I'm So Pretty, I Fart Fairy Dust

Shopping Trips Recently

2012-01-30T12:58:00.000-05:00

Lookie, another week as gone by without any post about my shopping! Last week, I was at my Dad's until Tuesday night and did a very quick shop later on in the week. That resulted in this haul from GiantPA:

Basically it was bare necessities plus any freebie stuff I could acquire. According to the receipt, the above collection had a shelf value of $22.47, and my OOP was $10.44 -- a savings rate of 54% The Coffee-mate was completely free after a manufacturer's coupon, the eggs were on sale for $2.75/doz and I had a 75-cent/1 coupon that doubled and made the carton $1.25, which is the best egg price in town right now.

Then yesterday (about 3 days after the above shop), I went out for my traditional Sunday grocery trip, again to GiantPA, where I got all of this:

The shelf value, according to the receipt, was $61.00, and my OOP was $32.55 -- a savings rate of 47%. Not so hot, but I had been without lettuce for my lunch salads, and I also ran out of $1/1 coupons for Sorrento cheese sticks and had to "punt" without any coupons (ack!). The Cracker Barrel cheese was on sale for $3 each and I had a $1/2 coupon that doubled. The Freschetta was free because I complained about a different "flavor" of their pizzas that I really didn't like, and received a freebie coupon in return. And the Diet Coke was "on sale" for $11/4 this week, which unfortunately was the best price in town :P

How did everyone else do??

I may have some pretty big news coming up, all sort of culminating from my various dealings with Dad, his mental decline, and all the people in his life. Stay tuned.

WAIT!!! Reports are being retracted: JoePa's Still With Us!!

2012-01-21T21:15:00.001-05:00

Hallelujah!!! It would seem Joe Paterno's still alive. Sorry I posted too quickly and VERY glad I was wrong!

Sunday Shops

2012-01-17T10:24:00.001-05:00

Good morning, everyone!

While my family life continues being rather hellish, my grocery shopping adventures were quite tame this past weekend.

In fact, I stopped at only two stores.

First up, as usual, GiantPA, where I brought home this lot (not including kitty):

Even though the Smart Ones frozen entree deal wasn't as good at Giant as it had been last week at Target, I did it anyway because while each meal cost a little more, I had a smaller OOP amount to pay. The reason for that was at Target, I received $5 back as a gift card, but doing this deal at GiantPA got me $5 back taken right off at the register. I also had a $3/10 manufacturer's coupon. So for 10 meals, I paid $12, which isn't too shabby. Now my freezer is completely full, so I won't be buying any more frozen things for awhile. The other deals were: buy 7 Puffs (on sale for $1 each), get $3 back at checkout, so each box cost 57-cents. I had an e-coupon for a 12-pack of any Coke product, so that cost $2.33. I had another FREE coupon from the manufacturer for any 12-ct Green Mountain coffee k-cup blend, and I had an e-coupon for $1 off Hormel pepperoni that I stacked with a $1/2 sunday insert coupon that doubled.

Altogether, the receipt value of the above lot was $77.66 and my actual OOP amount was $31.66 -- a 59% savings rate.

My other stop was right next door at CVS where Diet Coke 12-packs were on sale (if you can call it that) for $2.50 each. I bought 4 for $10 and put the total on an old gift card I still have. So technically free - yay!

How did everyone else do this week? I probably won't be posting a typical Sunday shop next week since I'll be headed out of town on Sunday and back on Tuesday (IF the weather cooperates) to try and deal with the latest problems happening with my wonderful Dad -- he has dementia and there are way too many cooks with their fingers in the Dad financial pie, if you catch my drift.

Wish me luck on my trip - I will need it!

Sunday Shopping in the New Year

2012-01-09T16:42:00.000-05:00

Hey, Everyone!

While my family-related life continues to forge ahead toward armageddon, I still find a nice trip to the store keeps me from losing it completely. So yesterday, off I headed to do some shopping.

First up, GiantPA, where I got all this (except kitty, of course):

It probably isn't totally evident that there are 5 6-packs of Diet Pepsi bottles and another 6-pack of Coke Zero bottles, but that's what is in the photo. The register receipt tallied this all up as being worth $47.65, and after coupons and weekly deals, the actual OOP was $21.75 -- a savings rate of 54%. The jug o' creamer and the box of k-cups were both free because of manufacturer's coupons I received in the mail (woo!).

Then I drove to Target for the big frozen entree score:

For buying 12 Smart Ones entrees, a bottle of 90-ct fish oil caplets, a container of peanuts, and a tub o' deli meat, my register receipt showed a value of $36.60. After stacking a $3/10 Target Q with a $5/12 mfr IPQ on the Smart Ones, and a $2/1 Nature Made Q (I didn't find out there was also a Target Q until after I got home - poop!), I ended up with a revised total of $22.52. I used a $5 gc from last week's Lean Cuisine deal, so my OOP was $17.52 and I received another $5 gc. Woo!

I also had a couple fb coupons for $4 off any Picky Cat Box of Royal Canin food. So I headed over to Petco where these are priced at $3.99 and found the last box (the other coupon I have is good until mid-Feb, so I'll go back for another box later). Here it is, totally FREE

And here is my very not-picky kitty trying to decide which sample she wants to try first

Here's hoping everyone has a great week and grabs lots of excellent store deals!!

Happy New Year - Welcome 2012!

2012-01-02T13:56:00.000-05:00

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!!

Monday Shopping - Day after Christmas

2011-12-30T13:46:00.000-05:00

LOL! So I'm still a week behind - it's now New Year's weekend, and here's my Christmas post. Ah well, with any luck I'll catch up one of these days :)

I kept my weekly shopping to a minimum this past week, visiting only GiantPA for the "essentials" that are shown here:

I actually didn't do as well as I was hoping to. I would love to tell you exact numbers for everything, but I have apparently misplaced my receipt (oops). I do remember that it wasn't quite 50% because of the milk and the Oreos. At the same time, my OOP was only about $13, so not exactly an extravagant expense for the week and to end the month (and year!).

The Christmas Oreos were for my son, who loves cookies and came into town to visit the day after Christmas (yay!!). By the time he left a couple days later, there were only a few Oreos left, which I took into work. Gone in a flash.

An interesting thing happened to me on Christmas morning. I opened a new box of Kona blend k-cups, shown here:

But what I found inside wasn't 18 Kona k-cups, it was only 9 Kona k-cups and 9 House Blend k-cups. This was some sort of quality control mixup at the packaging plant.

I went to the website mentioned on the box (http://www.tullys.com/), used the contact form and the box lot information printed on the Kona carton, and a couple days later I received an apology and a promise of a couple "free" 12-ct package coupons that I can use either on more Kona or some other blend at the store. Good on them for excellent customer service!

And finally, the Christmas present my sister sent -- I had asked for something that would entertain my cats. As you can see, she did an excellent job helping Santa with this:

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas/Yule/Kwanzaa/Hanukka/Holiday and that New Year's finds us all having a wonderful 2012!

2011-12-26T23:31:00.000-05:00

I can't believe how much time has gone by since my last post. Things are just chronically insane here and I have been pulled away so much by the ongoing crisis with my dad. But, I still need to eat and get ready for Christmas (humor me, I know it's over, but it wasn't when I took all these pics).

First up, Tribble poses next to the coffee maker I bought for a relative's Christmas gift.

The week before Christmas, Wegman's had one of the best Diet Coke deals in town -- 4/$11 or $2.75/12-pk. So I bought the four packs you see here plus I had a 75-cent/1 Coffeemate coupon, which doubled, and two free mfr Yoplait yogurt coupons. The total for all this was the $11 for the soda.

Then I did a very quick and limited shop at GiantPA. All this in the pic below (not, of course, including kitty) was worth $27.49. After doubled coupons, e-coupons and other deals, I brought it all home for $11.97 -- a savings rate of 56%.

Then I did the other Diet Coke deal I found, which was at Rite Aid. I did the transaction once with my card and once with my ex's :)

Using a couple Ups I already had and a RA Video Value coupon on Coke, I got all 6 12-packs for about $2.65 each. Not at all a great deal, but again, the best I could find around here for that week, and I was all out.

How did everyone else fare in the week before Christmas? I was -- in a way -- lucky that I had no one to fix Christmas dinner for this year. In fact, I ate at the house of some good friends both on Christmas Eve and then again on Christmas Day (very good friends!).

Here's hoping everyone's holidays were special!

Good Gravy, What a Week!!!

2011-12-15T10:14:00.000-05:00

This was supposed to be my Monday post about my Sunday shopping, but this has just been the week from Hell at home and at work, so I haven't had a spare moment. My new duties at work (as of late October) seemed to ramp up to the beyond-ridiculous range this week for no apparent reason, and at home... well, let's just say that my ex isn't the only man in my life who's blindsided me this year. For those of you who follow my blog, that basically leaves my son or my father. We'll go with the latter on this, which is a surprise since it's usually the former :)

ANYWAY, on to shopping. When I did my usual round-robin of stores on Sunday, here's what I ended up with. First up GiantPA where I picked up all of this (as usual, not including the kitties):

The worth of the above items according to my receipt was $45.22. After e-coupons, deals, and doubled manufacturer's coupons, my OOP was $16.14 -- a savings rate of 64%. Not too shabby, especially since it includes a good stock-up on kitty food.

Then I stopped at Target where there are no more "glitch"-priced eggs for 79-cents a carton, but their dozen large eggs price of $1.19 still beats out every other store in the area, plus I got a 5-cent bag credit and used a 55-cent/2 facebook egg coupon, so my OOP on these was $1.78 or 89-cents/doz, pretty good price for eggs these days.

Then I hit up Weis, which was the store in town with the best Diet Coke prices this week, 4 12-packs for $11 or $2.75/12-pack. Eh. The 20-oz bottle of Diet Coke (because all this shopping made me thirsty) was free after using a mfr coupon from MyCokeRewards.com

And finally, I stopped very briefly at Rite Aid where this week you can get a FREE 1-ltr bottle of Dasani water. It's priced at $1 and there is a $1/1 video value coupon. I had to look around a bit to find this -- it wasn't on the shelf where all the other bottled water was located, but I found it on the bottom shelf of one of the soda refrigeration cabinets.

