Binder winner!

Congrats to Brenda S for winning the coupon binder! I'll be getting in touch with her to get it to her.

Remember, I also sell the binders, $20 each or 2/$30.

Survive the blizzard? (plus this week's deals)

Did everyone survive the blizzard? Our town is one of the lucky ones in this area, we have power and only lost it for a few hours. What a relief! Let me just say, I like heat, electricity, and running water. Not to mention internet! LOL!

This week's sale deals:
United is having a half price sale, check it out on their webpage. I noticed some Post and General Mills cereals and there are always GM cereal coupons available.

I couldn't get Jumbo Foods ad to come up, but I noticed yesterday that the one on Willow was closed due to no power. When I get the paper tonight, I"ll look and see if I have an ad in there.

Aldi produce prices:
3 pound bag of yellow onions, 99 cents
3 pack multi-colored bell peppers: $1.49
Avocados: 29 cents each
Lemons: 15 cents each
1 pound package tomatoes on the vine: 99 cents
Cantaloupe: 79 cents each

Been under the weather

Sorry for the sparse amount of posts the last few days. I felt horrible all last week. No fever and not bad enough to be off work, but bad enough I was barely functioning otherwise. When school was out on Thursday because of the snow I didn't have any kids and I slept all morning long. I think that was the turning point because I have gradually felt better since then and hope to be back to "normal" this week.

If you haven't entered my binder giveaway yet, it ends tomorrow at midnight, so don't wait!!!!

Binder giveaway

I am having a giveaway on the blog. I will give away a coupon binder to one lucky winner! a Rafflecopter giveaway

Money Saving Strategies

What are your favorite money saving strategies? Coupons are a great way to save money, but it's definitely not the only way. Comment here with your favorite strategies and let me know if I can interview you for an article on the blog! If you have your own blog/webpage, I'll gladly feature it in the blog. 

All this for $2.09 at Staples!

We got all of this for $2.09 at Staples. Here's the breakdown:

The Kleenex were on sale with a store coupon for 99 cents for a 2 pack. I printed off two coupons, Tom bought one box, that was $1.07.

The other order:

Four 8 roll packs of Bounty Basic paper towels (on sale for $5.99 each)
One 16 roll of Charmin Basic toilet paper (on sale for $6.99 each)
4 one pint glass jars (in clearance section for $1 each); we can use them to make the Jar Salads I talked about week before last or Tom can put his homemade salsa in them)
plus the other box of Kleenex.

I had the coupon for the Kleenex, a $5 off $25 break room/cleaning supply purchase, and a $30 Staples Reward coupon (from turning in ink cartridges last month). After all of those discounts, my total for that purchase was $1.02!!!!

Dollar General coupons!

Dollar General has $5 off $25 today and tomorrow. You can go to their website to print one off to use in the store or you can use the code PRESIDENT online.

Giveaway at According 2 Mandy

Head on over to According 2 Mandy and enter a giveaway for a free bottle of Dry Idea Advanced deodorant!

Saving money on eating out

Does your family like to eat out? You can even save money on eating out! How?

Watch for coupons in your local newspaper. In this area, we also get a booklet about 4 times a year that has coupons for local businesses in it, including restaurants.

Sign up for e-clubs. Lots of national chains have e-clubs now that you can join. They will usually give you something free when you sign up and then periodically send out coupons to your e-mail. For example, when I signed up for the IHOP club I got a free meal plus they send a free meal every year on my birthday.

Chili's gives you a coupon for free chips and queso when you join and then sends out frequent coupons to our e-mail. It's one of my favorite e-clubs. I also joined Applebee's but unsubscribed after a while because they didn't send out coupons, they just sent out mailings for "free" phones.

Cici's Pizza, Mazzio's Pizza, Sonic Drive-In, they all have e-clubs. If you have a favorite restaurant, look up their website and see if they have an e-mail club.

Take my advice and if you sign up for these coupon clubs, then set up a separate e-mail just for that purpose so you can just delete the spam you may start getting. I use my gmail account for these clubs so I can just go through and click on a bunch at a time to delete them.

Last, restaurant portions are  so big most of the time that you can often split an entree' with someone and still be full. That also saves you money (and your waistline!)

Grocery deals this week: February 13-19

This week at Jumbo Food's in Enid, Hamburger, Chicken, and Tuna Helpers are 5/$5. Use the 75 cents off 3 coupon to get them for 75 cents each.

Progresso Soups are 4/$5, use the 50 cents off two coupons to get them for $1 each.

Didn't see much to get excited about at United.

Aldi has fresh pineapple for 99 cents, cantaloupe for 89 cents, 1 pound strawberries 99 cents, 4# bag of oranges for $1.59, lemons 15 cents each, and 6 oz package of blueberries; $1.29.

Reducing trash: re-using plastic containers

Recently I wrote about a website I found called Happy Simple Living and their January Money Diet. Another one of their challenges last month was to find ways to reduce your trash. That got me thinking about all the trash I throw out, not only in food waste, but other stuff. So I started trying to think of ways to reduce some of that. One thing I use a lot of is plastic zipper baggies. Recently I ran out when browning up and bagging hamburger meat and used one of these containers instead. These are little plastic containers that I get when I buy certain sandwich meat at Aldi. They are too nice to throw away and so I'd been keeping them. I found out that they are the perfect size to hold about 2 cups of browned hamburger meat. I also used them for the celery that I chopped up and the bananas that I sliced. 

What ways can you find to reduce your trash?

And we have a winner!

