Website review: Happy Simple Living

I have recently found a new website that I am really enjoying exploring: Happy Simple Living. This month they have been doing a money diet and sharing ways each day to save money, examine your expenses, and live more simply. Be sure and look back through those because they are great! There have been ideas on ways to reduce food waste, a post on another money-saving blogs, ways to reduce your waste, and much more. I highly recommend checking out their website and blog!

What are your favorite money-saving websites? Share them in the comment section!

Grocery deals week of January 30th-February 5th

Unfortunately I didn't see much to get excited about in the Jumbo Foods ad this week.

At United this week you can get a 50# bag of potatoes for $9.99. That's a lot of potatoes but if you had someone you could split them with, 20 cents a pound isn't bad. Other than that, I found the United ad kinda disappointing too. If anyone sees something I'm overlooking be sure and let me know!

Aldi has some good produce prices again this week: avocados for 29 cents each, grapefruit for 25 cents each, fresh pineapple for 99 cents, 1 pound of Roma tomatoes 59 cents, 4# bag of oranges for $1.59, and 3 pack of colored bell peppers for $1.69.

Know your prices

I know I have mentioned this before, but it's worth mentioning again. When trying to save money and stretch your budget, it is essential to know your prices. I was reminded of this again last weekend when I bought some stuff at Save-a-Lot and Aldi. We were in Save-a-Lot on Friday night and were getting stuff for Tom to make salsa. I couldn't remember how much the bags of onions were at Aldi so we went ahead and got them there at Save-a-lot since we had the $5 off $25 coupon and did the same thing with animal crackers. When I finished doing the shopping at Aldi the next day, the onions were on sale for less at Save-a-Lot (by 50 cents) but the animals crackers were 50 cents more at Save-a-Lot. So it was a wash lol.

One good way to keep track of prices is to make a price book. This can be as simple as using a little notebook or you can be more elaborate and make a print-out for the items you buy the most. Here is a picture of a sheet I have made (but obviously do not use very faithfully lol).

 On it there is space to list the store, the cost, and the unit price. This allows you to be able to easily see if something is a good bargain, a great bargain, or not a bargain at all. 

Dollar General online and in-store coupon

This week at Dollar General you can save $5 off $25 online all week long, just use the code: SAVENOW when you check out.

This week's in-store coupon is good for Friday, February 1st, it's also $5 off $25. Go to their website to print one off and check out this week's sale ad.

Dollar General 1-26

Dollar General has another $5 off $25 coupon available today for in-store purchases. Go to their website to print it out. 

Have you heard?

Have you heard about Gift Hulk? It's a site where you can earn "Hulk Coins" and redeem them for gift cards. It's a great way to save for Christmas, birthdays, etc. There are plenty of ways to earn coins. You can earn coins through doing searches on Gift Hulk (similar to using Google), by taking the daily poll, by entering codes in the Fountain of Youth, doing surveys, by watching videos, and by using the Treasure Box.If you decide to sign up, use my referral link, please!

Use your calculator and take cash!

The calculator is an essential tool in a frugal lifestyle, especially when shopping. Using your calculator as you go through the store helps to keep you focused on how much you are spending and keep you on budget. Furthermore, if you take only cash to the store, you can only spend what you actually have and not be tempted to go over budget. I tend to go through phases of doing these, but I always do better at the store when I use both.

Also, I'd suggest when using coupons, add up your dollar amount before you check out so that you can quickly tell whether the cashier properly entered all the coupons.

Grocery deals this week January 23rd-29th

United has Planter's peanut butter for $1.99 a jar. With the $1 off coupon that was in the paper recently, you can get peanut butter for 99 cents! Check out the entire ad on their website.

Jumbo Foods in Enid has Hormel assorted pork chops for $1.69 a pound. They also have Birds Eye frozen vegetables for 99 cents a bag. Check out the entire ad at their website.

Aldi has these produce prices this week:
Celery 59 cents
1 pound pkg baby carrots 49 cents
Avocados 29 cents each
4 pound bag of oranges for $1.59
Whole pineapple 99 cents each

Save-a-lot still has their $5 off $25 coupon IF you haven't got one yet.

Staples Rewards Members!

