Frugal Friday ~ August 16, 2019

This week I was able to sub for two days, so I'm grateful for that. Naturally, I packed my lunch and brought plenty of water for both days. 

My time was spent in the gym where there is no a/c. All the doors are open and there are big industrial fans, but it is still hot, so I drink a lot of water. 

These are the containers I brought with me. One is my regular water cup and the big one is a one gallon Bubba Keg. I bought it years ago at a yard sale for 50¢. It keeps ice all day long and even overnight. It was a good investment as a new one will run about $30.

Jody asked me to come over on Saturday and help him can peppers. He had grown all of them in his raised bed gardens. He had canned with his parents and grandparents when he was young, but they've all passed away since then. 
This was his first time canning since then and he wanted someone there to make sure he was doing it right. He does so much for us that I was more than happy to help him. In the end we had twelve half pints of peppers. 
The Mennonite community here has boxes of produce for sale at this time of year for $7.00 for canning. Jody said we should get some green beans and can them and split them up for our families. I thought this was a great idea.

Cool Gear really came through with their replacement for me. They sent me three containers and one of those was an expandable Bento box, which was very nice of them. 

We both received a free sample from the Freeosk at Walmart this week. This was a free sample of the Smarty Pants Women's vitamins. 

Weight Watchers magazine is no longer going to be published, so my subscription was switched over to Eating Well magazine, which came in the mail yesterday. 
There are a lot of good looking recipes in there that I'm going to have to try out. My original WW magazine subscription was free, so this one was as well. 

Last week I sold a cookbook that I bought at a yard sale for 15¢ for $5.00 on eBay. I also sold three other items on there this week. The money from these sales will help supplement my income this month. 

If you're interested in what I did in my frugal kitchen last week, be sure to read that blog post here. 

Thanks to my wonderful readers, this week I was able to cash out on Microsoft Rewards for two $5 Amazon gift cards making my balance $20 now. 

If you're interested in signing up for the program please follow my link here: 
Microsoft Rewards

My daughter went to town on Wednesday and scored a good deal on  Coca-Cola 2 liters. 

Publix has them on sale for buy two, get two free.  They also have a coupon in their coupon flyer for $2.00 off two certain coke products.
She bought me my favorite lemonade and stocked up on some other flavors that aren't pictured here like Mello Yellow and Pineapple, Orange, and Strawberry Fanta. 

My daughter worked out a deal through Influenster and earned a $15 shopping spree for Big Lots. One of the things she bought me were these dryer balls, so we will be trying these out this week. 

Panera Bread sent me an email for a free pastry this week, so I picked out this chocolate croissant. 

Toy Story 4 is ending in theaters here this week. We've seen all the Toy Story movies at the theater and wanted to see this one there as well. We saw it on Tuesday since it's $5 night and since we are reward members that comes with a free small bag of popcorn. 

It was a very busy week getting back into a routine and tiring at the end of the day, so I slept well. I hope you all have had a good week as well. 
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~ My Linktree

Good Deal Alert on Suave Deodorant at Publix

There is a good deal going on right now at Publix on Suave deodorant. 
Publix has the Suave deodorant on sale for buy one get one free. 
The price of the deodorant is $1.99, which makes them approximately $1.00 each. 
Publix also has a coupon in their purple sale flyer for $1.00 off when you buy two of the deodorants.
Y0u can get the purple sale flyer as soon as you walk into the store alongside their sale flyers. 
You can use each coupon up to four times, which means you can buy eight of the deodorants. 
They will end up costing you approximately 50¢ each, which is a great deal. 
The sale is going on through Tuesday if you're interested. 
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Food this Week at the Frugal Workshop

Last Saturday we ran a few errands stopping first at Publix for their buy one get one free deals. We bought Ritz crackers, Velveeta mac and cheese, smoked sausage, and Pillsbury pie crusts, which were all B1G1Free. 
I'll combine the pie crusts with the sausage, also bought last week, to make Sausage Quiche for dinner one night soon. I can also make Chicken pot pie, which is one of my daughter's favorite dinners. 
We also bought a sirloin tip roast, which was on sale for $3.99 a pound. I'll use it to make our traditional Italian Beef for Christmas Eve. I already have the Italian seasoning, beef broth, and rolls needed for this dish. 
On Monday I made BLTs for dinner, which were so refreshing and a nice change of pace.

