I need to remind EVERYONE to call your representatives and ask them to vote NO on HR875. It should come up for a vote THIS WEEK!

We had a relaxing weekend. It was blessed. I was intrigued when I heard a friend of mine on Facebook, reference that she was making her own deoderant. The more I research and read about Aluminum and the links to it and breast cancer , I set out on a quest. There are several recipes. One was fairly elaborate, using cocoa butter, shea butter, etc. Then I stumbled upon, this recipe from Tammy. It is ALL natural and it uses all the ingredients I have here (it was also cheap to make! MUCH MUCH cheaper than buying it at the store!). There are only 3 ingredients: Cornstarch, baking soda and coconut oil! I have been using it for a few days now, and I will probably never go back! Only thing I will probably change is to add a TINY bit of essential oil to it, but that is it. I put it in a pint jar and WALLA!



My parents are in a Christian camping club through Good Sams. The boys go with their business, Leia's Kitchen and take their homemade dog treats, which were a HUGE hit last year. I was there and was asked to come back. I took my homemade bread, granola and other goodies. Well it is this next week. WE spent all of last week making dog biscuits. I started making my granola on Saturday and made 10 casserole dishes of it.

We had church yesterday and went to Aldi's afterwards. We had a great meal here at home and a good day. I made Neiman Marcus cookies and ground a ton of flour and put it in the freezer in preparation for today and tomorrow.




Today has been crazy with schooling and bread baking. Joshua's teacher called and she is having heart issues so she cancelled today, which was probably best for me. That way I don't have to leave. We started sprouting and planting our seeds for our garden (Yipee!). Tomorrow I will continue to bake bread, but somehow we will have to try to figure out how to fit in 3 dentist appts and 1 piano. Dunno how that will be done, ugh! Weds we will have an orthodontist appt, plus school, finishing baking, loading the car and driving to the show. Fun, fun!

On one of my Yahoo lists (homeschooling), there is a recent discussion of Frugality. I decided that I would condense all the links here for everyone to use as a reference.

Being Frugal: How to survive a recession
Hillbilly Housewife
Budget 101
Frugal Abundance
Money Saving Mom
Living on a Dime
Hot Coupon World
Coupon Mom
Tightwad
Frugal Living
Frugal Mom
Dollar Stretcher
Just Frugal
Frugal Corner
Frugal Families
All Things Frugal

Books that are tremendously helpful:

Debt Free Living by Burkett
Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey
Frugal Families and Miserly Moms
Tightwad Gazette (there are three of them)
Any books by Mary Hunt

What are some of your favorite resources or links?

I posted a few days ago about my trip to Walgreens and CVS. Doing some research I decided that I needed to go back to Walgreens and then to Target! Here is what I did:

WALGREENS TRIP 12/20/07
3 Nice & Easy color glaze priced $8.99/clearanced $3.59 (as I mentioned in THIS post if you spend $20 in P& G products you get $10 in RR. This is included in the sale and I got credit of $26.97 (full price) instead of $10.77 (sale price))
4 Mom's best oatmeal normally priced $1, sale .69
1 Degree Deoderant (dh needed it and had no coupon!) price $3.99
1 Celestial candy cane tea (wanted it for me) price $3.99

Total $15.76
Minus manf coupons for Nice & Easy $2 off EACH box for a total of $6
Minus $1/1 Mom's best oatmeal I had 4 of these. You can get the coupon HERE. So I made $1.24 on this deal.
My total is now $10.52 with the male cashier giggling and saying "Wow they are paying you to buy this stuff!)

THEN I hand him $10 in RR from THIS shopping trip. With the Cashier saying "MORE coupons??" As he giggled, he said "Your total is .52!! As he was finishing the transaction, he said, "I am NOT going to even tell you what just printed AGAIN!! I said, "Yep I know. You are about to give me $10 MORE back in RR! He laughed and said, "That is UNBELIEVABLE!" The cosmetics lady, said I can believe it and once you become a parent you will believe it.

NOW onto Target! My only regret is that we don't have a Super Target. There I bought 9 pkgs of travel Huggies Wipes and 2 large containers of Huggies Wipes. I do not have anybabies anymore, but I do keep wipes on hand. I also put the travel wipes in my Handbags that I make for my diaper bags. The larger wipes I am putting with my deal at CVS on diapers for baby shower gifts (I have 4 friends having babies)!!

