Saving Strong!

Well as many of my friends know I love to save money. And I love to share with people in learning how to save money. I do that in large part by shopping the sales and clipping my coupons. I had to apologize to Rennie on Friday night, because it had taken me so incredibly long to get my stuff together for my first real grocery trip in a month. Yes, when I went on my blogging hiatus, that was not the only thing that got put on the backburner. Fortunately, my cupboards were well stocked and we could coast through that month without too much trouble. This is also the reason that I really needed to be organized and get as much as possible to restock (we were completely out of cereal)...but back to the story at hand, my time spent in preparation was not in vain.

I walked out of Kroger with all of this:

And it only cost me $41.24!!!

Here's what I got:

5 Cocoa puffs
3 Total Cereal
2 Trix
3 Hellman's Light Mayo
2 Strabucks Frappuccino (total splurge but still cheaper than going to Starbucks)
2 Nature Valley Trail Mix Bars
2 Fiber One Cereal Bars
1 Lipton Tea
2 Breyers Ice Cream (such a small package these days, it's a shame)
1 Activia 4 pack
2 Mountain 2l
1 Pepsi 2l
1 Nature Valley Granola Snack Mix
2 Reynolds Baking Cups
1 Clabber Girl Baking Powder
1 loaf of multigrain bread
2 loaves sesame seed italian bread
1 demi loaf
1 4ct sesame seed bagels
1 Uncle Ben's Ready Rice (FREE)
2 Sargento String Cheese
2 6ct Klondike Bars
1 Smithfiels Bacon (FREE)

Total before sales & coupons was $135.96 for 70% savings. I was so excited and that doesn't even take into account the regular price on all that bread since it was marked down. Usually I bake my own sandwich bread, but I picked up a bunch of markdown breads since I needed italian bread for Sunday dinner. Whatever I don't use, I'll just chop up to throw in the freezer for stuffing mix.

I owe all of the awesome savings to these sources: Kroger Mega Sale, Sunday newspaper insert coupons, internet printable coupons, shortcuts.com, cellfire.com, Kroger direct mail coupons, hotcouponworld.com and Rennie (he would run to the other end of the store for me when I forgot something).

I'd love to hear what you were able to score. I'm also glad to help you learn to maximize your savings too, so let me know what you need help with and I'll do my best.

Hiatus from blogging...

Well, I was off to a good start with this blogging endeavor and then I had to put a lot of things on hold and get down to business on the 5th Annual White Elephant Gala. Whew! It has been such a busy month, but all the efforts paid off. Virginia Chapter ASID was able to bring in over $12,000 through the event. Half of that goes to the Richmond Metropolitan Habitat for Humanity. I am so proud of the crew that we had working to pull this together. What an incredible team! I hope to add some pics from the event, when I can get my hands on them.

Just in case you wondering what I picked up this year at the auction. I won a gift certificate to Keep Good Company (I'll show you what I got later once I get things up in the house), a four piece cordless tool set for my man (maybe he'll let me use it on occasion) and check out my new chair.

The chest you see in the background is from the 3rd Annual White Elephant when I got hooked on this event.