Bad Deal Gone Good

As couponers, we are all too aware of a good deal gone bad - your perfectly strategized shopping plan ruined by products out of stock or a cashier refusing coupons. Don't you just hate it when things don't go according to plan? It can almost ruin a day, can't it? This week, I had to take back a deal I use to think was horrible and determine that under current circumstances it was a great deal indeed!

A little over a year ago, Wal-Mart (WM) built a new Super Store. We had a WM, but it was a standard WM with limited groceries, no tire center, optical shop or any of the other services found inside Super WM. I have never been a big WM shopper but my friends who frequent there were excited for the one stop shopping the new Super store would provide. They also built it across from Costco so my friends and family who live in the rural areas nearby were excited to get their two main stops next door to one another. But then it arrived.....

My friends were disappointed with the limited amount of products available and prices. They found that some of the items they specifically went to WM for were no longer available or the variety they bought wasn't available any longer. WM use to be the place you went for almost everything but now its just not the same and its left us disappointed. The one thing I did always go to WM for was their photo studio. They had fantastic package prices and the packages had all the photos I needed so I didn't have to buy extra sheets. Guess What? The new and wonderful Super WM does not have a photo studio!

I took my youngest son to Sears a couple of weeks ago for photos, paid three times as much and got a third of the photos I use to get at WM. I was so disappointed! Now onto the point of my story.

My oldest son brought home the order form for school photos last week. The last couple of years I looked at this order form and thought no way am I paying that much for a package of photos. This year, I was so excited to get this form and see the package prices. The most expensive package is $30 which is what I spent at Sears a couple of weeks and it has all the photos I need in it AND I don't have to make an appointment and use a precious hour or two out of our busy week or sit through the upsell script. All I had to do was send a check to school with my son! Its my best deal of the week!

Move it Tater! I'm Getting Mashed Over Here!

Were you able to score any of the Ore-Ida fries for only $0.49 per bag at Safeway last week? I hope so because I don't think I have ever gotten them this cheap before. I ended up doing 3 transactions for a total of 12 bags. I wish I could have made another trip or two because these will definitely go fast in our house!

Myself and a couple of friends and co-workers are always making quick trips into the grocery store on our way to work or on the lunch hour whenever there is a great deal going on and we had the freezer at worked crammed with taters this week! I love the deals that get us all excited and recharged!

Safeway has another great FREEBIE this week that's worth a stop.

Nestle Coffee-Mate Creamer 16-oz $0.99 with in-ad coupon, limit 3

• Use $1/1 coupon from $70 Dairy Coupon Book
• Final Price FREE

Tip: You will need to:

• Take your weekly Safeway ad with you or grab one on your way into the store
• Find the Coffee-Mate coupon inside the ad to show cashier at checkout (they usually do not make you clip them out). You can buy 3 at $0.99 each with this coupon but no more than three and there is a $10 minimum purchase requirement. This means that you need to have at least $10 worth of products in your cart before coupon is applied and the price of the creamer counts towards this $10 limit. For example, if the creamer without coupon is $2 each (a total of $6) you will also need at leat another $4 of other products to use the coupon.
• Find the Dairy Coupon Book (if you don't already have it) and tear or cut out the Coffee-mate coupon which is towards the back of the book. You will need one coupon from the Dairy coupon book for each creamer you are purchasing. So if you plan on purchasing a total of three, you will want to try to get 3 coupon books so you will have 3 coupons.
• If you are able to do all of the above, you will end up with 3 16-0z Cartons of creamer for FREE! Just make sure to check your expiration dates so you will be able to use the creamer before it expires!

Last Day for These Safeway Deals

Here are a couple of Safeway deals that you don't want to miss and today is the last day to get in on them! These are great deals too since the only coupons you need are right there in the store!


Ore-Ida Frozen Potatoes $1.99 with in-ad coupon (limit 4)

• Use $3/2 coupon from Safeway $70 Coupon Book (found in freezer & dairy sections)
• Final Price $0.49 each

Buy 6 Pillsbury Regfrigerated Crescent, Grand or Sweet Rolls $1.00 each

• Use $1/2 coupons from Safeway $70 Coupon Book
• Final price $3 for All 6 - Get Back $3 Catalina = FREE after Catalina

Tip: Inside each coupon book is a $1/2 Crescent Roll coupon, $1/2 Grands coupons, & a $1/2 Sweet Roll coupon, so if you only have one coupon book, mix and match the Pillsbury items to use all coupons. If you don't know what a Catalina is, go here and read my post about coupon types!