My total would have been $13.51 (w/o tax), but I used:
2 $3/2 coupon from HERE for the 9 travel sizes (*WARNING* The 2 Travel Sizes are .97 and less than the $3 (and my Target would NOT adjust!), so I actually bought 3 instead of 2 to bring the total to $3 so I could use the coupons, but still got them for free. It is just that Target will NOT allow the overage and I had issues, I thought I would save the hassle for you!)
I then used 2 .75 manf coupons on the larger containers, plus a store $3/2 to make the bigger ones .28 for both!!

Hope this helps you! I would love to hear comments or questions from you! Take care!

My Walgreens/CVS trips yesterday!

Well after finding out that Walgreens had a one day coupon for $5 off of $20, I decided to make a list and go. Another thing I realized is that Walgreens is caving to the pressure of CVS's tacktics and are mimicking their incentives to get shoppers in the store. They are now offering Register rewards, which are the same as the CVS bucks but you don't have to register for their shoppers card. Unlike CVS, your totals are NOT accumulative. You need to purchase the minimum in ONE shopping order!

I plotted and planned my trip and here is what I did:

Post cereals are 5/$10. Since I had a $1/2 coupon I bought 6. I got a register reward for $3. So I bought 6 boxes for $6.

I found out about many of my deals and sales through Slick Deals. If you go into the search box and type in CVS or Walgreens, you can pull up the deals listed in Hot Deals section.

There is a Procter and Gamble sale right now if you buy $20 worth you get $10 back in RR. Well there is a selection of LARGE shampoos that are normally $6.99. Some reports are that there are coupons on these products but I didn't see any! If you carefully check with these labels:

Herbal Essence (LARGE size) shampoo and conditioners
Nice Easy Root Touch ups
Nice Easy Color glaze
Pantene (LARGE size) shampoo and conditioners
Nice Easy gray solution
Infusium shampoo and conditioners
Head & Shoulders (LARGE size)

There are MANY of them on clearance. I saw where there were some for $1.79 but they were gone. I picked up 3 large bottles of Infusium shampoo that was marked down from $3.59 from $6.99. IF I would have paid full price it would have been over the $20 and that is what the register read. YOU GET CREDIT FOR THE REGULAR PRICE AND NOT THE SALE PRICE. So I paid about $11 for 3 bottles of shampoo and got $10 back in RR. BTW this deal lasts until 12/29.

Coke products are $4/11. Not a great deal but they are offering $3 off in RR, which is $4/9.

I got $17 back in RR. I also had a coupon with me for $10 off on the Entertainment book. I was questioning whether or not to get it. My dh said it was a good deal and I made it a better deal. It was $25. I used the $10 off to knock it down to $15. I used $14 in RR and paid OOP $1.66!!!! THAT is a good deal and worth it's weight in gold just in the Kroger coupons!!!!!

**WARNING** I had seen on slickdeals that people were taking their RR and putting them on American Express gift cards to use elsewhere. Tried it!! Register BOOTED me out and didn't work! Thought I would save the hassle factor for ya!

BTW, dh was with me during this time. He was laughing as we were leaving Walgreens. I asked him why. He said, I wonder first of all how many shampoo bottles you have, lol. Then he said, I wonder how long it will take these stores to realize that people like you are playing this game and learning how to buy things for nothing! I told him there were MANY others like me, RIGHT Friends, lol!?

Now onto CVS:

They had a Buy $20 worth of Gilette products and get $10 in EB's. WARNING: I tried to use a $1 coupon on a $1.79 container of Gillete shaving foam. It was considered a TRIAL size and didn't give me credit!

Here is how that transaction went down:
Bought 2 Gillette Fusion Razors at 9.99 each
bought 1 can Gillete foam $3.79 (due to the refund she gave me credit for an extra $1 coupon so I got $2 off of the foam)

used $5 off of $15 coupon
used $2 off of $10 coupon
used $9 (actually got credit for $10) manf coupons

Total oop $3 and got $10 eb's back

Bought Shick Quattro mens razor at 7.99 minus $4 manf coupon got $4 back in EB's FREE
Bought Shick disposable razors at 5.99 used $1 off of 1 coupon and got $3 back in EB's paid 1.99

They also had a soda deal (kids and dh loves it and we will go on detox after Christmas, lol) that if you bought 4 cases of Pepsi you got a free 12 pk of Pepsi max (dh's favorite!). We bought 5 cases of pepsi (got one free) and 2 bags of candy (for a reason) and total was $13.24. Used $13 in EB's and paid OOP .24!!!!!!