Congrats to the winner of the coupon binder on Facebook! My next Facebook page giveaway will be when I reach 200 likes. Meanwhile, stay tuned, I'll be announcing a giveaway on the blog soon!

Getting there: only 4 more likes!

I only need 4 more likes on my Facebook page to reach 100 likes and give away a coupon binder!

Reducing food waste: celery

A few days ago I wrote about my quest to reduce food waste. Another thing I did was to dice up the very inside of the celery stalks and the leaves, freeze them on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper, then divide them into plastic containers to freeze.

After I froze the celery stalks for about 1/2 hour, I divided them into these plastic containers to freeze. 

They'll be great in soups! 

Dollar General: $5./25 in-store coupon today only

Dollar General has another $5/$25 in-store coupon good today (Saturday, February 9th) only. Remember to know your prices so you know whether you're getting a good deal or not!

Reducing food waste: bananas

Last week I wrote about a new favorite website I found called Happy Simple Living and their January Money Diet. One of the challenges was to find ways to reduce food waste so I decided to work on that this week. Honestly, it seems like we throw away a lot of food around here. I'm not sure why, but I decided it was time to do something about it. So I started with bananas:

Did you know you can freeze an overripe banana right in it's skin? Then when you are ready to make banana bread or a smoothie or anything else using the banana, you can just thaw it out, cut off the end, and squish the banana out. It's great for banana bread because you don't have to mash it up, it mashes up as you squeeze it out.

Since I don't always want to use a whole banana when I make smoothies, I lined a cookie sheet with wax paper, sliced up the bananas and froze them. After they were frozen, I put them in a plastic container in the freezer. Now I have sliced bananas ready to toss in the blender when I make a smoothie.

Country Bob's All-Purpose Sauce Review

Recently I was given the chance to try out and review Country Bob's All-Purpose sauce. Prior to this, I'd never heard of the sauce, but we like BBQ sauces and steak sauces, so I thought it was worth a try. Now Tom and I are both hooked! This sauce is delicious on hamburgers, french fries, tater tots, chicken strips, chicken sandwiches, pork chops, you name it! Last time I made meatloaf, I even mixed a little bit in with the ketchup on top. Yum!

In Enid, I've seen the sauce at both  Wal-Mart and Jumbo Foods. I highly recommend this sauce and will definitely be buying more when we run out!

Jar Salads=Genius!!!

I don't know who first came up with the idea for jar salads. A few months ago a friend told me about seeing them on Pinterest so I went looking for them. Basically, you layer your salad ingredients in like this:

Dressing on the bottom
firmer vegetables (like shredded carrots, celery, cucumbers) on top of that
Lettuce on top (you don't want your lettuce touching your dressing before you're ready to eat or it will wilt

Then you have a jar of salad ready to go. These pint jars fit perfectly in Tom's lunchboxes and make an easy lunch for me or side dish for us for supper. The ingredients stay nice and crisp and well yummy!!! I would get annoyed in the past when I made up a big salad wanting it to last for a few days and after a day or so the lettuce would start turning icky. Don't have to worry about that with these salads. If I want cheese or croutons I just throw them on when I eat it. But they are delicious just like this!

Grocery deals: week of February 6th-12th

This week at Jumbo Foods in Enid you can get
boneless skinless chicken for $1.69 a pound
a 10# bag of potatoes for $1.98
Croissant, Hot, or Lean Pockets 3/$5

United Supermarkets has some good deals this week.
Betty Crocker Chicken, Tuna, or Hamburger Helper, Progresso recipe starters or Progresso classic soups: 8 for $8. There are coupons for 75 cents off 3 of the Helpers, making them 75 cents each, 50 cents off the Recipe starters, making them 50 cents each, and 50 cents off two soups, making them 75 cents each. I am super excited about the Helpers being on sale because I was almost out! There are also regular Progresso soups on sale 2/$3, with the coupon, they'd be $1.25 each.

Also this week at United, if you buy 8 participating General Mills Box Tops for Education products, you can get a mail-in form to send off for 40 bonus Box Tops for your school! What a great way to help your school and save money! Just think, if you bought 8 boxes of the Helpers, even without the coupons, you'd only spend $8 plus tax. Then you could get $4 worth of Box Tops for the school, not to mention the Box Tops on each of the boxes you bought, that would be another 80 cents! So for $8, you could get almost $5 for your school! Now that's a great bargain!!!

You can still get a $5 off $25 coupon from Save-a-Lot! The great thing about Save-a-Lot is that you can combine other coupons with their store coupon and save even more. Also, if you haven't been to the new one in Enid on South Van Buren, it's very nice. And their Cafe 81 has wonderful onion burgers!

12 likes away from a winner!

If you haven't liked my Facebook page yet, this is a great time to do it. I'm only 12 likes away from choosing a winner for a coupon binder! As soon as I reach 100 likes, I'll be drawing a name to give away the binder. 

Don't make assumptions

Last week I wrote about how important it is to know your prices. I was reminded this weekend about how important it is not to make assumptions about where you can find the best prices. I buy generic Claritin tablets to take for my allergies. I usually get them at Wal-Mart, 60 tablets for $7.92 and had just assumed that was the best place to buy them. When I was in Dollar General on Friday to use my $5 off $25 coupon, I thought I would check and see how much they were there and if it would be worth getting them there. Well, a bottle of 60 there was $7.50!!! So not only were they less there anyway, I saved even more since I was using the store coupon.

Reminder: Dollar General $5 off $25 in-store today (Friday, February 1st)

Just a reminder that you can go to the Dollar General website and print off a coupon for $5 off a $25 purchase today (Friday, February 1st) at Dollar General stores.