In other shopping-related news, I did a stupid thing that I do occasionally and went ahead with a purchase because I liked the item, not because it was particularly essential. In this case, it was a nifty top from HolyClothing.com (the Tesha top, specifically). I received my top, washed it per the instructions, and ... well, let's just say I looked extremely lopsided. But the company made good on their "you must be satisfied" guarantee and has offered me a full refund upon seeing photos I sent them of how the top was noticeably longer on one side than the other (and it's not supposed to be). So good on them for excellent customer service.

By Popular Demand - My Sunday Shopping

2011-12-06T10:16:00.000-05:00

Far be it from me to deprive my readers of the fun time that is my Sunday shopping trip. So here we go.

I actually didn't feel like doing too many stops, but I needed a couple things and had a couple coupons to use up before expiration. So first stop, as usual, was GiantPA where I got this:

According to the receipt, the above collection of stuff (not including kitty) comes to $35.50. After e-coupons, double paper coupons and deals, my OOP was $11.88 -- a savings of 66.5%. Yay! The really good stuff was free Lysol wipes (on sale for $2 and I had a $1/1 IPQ that doubled), free Dreamfields, cheap soup (on sale for $1/can, I had a $1/4 coupon that doubled so each can cost 50-cents), cheap cat food (the box was 39-cents after $1/1 doubled coupon, and the bag was 9-cents after $1/1 doubled coupon), and free 20-oz Diet Coke from MyCokeRewards.com.

Then I headed to Target to make use of the last $2/1 A&H kitty litter coupons I had. I was also lucky enough to snag a facebook Target coupon for a $10 gift card for spending $50 (*before* other coupons). So here's what I bought -- these 4 great, honkin' boxes of litter for $10.79 each and...

These two bags of dry cat food and 5 cans of wet. I had free mfr coupons for all these items from RecycleBank points and winning a couple giveaways. So the total for all this came to $55.77. For each two boxes of litter, I received a $5 gift card. Then I got a $10 gift card for using the Target coupon. Then I used $19.52 in mfr coupons and a $1/1 Target coupon and the 5-cent bag credit to bring my revised total down to $35.20. I used $15 in gift cards from a previous transaction and put the remaining $20.20 on my credit card. Plus I received $20 in gift cards back from the litter and the $10 Target coupon. Not too shabby and my kitties were very happy.

The last stop was Weis. I needed eggs and Target didn't have any of their 79-cent glitch eggs available. I saw that Weis had large eggs "on sale" for $1.50/carton, so I bought two cartons and used a 55-cent/2 IPQ from Incredible Edible Eggs on facebook. That made my total $1.90 and each carton was 95-cents.

I took the pics below because I just love how each little egg has its own little pink stamp on it... (yes, I am easily amused)

Aren't they cute?

So how was everyone else's Sunday or weekly shopping??

Seriously Some of the Coolest Wrapping Paper EVER!

2011-12-05T09:46:00.000-05:00

Check out this great idea -- cheeseburger wrapping paper:

Seriously, isn't that the neatest idea for wrapping multiple gifts??!! If you're interested, check out this site HERE to find out more.

I know the folks involved in this premium wrapping paper creation -- they are two very talented people and will be producing more cool stuff, just watch!

In the meantime, take a look at Gift Couture!

ThinkGeek's Cyber Monday EXTENDED!

2011-11-29T08:29:00.000-05:00

For any of you who may have tried to order something through ThinkGeek yesterday, they apparently experienced something of an overload on their servers (go geeks!). As a result, they are extending their Cyber Monday Specials. Through 3pm Eastern Standard Time today, you can still get FREE SHIPPING on any amount by using the code CYBERMONDAY when you check out. Or, if you'd prefer a different discount, through Noon EST today, you can use the code CYBERMONDAY10 to get $10 off any order above $50 (but the codes can't be used together).

Happy Geeky Shopping!

My buds over at ThinkGeek.com are at it again. I missed posting their great Black Friday deals, but today for Cyber Monday, they're offering FREE SHIPPING with no minimum!!! This means even if you order a nifty little $6.99 Star Trek Plush to cuddle, you can get it without paying extra for shipping. Hot Damn!

I guess there is one possible exception on the free shipping deal, and that's for anything excessively heavy. Otherwise, fire all phasers!

My Shopping Roundup

2011-11-28T11:10:00.000-05:00

Howdy, Everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful and resting Thanksgiving holiday, and that anyone who partook of Black Friday shopping scored some sweet deals!

I will cop to one Black Friday deal that I thought went pretty well. I already had a $50 Kohl's gift card courtesy of turning in some credit card reward points (so the gc was basically free). On Black Friday, I saw on Collin's Hip2Save blog that Kohl's had a 20% off code for any online shopping, plus there were scads of things already on sale because it was Black Friday. So I e-grabbed a much-needed-since-my-ex-took-mine can opener, marked down to $11.99 from $29, and 4 cases of Dark Magic k-cups (should it surprise anyone that I love Dark Magic? I think not) on sale for $13.99. The total came to about $68 with shipping included. After I applied the 20% code, the total dropped to $55, then I applied the $50 gc and my OOP was only the remaining $5. Not only that, but I placed this order through ebates, which was offering a 10% kickback on all Kohl's purchases, so I will get about $5.50 back from them AND because my total after the discount code was still over $50, I also got $15 in Kohl's cash to spend this week. In essence, the whole haul was free plus $15 in store bucks. Woooo!

Yesterday, on Regular Sunday, I went shopping for groceries. Here's what I brought home from GiantPA (not including kitty)

The shelf total according to the receipt was $55.74, and my OOP was $25.35 -- a 55% savings rate. The bottled Pepsi was the best local soda deal I could find, which wasn't saying much this week. The 5 6-packs I purchased cost $11. The Freschetta pizza was on sale for $5.99 and I had a $1/1 coupon that doubled. It still strikes me as a lot for a frozen pizza, but they are very tasty and stretch to two full dinner meals for me, so $2/meal... I bought the bagged Dole salad this week because it was already on sale for $2.50/bag and I had a $1 e-coupon loaded onto my rewards card, which made this bag o' spring mix cheaper than the usual salad bar mix.

I also stopped next door at CVS where I picked up these items:

The soda was full price at $4.99 but I had a $5 ECB I needed to use. The Glade sprays were on sale for 99-cents each and I had a CVS $2/2 Internet coupon. The Puffs were on sale for 99-cents and I grabbed a box to buffer the 3-cents of overage I thought I'd get from the ECB and coupon. So the whole thing after tax cost $1.04 because the cashier adjusted the $2 coupon down to $1.98 :P so I got only 1-cent in overage :)

Then I went to Target to pick up a prescription. The pharmacy gave me a $5/$50 Target catalina to use before 12/4. I almost bought 4 boxes of cat litter and 3 bags of Bertolli frozen meals, but I didn't have enough of the $2/1 A&H litter coupons with me to do the best deal possible, and I wanted to check on any printable Bertolli coupons (there was a $1/1 available so I was able to print 2). I will go back after work today and see what I can do.

How did everyone else's grocery shopping go? Or did you all mainly coast on Thanksgiving leftovers? I ate out for Thanksgiving, so my leftovers were pretty slim pickin's this year, but I loved having someone else cooking and waiting on me!

MORE!! Happy Cyber Monday from ThinkGeek!

2011-11-28T10:43:00.001-05:00

My buds over at ThinkGeek.com are at it again. I missed posting their great Black Friday deals, but today for Cyber Monday, they're offering FREE SHIPPING with no minimum!!! This means even if you order a nifty little $6.99 Star Trek Plush to cuddle, you can get it without paying extra for shipping. Hot Damn!

I guess there is one possible exception on the free shipping deal, and that's for anything excessively heavy. Otherwise, fire all phasers!

The Black Friday Sale – ING DIRECT USA

2011-11-25T09:04:00.000-05:00

The Black Friday Sale – ING DIRECT USA

Happy Thanksgiving!!! 2011

2011-11-24T14:44:00.000-05:00

Hoping everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving Day!

Baking, Shopping, and Up Goes the Tree!

2011-11-21T13:18:00.000-05:00

Happy Monday, Everyone! Here we are, into Thanksgiving Week! All the local college students fled town Friday afternoon -- back when I was student here, we were allowed Thursday and Friday off from class, now it's a full week. I guess the profs all got tired of losing most of their students for the full week anyway, so just gave in and made it official. Hmph.

Anyway, here at work, we had our annual Thanksgiving potluck lunch. The company provides the main dishes of turkey and ham, and we are asked to each bring in something(s) in the side, drink, or dessert categories. Last year, I made sugar-free cranberry sauce that absolutely rocked... except I was the only one eating it. Everyone else went for the canned junk (with tons of sugar). So this year, I made sugar-free Walnut/Cranberry drop cookies. And they rock, too. And again, I am the only person who ate any, with everyone else fighting over the ice cream cake and the cake balls rolled in chocolate. Again, hmph. Hey, if no one else wants to eat healthy, more for me! Here's what my cookies looked like fresh from the oven:

Not only do they contain the super food Cranberries, but also walnuts, almond flour, eggs, and whey protein. These puppies are yummy and good for you. But no.... please, don't eat any!

Okay, so enough about that. On Sunday, I went to two grocery stores -- GiantPA and Wegman's. Here's the haul from Giant:

The total shelf value according to my receipt was $48.43, and after e-coupons, deals, and double mfr coupons, I paid $11.37 -- a savings rate of 77%. Woooo! I got to that wonderful rate by using up some "free" manufacturers' coupons I'd received in the mail, like the John Frieda hair color for $11.99, the Iams cat food for $6.99, the Elegants cans of cat food for $1.40, and the free jug o' Coffeemate for $3.99. Yay on free stuff! If you want to learn how I find out about freebies, I tend to focus on two main blogs: Hip2Save.com and Mojosavings.com. Those are the places that tend to post most of the deals and more quickly than other blogs do. I also watch TotallyTarget.com for Target specials.

Then I went to Wegman's to use up one last "free" manufacturer's coupon for Chiquita avocados (from VocalPoint), and to partake of the best Diet Coke deal around for this week: 4 12-packs for $11. Not a great deal, but anything below $3/12-pack these days is apparently "good."

