thins
4 packs McCormick Taco seasoning
2 Betty Crocker scalloped potatoes
2 boxes S&S mac ‘n cheese
Total: 29.27 (However, when I got home I noticed that some of my coupons didn’t get scanned and some of them didn’t double that were supposed to. I called the store, and they will reimburse me for those amounts and for the doublers if they qualify –which they do- so I’ll be getting about $4.75 back).
New Total Should be: $25.22

Sunday’s Quick Stop & Shop trip (Nicolette’s fault – milk):
1 Gallon of milk
½ gallon chocolate milk (free!)
1 pint half and half
4 bricks Philadelphia cream Cheese
1 Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage pack
Total: $8.83

This week’s totals:
Stops: 5
Total Spent: $63.34

I think I went a little crazy this week. I needed more diapers, and Rite Aid had a great deal: I got as many diapers as I usually get in the giant box (plus some more!) for less! I usually pay $19.99 for the giant box, and there I got more diapers for $14.71. So, it’s kinda like I bought my usual with a $5 coupon and got everything else free or almost free. Then I’ll admit I didn’t NEED anything at Walgreens, (although I did think I was going to be able to get free crackers, but the blogs led me wrong there), but I did get a bunch of stuff that we’ll need eventually for super cheap. I couldn’t resist the gum deal at CVS, and just happened to be driving by, coupon book in hand. Target, I had a few pricey things I had to get, so I probably spent more there than I needed to, but now we’re all set on the breakfast front for a while! Stop & Shop – I realized while I was shopping that the blogger I follow who covers Stop & Shop usually has better sale prices than we do up in NH. Unfortunate since some of the deals just aren’t as awesome (or aren’t free). I’m also noticing that I think they get some coupons there that we don’t get here, so there were still lots of deals that I didn’t get to do.

Anyway, after I went crazy this week over the deals, I realized that I let the budget part of all of this slip my mind and went crazy with the stockpile mentality. I’m thinking that I’m going to have to chill out for a few weeks and maybe just live off our stockpile a little bit.

The two previous weeks I’ve been losing focus of the budget, actually, because I did make a few more stops last week that I didn’t blog about yet. (I think I spent about $20.00 more last week, than the Week 2 entry says.) There’s probably a reason for all that though. I have been busy, and so I haven’t been taking care to see what my deals are, how much they’re going to cost me, and weigh if it’s really worth it.

So, why have I been so busy? I started doing a paper route! It’s crazy! It significantly shortens my day (I’m going to bed a lot earlier now) and my energy levels. So I haven’t been as careful with my coupon organizing and my deal checking before I head out. BUT, I do get an extra Sunday paper as a perk for being a paper delivery person. That means 5 copies of all the coupons this week and the weeks to come…it kinda makes me a little dizzy.

Believe it or not, I really want to make another stop this week at Shaws. There’ll be some free meat in it for me, as well as some other freebies. I just think that before I go, I’m going to carefully look over what each item will cost me so I can keep the totals low, and then next week, maybe I’ll have to just get milk and produce and nothing else and live off the stockpile for a week or two. I’ll let you know.

Meals planned for this week:
Chicken leftovers (Sunday)
Chili and cheese (last night)
Baked chicken & pasta dish
Brats and a side dish?
Soup (I’m planning to invent something with lentils, some smoked sausage, peppers, green onions, carrots etc.)
Maybe a frozen pizza one night

What we bought for week 2:

Shaws
4 A & W diet Root Beer
4 boxes Orville microwave popcorn
4 lbs. boneless/skinless chicken breast
6 cups Danon Light & Fit yogurt

Spent: $12.20; saved: $21.82 

CVS
4 jars Skippy peanut butter
2 lg. jars Hellman’s mayo
2 Dove Men+ body and face wash
1 Colgate MaxFresh toothpaste
1 sm. Bag Doritos (pregnant lady needed a snack!)

Spent: $10.63 – $5.49 Extra Care Bucks = $5.14; Saved: $29.77 

Stop & Shop
1 loaf of bread
1 lb. box pasta
Ginger
Scallions
Cilantro
Bananas
1 Red pepper
3 Knorr pastas
4 Progresso Veggie soups
2 bottles prenatal vitamins
1 gallon milk
2 Sargento shredded cheeses
2 bags English muffins

Spent: $32.46; Saved:$29.03 

Total Spent: $49.80

We now have stockpiled lots of snacks (with the Chex Mix last week, the popcorn and yogurt this week), for us at least 6-8 months worth of peanut butter. Maybe 4 months of mayo (it depends on how we use it). I’ll have prenatal vitamins (they were buy one, get one free) for the rest of the pregnancy and into post-pregnancy. We have soup stockpiled (we don’t usually eat canned soup, so I’m sure it’ll last a while). My freezer is full of meat (some from before I started this, since I already would stock up when it was on sale), cheese, butter, bread, English muffins, bagels, etc. We have enough cereal for a few more weeks. We also have more soda than I think we’ll drink for a long time! Michael is so happy. So, I think all the little splurge items (and a lot of necessities too) are taken care of for a while!

