I love my Walgreens trips! 2-14-12

Went to Walgreens today to do a register reward purchase and boy did I do well! Here’s how it went and what I bought:

3 Vicks Naturfusion’s on sale for $5.99 – 3 P&G insert coupons worth $3 each
3 Puffs with Lotion $.99 ea – 1 P&G insert coupon for $.25
2 bags Girhadelli chocolates for my daughters for V-day at 2 for $7
$27.94 – $9.25 in P&G coupons
also used $8 register reward from my blink tears and $5 register reward from my Alkeselzter and paid

$5.69 out of my pocket AND got back $5 in register rewards for buying the P&G items

With the register reward I got back I actually bought it all for $.69 I LOVE MY COUPONS!!!!!!!!!!!

Coupons and The Internet

For those of you that don’t want to order more than one newspaper I do have a recommendation.

Get one newspaper, find out if there are any coupons for items that you use a lot. My example is I use a good bit of dog food, therefore, I order units (there are usually 10 to 20 coupons per unit) of coupons from Top Rated sellers off Ebay. I try to only order from top rated sellers and I always use the Buy It Now option as I do not like to wait to see if I won the bidding process. I just can’t stand to waste the time AND if a sale comes up while the bidding process is open then you just missed out.

Search Ebay for coupons and take a wide-eyed look at what’s available. You are paying the clipping servers for their time in cutting these out for you and when there are a lot of coupons to be clipped it can be worth your while. I bought 10 coupons for Ben-Gay the large ultra strength tube and they were worth $5 each towards the end of last year. I used some locally to me at my walmart and took the rest on vacation to see my parents. They use this stuff heavily as well. Since I had already fully stocked my own household  on this item I used the remaining coupons and bought some for them to keep. Now the jumbo tube I bought sells for $6.83 so 10 tubes would have cost me $68.30 plus tax but buying the coupons cost me $4.66 but saved me $50.00 so if you take the total cost and include all my expenses I paid $1.83 per tube add in the $4.66 making each tube $2.30 but overall I saved a total of $45.30 even with purchasing the coupons online. That is a huge savings.

Kroger Sale 2-8-12 and Receipe

Whaaahooo…one of my favorite items is one sale at Kroger. I will be ad matching it at Walmart.

Asparagus is $.99 per lb now here’s one of our favorite dishes to use it in:

Pasta (just about any type will do – I use what’s on hand and I keep plenty stocked) 1 lb
1 bunch Asparagus
1 8 oz block smoked swiss/guyere cheese cut into small cubes
1 small bag of frozen peas
1 thick slice of ham (if I don’t have any leftover ham I will go to the deli and get any smoked ham and have them cut it on their thickest slice)

Cook pasta until ad dente (just follow the directions and make sure and take a test bite so you don’t over-cook it) pull pasta out of water and put into very large ceramic bowl and cover with foil to keep warm and put cheese cubes over pasta to melt while doing the rest, DO NOT DRAIN OR THROW OUT PASTA WATER, snap the ends off the asparagus then cut into bite sized pieces put the asparagus AND the frozen peas into the pasta water. Cook 4 1/2 to 5 minutes but not more than that or you ruin the asparagus. Now just BEFORE you put the veggies in to boil and lightly cook cut your ham into bite sized cubes and either heat up by sauteing or microwaving. Combine asparagus, peas and ham with pasta and if needed in small ladle amounts add in some of the pasta water to thin out the cheese a little to make it easier to work with the whole dish. Serve and enjoy.

 

Purina Alpo Review

Since I’m a couponer I decided to try a little something different on my beloved pooches and see how they liked it.

We bought Purina’s Dog Chow for our 3 1/2 year old golden retriever and 10 cans of the chunky meaty food to mix with it.

The first two nights went well and she ate with gusto and seemed to enjoy it. By the third night we noticed a little something different in her. She had just eaten her dinner and it had been about 20 minutes and she was just going crazy in our living room. We watched her and finally my husband and I both said ‘what’s wrong with her’?

It was at that point that I realized that she was acting like a child who can’t handle lots of sugar. It was like she was on a sugar high and she had developed a rash as well and could not stop scratching.

I went to the store and got her the other brand we have always fed our dogs and put her back on her regular diet and had to treat the rash and give her benadryl to counter the effects and now she’s back to normal.