I also stocked up on their $1.99/lb hamburger. I made a couple burgers for dinner and will cook the rest then freeze baggies of it for future soups, chili, and spaghetti sauces. The peas were 99-cents/1-lb and I love peas, so I bought a bag.

In spite of thinking the cats would go for the hamburger, this kitten seems much more interested in the toy-shaped avocado...

I wanted to put up my Christmas tree while I had some time and was in the mood. So I put my holiday tunes on shuffle and got out the 4' prelit tree which doesn't pre-light anymore. After wrapping it in a nice fluffy gold garland...

I added a string of battery-powered LED lights that are on a timer to turn on from 5-11pm each day.

Ooooooh, pretty! There are actually red lights on the string, too, but I guess they don't show up as well with my camera.

Anyone else have their tree up yet??

What I Did on Sunday!

2011-11-14T10:30:00.000-05:00

Morning, Everyone!

I know I've been pretty absent recently, other than my once-a-week posts about Sunday grocery shopping. I apologize -- a lot of it has to do with how busy I've been at work, then I get home and sort of veg out. Somehow each day just slips by. I will try to do better :) AND there is a nifty 4-day holiday weekend coming up, so maybe I'll actually get caught up on some things.

For my weekly grocery shopping, I ended up going to GiantPA, Wegman's, and CVS. First stop, GiantPA, where I bought all of this:

I think this may be one of the only trips to the store where I have not purchased any wet/canned cat food! My cats were understandably alarmed, but I had no wet-cat-food coupons worth using. Hope some new ones are released soon! Meanwhile, according to my receipt, this lot above was worth $49.79, and my OOP for it after deals, e-coupons, and doubled paper coupons was $20.85 -- a 58% savings rate. Woo! That goldish brick-looking thing just to the right of the Hunts tomato can is a bar of Kerrygold butter. MmmmmmMMmmmmm! I would never have purchased that on my own (even though it was "on sale" for $4.49), but I finally received a Kerrygold freebie coupon in the mail that I had signed up for months and months ago. This butter is sooo tasty that I will not use it for baking, only for putting on top of something, like bread. Well, okay, not bread because that's all carby, but my flaxseed foccacia bread would be greatly enhanced with some Kerrygold butter on it!

The Cracker Barrel cheese was another indulgence I wouldn't buy straight out anymore, but it was on sale this week for $3/bar and I had received an e-coupon for $1.50/1, so the bar pictured above cost $1.50. The Hunts tomatoes, Dreamfields pasta, and 20-oz bottle of Diet Coke were all free with manufacturers' coupons. I had a Heinz ketchup IPQ for $1/1 that doubled and the bottle of sugar-free ketchup was $2.29, so 29-cents. The Fancy Feast dry cat food was $2.09 and I had a $1/1 mfr coupon that doubled, so 9-cents for kitty food (and boy, do my 4 kitties eat a LOT of it!). And the Hanover frozen veg were on sale for $1.67/bag, and I had a $1/2 coupon for each of the gold and silver lines, so each bag ended up costing $0.67 -- yay! Great to stock up on low-priced/high-quality frozen veg. The 4-cup Pyrex mixing/measuring cup over on the far left was on sale for $6.37 and I had a $1/1 Pyrex IPQ that doubled. I use these bigger measuring bowl/cups for soapmaking, and $4.37 was a great price! Finally, I had one $3/1 mfr Q left for any A&H kitty litter, and Giant had the 28-lb boxes on sale for $6.99 (down from $8.99), so I got the box above for $3.99.

Okay, after all that, I went to Wegman's where I learned a very valuable lesson. A lot of people, myself included before I started working there years ago, think that Wegman's is such an upper-crust sort of store that anything sold there must automatically be more expensive that at any other store. Here is a perfect example of how that's not true. This week, Walmart has its own generic butter quarters on sale for $2.50/lb box. Giant also has its store brand butter on sale for $2.50/box (and I bought some, see pic above). Wegman's, however, has its store brand stick butter on sale for $2.29/box. Ha! And if I hadn't gone there last, I would have saved myself the difference of 21-cents, but I'd already bought the $2.50 stuff at Giant. On the other hand, I freeze butter all the time, so I got a box of the $2.29 butter and stuck it right into the freezer. I may go back during the week and buy some more to freeze!

The avocado was free after a vocalpoint coupon, and in fact, the "free" coupon triggered a tax refund of 12-cents on the avocado even though food is not taxed in our state. So 12-cents in overage, making my box of butter only $2.17 -- woot!

Finally, I had a L'Oreal "free" coupon for any haircolor, and because it looks like an Internet-printed coupon even though it was mailed to me by L'Oreal, I decided to use it at CVS -- one of the few stores that doesn't seem to balk at Internet coupons for "free" things. They also had a sale going where buying any 2 L'Oreal hair colors yielded $5 in ECB. So I ended up putting about $8 on a free gift card (no actual OOP) and then getting $5 ECB back for buying both of these hair color kits. Yay!

It would seem from looking around at every store I went to, that it's now officially Christmas season. I admit that I actually LOVE Christmas season in the stores -- I love hearing Nat King Cole and Dean Martin and Bing Crosby and Ed Ames croon those beloved caroles, I love the colored lights, and frankly I love seeing lots of stuff go on sale :) Time to get out the little faux-tree and see if I can set it up by myself in such a way that the cats might actually leave it alone. Ha!

Sunday Shopping Roundup and My New Kitty!

2011-11-07T14:41:00.001-05:00

Hello, Everyone!

Well, somehow I managed to survive last week with all its weird weather, Halloween spookiness, and insane new job duties. Yay!

So given all of that, yesterday's shopping routine was pretty... routine :)

First up, I went to GiantPA. I didn't even bother to go to CVS - there was nothing in the flyer that seemed appealing, I had no ECBs to use up, and I didn't feel like making the shopping round-robin last any longer than necessary (same with stopping into Weis Markets).

I brought all of this home:

According to my receipt, the shelf price for all of the goodies above was $57.19. After e-coupons (on the Hormel pepperoni), doubled coupons, and store deals, I paid $27.48 -- a 52% savings rate. Not only that but the 2 bottles of Ken's salad dressing (each bottle was $2.59 and I used a $1/1 IPQ that doubled so each bottle cost $1.59) should trigger another $1 in my SavingStar account, which hopefully will reach a payout level sometime in this century. The Angel Soft TP was on sale for $5.99 (normally $7.99) plus I had a $1/1 IPQ that doubled, so the 24 rolls cost $3.99, a price that beats even the store's own generic sand-papery cheapo stuff. Not that I really need TP right now -- I just used $12 in Staples ink cartridge rewards to get 2 12-packs of double-roll Charmin for about $1.50 OOP -- but it certainly doesn't expire, and it will get used.

Next up was a trip to Wegman's that yielded one free avocado and a packet of Garam Masalla spice mix. No photo. The trip was uneventful in that it was too %*#@)$ crowded so I just wanted to get the heck out as quickly as possible.

Then I stopped at Target, which was a lot less crowded. And here's what I picked up:

The ongoing "glitch" of our local Target pricing each doz eggs at 79-cents continues, so I grabbed two dozen and used the Incredible Edible Egg 55-cent/2-doz Internet coupon. Plus I had a "free" manufacturer Sunday insert coupon for the Dr. Pepper 10 bottle, and there was another IPQ for a "free" 4-pack of any Ocean Spray sparkling juice when you buy 2 64-oz Ocean Spray juices, and those were on sale for $1.99 each. Soooo my final OOP was $4.96, which I put on a gift card. Yay!

I also made a quick stop at Rite Aid because last week Collin over at Hip2Save posted about a $5/1 facebook Rite Aid coupon good on any NatureMade fish oil. I also had a $1/1 IPQ for Nature Made and a manufacturer's free mailer coupon for any Shick Hydro 3 or 5 razor.

Bless the cashier's heart, she put my free razor coupon through for the full $9.99 amount even though the razor rang up for me at a sale price of $8.99, so $1 overage - yay! I ended up paying $1.49 OOP. Now I'm good to go on fish oil caplets for awhile longer.

And, as promised, here is a pic of my newest kitty. Since she was a Halloween adoptee and she's mostly black, all hail Wicca.

She actually looks a tad grumpy here, possibly because she's not as camera-loving as my other cats, but she's really very sweet and loves to play. Hopefully as she acclimates to the household, she will give me more photo opportunities that show off her funloving nature.

Happy November! My Recent Shopping and Trip "Home"

2011-11-01T12:11:00.000-04:00

Hi, Everyone - Happy November 1st!

Here's hoping everyone's Halloween was a spectacularly spooky one!!

I confess to being sort of out of the H'ween celebrating mood this year. Between my new job duties at work that have me befuddled most of the day and then my various issues at home, I haven't been celebrating seasonally at all lately.

However, I did make a grocery shopping run this past Sunday, and here's all that I brought home (minus cats who were already at home waiting to inspect everything):

This wasn't necessarily a great shop, just a moderately good one. I splurged and bought some asparagus because it was on sale for $1.99/lb, which is usually the price at its peak during the summer. So I wanted to snap that up. According to the receipts, my total worth of goods was $45.73, and my OOP was $23.77 -- a savings rate of 48%. I now have a new kitty mouth to feed, so I needed to make sure I got some more cat food. The soda deals were virtually nonexistent at any local store this week, so I bought the cheapest Pepsi I could find (each of these bottle 6-packs was $2.20) and I got a decent price on the one Diet Coke 12-pack because there was a Giant e-coupon for $1 off plus I had a mfr $1/1 coupon that doubled, so the final price I paid was $1.33 -- too bad I couldn't get more at that price!

As for what's been occupying me so much in the category of Home Issues, my dad's mental decline continues and I had to make a visit to his house a few hours away to try and find various documents that various people needed and he couldn't remember anything about. I didn't have a lot of time alone in his house to look for things, so I basically grabbed everything I could find from 2009 forward and threw it all in my car to be sorted later.

Here is the result of my sorting (and my sorting apprentice):

As I mentioned up top, I just adopted a new kitty. Since she's my Halloween kitty and she's black (with a white nose), I've named her Wicca. However, I haven't had a chance to snap any good pics of her yet, so I will post those another day.

Enjoy the end of Fall -- it will be winter any day now (Brrrrrrr)!