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

Yesterday on a quiet afternoon, shortly after getting my 3 year old down for his nap, there was a knocking on the door. This loud knock, set my dog off into a barking rant, and as my husband went to answer the door, I took a peek out the window to see what obnoxious soul had the nerve to disrupt my quiet home and risk startling my toddler out of his nap. Peering between the slats of the blinds, I see two sets of legs and in their arms is the Sunday paper. Occassionally our local paper hires teenagers to go door to door offering free papers in hopes of selling suscriptions. I'm thinking to myself, Jeez don't the give these kids a list of homes who don't already have subscriptions? Don't they understand people might be upset to have someone coming to their door during their quiet Sunday afternoons? I could call and complain like some manic mother, but would they really understand the frustrations of a child being woken from a nap. That would just be silly and besides there was no harm done - they are gone, my dog is done barking, and my son is still sleeping, but oh no, wait......

I go running upstairs saying to my husband "Who was that? Was that the tribune? Did you get a paper?" He looks at me like I grew two heads in the laundry room, "No, I told them we already had the paper?" Ah man! "You should have taken the paper! There were really good coupons today!"

Yes, I gave my husband a good dose of crazy yesterday :-)

Braggin' Time

Jeez the nerve of me, right? I take a vacation from my blog and then my first post back and all I want to do is brag... thats just not very friendly is it? Once I get done with my bragging, I think you will understand that this is a moment in a working mom's year that a gal just needs to share a rare moment with someone who understands.

First let me start by sharing that this past Friday was my 10 year wedding anniversary! Yay for us! How did we celebrate? Dinner out with the kids... yep that's right, you heard me, an ordinary weekend night out for dinner with two children in tow! However, I must say (er I mean brag) that my boys were fairly well behaved so all in all it was a great night. Now my husband and I really aren't big gift givers. We usually celebrate our birthdays by picking out our own gifts, something we really need or want but feel guilty about spending the money on any ordinary day. This anniversary, even though a milestone, we celebrated with dinner and our usual exchanging of cards. You see the wonderful thing about marriage is having someone in your life who really is in sync with you. I have been saying to friends and fellow couponers how desperately my freezer needs defrosting and one day this week I came home from work to find my husband had defrosted the freezer! Its was the perfect gift, even though I don't think he intended for me to think of it as a gift! My first response was, "Wow, now I can do some more shopping!" A joke of course, but I just found out there is a great buy on Ore-Ida fries, so I am seriously so relieved of my new found freezer space! Check it out!

My second item to brag about is my cleaned carpets! Actually they're not worth bragging about since I spent a good portion of my weekend pushing and pulling a heavy cleaning machine over my rugs, without much improvement, but at least I can say they are clean and I knocked off one an item from my every growing things to do list! Our carpets have to be 20 years old and in desperate need of replacement, but with two small boys, it just doesn't make sense to replace them at this point in our life. I just need to tough it out a few more years!

My final item in need of bragging, which is truly the rarest of them all, is my FINISHED laundry. Oh yeah, that's right, woo hoo, my hampers are empty, my laundry is washed, dried, folded and put away! I almost don't believe it! I don't remember the last time I accomplished this! The summer months, packed of so much activity, led to my weekly panic of going to bed on Sunday nights not knowing if I was going to be able to find clean clothes for myself or the rest of my family to wear come morning. Then I followed it with a stressful week of cramming a load of laundry into our hectic evenings, with not enough time to actually fold it, but to just let it pile up on the downstairs table, waiting for Friday afternoon to arrive so I might hopefully get it folded and put away before the wrinkles permanately set in.

After my list of brags, I hope you can understand my need to get it out there to someone who will understand how truly great of a weekend this was. I was starting to feel that there just weren't enough hours in my week to get it all done (which there really isn't) but there is enough to get a LOT done. I think I just forgot how much could be accomplished in a weekend. We really took advantage of the summer season and spent our weekends enjoying the outdoors and time with our family and friends, which is what summer is all about so I have no regrets to all those wonderful days on the beach and the river!

I just let myself get overwhelmed with the list of chores that piled up while we were out playing. It feels really good to have a weekend of accomplishment, a reminder that I can get a handle on things when I use my time wisely! I almost forgot to mention that I also got my coupons organized. I am not completely done, but I would say I am about 80% there, which is much closer, than where I would have ranked myself a week ago, which I hate to admit was probably only about 25%!

I hope everyone else had a great weekend and that the fall season is getting everyone else back on track from a summer of play, because before you know it, the Holidays will be here!

