Ashley experiences Harris Teeter Super Doubles!

Ashley was in town this weekend and when I told her about Super Doubles at Harris Teeter, she had to experience it for herself. So on Saturday night we picked up a newspaper for her and that night we clipped coupons together (we are very exciting, obviously). Surprisingly, there were a good number of coupons for items she used and needed so those combined with a few printables made for a pretty successful shopping trip for her. She got the following items for free: 2 boxes of Success Rice, 2000 Flushes, 2 whiteout products, and 2 candy bars. The toothpaste was $0.89. I don't remember what everything else cost but it all worked out to be a great deal.

Ashley's summary:

Total OOP: $24.11

Total value: $71.68

Total savings: 66.4%

Ashley was very impressed by the power of super doubles. We had a great time bargain shopping!

Grocery shopping, week of 7/26

It is still Super Doubles time at Harris Teeter so I picked up some deals and a couple of staples. I am pretty well stocked right now so I only grabbed a few things. The 2000 flushes was free which was cool. So were the 3 candy bars! I never buy candy bars so that will be a nice treat one day! I put them in the freezer. The whiteout was also free. I will probably put that in my school supply donation pack. The jello ended up being $0.67 for all 3 of them. The chicken was not on sale but it is the brand I like (I like to buy 'happy chickens') and since I have plenty of room in the gracery budget this month, I went ahead and grabbed some ($7.69).

Total OOP: 14.75 ($7.69 of which was the chicken)

Total value: 31.21

Total savings: 52.8%

Total savings without the chicken: 70%!

CVS, Week of 7/26

Another great week for school supplies at CVS! I've been poking in and out of various CVS stores this week to snag these great deals in 3 transactions.

I started with $1.98 ECBs.

Transaction 1:

2 post-it notes @ $0.99 each (on sale)

Total value before coupons and sales: $3.98

Paid with ECBs, Total OOP: $0.10

ECBs earned: $1.98

Transaction 2:

2 packs of pens @$0.99 each (on sale)

Total value before coupons and sales: $4.38

Paid with ECBs from transaction 1, Total OOP: $0.10

ECBs earned: $1.98

Transaction 3:

2 composition books @ $0.99 each (on sale)

Total value before coupons and sales: $$5.98

Paid with ECBs from transaction 2, Total OOP: $0.10

ECBs earned: $1.98

Summary:

Total value before sales: $14.34

Total OOP: $0.30

Savings = 97.9%

Plus I have $1.98 in ECBs to roll into something next week!

Grocery shopping, Week of 7/19

Ok so technically I've already had my grocery shopping trip for the week but Harris Teeter is having SUPER DOUBLES this week and last time I waited too long and they were out of a lot of things (even though the week started today they were already out of some stuff). Plus I'm about $17 ahead in my grocery budget for the month so I figure I have a little room for stocking up on these great deals.

Anyway - it was an awesome trip. I am particularly pleased with the Kotex purchases - I got each of the packages for $0.50. Also notable - the rubber gloves were free, the shave gel was $0.50 each, and the air freshened was $0.79. The shampoo is for men - so I might end up smelling like a man but for $0.27 for shampoo I'll deal with it. The face wash was not cheap - $3.39 each but better than paying nearly $7 each. I now have 4 of those stockpiled so I should be good for a while. I can't seem to get them cheaper than $3 something so it was worth it to pick them up.

So here is the run down:

Total OOP: $12.37
Total Value: $41.96

Total Savings: 70.6%

Most of that OOP cost is for the face wash. If I eliminate that from the tally, I saved 81%! I am pretty happy though because I got all that useful stuff for the cost of what I would have paid for the 2 face washes alone. Not bad at all!

Making English Muffins!

I will never purchase English Muffins again! These are amazing! I was browsing the internet looking for a new muffin recipe to try when I stumbled upon this recipe. It was very easy to make and really they turned out better than I anticipated.


Here are some fun pictures of the process. I mixed all the ingredients into a fairly wet dough and let it rise covered for about an hour. Here is the pre-rising dough ball. I forgot to take a picture of the post-rising dough ball. It was MUCH bigger.


After punching down the dough, I rolled it out using a drinking glass (note to self - buy a rolling pin!) and used the same glass to cut out circular muffins. Then I let the dough rise for another 30 minutes.
The weirdest part of the recipe is that you bake them on the stove top. The recipe says to use a gridle, but I used a large frying pan instead. I just sprayed it with PAM and that was enough to keep it from burning.



And here are my beautiful finished English Mufins!!! :)

More CVS deals, Week of 7/19

Yay for continued great deals from CVS this week! The CVS next to my office is too hard to pass up when I know I can get basically free items! So I grabbed 2 packages of notebook paper, a pack of pencils, and 2 small notebooks in 4 separate transactions (spread over 2 days - don't worry I didn't stalk the CVS people). I won't go into the details because frankly I am pretty sure no one cares that much...but here is the summary:

Total OOP: $0.48
Total Value: $8.65

Total Savings: 94.5%

Plus I have $1.98 in ECBs to put towards something next week!

Grocery shopping, Week of 7/19

Not a great week for me with grocery shopping because I was rushed and didn't go to my usual grocery store. I usually shop at Harris Teeter but was out running errands in a different part of town and ran into Safeway to pick up some fresh produce. They were running a good promotion on the freezer bags ($1.50 each) and my favorite bread was 2/$5, a decent deal considering it is usually $3.99/loaf. I have very few brand loyalties, but I don't mess around with my bread.

Anyway, here are the numbers:

Total OOP: $26.06
Total Value: $37.20

Total Savings: 30%

Not too bad considering I wasn't trying hard :)