 As for meals this week, I bought a few items at Stop & Shop for some recipes I’m using this week. We didn’t end up eating the baked bean soup last week. We had a French toast night instead (since my freezer was full of bread). So, I made the Baked Bean Soup last night.

So, meals this week:

Brats and sweet & sour coleslaw
Baked Bean soup
Indonesian Peanut Chicken
Soy Ginger Chicken
Di Giorno Pizza for Friday night!

 Most of my recipes feed us for 2 nights, so this is more than enough for this week. Next week I’ll work with what’s in my stockpile and what’s leftover from this week to plan for the next week. My meal planning is changing a little. I see what’s on sale and what’s in the stockpile, and figure out which of my recipes best fit with those items. That way, I’m buying very little that’s not on sale or not with coupons.

What I’m still thinking about doing: This will bring the totals up some more, but I can get FREE Post cereal at Walgreens this week. I can get 2 more lage DiGiorno pizzas at Walmart for $2.97 each (This saves us a lot, because we love doing pizza night, but we don’t often get to because it can get expensive. We also like to do the $5.00 Hot & Ready pizzas at Little Caesars when we’re really wanting a pizza night). Anyway, I may or may not do this stuff. It’ll bring my total out of pocket for the week up a little. I’ll write a little report if I do.

Hey everyone!

I’ve been blogging about couponing lately, and I found this great givaway at Frugal Shopping with Julie’s blog. But, hurry!  The givaway ends on Feb. 3!

Go HERE to read more about it!

The coupon mom has one of the great free sites for helping with matching up sales and coupon deals. Her website is couponmom.com.

This is my first week officially trying out the coupon shopping that I’ve been reading about all over the internet. I’ve been noticing that there are lots more deals out there, but for the most part, they are using coupons from earlier this month or from as far back as October of 2009. Since I don’t have any of those coupons, I’m limited to take advantage of the deals at my finger tips.

Sunday I got my four papers. Actually, only one of them came, so I had to have them send over my other three. The delivery man said, “You really ordered four subscriptions?” “Yes, I did.” “That’s very unusual,” he said, looking more confused. “I’m a coupon shopper, so I want lots of coupons.” 

Sunday afternoon I spent some time separating all the pages of the coupon inserts into piles (4 copies of each page in each pile – read more about this method on Krazy Coupon Lady’s Website here.) I decided to do a sort of adapted version of the binder methods shown on KCL’s site. I mostly do Heather’s way (they’re in the binder quick), but I also have the baseball card holders for internet printed coupons, and coupons clipped from other places that I want to have organized in some fashion.

After my coupons were all in the binder, I got out the store sale circulars. This part is what took me the most time. What I did was looked through the pages, and circled any item that I was pretty sure I had a coupon for. I took a break, made dinner, and then after dinner I got back to work. First, I went back over the circulars looking at what the sale prices of the items were, what kind of discount my coupon would give me, and weighed if I thought I still wanted to get the item. I based that decision mostly on if it’s something I thought we might use either now or in the near future, and if the prices seemed low enough for me not to be able to pass it up.

As I went through, I realized that each store had a few good deals, some okay deals, and every once in a while a store had a REALLY AWESOME DEAL! For instance:

Shaws had General Mills products on sale. You had to buy 4 participating items (no more and no less) in order to get each item at the price of $1.75. This included some GM cereals. I checked, and in my internet printable coupons, I found a bunch of GM cereal coupons, some for $1.00 off of 1 box of cereal! That meant that with that coupon I’d be able to get a 75 cent box of cereal! Great deal!

Stop & Shop had a specialty low fat milk on sale that I also had a coupon for, Pampers Diaper wipes on sale for $2.50 (I had a coupon for $1 off), and really cheap chicken!

Anyway, I was realizing that there were some good deals to be found, and I just needed to do a little organizing. I made a list of what deals I wanted to get at each store, what the prices were, what the coupons were, and what I expected to pay.

At Walgreens I noticed the DiGiorno pizzas were 2/$10. While this didn’t sound super cheap to me, I had $1.00 off 1 coupons (several of them), AND if you bought the two pizzas you got a free 2-Liter Coke. So, I browsed their circular some more. I found really low prices on lots of things that I had JUST gotten coupons for that very day!

Pert Plus for Men Shampoo – Buy 2 for $5.00 and get $2.00 register rewards for your next purchase! I had 4 coupons for $1.50 off one bottle of this shampoo, so they worked out to be free if you count the register rewards. (I did this deal twice!) = 4 free shampoos! (I had 4 coupons because of the 4 subscriptions.)