Sunday Shopping, Robin Ellis's new Cookbook and More!

2011-10-25T09:53:00.000-04:00

Hello, everyone! Man, I have just been slammed at work by new job duties and at home by various family issues, so my posts have dwindled again. Here's a catch-up post about the shopping I did on Sunday.

First up, I was getting dangerously low (oxymoron?) on diet name-brand soda, so my first stop was Rite Aid where there was a Pepsi deal. Buy 3 12-packs of Pepsi products for $9.99 (which is NOT a very good price at all) plus I used $2 Ups that were expiring. So each 12-pack cost $2.67. Still not a good price, but better than any other store, all of which were selling the 12-packs of Pepsi for $2.75 or more (and Coke for $4 or more!), so this was a moderately good use of my expiring Ups.

Another deal I did was to take $12 in Staples ink cartridge rewards (turning in used ink/toner cartridges nets a member $2/each and I turned in 6 last month) to take advantage of this week's sale on TP. Each of the packages of Charmin shown below cost $6.99. After 25-cent mfr coupon and rewards, I paid $1.73 OOP for all this TP:

Recently I received my copy of Robin Ellis's new cook book Delicious Dishes for Diabetics from amazon,

and once my havoc-wreaked life calms down a bit, I plan to start fixing some of the wonderful-sounding recipes. In preparation for the first recipe I plan to try -- Comfort Lentils or Dal -- I realized after inspecting my pantry that the only ingredient missing were the lentils themselves. I happened to have a $2 ONYO for Weis grocery store, and Weis happened to have their store-brand lentils on sale for $1/bag, so voila -- 2 free bags of lentils, kitten approved! These aren't the beautiful red lentils that Robin uses in his blog post, so if you want to see this dish in a picture-filled how to, please visit his recent post HERE.

And then onward to GiantPA for my weekly grocery haul:

According to the receipt, all of this was worth $64.54, and after deals and coupons, I paid $29.38 -- a 54% savings rate! A couple things to note: The Cats Pride should have been $1 cheaper than it was. For some reason, the $1/1 coupon did not double even though it started with a 5 (the UPC code) and did not say "do not double" on it anywhere... The Coffee Mate creamer jug was a freebie after mfr coupon (looooove Coffee-Mate creamer!!) as was the Pam cooking spray. That orange thing in the back right quadrant is an acorn squash. It just looked so pretty and I haven't enjoyed any squash yet this Fall. Following Betty Crocker's instructions, I pricked it a few times with a knife, then microwaved it for about 11 minutes total (turning it over half-way through). I will scoop out the cooked flesh and add it to something or just reheat with a little butter. Yum!

As for all the other stuff in my life, today is Dad's follow-up with his physician after an MRI last week. It would seem to be that time in his life where I, as the Agent named in the Power of Atty paperwork, need to step in and help with things... like the fact that his 2010 Tax Return to the IRS never got filed (!!). So I will be talking with his doc and seeing what needs to be put in place for me to start dealing with all those sorts of financial things.

Meanwhile, I have visited a true angel -- a lady here in town who custom makes orthotics to help people with foot problems (and boy, do I have foot problems!) overcome their pain. I have her first round of orthotics, made from a mold she took of each of my feet, in my shoes as I type. So far, there is a LOT less pain -- hallelujah!! I go back after another 5 weeks so she can start tweaking the orthotics to make them even better, and will eventually make them "permanent" so they last about 2 years. As usual when I find someone or something that really helps me, I wish I'd thought to do this a long time ago :)

Hope everyone else has a great week!!

Phone vs Email - Pet Peeve Rant

2011-10-19T09:20:00.000-04:00

I will state up front that I have always hated talking on the phone. I stammer, stutter, talk over the other person, can't think of anything to say, just absolutely hate talking on the phone.

Along comes the Internet and email - hallelujah!!! For people like me, email, instant messaging, and texting are pretty much better than sliced bread. I realize no method of communication is perfect, and that no matter how well I think I've stated my case in an email (or here in a blog post), someone reading it might take a different meaning from it than I intended. However for finding out information, email seems like a godsend.

Except that so many businesses, even big-honkin' ones, do not want to deal with emails, and this brings me to my rant for today.

Here's what seems to happen on a pretty regular basis. I have a question or problem. Right now, for example, I'm trying to get big-name banks where my dad has various accounts to answer my pretty straightforward question of What do I need to bring with me to ensure I can be added onto my dad's accounts now that I'm his Agent via power of attorney? I don't see this as a difficult question, it seems pretty easy to answer with a list of items, right? The PofA paperwork, some sort of ID, the account numbers, etc.

I go to the company website, find the Contact Us page or link, fill out a contact form or send an email to the stated address. And what happens? If I receive any reply at all, it's this: "Please call customer service at XXX-XXX-XXXX to discuss this."

WHY? Why can't the person at the other end of the computer just answer the ^*)@$( question via email? Why do I have to call to repeat the question/problem and be given the answer/solution over the phone when it could have been relayed to me via email -- the communication method that I, the customer/client, would REALLY prefer?! If I send an email that means I want to receive an email, not make a friggin' phone call. If I wanted to talk over the phone, I would have called in the first place!

I suspect that the companies who do this may actually have separate staff for emails and phones. So the email-answering staff members have certain easy, non-secure-type answers they are allowed to address. If anything comes along that isn't in their little Easy-Answer manual, they are required or instructed to reply "Please call Customer Service at...". That would seem to mean that the people who answer the phones are farther up the info chain. Again, why? Why can't all the answering staff be able to answer questions at the same level? Maybe because the people running the banks or other big businesses are still old-school old people who have always talked by phone and don't trust computers, or don't believe they need to pay for competent email-answering staff? I don't know, I'm guessing.

All I want to do is get a reply to my question in the same communication mode I asked the question. That, to me, would be great Customer Service. And I'm still waiting, in most cases, for all the businesses I deal with to step up to the plate and offer that great Customer Service!

(end of rant)

Sunday Shopping and Kittens in Water

2011-10-18T10:17:00.000-04:00

Just one main grocery shop on Sunday. I skipped shopping altogether last weekend, so it was time to get a few things. I brought all of this home:

The receipt shows a worth of $74.05. After deals, e-coupons ($1/1 Sargento cheese on sale for $2.50/8-oz bag), and double regular coupons, I paid $24.37 -- a 67% savings rate. And I received a $2 ONYO back. Yay!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my littlest kitten has discovered water. I got tired of her need to splash all the water out of the cats' water bowls, so I set her up with her own little pond in the bathroom.

Now everyone's happy :)

Get FREE Stuff at One King's Lane

2011-10-16T17:06:00.000-04:00

Currently if you sign up for a new account at One King's Lane -- a multiple shop sales site very much like Rue La La - you'll get a $15 new member credit! And you can use that on any of their sales that come up (they change frequently) to snag some potentially free goodies. You will still need to pay shipping, which is $4.95, but it'll make for good (cheap) gifts or kitchen tools!

Go HERE to sign up and if you send a referral link to friends and they sign up, you get another $15 credit. Nice, huh?

Star Wars/General Mills/Walmart gift card Giveaway WINNER!!!

2011-10-16T13:34:00.000-04:00

I put all the (wonderful!!!!) giveaway comment entry posts into a big barrel then picked out a random winner.

kendra22 said...
GFC Kendra22
I love this blog name!!!!

Congratulations Kendra22 -- I'll be contacting you via email regarding your prize!

And a huge Thank You to EVERYONE for participating (and to General Mills, Star Wars/George Lucas, and MyBlogSpark.com for sponsoring) and making this giveaway so much fun!

GIVEAWAY - Last Call, $25 Walmart gift card!!!

2011-10-14T09:20:00.000-04:00

One final reminder that my GIVEAWAY for some Star Wars/General Mills cereal and $25 Walmart gift card is ending today at Noon Eastern Standard Time.

Make sure you enter if you haven't already!!! Once we get to Noon today (Friday, 10/14/11), no further entries will be accepted.

So click HERE to post your entry and get in on the fun!!

Another Last-Minute GIVEAWAY Reminder

2011-10-13T13:22:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone!

Just wanted to remind all you nice folks out there in cyberland that tomorrow (Fri 10/14) at Noon Eastern Standard Time is the deadline for entering my GIVEAWAY if you haven't done so already.

Just click HERE to read about the giveaway and post your entry!

Win yourself some Free General Mills special Star Wars cereal and a $25 gift card to Walmart!!!

And 'May The Force Be With You'!!!

Not Shopping Sunday! Giveaway Reminder!!

2011-10-11T10:55:00.000-04:00

Hey, everyone!

Instead of going shopping on Sunday like I usually do, I was happily visiting friends up in Michigan all weekend. The weather was unbelievably gorgeous, so on Sunday we were at a park where this was my view:

And one of the side perks of flying up to visit friends in Michigan is getting to go through this tunnel at the Detroit Metro airport. It's like a little underwater Disney ride complete with tons of people.

I will post more later but am still catching up on things from being away for 4 days.

Just a reminder, PLEASE check out my GIVEAWAY!!!!! You could win some free special Star Wars commemorative cereal from General Mills and a $25 gift card from Walmart.Woooo! Entries will be accepted until Noon Eastern Standard Time this Friday, 10/14/11.

2011-10-08T15:42:00.001-04:00

Unbelievably gorgeous day in Ann Arbor! Here visiting friends.

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My Keurig - A Love Story :)

2011-10-05T15:35:00.000-04:00

FIRST: Don't Forget to Enter My Latest GIVEAWAY -- you could win free cereal and a $25 Walmart gift card!

So for my birthday, I received a Special Edition Keurig single-serve coffee brewing machine. Specifically a B60 model. ("oooOOOoooh!") It's a little bigger than the solo/smallest Keurig and has a few more bells and whistles - most notably, it allows me to pick a size/amount for brewing then it shuts off at that point, so I don't have to stand and watch it then manually stop the flow of water when my cup is full. I really like that feature! It is the one thing that my little Dolce-Gusto Piccolo doesn't do, although it's not a huge issue once you figure out how much is the right amount. It is also somewhat programmable, I understand (for example, I think it can be programmed to brew my first cup at a specific time in the morning), but I have yet to test that out.