Tuesday I worked half a day, and now school is on Christmas break until after the new year. 
I filled up my gas tank on Thursday and plan to stay home more than usual the next two weeks, which will save me money on gas.
Now I can spend my days getting things ready for Christmas. I sure am enjoying being at home all day. 
We ran errands again on Wednesday and I picked up the last few items I needed for Christmas dinner. I also found two packages of ground beef on yellow sticker.    We went to Target and found half gallons of half and half for $2.26. 

Thursday I made Broccoli & Cheese soup in the crockpot. It's been raining off and on here for a few days, so it was good and filling. We also had this for lunch on Friday. 

I used my immersion blender and blended it together when it was done. 

On Thursday I also pulled out my GE Roaster and made Taco Meat in it for multiple meals this week leading up to Christmas. 
This will save time to not have to cook a new meal each evening, so that I can concentrate on Christmas things. As usual I cut up a potato to  s-t-r-e-t-c-h the taco meat. 

On Friday I made a cheese ball, banana pudding, a spice cake, and carrot raisin salad. 
My Christmas cactus has so many more buds this year versus last year. 

I listed three things for sale on Ebay today. One of the items was BoxTops for Education. If you sell these, don't do what I did. I let mine go too long before I checked them and had some expire on me. 
I hope you all have had a good week so far.  :)
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Another Publix Deal

Here is another video (37 seconds) on a coupon deal my daughter Bailey did at Publix this week. 
She was able to pick up two Palermo's frozen pizzas, one bottle of Ken's Steak House dressing, four Country Crock spreads, and eight boxes of Lipton tea for $2.81, which made each item 19¢ each after sales, coupons, and rebates. 

She explains how she did the deal in her video and I hope you enjoy and learn from it, if you are interested. She is a whiz at couponing and saves our household a great deal of money. 
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Frugal Friday

This was our deal of the week. We found gallon jugs of milk on August 1st for $1.39 at Kroger and the sell by date was August 12th. I was shocked! I bought three gallons and will put two of them in the freezer.

We bought four boxes of Lipton tea bags 100 count for $1.11 each. Publix sells them for $4.11, but had them on sale for buy one get one free and had a coupon for $1.00 off in their sales flyer. So, we were able to buy them for $1.11 each, which is a great deal for 100 name brand tea bags.  

Kroger had Kool-Aid & Country Time lemonade on sale this week for $1.00 each and we had six coupons for 55¢ off one, so we paid 45¢ for each of these. I figured they were a good deal since the sugar was already included. 

Some things I've done in my frugal kitchen today include...

I made cole slaw dressing this week to use with the cole slaw I bought on mark down at Kroger on Saturday. 
I used up three bananas that were on the verge of spoiling to make Banana Pancakes so as not to waste them.
I made a chocolate cake with homemade peanut butter frosting. 
And finally we are staying home today, so no money spent outside our home. 
How have you been saving money this week?
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Awesome Publix Haul

My daughter does such a great job with coupons and I just have to brag on her. While I was out and about yesterday running errands with Mom, she went to Publix and secured this great coupon deal. 

-Eight jars of Hellmann's Mayo that were BOGO $4.99.

-Eight French's mustards, four regular, two spicy, and two sweet. These were BOGO $1.63.

-Eight Vlasic Pickle Relishes that were regularly priced $1.39.

-Two Daisy Sour Creams that were BOGO 2.49.

-And, four DulcoGases that were on sale $2.99.

She used...

-Eight Publix store coupons that were $3 off a Hellmann's Mayo, a Vlasic Pickles, and a French's Mustard.

-Two $2 off $6 worth of Hellmann's coupons.

-Four $0.50 off French's Mustard coupons. (doubled)

-Two $0.50 off French's Spicy Mustard coupons. (doubled)

-Two $0.50 off French's Sweet Mustard coupons.  (doubled)

-Four $1 off two Vlasic Product coupons.

-Four $3 off any DulcoGas coupons.

-And, two $0.45 off Daisy Sour Cream coupons. (doubled)

Total Retail Value: $97.14
Total OOP: $3.45

Everything in this haul ended up being $0.12 each!

She achieved a savings of 96%!

Here is the deal she used at Couponaholic.com to secure this deal:  

Publix: AWESOME Hellmann’s Mayo, Vlasic Relish and French’s Mustard MONEYMAKERS

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

My Frugal Week

Thanks to a sale at Walgreen's and several valuable coupons, we are now stocked up on 15 bottles of Purex laundry detergent with Clorox. 

My daughter did this deal for us and combined coupons from Coupons.com, which also reset, along with Walgreen's reward points. She used $10 worth of her Walgreen's reward points, so the majority of the laundry detergent was free to us. 