I still have $10 left in RR from Walgreens and $10 in Eb's with a $5 off of $20 purchase at CVS. Debating on what to use them on......hmmmm!!!!!

My next adventure! BTW if you search on Slick deals under CVS you can get the scans for next weeks sale. Looks pretty good too, although some of it is a 3 day sale! Good luck and be inspired!

My Frugal Friday tip is simple: Homeschooling for free and using the internet. You know when the internet first came out there wasn't alot to offer. Now there is EVERYTHING for homeschooling. I have quite a few friends that are homeschooling for Free using the resources solely that they found online!!!! Well to help aid in this department, a while ago I established Homeschooling For Free. I continue to update it DAILY and have many more additions to make. It is a VERY exhaustive, comprehensive list. If you do go there and use it, I ask you to do me a favor:
1. Leave a comment. I like to see who has been and what their comments are. Out of respect for my time and effort, I ask that you leave a comment.
2. Link my blog on your blog! What a wonderful way to show this resource to your friends and family!
3. Spread the Word! There is literally something for everyone! My mom, who works in a corporate office uses it...Why? Because she teaches children's church and uses some of that!

For more frugal ideas, visit Crystal over at Biblical Womanhood Online.

Today's Frugal Friday is my tip for Spraying your pans. The aeresols in the store have harmful chemicals and alcohol in them,are diluted and expensive at best. My solution to this is the MISTO:
With this, you just pour in your Olive oil, pump and spray! No additives or chemicals! It not only is all natural but it saves you money. I bought mine at Bed Bath and beyond for 9.99 and with a 20% off coupon that comes all the time, it will cost about 7.99. The savings are TERRIFIC! (I buy my olive oil at Sam's, because I only use it to cook with)

For more Frugal Friday tips, check out Crystal at Biblical Womanhood.

My CVS (and Grocery Shopping) Trip yesterday

I pretty much consistently save ATLEAST (minimum) of 50% or more on my groceries. I use sites likes Coupon Mom and The Grocery Game to be able to "stack" coupons, be on sale and even double my savings on top of that. Well, while watching Money Saving Mom I was intrigued about the savings that can be had at CVS. I knew there wasn't one on our exit, so my FIRST chore was to even see where the nearest one was, to see if it was even feasible. I found out that amongst our 4 exits for our town, the CVS was located 2 exits down from us. It is a fairly new store. SO, my plan was to really start the savings. Before I get to the "nitty gritty" it didn't take me that long. The thing that took me a little time, was figuring out a "strategy" of what to buy when and buy things in 1-3 products at a time to be able to use my Extra Bucks. You can see my picture at the top.

**Drum Roll Please**

My total at CVS was $219.90 (before ANY savings)
My total OOP (Out of Pocket) was $36.37

What did I get for all of that. Now, I will go into detail. The one thing I did before I left the house, was to write out which products I would divide up into separate transactions (1-3) to be able to turn around and use my Extra bucks. Basically they give you money in a paper receipt format and you can use it on a separate transaction, so that is why you divide it. First of all, I signed up my card and logged in online, and they sent me a certificate for $4 off of $20 purchase. BTW, my store said, as long as I use it in separate transactions and trips, I can use as many as I want, so I saved it in my email. Secondly, I used $2 off of $10 purchase on each of my transactions. Thirdly, there is also a sale on some of their cold and flu remedies with bucks, so I stacked another coupon like $2 off of $10 Flu/Cold Coupon HERE which gives you $2 off of $10 for colds and flu meds. Now my CVS told me as long as the certificates have different numbers on them, you can use more than one in a transaction. I also noticed that your total needs to be more than your ECB bucks. IF you need more clarification or details on things, you can head over to Money Saving Mom's post on CVS 101.