Here's what my new Keurig looks like:

Snazzy-lookin', ain't it? I've been using some K-cups that were recommended to me -- Green Mountain Dark Magic (extra-bold), shown sitting in the machine below. Those produce really strong, full-flavored cups of coffee at the middle setting, which I believe is 7.25-oz. The three brew amount level (those 3 little buttons underneath the blue screen in the pic below) are for 5.25-oz 7.25-oz and 9.25-oz. Anyway, I have taken to using a big travel mug and brewing two k-cups' worth of coffee on the middle button setting.

In order to not go into bankruptcy because of K-cup purchases, and to be a little kinder to Mother Earth by not tossing out sooo many of these little plastic cups every day, I bought a reusable k-cup device from amazon.com called the Ekobrew, shown here:

The device works great, although I already have taken to overfilling it. When I pack the coffee in there so tightly (because I want a strong cup of coffee, remember), there is a bit of overflow, shown here:

It also seems to cause the pump to ... well, not work as efficiently as it does with a disposable k-cup. In fact, yesterday I so overpacked the Ekobrew that the water simply stopped flowing through it completely, and looked like this when I opened it:

Apparently, I need to either restrain myself when packing coffee into this thing, or I need to start getting coffee that is much more coarsely ground and will allow the water to flow through more easily.

This is the lovely coffee coming out of the Keurig and into my travel mug:

And here it is, all creamered up and ready to enjoy:

If you have any interest in buying this machine for yourself, Amazon is currently selling it at a nice price:

GIVEAWAY - Star Wars, General Mills Cereal, $25 WM Gift Card - GIVEAWAY!!!!

2011-10-04T09:49:00.003-04:00

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED -- NO FURTHER ENTRIES WILL BE ACCEPTED!! WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED AND CONTACTED BY SUNDAY AT 6PM EASTERN STANDARD TIME. THANK YOU ALL!!!

It's finally time for the latest I'm So Pretty I Fart Fairy Dust giveaway! All brought to you courtesy of MyBlogSpark, General Mills, and Star Wars (LucasArts).

In commemoration of the first-ever release of all the Star Wars movies in Blu-Ray (because you can't EVER have enough ways to watch these classics!), General Mills has produced a collection of Star Wars commemorative cereal boxes that combine side-by-side to form a gorgeous panorama of the Star Wars universe.

Here are the three cereals:

General Mills Honey Nut Cheerios, Lucky Charms, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

And here's what you see when you turn these three boxes around:

Oooooh! This would be so cool all cut out, mounted and hanging on your kid's bedroom wall (or your own den wall, for that matter)! And thanks to the kind folks at MyBlogSpark and General Mills, you don't even have to go out to the store and look for these specially marked cereal boxes. You can WIN THEM right here by entering my giveaway! Specifically you will receive:

One box of each of the following cereals to form your own Star Wars panoramic poster:

Honey Nut Cheerios

Cinnamon Toast Crunch

Lucky Charms

plus, a $25 Walmart gift card

I'm going to try and make this as simple as possible, but still fun. The rules -- for each entry (there are 4 possible for each person) you will need to leave one (1) separate comment below, on this post. Because my blogger comment box seems to be out to lunch sometimes, if you cannot log in using your regular blogger or google accounts, you can always use the Anonymous function as long as you include your ID name and a valid email address within each entry comment. Bottom line: I need to be able to reach you by email if you win, so help me out with that :) Also, I must add that this giveaway is open only to residents of the USA.

There are 4 possible ways to enter; do any or all!

#1) Sign up to follow my blog or subscribe to it. You can do that by going over to the right -----> and scrolling down till you see either the heading "Subscribe To..." or "Followers...." If you are already a follower or subscriber, just mention that in your entry.

#2) Get creative! -- leave a comment here on this post with a new Star Wars-related name for your favorite General Mills cereal. Example: Uncle Owen & Aunt Beru's Cinnamon 'Boy are we Toasted' Crunch. (get it get it????)

#3) Blog and/or Tweet about this giveaway with a link back to this post. If you twitter about it, please include @ifartfairydust in your tweet. Then provide a link to your blog or twitteration here in your entry comment.

#4) Get creative again! -- Tell me in a separate comment on this post which Star Wars character you'd want to have serve you a bowl of General Mills cereal and why.

There are no right or wrong answers for the Creatvie options, all valid entries (with ID name and email address) count, so just have fun with them!

This giveaway will be open until Noon (Eastern Standard Time) on Friday, October 14, 2011.

Disclosure: The cereal, gift card, information, and giveaway have been provided by General Mills through MyBlogSpark

Ahhh, The Weekend - Sunday Shopping

2011-10-03T10:19:00.000-04:00

Happy Monday Morning to everyone! Here we are, already into October - wow! Wasn't I just wearing shorts like a few days ago? Now it really feels like Halloween weather outside. Time to break out the hot cider :)

So yesterday was a pretty good round robin of shopping for me.

We'll start with what I brought home from GiantPA:

If you recall, last week I announced that I had filled my over-the-fridge freezer (and I have cleaned out and unplugged my full-size standing freezer). So that of course meant that this week there would be some frozen food deal I simply couldn't pass up. Right? Right.

The grand total for the above collection of groceries was $65.55. After various deals and coupons, the actual amount paid was $39.89, which is not all that great except that on top of that, I also got a $10 ONYO to use on my next shopping trip. That all figures out to a 54% savings rate. The $10 ONYO came from the freezer deal the store was offering. There was a select group of frozen food items and for buying $25 worth (AFTER coupons), I got the $10 ONYO register coupon back. So what I did was buy 4 Bertolli dinners @ $5.99 each using a $1/1 that doubled. That gave me $21.96. Then I purchased the two Hanover silver bags of broccoli for $1.66 each, which put my total for this deal at $25.28. So one way I look at it is that I got the veggies for $1.66 per bag, then I got the 4 Bertollis for $2.99 each. If I can make each Bertolli last for 2 meals (they are supposed to be meals for two but they taste so good I can easily eat the whole thing in one sitting - very bad...), then the amount spent per meal is pretty good.

Moving onto Weis, I brought home this lot (minus kittens)

I have been going to Weis for the non-dairy creamer. Of all the stores in the area, this is the only one that sells a store-brand of non-dairy creamer. Even Walmart sells only name-brand now (like Coffee-Mate), so without coupons for any of the name-brand creamers, this is where I end up. I used one of the $2/2 Lipton bottled tea coupons since every store in the area had these on sale because of the newspaper coupon insert from Pepsico. I also needed more beans cuz I made chili over the weekend. And I had a 50-cent/doz Eggland's coupon that doubled and Weis had the XL size on sale for $1.99, so 99-cents for eggs. According to my receipt, the value of the aboves goods was $20.54 and my OOP was $12.34, a 40% savings rate.

The other trip I made was to Rite Aid. I admit to not being in Rite Aid for weeks now because they have taken away most of the deals that were of interest to me, including all X off YY coupons that made for some free food on occasion. However, this week there is a real money-maker deal available even I couldn't pass up. The Prevacid 24HR, 28-ct packages cost $21.99.

They are included in a collection of items where buying any included product(s) that comes to more than $20 triggers a $10Ups reward. There are also 2 stackable $4/1 coupons available - one from Prevacid, one from the video values for October. So the initial price of $21.99 triggers the $10 Ups automatically, then the $4 and $4 reduce the price paid or OOP to $13.99. Then there is a rebate available for the full price minus the one $4 mfr coupon, so the rebate *should be* for $17.99. That would make this a $14 money-maker: $10 in Ups for next time and $17.99 back even though my OOP was $13.99. Woohoo!!!

Now I will add that because this was my only purchase, my receipt pretty obviously shows that I bought only this one item and paid only $13.99 for it. It is entirely possible that the Prevacid rebate folks will send me a rebate check for only $13.99. That's not what the rebate form says, but that may be what happens. So I'm realistically expecting to end up with $10 Ups as the money-maker amount and if the extra $4 is included in the rebate check, that will be a bonus :)

I have lots more to blog about -- my new Keurig, a new product called Mona-vie, and *drumroll* a GIVEAWAY (including a $25 Walmart gift card!).

So stay tuned!!!!

How did everyone else's shopping go? And totals for September? I confess I have yet to calculate mine. I think I went over my $100 grocery budget by about $15, but one of these days I'm going to come in under budget (dangitall) to make up for it! Maybe in October. I go to the store each Sunday to get my lunch-salad lettuce, and while I'm there I get other things based on sales and coupons I have. But I have plenty of lunch materials I could eat instead of the salads, so I really need to do some shopping-free weekends!

Update on Progressive Snapshot - I Need to Stop Driving

2011-09-27T11:30:00.000-04:00

So back in July, I landed a brand new car insurance account (yet another thing I had to start over because my ex-husband's name was listed first on our insurance accounts...), and in order to get the best rate possible with Progressive, I agreed to participate in their Snapshot program.

I received my little snapshot thingy about 2 weeks after my new policy started, and finally figured out where and how to plug it in (see that HERE).

So after the first month, I was awarded a whopping 4% immediate discount (out of a possible 30%). Seriously... wow... I was totally underwhelmed considering I barely drive at all and am ridiculously cautious when I do. They sent me a check for $10 - oooh!

Anyway, the program continues for another 5 months beyond that, and I can look at my stats every day online to see how things are progressing. A couple weeks ago, my overall possible discount (if the 6-months had ended on that day) was at 23% out of a possible 30%. That was pretty encouraging!

Last week, after a couple longer trips during rush hour, my overall possible discount had dropped to 19%. Damn!

And after this past weekend of visiting my dad (a 2.5-hour trip each way), my overall possible discount has dropped to 18%. So I'm being watched and penalized on when I drive, how far I drive, and what my braking looks like. I don't know about you, but when someone cuts me off on the highway going about 80 mph, I'm gonna brake like a fiend to avoid him! I also will brake to avoid running through lights and to avoid hitting animals. Apparently all those things are wrong. I should run red lights, I should hit people who cut me off or turn in front of me, and I should always run right over any animal. The key here is apparently to never slow down quickly for any reason. And visiting my dad in another part of the state is also really bad.

