Our Latest Good Deal

One of our local grocery stores, Cooke's, had a Friday only sale this week. They had canned vegetables for 25¢ each, but for only six hours starting at noon. I would be at work, so I asked my daughter to go instead. 
To say it was a madhouse would be an understatement. She arrived at 11:55 and had to park far away from the store. 
She easily found peas and green beans, but no corn, so she asked an employee who told her where the corn was located and pretty much told her to be careful. 
She found the corn and while she was getting a box, someone actually tried to take what she already had out of her shopping cart. She was shaking when she finally got out of the store and said never again.
I don't know why stores design these sales for only a few hours knowing what might ensue. 
Anyway, we ended up with 24 cans of peas, 24 cans of green beans, and 48 cans of corn. Cooke's had recently sent me a coupon for $5.00 off any purchase, which she used. So her total came to $19 or 20¢ for each can. 
I know why the place was a madhouse. I  think it's because groceries cost more now than before the Great Recession in 2008. People are underemployed or looking for work and times are hard. 
When a good deal like this comes along people want and need to get in on it. We wanted to get in on this good deal as well. When was the last time you saw canned vegetables for 25¢ a can? I've not seen that price since before 2008. 
We will be going through the summer without my sub pay, as usual, so we definitely wanted to stock up on this good deal. Even if it was a little bit frightening.
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Saturday Errands

Saturday was a busy day here this weekend. We started the day with a home cooked breakfast. 

Scrambled eggs with cheese, fried potatoes, ham, and buttered toast. 
Afterwards we went to town to run errands and stopped at a couple of yard sales. 

I found these containers for 5¢ each. I couldn't believe she had the Tupperware marinating container included, but she did. I looked and the item sells for $22.00 on the Tupperware site and $12.00 on Etsy. What a bargain! So, 25¢ for all five containers. I couldn't help but pick these up as they are useful for many things. 

Afterwards we went to our local Goodwill store, since March 5th is the first Saturday of the month and everything is 50% off the first Saturday of the month. 

We picked up four blankets for our cats. One of them was $2.50, but the others were $1.00 as was the Better Homes and Gardens gold towel. 

I like to buy the blankets for our cats at yard sales and thrift stores and let the cats use them until they need replacing and then just toss them because I do not want to clean them in my washer & dryer. So, buying them at yard sales and thrift stores makes them more affordable. 

   

We found these baskets in a free bin on Friday and I knew the cats would love them, so we picked them up and put the blankets in there yesterday. 

Big Kitty, on Friday night, didn't even want to wait for a blanket for his basket. He is a funny cat and loves to have new items to sleep on. If I have a towel drying on the banister and it falls to the ground, he is on top of it almost instantly. :)  

Other items we found include these organizers and two shirts. The Made Smart Junk Drawer Organizer is brand new and retails for $12.00 at Ace Hardware. I picked it up for $1.50.

We stopped in at Fresh & Low and Cooke's Hometown Grocer to pick up a few sale items. 
I went to Cooke's for their sale on Kraft cheddar cheese. They have this sale about every three months where you buy eight of a certain product and they take off $8.00 of your order. I picked up eight of the eight ounce blocks of cheese and ended up paying $1.49 each. 
Next stop was Fresh & Low, which is actually owned by Cooke's, and picked up some dried beans, sugar, bread, macaroni and cheese, and canned chili. 

The two pound bags of mixed beans were $2.01 each while the cranberry beans, a favorite of mine, were one pound bags for $1.36 each. These will make very frugal dinners of beans & cornbread served with a green vegetable. And beans are a great item to keep my blood sugar lower.  

I also picked up two boxes of the Best Choice Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese dinners. I picked one up about a month ago to try it and we liked them, so I decided to pick up two more boxes. 

These will make a good dinner on a night when I am too tired to cook after working all day. A can of chili stirred into the Mac & Cheese after it is cooked makes for a great addition. 

The Mac & Cheese was on sale for $1.25 and the chili for $1.19, which makes it a very frugal dinner. Of course I will add a vegetable when the times comes. 

We also went to McKay's Used books where I traded some books and received $5.76 in trade credit and bought two movies. One was The Long Walk Home for $1.95 and the other was volume 30 of The Heartland Series with Bill Landry for $6.95. 