Also, on another site that I love, I found out that you can get a free glucose monitor (my dad is diabetic). On that site it said that you get $20 in ECB bucks, BUT THAT IS NOT TRUE. But what I DID find out, is that the Breeze 2 is regularly $59.99 and was on sale for 14.99. In the pharmacy is a diabetes magazine for $50 OFF of a the Breeze 2 or Contour. (They adjusted the coupon for the price of the monitor). Now to sweeten the deal, there was a sticker on there, that YOU GET A REBATE. It says up to $40, but I have been doing rebates for a while, and I know they are going to give me the price that I paid ($14.99 before coupon). So basically I will make $14.99 on this deal

If you click on THIS BLOG, you will figure out how to get your Christmas pictures (or any) for FREE. I was only able to figure out how to do 60 on each card(I have two cards), so I got 120 pictures, FOR FREE. I just uploaded my pictures online to their photo center, and sent it to them. I picked them up when I arrived. I was very pleased with the quality and I saved $22.80!!! .

Here is my list of what I got:
120 4x6 Christmas pictures (free)
Glucose monitor (reg 59.99 and I will MAKE $14.99)
2 pkgs of Jumbo size 1 Pampers (I have two friends having babies soon! These are for gifts)
1 pkg jumbo (dbl pkt) Huggies Wipes
2 bottles of Oasis Mouthwash (free after ECB bucks)
2 Gillette Fusion razors (FREE after ECB bucks)
6 cases Pepsi (I don't drink it but dh does. After coupons and ECB's I paid $1.08/case of 12)
2 boxes of Garnier hair color
2 tubes of Cover Girl Lipstick (It was already b1g1 and I had a b1g1 manf cpn so they were BOTH FREE)
2 double pkgs of Charmin bath tissue
2 boxes of Theraflu strips
5 pkgs of cough drops
1 box of children's cough expectorant

That is not all my friends, after looking at the weekly sales for this week, I decided to go to Publix. Now other than eggs, the rest I did with using The Grocery Game. My total at Publix (we have double coupons BTW) was $51.83. My total OOP (out of pocket) was $15.63. Now here is a list of my items:
2 1/2 doz. eggs (non coupon item)
2 LARGE Publix pizzas (got them for .02)
3 boxes of Totino's pizza rolls (on sale for 50% off, had a .40 cpn that doubled. Paid .20 each box)
1 bottle of high end shampoo and conditioner (paid $1 for shampoo and $0 for the conditioner, it was FREE)
2 revlon nail clippers (they were on sale b1g1. Reg price $1.49, which is about .75 each. Had 2 Manf cpns for $1 off each one, which I MADE .50. Make sure you know that you can use 2 $ off on b1g1)

6 boxes of Uncle Ben's Wild Rice (it was on b1g1 and I had a manf b2g1f)
4 bags of Marie C. Croutons (look out in those Publix coupon fliers! These were.60/bag)

I am not done. I hope to go to Kroger later this week. It depends. I know CVS is great for HBA, but I also like to save at the grocery store too!

Hope this helps some of you and encourages you. I would love to her comments or questions! Don't forget our 30 Days of Joy Box going on right now. I will post on that one again in a minute.

Southern Belle

Make sure you don't miss out on my new updated links on all subjects and recently Christmas and Thanksgiving! You can get to my blog by clicking HERE Make sure you bookmark it! I am uploading things/links ALL the time!

Now is for another time where we talk about going to the grocery store. Before I forget, one of my recent blogs that I love is Money Saving Mom. I used her in combination with The Grocery Game and Coupon Mom. The Money Saving Momis helpful and insightful in her posts. One of the things that I didn't know and learned is that P&G will load your Kroger card with coupons. You pick the ones you will use and transfer it to your card. That is it! It is important to remember that sales run in cycles (4-6 wks) and it is best to stock up during that time. That is just what I did. Also remember that there are TWO times of year to get really good deals on turkeys and hams. One is Thanksgiving and the other is Easter. We plan on getting three turkeys and freezing them, cooking them one at a time. I thought I would throw a reminder out there. Both Kroger AND Publix doubles coupons up to .50! Some non-perishables, we go to Aldi's or check and see if you have a Save a Lot near you. If it is within 20-30 miles or so, it is SO worth it!

Here is my run down:

Kroger

TOTAL $165.41
Coupons/savings: 65.06
Final total $100.35

Walgreens

Total $26.95
coupons and savings $24.46
Final total $2.49

**A little note here. I WOULD have had THEM pay ME money, but I am making Thanksgiving blessing mix (check blog) and they had Hershey's kisses 75% off from Halloween in fall colors. The $2.49 is for 4 bags of Kisses! The things to remember at Walgreens, is not only do they have a monthly rebate program, but they will alot of times run specials with store coupons and allow manf. coupons on top of that. So this week they had their PRO line from Vive on sale (shampoo and conditioner) for buy one get one free. Now I have noticed a trend. ALOT (majority) of stores will split the cost in 1/2 for buy 1 products. Walgreens does one at full price (4.99) and the other one free. I had manf. coupons for buy one get one free, so I got 2 bottles of shampoo and 2 bottles of conditioner, FREE. They also had the Purell santizer foam for $3.49-store coupon (in book at store) for $2.50 off, then I added in my manf. coupon for $1.50 off, which means product was FREE!