In-store ONLY deals: If you are a Staples Rewards member, you can get 25% back store-wide in Staples Rewards this week. This is huge, you usually only get 10% back on certain items. If you didn't get the e-mail with the coupon and information, let me know and I'll forward mine to you. In the same e-mail, there is a coupon to get 100% back after Easy Rebate on copy paper too. I love the Easy Rebates, especially now since you can get the money back in your PayPal account! And if you got this week's Staples ad in your Sunday paper, there was an in-store coupon for Bounty paper towels, you can get an 8 pack for $4.

Online, Staples is running a special with free shipping on orders over $20. You can also get a self-inking return address stamp for 99 cents (normally $18.99) plus shipping.

Remember the Box Tops for Education factor!

When considering the many benefits of couponing, don't forget the Box Tops for Education factor. Back when I had stopped couponing and was buying mainly store brand products, I rarely had any Box Tops to save for our school. Since I started couponing again, I keep a baggie hanging on a clip inside the cabinet and drop the Box Tops in there. When I get a bunch, I send them to the school with the school-age boy that I keep.

Think your few Box Tops won't make much difference? Consider this, I was told from someone in our local PTA here that the last Box Tops check was about $700! That is HUGE for our little school! So send those Box Tops to your local school!

My current stash of Box Tops, I counted 54!

Toothpaste for 19 cents each!

There was recently a coupon for 75 cents off Colgate toothpaste 4 oz or larger. Right now Wal-Mart has some Colgate toothpaste for 94 cents each, so I got toothpaste for 19 cents a tube. The coupon limited how many could be used in a transaction to 4 so since Tom was with me, I gave him two of my six coupons and he got those. If you have any of those coupons, they expire Friday the 25th so be sure and stock up on some toothpaste!

Meatloaf in the Crockpot

A few years ago, I got a wild hair one day and decided to try cooking meatloaf in the crockpot. Well now I'm hooked on doing it that way! It turns out so tender and just melts in your mouth. Not to mention that you don't have to heat up your oven on a hot day! (Not that that's a problem right now lol). 

Spray the crockpot with cooking spray first! Then just make your favorite meatloaf recipe and pat it down in there. An hour or two before you want to serve it, put ketchup on top and let it finish cooking. 

I don't follow a certain recipe, meatloaf is one of those things that I tend to just throw together. But since we are trying to eat healthier and I was trying to figure calories, I actually figured up what I put in this time:

1 pound ground beef

1 package onion soup mix 

1 egg

1/4 cup bread crumbs

3-4 tablespoons ketchup (this ketchup ix mixed into the meatloaf)

dab of milk

Ketchup for the top

Mix together until it will hold a shape, then pat it down into the crockpot. I started mine around 11:00 a.m. on high for about 30 minutes, then turned to low and it was done well in time for supper. 

Great deals at Save-a-Lot

I went to Save-a-Lot tonight and used my $5 off $25 coupon along with a couple of cereal coupons. Check out all I got for only $20.40 after coupons!

5 boxes of General Mills cereal (I had coupons for $1 off two boxes and $1 off three boxes. The two boxes were on sale for $1.69 each and the other three for $1.99).
1 box of animal crackers
3 pound bag of onions
tomatoes
pickles
jalapenos
sugar free pancake syrup
5 cans of spaghetti sauce

 Front View

Side View

Have you got your January $5 off $25 coupon for Save-a-Lot yet? And if you haven't visited the new Save-a-Lot on South Van Buren in Enid, it's super nice. 

Dollar General coupon: Saturday 1/19/13 only

Dollar General has another $5 off $25 coupon for in store purchases this Saturday, January 19th. You can go to their website to print one out.

You can also save $5 off $25 online purchases through tomorrow by using the code: SAVENOW.

Gift Hulk: Earn Hulk Coins to redeem for prizes!

I know, I know! You guys might be getting sick of me promoting Gift Hulk. But I love the chance to earn free stuff and figure everyone else does lol.

Last week, I wrote about starting to plan now for next Christmas:

Plan now for next Christmas

After I posted the first one, I wrote about a great post I found on buying gift cards throughout the year to save for Christmas:

More on planning for next Christmas now

Sites like Gift Hulk are a great way to earn points and save gift cards throughout the year. You can then use them for Christmas (or other gifts) and not have to spend a dime!

If you haven't joined yet, use my referral link and my code: "cruisingwithcoupons" (no quotes) to get started!

Score free music from Google play!

