Happy New Year - Welcome 2012!

Please let it be better than 2011! Last year, in a nutshell, I found out my husband of 28 years had not only had an affair three years earlier but had been lying and cheating the entire 3 years since then, so we divorced. That was in April, then I broke my foot in May (and it's still not fully functional again - there is ongoing pain with every step), and then my dad's mental decline got exponentially worse and his lady friend and her son decided to start going for his money - this was what totally impacted my Thanksgiving and Christmas (and not in any sort of good way). 2011 was most definitely a sucky year.

Here's hoping for a whole lot less angst and anxiety in 2012 :)

And what did I do for New Year's Day? I went grocery shopping! Here we go. First up, GiantPA for limited grocery items:

So according to my shopping receipt, the value of the above items was $16.35. After very limited coupons, my actual OOP was $10.45 -- a savings rate of 36%. Not at all great, but at the same time, I didn't get very much. The Kleenex was on sale for $1.50 and I used a 50-cent/1 coupon from the Sunday P&G insert. That doubled so the tissues were 50-cents. And I confess I LOVE how they feel cool to the touch. That really is "cool" technology :) The broccoli was $1 for a 1-lb bag. I had also grabbed a 1-lb bag of frozen peas that I thought were also on sale for $1, but they rang up at $1.50 and the cust service gal went back to check and swore they really were $1.50 so I had those taken off the order. The broccoli's better for me anyway. But really, would you think peas to be more expensive than broccoli? I was a little surprised.

Next up, I discovered that my freezer is almost bare of lunch frozen entrees, so since every store in the area seemed to be having a sale of some sort on Lean Cuisine, I picked Target. Not only were the entrees on sale for $1.99 each but for buying 10 of them, I got a $5 gc in return. Yay! It would have been even sweeter if I could have found a coupon, but all the online coupon databases turned up nothing that was printable or in one of my newspaper inserts. Target supposedly had a coupon but it must have been out of prints cuz I couldn't find it on their website.

So I brought home all this (minus kitty)

And paid $21.12 OOP then got a $5gc back.

For Christmas, my cats got a new cat tree. Here are a couple pics of the two cats who absolutely hate each other looking sooooo innocent while checking out the new cat tree.

Can't you just sense the loathing flowing between them? The Hatfields and the McCoys have nothing on these two, believe me!

Happy New Year, everyone!!