Coupons 101 - Electronic Coupons

Some grocery stores allow you to load electronic coupons onto your store card that are automatically deducted when you purchase those products. Here are three sites you can go to load coupons onto your card:


cellfire.com

• Participating stores: Baker's, City Market, Dillons, Fry's, Fred Meyer, Gerbes, Hilander, JayC, King Soopers, Kroger, Owen's, Pay Less, QFC, Ralphs, Scott's, Smith's, Carrs, Dominick's, Genuardi's, Pavilions, Randall's, Safeway, Tom Thumb, Vons, ShopRite, Giant Eagle, Shop 'n Save

shortcuts.com

• Participating stores: Safeway, Carrs, Dominicks, Genuardis, Pavilions, Randalls, Tom Thumb, Vons, Bakers, City Market, Dillons, Frys Food, Fred Meyer, Food4Less (Fremont), Gerbes, Giant Eagle, Hilander, Jay C Foods, King Soopers, Kroger, Owens Market, Pay Less, QFC, Ralphs, Shop 'n Save & Smith's.

pgesaver.com

• Participating stores: Safeway, Carrs, Dominicks, Genuardis, Pavilions, Randalls, Tom Thumb, Vons, Bakers, City Market, Dillons, Frys Food, Fred Meyer, Food4Less (Fremont), Gerbes, Hilander, Jay C Foods, King Soopers, Kroger, Owens Market, Pay Less, QFC, Ralphs & Smith's.

If you have a local grocery store that is a participating store, then it is well worth your time to load the coupons onto your store card. The only store in my area is Safeway so I load all the coupons available at all 3 sites onto my card.

Electronic coupons will be deducted from your card only one time no matter how many participating products you purchase. For example, if you have only one $1/1 Ore-Ida e-coupon on your card but you buy 4 bags of potatoes, only $1 will be deducted from your total (based on my experience at Safeway).

All electronic coupons will be decuted from your card for the participating products your purchase. For example, if you have two $1/1 Ore-Ida coupons on your card but only purchase one bag, both coupons will be decuted from your total (based on my experience at Safeway).

You can also use paper coupons in addition to e-coupons loaded on your card. For example, if you have one $1/1 Ore-Ida coupon on your card and you have a $1/1 paper coupon, you can use both coupons even if you are only purchasing one bag!

Coupons 101 - How to Organize Coupons

Now that you have started to compile your coupon stockpile, you will want a way to keep them organized. You should organize them in a manner that works best for you. I started with a smaller accordion style folder. This worked for awhile, but as my stockpile grew, I out grew the folder, and then upgraded to the binder you see above. There is a nice deep pocket on the front of this binder that is perfect for keeping the weekly ads of the stores I frequently shop at. This allows me to carry around my ads from home in which I have marked items and/or written notes in.

When you open the binder, on the left side of the binder is an accordion style filing system. The file pockets are perfect for storing the weekly coupon inserts from the Sunday paper or any internet printed coupons until I have time to clip them.

On the right side of the binder I have inserted sheet protectors designed for baseball cards. There are nine pockets to each sheet which I slip my coupons into. This allows me to flip through my binder and be able to see all my coupons without flipping through them. These sheets are broken into categories by indes tabs. The categories I use are: Produce/Bread, Cereal, Dairy, Groceries, Frozen Foods, Drinks, Snacks, Paper, Household, Personal Care, Pet, Baby, and Healthcare.




My binder has a place for me to store pens, scissors, calculators, and notepads. This way I have all the supplies with me that may come in handy. You would be surprised at how often I need my scissors while shopping.






One of the features I like best about my binder is this clear zip pocket. Sometimes I plan my trip(s) out the night before. I then paperclip my list to my coupons and insert it into this pockets, so all I have to do is grab this pocket from my binder to take into the store instead of my entire binder.

My binder is working well for me. The only complaints I have when it comes to my coupon organization is my lack of ambition to keep my coupons organized. I have the tools in place, but sometimes I fail to take the time to get everything orderly. My advice (based on the examples set by friends) is to clip your coupons on Sunday and get them filed away into your binder immediately. Once you have this task done, your coupons are organized in a fashion you can quickly flip to, rather than stuffed into your binder in a manner that causes you to have search for a particular coupon. In the long run, it saves you time. I am working on this because I know once I can get in the habit of keeping everything organized, I will be able to plan and execute my trips much more successfully, saving me not only time but money.

Please share your coupon organization system with us by leaving a comment below. We could all use other ideas!