Publix

Total: $58.92
minus coupons/savings $36.24
Final total $24.02

On Publix, they had Kelloggs cereals for B1G1, which made them $1.84 each (they split it in 1/2). I had $1 coupons off of EACH box (I use 2), which made my total for each box, .84!!!!!! With 3 boys and in our house, I stocked up. I don't just buy a couple. With a sale like that, I got as much as I had coupons for (because if you run out, you will be back in the store, probably spending $ you don't have or you will go over budget).

Now, MILK prices are driving me NUTS! $3.50 is NOT a sale! NOT! $5.69 for MAYFIELD's? You kidding me? Milk has been a budget buster-So I went on a search for not only REAL powdered milk but one hopefully without any hormones, antibiotics, etc. We found Grandma's Country. We bought the 25lb pail. It has NO additives, anything and the cows are all natural too. I will get approx 46 gallons of milk from my pail at a cost of $1.73/per/gallon! Now friends, IF I were to pay the 3.50 SALE price or even reg. price at 3.99 (the prices I am talking about, 3.50-3.99 is from Kroger): (Walmart is 4.29/gallon?), my savings is a bracket of 81.05-103.59 NOT including tax! That is JUST on milk! It took about 10 days for us to get our milk but it is SO worth it in the long run! When I did our budget for last month, some of our overages are from Walmart (which we have cut dramatically, to almost nothing) and late night runs for milk (which end up usually being more than JUST milk, lol)!

Hope this helps you. God Bless
Southern Belle (Beth)

MORE BANG FOR YOUR BUCK!

Well, I have always tried to be frugal and a good steward of our money and have pretty much tries to get the best sales and/or prices. It wasn't until we moved to GA and I was excited because of DOUBLE coupons, I have been doing things a little different. I have gone to ALDI's and I love it, but I also love couponning and wanted to do it, but obviously my stacks of coupons were piling up and the daunting taks of going through them was well, sometimes overwhelming. The FIRST thing I did, was to grab a box that allows for hanging folders in it. I grabbed some left over hanging folders, and took address labels and put GENERAL categories on them (like Dairy, Breakfast, Frozen, etc) I then filed the coupons under their genreal category. Also I have folders for the ads of the main stores and then a folder for coupons for those stores. I have been using Coupon Mom and The Grocery Game. The difference is that Coupon mom is Free and helps remind you to take extras to help feed the hungry. The Grocery Game, turns it into a game and helps you realize that there are cycles in sales and when they are at their lowest or free, to stockpile and build your own Grocery Store in your own home. The Grocery Game does cost but it is minimal and you can try it for the first 4 weeks for $1. This week, I was determined to get a handle on things and be a better organizer of my coupons to cut down on my time. This last week, I used both of these and planned my trips.

Here are my totals:

Kroger $119.59 MINUS 60.31 in coupons, store specials and doubled coupons, equals 61.85 after tax, which is a 50% savings.

Walgreens $62.17 MINUS $46.09 in coupons, store coupons and specials, and my total after tax was $16.08 (2.36 was tax).

Publix $45.75 MINUS $32.48 in coupons, double savings and sales, and my total after tax $13.27.

My total shopping trip totals are here:

Total amount in groceries is $228.04

Total amount in savings with stacking, coupons, doubles, sales: $138.88

My total paid between the three is $91.20



While that is all great and I am EXCITED that I saved so much money, the thing that excited me the most, was how much product I got FREE! Here is what sales and coupons will get you:

1 24 ct. Excederin

1 3 oz pkg Sunkist Tuna

13 cans of Purina One dog food

14 boxes of Crest Toothpaste

2 boxes of Quaker Oatmeal granola bars

Not only that but the toothpaste has an extra tube of travel toothpaste and floss which will be put in bags for the homeless this year that we make up. It is worth it to do this and the savings are tremendous!