Sure for Men deoderant was 2/$3.00. I had coupons for $1.50 off each of those too, so 4 free deoderants.

Chex Mix was on sale for $0.99/bag, and I had 4 $1.00 off when you buy 2 coupons, so I got 8 Chex Mixs for $0.49 each! And I had an internet coupon for chocolate chex mix, so I got one of those for $0.49 also.

There was another shampoo that was free with rebate, some lotions that were also free with rebate, and a few other on sale really cheap grocery items.

Grand Totals:

Shopping Stops: 3
Total Paid Out of Pocket (OOP): $35.63 (after the rebates)
Total Saved in coupons, sales, rebates, specials, etc.: $109.54

What I got for this day of coupon shopping:

The Walgreens Loot

Nicolette has been talking more and more. When she gets up from bed, whether first thing in the morning or after a nap, she’ll say, “maw-ning!” She correctly identifies airplanes, cars, and birds that she can hear outside. She knows all the parts of her face, a whole bunch of animal sounds, when to say “Amen” during prayer or church, and even appreciates the moments when she’s funny.

Yesterday, at the request of my sister, I asked her if she could say, “Auntie Melz.” She looked thoughtful for a moment, and then said, “No.” When I laughed at this, she laughed too, and then recited her little joke again. “Mow? – No!” and ever since then, if I mention Auntie Melz, she says “Mow-no.”

In other news, this Sunday I will be 12 weeks pregnant with our second child. We plan on keeping this one a suprise (boy or girl) until the very end too. We thought it was fun last time, so we figure it could be fun again. I’ve had a lot of phantom baby kicks – I know it’s not possible to feel the baby yet, but any twitch or bubble I feel, I automatically think, “baby!” Then I have to remind myself that it’s still going to be a little while.

The due date for this little one is May 31, 2010. It seems like this pregnancy is going a little more quickly with Nicolette to keep me busy. Except for the all-day sickness, it hasn’t really sunk in that I’m pregnant again.

Last Saturday we were invited to go up to the Gould Hill Orchard near Concord for some apple picking. We had a nice little group and Nicolette got to play with her new friend, Francis.

Since then I made a nice big apple pie. I’ll have to make more, because we’ve still got tons of apples!  That, or make apple sauce, which I’m not really sure how to do…

Whew! It’s been months since I’ve updated. Nicolette is a walking (or rather, running) toddler now who jabbers away. She demands “bow” when she is thirsty (that’s water). She has so many “words” like that. Not pronounced correctly, but they must sound right to her because I’ll say, “Water?” and she says, “Bow” every time. So at least she is consistent.
She imitates almost anything that I do, and ever since I let her stand on a kitchen chair and help stir some cookie dough, she wants to help with everything in the kitchen.
She has become very social and independent. She always waves and says hi to strangers. I’m not exactly sure when I should start discouraging the talking to strangers.
Michael has started another year of teaching and soccer coaching. They had their first game last Tuesday, which they won. He is hoping for an undefeated team this season. Classes are busy, but he is really finding his groove now that he’s already had the classes he’s teaching once before.
I got a job working for Mother of Divine Grace school, but it was with the provision that they would have enough enrollment by the end of summer. Alas, enrollment wasn’t high enough to allow me any students, so I’m left to my own imagination for other ways to make money until I get some students. That might be next semester or next school year.
For now, I’ve been selling some things (books, movies, etc.) on ebay. Also, for those of you who know how much I enjoy knitting and crocheting, you’ll be glad to see that I’m putting this hobby to a more practical use. I’ve opened an etsy.com store. I put the link on the left side of the blog under “Marcy’s Store” if you’d like to check it out.

Summer was great. I’ll give just a short overview. We went to the Adirondacks in upstate New York with my family at the beginning of July. We celebrated Nicolette’s first birthday while we were there, did some hiking, climbing, swimming, played board games, and ate a lot of delicious food. I just wished we could stay longer.
We had about a week to ourselves once we got back, then a dear friend from California came to visit for several days. We took him to explore Boston, Lowell (MA), Quechee (VT) and a little bit around Manchester. It was such a nice time to visit and fellowship. At then end of his stay, we dropped him off at his hostel in Boston and drove down to Lacrosse, VA to meet up with some Hillsdale friends. We had a nice long weekend with them in a house on Lake Gaston. We had great fellowship, lots of food and games, and I loved watching all of the little kids interacting. Nicolette wasn’t sure what to think of the older ones. From Lacrosse, we drove down to Birmingham, Alabama to visit Michael’s family there. We intended to stay about 8 days, and ended up staying for almost two weeks. But it was really nice not to have to be back for work or anything. We just relaxed and enjoyed as much time with family as we could get.

A few pictures from the past several months: