Tuesday's Table

Sorry I'm so late in posting this week, and sorry the photo is so dark. I guess daylight really makes a difference for my little camera. I don't know why I thought Meijer would be quiet at 8 at night, cause it was hopping tonight. I got free Kool Aid singles packets (Meijer Mealbox coupon), and the Country Time was .33 each after the $2 off catalina at checkout. The lunch meat was $1.50 a pack and the Cream Cheese was .75 each. I ran into a friend at check out and we were talking about my order, Savings Angel, and if we were only eating Pringles this week. They are one of The Profs favorites. She was wondering if I save the $20 month expense of Savings Angel. Well, it is the beginning of Sept and I spent $35.99 and saved $43.07. So I would say that paid my SA expense tonight.



I'm already planning another trip this weekend though. I saw posted somewhere that their Danimals were $2 each again with $1 coupons in last weekends papers and $1 Meijer Mealbox coupons, they will be free. They were out of the $1 A-1 Marinades that were free with coupon, but had plenty of the A-1 steak sauce that were free with Meijer Mealbox coupon. And on the middle aisle where they stock the sales, there was a coupon for $1 off beef if you bought either kind of A-1. So I picked up 3 coupons, since I know I will buy that many with my other coupons when they are restocked. Should make for a good deal with whatever beef is on sale.

Free Panties at Victoria Secrets

To celebrate having 2 Million Fans Victoria Secrets has a coupon for 2 free pair of VS Undies Panties good only tomorrow September 1st. Become a fan on Facebook over HERE. Then go and look under the Secrets Tab to print out your coupon. And to find out how to get 2 other coupons to use there click on over HERE. I will be heading over with my $10 off because it is the month of my birthday too : ) Thanks Hip 2 Save.

How Cool is This?

Thanks to Tiffany I saw this video on how to open those plastic clam shell casing on almost anything you get at the store these days. Click on over here to view it on You Tube. We will all need this come Christmas. Who knew?

Well, here are some things I'm buying at Meijer this week. Actually that's not entirely true, I'm still stocked up on A-1 from the last time it was free. Maybe I'll see what their Marinades taste like. If you find a great deal at Meijer, leave me a comment and let me know.

$2.50 A1 Steak Sauce, 10 oz or Marinades
-$2.00/1 A1 Sauce or Marinade coupon (from 8-16 SS), use 2
$1.00/2 Meijer Mealbox printable coupon

$1.67 Keebler Special K Crackers, 8 oz
-$1.00/2 Meijer Mealbox printable coupon
-$1.00/1 Keebler Special K Crackers printable coupon (may disappear after 8-31!), use 2

$0.99 Aunt Millie's Butter Top Bread (white or wheat) or Honey Hot Dog or Burger Buns
-$0.35/1 coupon (from 5-10 or 8-16 RP)

$1.00 Kool-Aid or Country Time Drink Mix, sweetened, in canisters
*Buy 3 or more in one transaction, get a $2.00 checkout coupon good on your next order.*

$1.25 Kraft Philadelphia Cream Cheese, 8 oz brick
-$1.00/2 coupon (from 8-9 RP)

There are many more match ups over at Macomb Money Saver

How It all Went

The reason I even started this whole thing is because I wanted to use up the rest of the zucchini from the neighbors. We really love our neighbors, the Snowbirds. They area young retired couple whose nest is empty, so they spend the winters somewhere warm. Yes we are jealous. Over the years I've really gotten to enjoy them, they make me laugh. They assure us we are right on schedule. They loan us stuff. And he gives me his coupons. Anyway, this year they shared zucchini, cucumbers and green beans. and I finally decided it was time for the last batch of bread. But the pantry smelled.

So off on the potato adventure I went. Thanks to Katie and Tiffany for their ideas I made Make Ahead Mash Potatoes. 3 batches of them. Of course, this was unplanned cooking which means unplanned shopping. So here is what I do: I go to Savings Angel and do a search on Sour Cream, Cream Cheese, and Onion. Then I can see where the best prices are. This week it was Family Fare. Really who knew? And they are just down the street. I might not score the deal of the century, but at least I can see where I will be gouged the least. So now that I am typing, I realize that I spent more than the silly potatoes! Well I just can't stand to waste food. It accounts for some of the extra pounds that came with our babies and decided to stay around. Yep, we don't make the kids clean the plates, we do. I had planned to make my Russian Meat Salad or as others call it: potato salad, so at least I had those ingredients on hand. That is why I bought the potatoes in the first place. I need to hire serious cleaning help to recover my kitchen, which was looking a little wind tossed when I began. It now looks like a full hurricane blew just over and dumped all the stuff it collected on my counters. Sorry, I didn't photo that for you, my self esteem is not ready to let you into my kitchen on it's worst day. So I decided it was time to grill out. This way I can clean up a bit while The Prof cooks.



You can see my potatoes ready for the freezer. I reuse the plastic bags. See this is a post of confessions. It really started in our year in Russia. They don't have Zip Lock there or even an Aldi generic. So washing worked. They all had these draining dish racks that hung just about your sink. Really a ingenious design for it. So we would clip them on the bottom of it with clothes drying pins. Yep we line dried the laundry there too. There are few money saving ideas I haven't tried at some point. But I don't love all of them. And I don't do all of them. But now that I know that you don't have to waste your plastic bags, I recycle them. Moving on....I will also confess that Cents and Mite didn't finish their potato salad....so I had to.

Potatoes Again

This is not how I planned to spend my Saturday. We have been cleaning out our basement this summer and planning to switch some rooms around. Today was to be cleaning and moving day. It is our last weekend before The Prof begins teaching again and we have just one more week with the boys (scratch that, Cents is off to school this fall too)at home. So time to get those rooms cleaned out and rearrange some bedrooms around here.

Instead, I'm currently boiling 9 1/2 pounds of potatoes. The Prof picked me up the 10# bag at the store last week (be specific for those hubbies ladies!). And now my pantry smells bad. Real Bad. So I pitched about half a pound and the rest are boiling away on the stove top. You really ought to see my info about how to do this without peeling here. It is going to save me a military amount of peeling today.

So I will be busy finding things to do with all those potatoes today. Soup and salad come to mind. Any other ideas, please share, and fast!

Tuesday's Table

As usual I went to Walgreens first this week. I forgot to photo the Smooth Away that I bought. They have the occasional $1 off coupon for those "As Seen On TV" products. Then I chose the pool for next season. It was on clearance for half off making it $14.99. I picked up two free photo products. The Poppycock was on sale for $1.99 and there was a $1 off coupon in their back to school booklet (there are still plenty at the store to pick up) and I used a .75 off coupon to make it .24 each. There is a $5 off $25 coupon that I didn't use because my total (after last weeks register reward coupons of $11) was $14.70. To make this deal better I could have picked up 4 Keebler cookies or crackers for $10, then something little (maybe another back to school item) to bring my total up $25. Then I would get $5 off coupon and gotten $5 back in register rewards. See, I don't catch them all. But maybe you can : )



Here is another deal I almost missed. If you spent $50 on a MasterCard this week, you got $5 off jeans $9.99 or over. My total before any sales was over $126 and before coupons it was $82 and after coupons it was $49 and change. So I asked if I could go back and pick up the jeans. He suspended the order and I went back to get jeans. The Nesquick was with a rain check and coupons as they were out 2 weeks ago when it was on sale. I forgot to put my Watermelon in the picture today. My total was $55 and change : )



Here are my Box Top for Education purchases. If you buy 8 you got a register reward for 50 extra Box tops, if you buy 12 you got on for 100 Box Tops. Yay, I have 100, or $10 for our school. Our grade school often does contests to encourage Box Top donations. So I clip away all year long. Looks like my kids might be fighting for this one :) It has been fun for me this year to send off my kids well supplied for school and with a couple of the extras from the teachers wish lists. So some of the Zip lock will go to the school. And I use them a lot for my cooking club and freezer cooking.