How was your Saturday?

Belinda ~ Living within my means in Southern Tennessee ~
Earn with Swagbucks

Good Morning & Welcome Tuesday

We made a run to Cooke's yesterday to get in on two sale items I wanted to pick up before their sale ended today. One was for a three pound bag of onions for $1.50. The other was for a five pound bag of grapefruits for $2.99. 

When I arrived there I checked out the Crash and Burn Items first and found four packages of onions for 99¢ each, which was a great deal. We love onions here and they are so healthy for you. Cooking from scratch means I use a lot of onions and use at least one every day in my kitchen, so I picked up all four packages.

I checked all the grapefruits and most of them had six per bag, but this one had seven in the bag, so I picked this one. Grapefruit for less than 50¢ each is a great deal.  
School is on a two hour delay due to freezing temperatures this morning, so I have a couple of hours until I need to report for work. It is 12° here this morning, so hot chocolate to warm everyone up is on the menu. 
Belinda Living within my means in Southern Tennessee. 

Frugal Saturday

The weather here in Tennessee yesterday was wonderful. It was a cool fall day and perfect for yard sales. 

Here are a few things we picked up:

One pair of skinny jeans for $5, one pair of capris for $5, three pairs of shorts for $3 each, three shirts for $2 each, one pair of like new OPI sandals $1, and one American Eagle jacket for $4. The pants and shorts are all name brand. 

All of these are for my daughter. She was thrilled with all of it, but especially the American Eagle jacket. And the flowery shirt in the front will be perfect for a dressy event she has coming up at school. 

A brand new, still with stickers, double wall cup with lid and straw. We like these cups because they have the lid and they keep drinks colder for long periods of time. These cups retail for $5 and up at most retailers, but we bought this cup for 25¢. We still can't believe the person sold it for that amount. 

Other things we bought, but are not pictured are two boxes of thank you notes for 25¢ each, and a thermal blanket for $3, which was needed for the living room as the blanket I used in there has been permanently borrowed by my daughter. lol

Since I was in town, I decided to stop at Bi-Lo and Cooke's to check out their crash and burn items. I couldn't find any at Bi-Lo, but I was glad I stopped in anyway. Looked what I scored:

These are 30 count bags of tortillas for $1.19, but see the coupon attached? I carefully read it to see if it would double, since Bi-Lo doubles coupons up to 60¢, and I figured it would, so I tried it and it worked. That coupon doubled and gave me 70¢ off each bag, so 49¢ a bag...what a deal. I'm so glad I stopped in there today. Always be on the look out for peelies to see if you can score a good deal on an item.  

My other bargain of the day came from Cooke's. Their crash and burn cart was filled with one pound bags of black eyed peas for 50¢. If you look closely you can see the 50¢ on the package. This was such a great deal that I bought ten bags. I love finding great deals like this so I can feed my family inexpensively.  

These two items were the only food items I bought on Saturday. 

Once we got home I got busy cleaning, hanging our laundry up to dry, and doing some things in the kitchen.  

I made sure to put the onions I bought this week into pantyhose and hung them in the pantry. I mentioned in a blog post a while ago that I would let you know how my experiment turned out. 

Storing the onions in panty hose, where the air is able to circulate around them definitely helps to keep them longer. The ones I bought and kept in the original mesh bag sprouted after one month, but the ones I stored in panty hose lasted four months. As a result, I will be storing them this way in the future.  

If you don't have any panty hose, Walmart sells knee highs for 30¢, which is what I used in this photo, so one of these would only cost you 15¢. Not a bad price to help keep your onions longer. 

I do have one frugal fail to mention today, if you are interested. I scored this 42 ounce canister of oatmeal at a yard sale today for 50¢. I was  actually kicking myself because if I had gotten there sooner, I could have gotten all three that he had for sale. 

When I got it home I looked at it closely and it expired in 2009. I should have looked at it closer when I was buying it. Now I will have to Google non food ways to use up oatmeal. lol

We are on Fall Break this week from school/work, so I am looking forward to getting a lot of things done. 

How was your Saturday? Did you find any good bargains?

Belinda
CFO ~ Chief Frugal Officer
© Belinda & Frugal Workshop, 2011-2014.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”
"Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle ~ It will help you save money"

My Frugal Weekend

Saturday turned out to be a very busy day for me. I had several errands to run including...