The sale is going on through Sunday. 

There are several sales going on this week, which I hope to take advantage of, which include:

Aldi
Eggs 69¢ (limit 4)
Red Onions 99¢ (2 lb. bag)

Publix
Raisin Bran B1G1F + doubled coupon - $1.45 box

Piggly Wiggly
Ground Beef $1.99/lb. (wow!)

Kroger
Milk - 1/2 gallon - $1.00

Any good deals going on where you live?

Thank you for reading,
Belinda ~ Living within my means in Southern Tennessee ~
Earn with Swagbucks

The Weekend Report

I worked two days last week and now we are off for Christmas break for eighteen (18) days. I've already gotten several things done from my to do list and also have several more things I want to accomplish on this break. One of those being a pile of clothing that my daughter has requested I repair. 

Today I finished my Christmas shopping. I have another blog post detailing our Christmas this year, which I will be posting later this week. 

I started the week thinking that we needed bread. By the end of the week we were gifted with multiple bread items and had this to be thankful for...several loaves of bread, hamburger and hotdog buns. 

Since we had hotdog buns, dinner tonight was a recipe for Butter Dogs from The Kneady Homesteader. They were fantastic too! Not the healthiest of dinners, so we won't be having them very often, but everyone really liked them. 

I stopped in at CVS one day this week because I had a coupon for a free full size CVS brand body wash for liking their Minute Clinic on Facebook.  Turns out they were having a sale on the bodywash. If you spent $10 on body wash you earned a $3 extra care bucks. I already had a $10 extra care bucks from CVS, so we didn't have to pay anything out of pocket for these...

I also stopped in at Publix this week to buy a gift card and some Scrubbing Bubbles cleaning spray and Truvia. Both of these were money makers for me at Publix this week, so no cash out of pocket for these items either.  

Gas is down to $1.89 a gallon here, so I was able to fill my car up for only $21, which I am loving! We ran our usual errands yesterday including taking the garbage and recycling off and are planning on spending as much time at home as possible these next two weeks. 

How is your weekend shaping up?

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

The Wait is Over...

We have a new dryer!

We tried to buy the dryer I mentioned from Home Depot, but they wouldn't deliver, so we ended up buying a dryer from Lowe's yesterday for $299 and they delivered it this morning. It is a little bit bigger than our other dryer was and it looks great. We are just thrilled to be back in business with the laundry and have plans to get caught up on it this weekend. 

Today is my daughter's day to volunteer at the library, so we left the house early, took the garbage with us and dropped it off along the way and I made stops at Bi-Lo, Publix, Dollar Tree, and United Grocery Outlet. 

At Bi-Lo, they had Stayfree pads on sale, priced at 2 for $6.00, a real bargain since I normally pay $4.97 for them at Walmart.  Lucky me, I also had three $1.00 off coupons, so I paid $2.00 each for them. What a bargain! I now have 10 of these in my stash, which is about a ten month supply for me. 

We picked up seven bottles of Pom juice for free at Bi-Lo too. They had them on sale priced at $1.00 each and we had seven 50¢ off coupons, which doubled, so all of these were free.  

I also picked up this 12 pack of Fanta strawberry drinks for free using the coupon above I received for free from My Coke Rewards. 

At Publix, they had Mueller's pasta on sale for buy one get one free, which was not a good deal without coupons, but I had two 75¢ off coupons, so I picked up two packages of spaghetti for 25¢ each! Another good bargain today.  

I also stopped in at the Dollar Tree to buy a loaf of Nature's Own bread and a loaf of Wonder bread and since I had a 55¢ off coupon for both, these were only 45¢ each.

At United Grocery Outlet, they had a Saturday only special. Green Beans for 39¢ a can and Mandarin Oranges for 40¢ a can. I picked up 20 cans of Green Beans and 20 cans of Mandarin Oranges, all for $15.80 plus tax. Forty cans of food for $15.80 was a great bargain and is a good example of how the Pantry Principle works. :)

Free this Week 

Three samples of Juicy Fruit.

A very nice five pack sample of Nestle Quick. 

I certainly didn't spend a lot today, unless you count the dryer, but I came home with a lot of food for the money I spent. $17.19 for 20 cans of mandarin oranges, 20 cans of green beans, 2 loaves of bread, 7 bottles of Pom juice, one 12 pack of pop, and 2 boxes of spaghetti. The best part is we had fun in the process. 

How was your Saturday?

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