*sigh* Yes, I really am having one of those days/weeks/months/years - LOL! Luckily (I think), my visiting has been taken care of for awhile now. I have about 4 months left on this Snapshot program. If I can walk whenever possible, drive as little as possible, and basically never go more than 15 mph so that slowing down requires no "hard brake," I may get my overall discount percent back up over 20% by the time the actual program ends. Or, I can just rent or borrow a car and drive that the next four months while my car and the little Snapshot thingy sit in the garage...

I know this is a new program, and I'm sort of a guinea pig for it. I think it needs some serious tweaking. Just my 2-cents...

The More I Try to Make Things Right... The More I Screw Them Up

2011-09-27T10:39:00.000-04:00

My latest fiasco related to my divorce concerns the electric company (West Penn Power/Allegheny Power). I have lived in the same house for 15+ years now, but the electric utility account was in my ex-husband's name. I now am sole owner of the house, and can prove that with a copy of the new deed. Yet when I contacted the eletric company to have the account changed to be in my name, I was told that's simply not possible. The only option was to end/close the account that's in my ex's name and apply for a new account in my name. I was assured that when I did that, everything else would remain the same (we've been on an average payment plan the entire time we've lived at this address - 12 months of usage is averaged out to keep our monthly payments relatively level at approx $130/mo).

So I closed out the ex's account and got hit with a big invoice for all that remained due. And I set up a new account in my name and got hit with a guesstimate first-month invoice, which is much higher than any actual month's usage in the past year. When I tried to sign up for the average payment plan, I was told that since I have a new account, there's not enough usage data to average out. I wrote back and said there's plenty of data - I can even access it all online, for the past umpteen years! I just got a reply that "how would we know you've been there for 15 years, your name is dfferent!?" as their excuse for claiming to not have enough data. Keep in mind that all I've done along the way here is exactly what they told me I had to do... and they assured me nothing would change except my name. Can you see my eyes rolling? Can you hear my exasperation??

And the best part? Even though I have paid $130/mo (sometimes down to $125/mo) for the past two or more years now, they've started my new average payment plan -- supposedly based on my usage history in this same house, now that they know I'm the same person with a different name -- at $158/mo. Excuse me??

At this point, I'm starting to think they're so full of poop they don't know what they're talking about. But, hey, I sort of need the electricity, so I guess I'll suck it up and pay the $158 until they see my actual usage for a couple months and readjust things to a more reasonable place... like what the payments used to be!

Honestly, some days I just can't win for trying....

My Weekend and Shopping

2011-09-26T13:16:00.000-04:00

Happy Monday, everyone! I hope everyone's weekend was a good one. I spent most of my weekend visiting my dad, and these days, that is usually a mixture of happiness to see him and sadness to see his continued decline. Some things that happened over the weekend simply broke my heart. I'm almost glad Mom isn't still around to see it. On the plus side, Dad is still Dad and his humor's still intact, as is his overall optimism about most aspects of his life. He has a wonderful companion and they have a wonderful set of caregivers who do whatever is necessary to make everyone's life as good as possible. For that I'm extremely grateful!

One other thing that came out of my visit was a belated birthday present. I gotz a Keurig! Now I've actually poo-poo'd these machines in the past because of the ecological waste of tossing out little plastic cups every day. Those things do not breakdown in the landfill and go away. So here I am all excited about having this very same machine in my kitchen. (here's a pic)

I have already ordered a nifty little device from amazon that gets rave reviews and will let me use my own coffee so no more plastic k-cups going into the landfills!

And I'll be blogging more about all this when I get up and running (and have time to test things out)!

Meanwhile, I got home yesterday around 5pm and realized I still had to do some grocery shopping, plus I needed to use my free drink coupon at CVS before it expired (gotta get those free Diet Cokes when I can!). Here's what I brought home from GiantPA:

The grand total of everything here was $73.07, and using the store deals, new store e-coupons loaded on my Giant rewards card, and coupons that the store doubles, I paid $38.20 -- a savings rate of 48%. I have just boasted to you about ordering that ekobrew cup hoo-ha above so I can not use k-cups, but here I am, buying a box of 12 k-cups because I happened to have a $1/1 coupon that the store doubled. *blushing* What can I say, I wanted some coffee this morning :) Of all the other items, the 12-pack of Diet Coke cost $4.33 minus a $1 e-coupon minus a $1/1 paper coupon that doubled = $1.33. The bag of Fancy Feast dry catfood cost $2.09 so 9-cents after my $1/1 coupon doubled. The three red and white boxes toward the back are 16-oz of frozen cheesesteaks. They were on sale for $5.99 (down from $7.49) and for buying 3 in one transaction, I got $5 off at the register, so each package cost $4.32, and they will last me awhile. And this week, the frozen veg were $1/bag, so I bought 4 bags. My freezer is quite full, and that's a good thing. Now I should be able to coast on all the frozen goodness for awhile!

How was your weekend?? Any good deals out there?

Sunday Shopday

2011-09-19T11:26:00.000-04:00

Happy Shiny Monday, everyone! I had a fairly good round of grocery shopping yesterday (with one glitch I'll talk about in a moment), so the month is still on track budget-wise.

First up, I stopped in briefly at CVS just to see if the Magic Coupon Machine would spit out anything useful and/or free. Not a chance :) But I did have a freebie mfr-mailed coupon for any Pantene product that needed to be used before the end of the month, and I found a shampoo I like that came with 25% more 'poo in it. That almost caused an issue because with the extra 25% content, the fl. oz. amount on the bottle didn't match what was listed on the coupon, and the clerk noticed. I explained that the 'poo would be the size that matched the coupon except that this had a bonus amount. He seemed to get it, and the coupon scanned just fine. Plus I snagged a free 20-oz Diet Coke to quench my thirst for the rest of the shopping.

Then I went next door to GiantPa where I had a pretty good shop. I got all of the stuff shown below (minus the ever-present kitten).

The total of all goods according to my receipt was $79.82, and after deals and coupons, my OOP was $38.98 -- a 51% savings rate. I splurged on a few items, like the PF Changs frozen dinner for 2. I did have a $1/1 coupon for it that doubled, but the price was still $5 after coupon. I had half for dinner last night and saved the rest for a lunch this week. The frozen veg were "on sale" for $1.25 each, although they've been down to $1 each in the past, so I should have bought them then and not this week. But this week is when I noticed I was completely out of frozen green goodies. The cat litter isn't the brand I usually buy, but it was on sale for $5 each and if I bought two, another $3 was deducted, so each 20-lb container cost $3.50, which is a good litter price. The Smart Ones were on sale 5 for $10, and I had a $1/5 coupon that doubled and for buying 5, I also received an additional $2.50 off at the register, so these 5 meals cost me $5.50 or $1.10 each.

Okay, now for the glitch. See the package of OM Angus hotdogs in the front row above? Well, I got that by using a "free" coupon from the manufacturer. The thing is that the coupon looked like I'd printed it off the Internet onto a color printer -- it looked just like a coupon from Bricks.com or Coupons.com and it said "FREE" on it, so I was expecting trouble.

However, since it was below $5 (the hot dogs were on sale for $4.49), the cashier put it right through. A few seconds later, she tried to do the same thing with a "FREE" Internet-looking color coupon that was also mailed to me from the Herbashine hair color manufacturer. This time, though, because the cost of the product was $7.43, the register made her call for manager's assistance/override. And the manager immediately looked at the coupon and said, "We can't take any coupon for a free item that's printed off the Internet." I said that I knew that but it had been mailed to me from the manufacturer, and I flipped it over to show her the special authentic paper it was printed on that I certainly don't have at home(thank you, Sluggy, for this very valid argument):

No good. She insisted that it didn't matter who printed it off the Internet and mailed it, it was still printed off the Internet and they would not take it, period, end of discussion. So I (pretty red-faced at this point) rooted around in my 3 bags of groceries, finally found the hair color and handed back for her to take off my order.

What I was afraid would happen next was that the cashier, who had stood there listening to this exchange, would pipe up and point out that she'd already put through another coupon just like that (mailed to me but looking like it was printed off the Internet) for the hot dogs. I wasn't going to mention it, and she didn't mention it either. That doesn't make it okay, I realize, but it really was mailed to me from Oscar Mayer, and it really was a completely valid coupon that the store will be reimbursed for. I hope the cashier doesn't get any flack for it when the coupon processors spot it in her drawer.

So then onto Walmart where I was all about the overage just to get a half-gallon of milk.

I had a $1/1 coupon for the 98-cent carrots, a $3/1 coupon for the $2.84 KY, and a $5/1 coupon for the $4.23 Bengay gel. That worked out to bring my $1.88 milk down to 93-cents. Woo!

And how did everyone else do this week??

First Meeting of Divorce Care Group

2011-09-15T10:49:00.000-04:00

Last night was the first session of the local Divorce Care group I signed up with. Divorce Care is a national organization -- actually, last night I learned they've recently gone international -- helping people through the mess of divorce. It's usually offered locally through churches because there is a strong Christian undertone to the whole series.

I signed up after reading about it in an online forum on infidelity. I admit to a certain amount of reluctance because of the Christian orientation of the messages. To misquote Seinfeld -- not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that I'm not a believer. But I read in the infidelity forum that the overall divorce-related messages were very helpful regardless.

Last night's meeting was very interesting. There are 2 group co-leaders (a married couple who had each both been through divorce before meeting the other) and six of us attendees, all women. According to one of the co-leaders, the make up of the group is usually 50/50 men/women, but not this time. Of the six of us, three (including myself) ended up in divorce due to infidelity. The other three found themselves divorced or separated due to varying levels of domineering/brutality/abuse. The word I heard most often from all six of us when speaking about our former or soon-to-be-former spouses was "narcissist". Apparently, being married to a narcissist or someone with serious narcissistic tendencies does not bode well for the marriage.

Anyway, I won't be going any further into details. As the saying goes -- what goes on in Group stays in Group :) But the session was very interesting. There was (IMO) a *lot* of God/Jesus/Lord talk, and I'm okay with that as long as it's not pushed at me or somehow required as part of the sessions. (One of the co-leaders came perilously close when she said that the series really won't work if each person doesn't give herself over to following Jesus, but it's still not a requirement.) We didn't even get to the first video, and there's supposed to be one shown at each session, so you know we had lots to talk about as we went around the room introducing ourselves. I will definitely go back and attend at least another session if not more.