Having the oil changed in my car. Cost was $43.89. 

Stopped at Cooke's for a sale on Kraft cheese, which was $1.49 for the eight ounce bags of shredded cheddar. A price not seen since before the Great Recession. I also bought oranges, potatoes, and bananas since they sent me a $2.00 off $5.00 worth of produce coupon in my email. I also received 25¢ back from Checkout51 on the bananas. 

I know I said I wasn't going to buy Ziploc bags, but we came upon a great deal. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. :) 

The sale was for Hefty bags, 2 for $3.00, and we had 50¢ off coupons that were not supposed to double, but they did, so we paid 50¢ per box. See why I couldn't pass it up? :)

We ended up in Chattanooga at McKay to check out the free book bin. We ended up with eighteen free books. I didn't really look at them until I came home, but there was a hardback book in there from one of my favorite authors, Willie Morris. He wrote one of my favorite books, My Dog Skip. If you've not seen the movie, watch it. You will love it. 

The book I picked up Saturday was Taps and ended up being his final book written about a fictional journey through the south, of a fleeting boyhood and a young man coming to age in a time of war. I'm already reading it as I love the author's writing style. 

While in Chattanooga, I bought gas for $2.98 a gallon. We even saw it cheaper at several stations down the road offering it for $2.94 a gallon, which is such a welcome sight. We also went by Krispy Kreme to use our free doughnut coupon that was in the Sunday paper. 

Finally, I went to Publix for Angel Soft Tissues. 25¢ per box after sale and coupon. I was able to pick up four boxes. 

We went to a couple of yard sales. I bought a sweater jacket for my Mom, and my daughter bought two historical decorative plates. 

CVS has Arm & Hammer laundry detergent on sale this week for Buy 1 Get 2 Free. We had $2.00 off coupons, which brought the price per bottle down to $1.07 each. I bought 8 bottles, so I am stocked up on detergent for a while. 

I hope you had a frugal weekend.  :)

Belinda
CFO ~ Chief Frugal Officer
© Belinda & Frugal Workshop, 2011-2014.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”
"Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle ~ It will help you save money"

Grocery Store Ads 7-27-11

Grocery Store Ads here include: IGA, Bi-Lo, Aldi, Food Lion, Cooke's, and Super Saver. There aren't too many things on sale this week that I would consider a stock up price except for the Ground Chuck at IGA. I've included the links if you want to check the store ads for yourself. Following is a list of items I would buy for my family:

IGA

- Ground Chuck $1.99 a pound

- Sugar - 1.99 - 4 pounds

- Crinkle Cut Fries - 5 pound bag - 2/$7.00 

Don't forget, IGA has a weekly web coupon you can print out. This week it's a 24 ounce bottle of Hunt's ketchup for 49¢.

Aldi

- Red Grapes - 99 cents a pound

- Cherries - $1.49 pound

- Strawberries - 99 cents a pound

- Broccoli - 99 cents a pound

- Boneless, Skinless, Chicken Breasts - $1.69 a pound

Food Lion

- Red Grapes - 99 cents a pound

Walmart Trip 6-7-11

Made a trip to Walmart today to buy groceries. My total before coupons was $106.82, and I saved $22.35 using coupons for an out of pocket expense of $79.27 for everything you see pictured above. My total spent on food in June 2011 so far is $89.71.

Here is a list of what I bought:  

2 bags GV rippled chips, 3 pckgs Nestle Quick, 2 pckgs Knorr rice mixes, 1 pckg Kit Kats, 1 pckg Hershey bars, 2 pckgs Ball Park hot dogs, 2 pckgs pepperoni, 2 pckgs Kraft cheese, 1 pckg Sargento cheese, 1 Hillshire Farms kielbasa, 4 paper towels, sourdough bread, Lipton tea bags, Club crackers, Cheeze-It crackers, Lender bagels, Flour tortillas, 4 pckgs. Linguine, 1 – 2 liter Dr. Pepper (coke rewards points), 3 jars pickles, 2 boxes popcorn, Slim Jims, band aids, cottage cheese, Country Crock, 4 cream cheese (Was $1.98, but priced matched from Cooke's 99 cent sale), 1 yogurt, and 2 Degree deodorant.