Do you have an Android device? Did you know that you can score free music daily at Google Play? Just go to their music page and click on "Free song of the day" to get your free song each day. So far it seems they only change it Monday-Friday, but still 5 songs a week times 52 weeks a year, that's a lot of free music! As a general rule, I just go ahead and download it and if it's something I don't like, then I just delete it.  There have been some songs that I knew from looking at that I wouldn't like, so I just didn't get them.

Grocery deals this week

There are some good grocery deals to be found this week.

At United Supermarkets, you can find:

They are having a buy 5 Red Gold items, get $5 off sale. That means you can get tomato sauce, crushed, stewed, or diced tomatoes, and diced tomatoes with green chilies for 25 cents a can and ketchup, sloppy joe mix, and salsa for 50 cents each with the deal!

There is also a buy 10 select Kraft items, save $10 sale.

Check out the whole ad on the United website.

At Jumbo Foods in Enid this week, you can get

10# package of hamburger meat for $1.99 a pound. (My advice, if you get this, divide it up before you freeze it lol)

They also have Ortega foods on sale and there was a 50 cents off two Ortega items coupon in last Sunday's paper.

Check out the entire ad at the Jumbo Foods website.

As usual, Aldi  has some great produce prices this week. You can get a 5 pound bag of potatoes for 99 cents, one pound of fresh broccoli for 79 cents, 1 pound bag of baby carrots for 49 cents, a 1 pound bag of Roma tomatoes for 49 cents,  3 pack of colored bell peppers for $1.49, and a 1 pound bag of spinach leaves for 99 cents.

And don't forget to go get your $5 off $25 purchase coupon for Save-a-Lot!

Staples this week

This week (through Saturday, January 19th), Staples has more 100% back in Staples Reward deals:

Cardboard storage boxes (limit 2)

Plastic file totes (limit 2)

Avery Binders (limit 4)

They are also running the HP ink promo again. If you buy $50 in HP ink, you get $6 in Staples Rewards for every empty ink cartridge you turn in, compared to the normal $2 per cartridge, up to a max of 5. I didn't get to turn mine in last week because I didn't have $50 to spend on ink. Hopefully I'll be able to do it this week because I will have 5 cartridges to turn in.

More on planning for next Christmas now

Right after I posted on Saturday about my plan to start planning for next Christmas now, I ran across this great post on a blog that I follow called Colie's Kitchen:

Christmas Gift Card Savings Plan

Basically, you purchase gift cards at every payday throughout the year, then use those cards either as Christmas gifts or to buy your Christmas gifts and meals. I love this idea! And after I shared the link on Facebook, a friend of mine posted how a co-worker of his does this with restaurant gift cards and saves them for vacation. I thought to myself that this was another great idea. When Tom and I are on "staycation", I like to take a break from cooking and this would be a great way to "save" up for that week.

Still looking for a winner!

I am still looking for a winner on my Facebook page contest. As soon as I reach 100 likes, I'll be holding a drawing to give away a coupon binder similar to this.

My Favorite Grocery Store

I know that I may have mentioned this before, but Aldi is my favorite grocery store for just basic grocery shopping. Since I started couponing, I buy less there than I used to (since they don't take manufacturer coupons), but I still go there every two weeks. Why? For example, their prices on bread can't be beat. A loaf of whole wheat bread is a little over $1. Almost everything I've bought there has been good quality. As I've posted before, I've found excellent deals on meat there and the meat has always been good quality. Just earlier this week, I posted about getting spiral sliced hams for 1/2 price. Their produce prices are really good too and they run wonderful sales on their produce.

Aldi is different than a regular grocery store. You will need to take a quarter to get a cart, then you get the quarter back when you put the cart back. This keeps carts from cluttering up their lot and having to pay someone to go round them all up. Take your own bags or plan to buy some at the store, last I looked the paper bags were about 6 cents each and their plastic bags were around 10 cents. You will be bagging and carrying out your own groceries, but the savings are well worth it! Another way they are different is that they mostly carry their own store brand of things, although sometimes they'll have special buys on name brands. They have a good line of low calorie healthy foods and they seem to be adding more all the time. If you haven't tried it out yet, check it out. The one in Enid is on W. Garriott  by Lowe's and not far from Wal-Mart.