It's a good organization and a great resource -- for anyone who finds him or herself in the throes of divorce, I would definitely recommend checking it out. DivorceCare.org.

My First Attempt at Yoga - LOL!

2011-09-13T10:07:00.000-04:00

So last night was my first of six lessons in very low-impact Yoga. I had received a booklet in the Sunday paper from the local Parks and Rec folks, listing all the fall/winter classes available to kids and adults in our area. There were lots for more active adults, but since I'm still dealing with the aftermath of the broken foot bone, I wanted a class that would help me feel like I'm doing *something* but without doing so much I'd re-aggravate everything that's still healing. This Hatha Yoga class seemed like just the ticket.

Overall, afterwards I felt wonderful -- relaxed, energized, calmer. It really was a nice experience. There were people there like me who had never done any Yoga before at all and others who had been in many different Yoga groups over the years. So there were a lot of differing levels of ability with the various poses we were shown. I did okay with everything except these three. Believe it or not, this downward dog pose, that's supposed to be one of the easiest, was actually the hardest on my foot. As you can see in the picture below, the feet get stretched.

It doesn't really look that bad, but we started by laying prone, then bending our toes forward to push up off the floor, and eventually pushing the heel backwards to a flat-footed pose as in the picture. What that did was really *really* piss off my sore toe -- it doesn't want to be stretched and it definitely doesn't want to be bent with full weight put on it. So I was roughly in this position but with my right foot sticking out to the side like some flipper :)

Then there's the Tree. I can't help but think of this as more of a flamingo stance, but it's called the Tree and has been made rather famous by the Wii fitness module that showed a woman in this pose on the box

What the Tree requires is a really good sense of balance, something I learned last night I do NOT have. The instructor urged people to lean against a wall if they needed to, and I'm obviously going to have to do that in the future, but wanted to give everything a try the instructor way for the first time. When it came time to do the Tree balancing on the right foot (left foot up on the right leg), I again really pissed off my broken bone/foot, so definitely wall leaning from now on!

And if the Tree pissed off my foot, you can bet your bottom dollar that this nifty pose (the Eagle) really did a number on it:

It looks really cool and I have no problem with the wrapping/intertwining aspects, but again, trying to balance on just the right foot and do this ... not a good plan.

After the class was over, the teacher asked how I'd liked it and I told her it was wonderful! Then she said, "Of course, we went really slow tonight," so that has me a bit nervous. In my opinion as a total Noob, she could go that slow for another 2 or 3 classes and that would be just peachy! So we'll see what happens next week.

Anyone out there have any Yoga experience or tips to share?

Sunday Shops

2011-09-12T14:43:00.000-04:00

Here it is, another Monday, and almost half way through September already!

Yesterday's shopping went pretty well overall. Here's what I ended up with. First stop was CVS, and this went really well because just before I left to go there, I received an email CVS survey that I actually qualified for and was able to complete (just a tiny vent - CVS used to reward any survey taker with a couple ECB just for trying the survey; now only people who complete the survey get anything...), so I walked out of the house with $10ECB from that plus $2ECB for my birthday (that was on Friday) and another $2ECB from a previous deal.

So I did the 4 Diet Coke/$13 deal which generated $3ECB back. I paid for that with the $10ECB from the survey and put the rest on a gift card. Then I grabbed the package of Charmin TP for $9.99 and used a 25-cent mfr coupon, the $3ECB I'd just earned from Coke plus the $4ECB described above. The remainder due was $2.74, which I put on a gift card. Woohoo! Oh yeah, the crackers were totally free thanks to a coupon spit out by the Magic Coupon Machine in the store.

Then it was next door to GiantPA, where I picked up all this:

According to my receipt, this lot of goods was worth $35.86, and after deals and doubled coupons (no e-coupons this week), my OOP was $13.40 -- a 63% savings rate. The only item above that was completely free was the 12-pack of Diet Coke. I had received a coupon for a Free 12-pack of any Coke product courtesy of MyCokeRewards.com.

Then I did a quick stop at Weis to take advantage of a few coupons that would work better there than at Giant. I grabbed this haul:

The receipt says the value was $14.64, and after deals and coupons, I paid $7.24 -- a 51% savings rate. The bagged salads were $2.79 and I had two $1/1 coupons, so each bag cost $1.79. The Betty Crocker potatoes were on sale for $1 each and I had a 50-cent/2 coupon that doubled, so one box was free. The rice was on sale for $1.67 and I had a 50-cents/1 coupon that doubled. The non-dairy creamer was at its regular $1.99 price for a quart which is the cheapest price I can find in the area since I currently have no coupons at all for any of the name-brand non-dairy creamers I usually buy.

How did everyone else do with their deal shopping??

Quick-like to Target

2011-09-08T14:57:00.000-04:00

I went over to Target last night because I had some "free" manufacturer's coupons that, even though the manufacturer mailed them to me, still look like Internet printed coupons. I mean, the mfr printed them out at their end and mailed them to me, totally screwing me (and others, I'm sure) over because most stores will not accept anything labeled "free" but printed off the Internet. So my "free" Oscar Mayer Selects hot dog coupon, for example, looks like I printed it myself from coupons.com or bricks, and therefore none of the grocery stores will touch it. So far, Target has not officially said their stores will not accept IPQs that mention "free," although I won't be surprised when/if they do.

The problem is that my Target also doesn't carry a lot of the items I have these mailed IPQs for -- like the OM hot dogs. My Target *has* OM hot dogs, but just the Classic ones, not the Select ones specified on the coupon. Same with Herbashine hair color -- my Target has just a few dark-brown colors available, nothing approaching blond let alone light blond. They also have no Oikos yogurt. So pretty much I'm SOL on some of these great freebie coupons, and that really ticks me off. I will try CVS, but I don't hold out much hope, especially when it comes to hot dogs and yogurt!

However, last night I did find some other things at Target and ended up making two trips. I didn't really mean to do this in two transactions, but it ended up being slightly beneficial since I received two 5-cent bag credits that way (oooh!).

Trip #1:

For the above, I had two Target $1/1 coupons for the Whisker Lickens cat treats, which are priced at 99-cents each, so 2-cents overage! The Diet Coke was free after a MyCokeRewards.com coupon. And because I figured I'd at least have the 5-cent bag credit to put toward something else, I looked around and discovered the OceanSpray Diet Cran drinks are on sale and have $1/1 hang tags. So the above lot cost me $1.62 which I put on a free gift card.

Then on my second trip, I got all this:

I found two "free" IPQs in my wallet for the Lipton teas, I had a mfr mailed (real, not IPQ-looking) coupon for the Cottonelle wipes, and I did the same Diet OS Cran deal a second time. This lot cost me $1.64.

Now I have more healthful diet drinks to mix with my nighttime nip o' vodka :) I gave the Lipton teas away because they are "natural," which means they are filled with sugar :P My office mates don't have nearly the thumbs-down reaction to sugar that I do, so they get my free tea.

Any good Target deals for anyone else? I had two of the Target $5/1 Mossimo apparel coupons with me, but nothing on the clearance racks were anything I'd be caught dead in, so I may check back another day since the coupons don't expire till 10/15 or so.

Sunday Funday

2011-09-05T11:35:00.000-04:00

Happy Labor Day, everyone!

I managed to do a bit of shopping yesterday, and here's what I brought home from a few different stores. Fist up, Walmart. I had a $1/1 mfr coupon for Cascade and a $5 check from Similac, so I ended up with $1.41 in overage from those item purchases. Also, the shelf tag for the Planters said $4.98 (I was very careful to check because I realized this problem last week but not until I got home), but when I checked out, the nuts rang up at $5.48, so I went over to customer service and the young dude was determined to make me wait while he flagged down someone to go check the shelf price. I said, "Sure thing, no problem!" Well, happily it was a supervisor who came over, looked at the situation and said "Just give it to her!" because he wasn't going to run to the back of the store and check the shelf tag for 50 cents. But if he had, he would have found I wasn't lying :)

So the results from Walmart: total worth, according to the receipt $17.32. Total paid after coupons, checks, and refunds: $11.82. The sweatpants aren't something I would normally buy, but I completely wore out my last pair (shredded them and the drawstring broke beyond repair) so I need another pair before I start my new Yoga class next week.

Then, onto GiantPA where I got all this:

The receipt says it's all worth $39.32. Total paid after deals, coupons and e-coupons: $13.82, which if my math is correct is a savings rate of 65%. Yay! The bagged salad was actually the best part of the shop. I had a free mfr coupon for the bag in the middle, plus I had a $1/2 mfr coupon for the two Dole bags, which were already on sale BOGO at $3.69, so after the $1/2 coupon doubled, those two bags cost $1.69 or 85-cents each. The LOL eggs were on sale for $2.50 and I had a 75-cent/1 Internet coupon from the Land O' Lakes website that doubled, so the eggs cost $1. Not as good as the recent Target glitch eggs, but close.

I also stopped at Wegman's and CVS very briefly, and combined the results here:

At Wegman's I had a $1/$5 produce coupon and used it for the apples and bananas, which were both on sale. I also picked up a 20-oz Diet Coke, which was free after using a mfr coupon from MyCokeRewards.com. The trip to CVS yielded nothing except two free candy bars courtesy of the magic coupon machine. I put those in the fridge for my son's next visit :)

And to finish off my post, here's a great Awwwwwww! pic of my kitty sleeping on the couch last night (in my spot).

Another Quick Shop Just to Go Over My Budget

2011-08-31T11:55:00.000-04:00

I really didn't want to go over budget this month (or any other month...) but whether it's because my son was living with me (and eating my food) or because I just couldn't pass up some deals/coupons, I'm not totally sure. Probably some of both.

Anyway, I wanted to make sure I was able to use some $1 coupons that would double, and thanks to my favorite cashier who let me do 3 small transactions, I got a pretty good haul, shown here:

As usual, the beautiful kitten -- the one who loves to be in every single photo I take -- is not included. The shelf-worth of all the above items was $43.43. The OOP (out of pocket) amount I paid was $8.96, a savings rate of.... 79%. Woohooo!!

Ah, if I could just do that every time I go to the store :) The son will probably eat all 8 of the Morningstar veggie burgers today and tomorrow. And the cats will also be eating well, leaving me with the Hillshire Farms deli meat in my salads, the tuna for a lunch or snack, and the Dreamfields pasta for my weekly Friday night dinner.