Lesson learned, I (like an idiot) did not check the ingredient contents on the package of the Dog Chow. Now ingredients on anything are required by law to be listed by highest content to lowest. So when you see something and the first item on the list says for example ‘whole grain corn meal’ then the product is primarily comprised of that item and so on. Dog Chow has corn gluten meal listed as the third item on the bag. That means it’s full of sugar that our dog can not handle it.

We are back to our regular brand and maybe we’ll try something new again but next time we will be checking the labels before we buy so we make sure that ingredient is not listed at least so high on content.

What else does sugar do for your dog? It makes them fat and it’s harder to get the weight off your dog than it is to get it off your own body.

Foodtown match at Walmart 1-31-12

I had a few coupons that I did need to use and use the items all the time so I did a last minute ad match on Foodtown’s ad at Walmart tonight and here’s how it went:

2 Cascade trial sizes $.97 ea – 2 q’s for $.25 ea
2 Always Infinity 16ct $4.18 ea – 2 q’s for $2 ea
2 Colgate 6.4oz Foodtown ad match for $.99 (walmart’s price was $1.50) – 2 q’s for $.50 ea
4 French’s 14oz mustard Foodtown ad match for $.88 (walmart’s price 1.88) – 2 q’s for $.30 ea
1 gal milk $3.48
TOTAL BEFORE COUPONS $19.28

SAVED $6.10 in coupons and $5.02 in ad matching

PAID $13.18 plus tax

Crisp Mandrin Salad

In need of something fresh and crisp and craving citrus all at the same time we needed something not so heavy on our tummies since we were all just getting over the stomach flu, so I came up with this and it worked very well. Nice and light and not to heavy.

Romaine lettuce
Canned mandrin orange slices in syrup/light NOT sugar free (it changes the taste of the salad)
Bananas
Crushed walnuts
Ken’s steakhouse Raspberry Walnut Vineagrette

Fully drain mandrin slices, combine with lettuce, sliced bananas (these are optional but we liked it) and crushed walnuts. For a salad for 4 people you only need 2 tablespoons or 3 at best for the entire salad. You only want just enough to just very lightly coat and nothing in the bottom of the dish. Mix well and enjoy.

For a little change up I also had this for lunch yesterday and added some cubed chicken that I mixed in a little salt, pepper and Italian seasonings and then a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil and I quick pan fried until done but not crispy to retain all the taste and moisture. I just threw the chicken in and mixed well and it was awesome!

 

Foodtown thru 1-31-12

Hunt’s ketchup 24oz bottle $.99, fresh baby carrots 1lb bag $.69 and Colgate large tube 6.4oz $.99 (going to check if my coupons are still good for the toothpaste, if so only .50 for me)

If you want to check the Kroger ad for this coming week’s sale simply go to their website and change your location by using an ohio zip code. I use 43452, while the ad prices and items are not 100% identical it gives me a good idea of what to look for in my local ad and only with a few changes in items or prices.

Sales and Coupons

Walgreens has Blink eye drops for $8 if you use the coupons that came out earlier this month for $1 off you get back $8 in Register Rewards.

CVS has Puffs tissues on sale forr $.88 per box, use the P&G January coupons before they expire on 1-31-12 get $.25 off 3 boxes limit 6 boxes and Dawn small bottle is $.98 with same P&G flyer coupons use the $.25 off.

Food Town has 14oz bottle French’s mustard for $.88 with earlier month’s coupons for $.50 that makes this item $.38. Now that’s this a good stockpile item for the summer months. Walmart sells the same bottle for $1.08 regular.

Kroger ad with mega sale will continue into this coming full week so you have time to get your items together. Remember if you ad match at walmart no limit on items but if you just want to go to Kroger then you can only do 40 items per transaction at a time. Their registers will not roll the mega deals $5 off 10 items past 40 items so you will have to do separate transactions for more. Bonus of taking this ad to Walmart is they will be better stocked and you won’t have to stick to the 40 item or less limit.

Things you can do with Peroxide

Did you know the best way to clean animal urine out of your carpets is to use straight peroxide you can get from any store? I have teal colored carpeting and I use it full strength to get the puppy pee out of my carpets and you can get right down to the floor and smell and you would never know that they ever had an accident.

Best way to get it all up is using a steam vac but if you don’t have one just spray it down lightly and use a towel little by little to get it out.

I am hoping to clean my carpets today. I will try to get pictures posted of the before and after effects.

Sunday Coupons Inserts 1/28/12

This is a good weekend to load up on coupons. We will have redplum, smartsource and a p&g and possibly 2 redplum inserts. I will get buying at least 4 papers possibly 6. Make sure you get your coupons this weekend.