Save $5 off $25 at Dollar General Saturday, January 12th

You can save $5 off a $25 purchase at Dollar General today, January 12th. You can go to their website to print the coupon to use in store OR you can use this code to save when ordering online: SAVENOW.

Start planning now for next Christmas

A good way to save money is to start planning ahead for next Christmas now. How can you do that? Well, there are many ways and I'm not very good at them, but the times that I've done some of them, I've been much more relaxed about the holidays. This year I'm going to have a grandbaby to shop for and I plan to spoil that little one! LOL. So my goal this year is to start now. Here's my plan:

1. Make a list of who I need to buy for and put it in my purse. Also put on there the gift exchanges I need to buy for.

2. Start watching sales for items to fit the people/exchanges on my list. As I purchase gifts, write down the gifts on the list (and write down where I put them, lol).

3. When possible, use coupons/gift cards to help pay for the costs of the gifts. There are many programs out there that can help you do that. Gift Hulk and Swagbucks are both rewards programs where you earn points and can redeem them for gift cards. These can be saved throughout the year and used to buy gifts for Christmas. Another thing I used this year was Staples Rewards. As I mentioned in a post earlier this week, I earn Staples Rewards coupons when I turn in ink cartridges. You can also earn them on items you purchase in the store. I had bought some batteries (that I needed anyway) that were 100% back in Staples Rewards and when I got that coupon, I took it in there and used it to help buy some Christmas gifts. I also used a Sears automotive card I got. It was a $25 off $25 or more purchase, but could only be used in the automotive department at Sears. I could have used it for the repair shop, an oil change, etc. I chose to use it to buy some things in the automotive department.

How do you plan for the holidays? Please share your thoughts in the comment section!

Oh and keep in mind, this can be a great time of year to stock up on gift items, many of those items are marked down after Christmas!

Have you joined Gift Hulk yet?

Have you joined Gift Hulk yet? No? Well, what are you waiting for? Use my referral link and enter this code: "cruisingwithcoupons" (no quotes) at the Fountain of Youth to get you started!

If you don't know what Gift Hulk is, it is a site where you earn "Hulk Coins" and can redeem them to get free stuff, such as Amazon gift cards. There are several ways to earn coins. There is the Fountain of Youth, daily hulk polls, and the Treasure Box. You get a certain number of daily keys when you start (and earn more as you go) and you can go in daily and "open the box" to get Hulk Coins, extra keys, and more. You can also do surveys and other things for coins, but mostly I stick with the Fountain of Youth, the Treasure Box, and the polls.

Save-a-Lot January coupon

Save-a-Lot grocery stores have a $5 off $25 coupon available this month. If you're not already a member of their Smart Shopper club, you should join soon! They send out periodic coupon promotions like this. Save-a-Lot is a smaller scale grocery store with mostly their own store brand items, all of which I've found to be of good quality. However, they also have some name brand items and unlike Aldi, they do accept manufacturer coupons (which you can combine with the $5 off $25 for even greater savings!).

Go to their webpage for information on getting your coupon and joining the Smart shopper club. To get your coupon, you will be sent to Facebook, so if you're not comfortable giving the app access on Facebook, you might want to do like I did and sent up a separate Facebook account specifically for those types of items.

United Deals this week

There are some good deals at United this week

Angel Soft bath tissue: $4.99, there was a coupon in Sunday's paper for Angel Soft. I don't really care for Angel Soft, but this still seems to be a good deal.

Best Choice 5# bag of flour: 99 cents

Nabisco Ritz crackers: 2/$5 and there was a $1 off two coupon in Sunday's paper

Green giant boxed  vegetables: 4/$5,  coupon for 60 cents off 3 in Sunday's paper

Check out all the deals at the United ad online.

Some good deals at Jumbo's this week

Jumbo Foods in Enid has some good deals this week:

Hunt's pasta sauce: $1
Best Choice canned biscuits (7.5 oz): 3/$1
10# bag of potatoes: $1.98

Didn't see much to match up with coupons, though.

Staples this week

Staples has more 100% back in Staples rewards deals this week, including storage boxes, file folder boxes, and Avery binders.

Also, if you happen to use HP ink, they have a special running that if you buy $50 worth of ink, you get $6 in Staples Rewards per recycled cartridge (as compared to the normal $2), with a max of 5 cartridges allowed.  They run this promotion periodically, so I save up my ink cartridges so that I get more $'s back on them. Right now, I have 4 cartridges to turn in. Turning in those cartridges is a great way to save money!

Clearance sales on meats

Be sure and keep an eye out for clearance deals. I get a lot of my meat this way. It's still perfectly good, the store just bought too much or packaged too much and needs to move it. If it looks AT ALL questionable, I do not buy it. I have never had any trouble buying meat like this.

Just this past Friday, I bought two spiral sliced half hams at Aldi for half price. One of them was about $5.50,  the other about $6.50. This was an excellent deal and will make several meals for Tom and I and for the child care.

This is a great way to save money on something that rarely has coupons!

Free e-book through today (Saturday, January 5th)

You can get a free homemade bread e-book through Living on a Dime today. It's a Kindle book, but you can download it to your PC and use the free Kindle reader app. To get your free e-book, go here: How to make homemade bread. 

Review: Grandison Inn at Maney Park

Last month for our 20th wedding anniversary, Tom and I stayed at a Bed & Breakfast in Oklahoma City called The Grandison Inn. It's on N. Shartel, just minutes away from Bricktown. It was our first time in a Bed and Breakfast and we had a great time!

The pros:
The room was super comfortable and decorated very nicely. We really enjoyed the hot tub and the shower head was fabulous in the shower too. There was a nice TV with a DVD player that we used to watch movies from the DVD library downstairs. We got a key to the front door, a key to the back door (that came upstairs and into the hallway leading to our room), and of course our room key. That made it nice, we could come and go as we pleased. The downstairs area was really pretty and decorated up for Christmas.

The cons:
The electric fireplace in our room didn't work, that was kind of a bummer. Since we went during the week, there was only continental breakfast available. It wasn't bad, but since I'm diabetic there wasn't a lot I could eat so that was rather disappointing. We hope to go again and stay on a weekend when the full breakfast is available.

I got this room through Google Offers last spring for $149 for two nights. I felt like that was a really good deal, especially since you can't really get a motel/hotel room for $75 a night, and especially not one with a hot tub in the room. We definitely hope to go back again and actually hope to make this an annual thing for our anniversary.

Gift Hulk

It's Friday so that must mean it's time to remind you about Gift Hulk! Sign up using my referral link and start earning coins to redeem for prizes. I use mine to get Amazon gift cards, but there are tons of prizes to choose from. If you sign up under me, you can use the code "cruisingwithcoupons" (no quotes) in the Fountain of Youth to earn extra coins.

100% back in Staples Rewards deals (plus more)

Staples has some great deals this week if you have a Staples Reward card. You can buy these items and then get 100% back on a Staples Reward coupon in a few weeks. I wouldn't go out and buy this stuff just because it's "free" but if you truly need any of it, check it out:

Avery binders (limit 4)
10 pack of economy storage boxes (limit 2)
Manila folders (limit 2)
Letter/legal size plastic storage totes (limit 2)
Deskpad calendar (limit 2)

You can also go online to Staples and print off a $5 of $25 purchase coupon. These deals are good through Saturday, January 5th.

Walgreen's: Free Photo Brag Book

You can get a free photo brag book from Walgreen's through Saturday, January 5th. Just enter this code online: FREEBRAG

GOBS of coupons this weekend!

This coming Sunday (January 6th), there are tons of coupons coming out in the paper. Smart Source has 3 inserts and Red Plum has 2! If you don't already coupon, now is a great time to start. At least look through the coupons and see if there are any for items you already use! Why not save a little bit of money on stuff you already buy? Want a sneak peek of what's coming out this week? Check out Sunday Coupon Preview.

Want to know where to find coupons? Check out these posts:
Where can I find coupons?
Where else can I find coupons?

It's a New Year!

It's a New Year and it's a great time to start couponing! January is a great month for coupons, especially keep an eye out for coupons for healthy foods (everyone wants to lose weight after the holidays) and for snack foods (after all, the Super Bowl is coming up!).

Not sure how to get started? Check out some of my getting started posts (listed at the bottom of the main page). Here's a couple to get you going:
Getting Started with Coupons
Getting Started with Coupons, part 2

Want to see what coupons are coming up in your Sunday paper? Check out Sunday Coupon Preview.

Remember to like me on Facebook for a chance to win a coupon binder!