Eggs, Eggs, Eggs and What to Do with Them!

2011-08-30T15:24:00.000-04:00

Thanks to a wonderful glitch at my local Target, eggs have been *really* cheap lately. In other words, the price of a dozen eggs was marked down for a sale about a month or so ago, and the computer price hasn't been changed since. That combined with a couple 55-cents/2-doz IPQs and the 5-cent bag credit has landed me a boatload of really cheap eggs, like 49-cents per dozen. Woo!

In fact, here are a couple dozen I picked up just yesterday:

As stated, the eggs were 49-cents/doz and the Suave and diet Coke were free after "free" manufacturer's coupons.

As a low-carber on a budget, cheap protein is extremely coveted and often hard to find. Meat prices just keep going up and the so-called "sales" aren't really very impressive. But, oh, the egg!

So what do I do with all these wonderful little ovoids of goodness? Well, one sure-fire way to use up five at a time is to make the flaxseed foccacia bread I've mentioned before. In fact, I need to whip up another "loaf" of that later today.

Aside from that, I tend to use eggs as a medium for quick and easy "meals for one" almost every evening. Here are a couple examples:

My favorite go-to meal is the Pepperoni and Pea Scramble. If I need to go strict low-carb, I forgo the peas and use edamame (raw green soybeans) instead.

First, I quarter about a dozen slices of pepperoni

Then I crack 3 eggies into a bowl and beat them up.

Into a hot skillet go a glug of olive oil, a handful of frozen peas (or edamame, shown here), and the pepperoni.

After the beans and pepperoni have heated up, I pour in the eggs.

Sprinkle on a handful of shredded cheese. At this point, I can either try and keep the whole thing intact and flip it as an omelet or put it quickly under a broiler for a fritatta.

Of course, I rarely have the patience or skill for that, so mine just get stirred up:

Yum! And using this same really REALLY basic composition, I also use up leftovers, such as with this Fish Stick-Broccoli Toss Up:

First, the leftover fish sticks and broccoli florets get cut up so that they're all about the same size, then put into a hot skillet with a glug of olive oil.

Once heated, then pour in three beaten eggs.

In this case, I didn't remember to add the cheese until after I'd "plated" my meal, but the end result was just as tasty.

Really versatile things, those eggs!!

Sunday Shopping

2011-08-29T12:26:00.000-04:00

While the East Coast was dealing with Hurricane Irene, we in Central PA really didn't get hit with too much of her wrath at all. It was very gray and rainy and blustery, but not much else, which was just fine. Seeing the rampaging flood waters in Vermont on CNN last night made me very sad for the folks there dealing with it, and quite happy I was here!

Anyway, a little rain and wind wasn't going to stop me from my weekly grocery shopping! The nice folks at GiantPA had emailed me a list of e-rewards (coupons I could load directly onto my rewards card via their website) that was tailored especially for me from my shopping history. And they did a pretty good job since I received 5 e-reward offers and used 4 of them yesterday. There was $1.50/1 any Cracker Barrel cheese, which was already on sale for $3/bar; 75-cents/1 V8 juice drink, already on sale for $2.50/ea; $1/1 any Coke 12-pack; and 50-cents/1 any Hillshire Farms deli meat, on sale for $3.33/tub.

The really nifty thing about e-rewards or e-coupons that trigger at the register is that I can also "stack" them with paper manufacturer's coupons, which Giant will double. So, for example, the V8 juice was on sale for $2.50, the e-coupon deducted 75-cents, and then my $1/1 paper coupon doubled and took $2 off, so I actually received overage of 25-cents toward the rest of my purchases. Woot!

Anyway, all of the above items cost $69.06, but after weekly specials, e-coupons, and doubled coupons, my OOP was $27.41 -- a 60% savings rate. Yay!

I also did a quick transaction next door at CVS, which I should have split into two transactions but didn't think of it till later (duh). Here's what I got (not including the gorgeous kitten):

The St. Jo's aspirin was on sale for $2 and kicking out a $2 ECB. I had a $1/1 IPQ for it plus one ECB from the previous trip. What I should have done was do that transaction (paid nothing and gotten $2ECB back) then used the $2 ECB toward the BOGO vitamins to make them only $3.99. But I got everything at once, so I put $5.99 on my gift card and took the $2ECB home with me for use next time.

On the foot front, I am SO thrilled to report that finally... FINALLY my foot is not hurting constantly if I stand bare- or stocking-foot on the floor. It doesn't feel normal yet (as in, how it felt before it broke), but it doesn't hurt to stand like that anymore. As a result I was actually able to wear a pair of new shoes out to a club Saturday night (no dancing, though, just sitting and drinking a beer), then take an honest-to-gosh shower last night instead of a bath. And after both those activities, no aching foot! Hallelujah! Maybe, just maybe someday I'll really be able to walk barefoot on a beach again - it's a dream for now :)

How did everyone else's deal shopping go this week?

Soapmaking - Not-So-Hot Chocolate

2011-08-29T11:17:00.000-04:00

I gave cold-process soapmaking another try last weekend -- Read about my first attempt HERE and HERE -- but while I'm not totally disappointed (exactly) with the results, I'm not really thrilled either. I need to do a lot more practicing of this method, but the ingredients (specifically, the various oils used) can be expensive, which is hard on my limited budget these days. Maybe Santa will be able to help me out a little later on in the year.

Anyway, I did have the ingredients on hand to try another simple, small batch. The oils involved were olive and coconut. I also wanted to try to color the batch light brown because I planned to use "hot chocolate" fragrance oil for scent. The resulting soap, which will be curing for weeks before I can actually use it, doesn't really look light brown, as you can see here:

This would probably be better with some sort of peach scent - LOL! But I tried. I have very limited colorant choices, so I was basically trying to mix yellow, blue, and red, but it really wasn't working. Anyway, the picture just up above is the unwrapped loaf of soap after 3 days. I should have unwrapped it for bar cutting after a couple days, but put it so safely up and out of the way from the cats that I completely forgot about it until three days had passed.

That plus having no good cutting tool resulted in these "bars":

I first thought maybe there was too much lye in the mix, but pH testing and the "zap" test both convinced me that I just didn't use a good cutter. So now I have a better mold, cutter, and a few other new tools. And I will try again in a week or so, probably going back to a much more basic recipe without any colorant at all.

But I have to say, soapmaking is a LOT of fun, and even though I still need lots of practice, I always look forward to the next session I set aside for myself, be it cold process or melt-n-pour. If anyone wants to explore soapmaking, I strongly encourage you to head over to http://brambleberry.com/ for supplies and a link to various soap forums and videos from Soap Queen TV, which demonstrate all sorts of basic and helpful techniques.

Blogger Comment Problems Continue...

2011-08-24T12:25:00.000-04:00

Hi all!

Just wanted to alert anyone who has tried to post a comment to any of my blog entries and been thwarted by the various options that insist you log in but then won't let you... I cannot get an answer from blogger/blogspot about this issue. I have read lots of posts from other people having this same problem with their own blogs and when they try to post on other blogger-based blogs.

When I go to other Blogger-based blogs, I have the same problem. In fact, I can't even post a comment on my own blog anymore! I have to use the Enter Name and URL choice and then type in "I'mSoPretty" for my name and http://ifartfairydust.com/ for my URL every time, and it's my frickin' blog, fercryinoutloud!

So I sympathize with anyone having this problem. All I can suggest in the interim is that the easiest way seems to be to choose Anonymous and then include you name or ID or handle (or whatever you want to be known as) in the body of your comment.

Stupid Blogspot! They reported knowing about this issue back in May and still have no followup as to whether they even have a clue what's wrong let alone when they might be able to fix it...

Anyway, I'm very sorry it's causing anyone problems who might think about posting a comment here then get turned off by the process!

-FairyDustHerself

Sunday Shop Successes

2011-08-22T12:53:00.000-04:00

Before I get to the shopping, let me pause a moment to reflect on my $%*)@$( foot problems. I won't whine at you too much more than I already have, but I do want to mention that I saw my orthopedic surgeon for my last foot exam on Thursday 8/18. He took a final round of x-rays and prounounced the broken bone healed. Yay!

The problem is that my foot still has achy/pain issues that really still limit my "quality of life" situation, namely I cannot walk bare or stocking footed, and unless you're in that situation, you may not realize how very much that affects a lot of things - no showers because I can't stand on a hard surface like the shower stall, no quick trip to the loo in the middle of the night, no beach walking, no grass/lawn walking, no walking on the cement all around a swimming pool, etc. It really sorta sucks (oops, sorry, whining again). Anyway, I took this last opportunity to really try to pin the doc down about this ongoing issue and what can be done about it. Unfortunately, all he said was that since my 2nd toe (the one that aches to beat the band) is longer than all my other toes, this is a common problem - it's under the most stress. But it didn't hurt like this before I broke the 3rd toe bone! Something must've happened. Well, according to him, this can continue to hurt for another 9 months to a year (...shit!) but I shouldn't let it keep me from being active. I don't know about you, but pain makes me not want to do what's causing the pain. Seriously... And I said that to him. The other options he gave me: 1) a shot of steroids directly into the toe joint of the toe that aches, and 2) installing a Metatarsal pad into my shoe to "take the weight off the aching toe."

Okay, well, I already did option 1 back in June, and it did no good -- in fact, it made my toe hurt much worse for a week and turned it completely black and blue (very unattractive). So I allowed his tech to put the option-2 orthotic pad into my shoe. The pad goes basically in the middle of the foot just back from all the toe joints. While it doesn't cause me any further pain and I've diligently walked with it for 4 days now, it does NOT fix the problem or even lessen it. *sigh* So this morning I put a call into a foot specialist -- she's not a doctor, but she is someone who builds shoes and orthotics specific to each person's problems. I'm hoping she can come up with some better insert for my shoe that will actually do what this little pad of the doc's was supposed to do but didn't. Please keep all fingers crossed for me on this. I'm not sure I can make it another 9 months to a year with this kind of pain. I know I don't really have a choice, but I may just go absolutely stark raving mad or lop my foot off in the meantime. :)

There, now you're all up to date on that fun! Let's go shopping.

First, I went to a Rite Aid at the other end of town, because they tend to be better stocked with more items since the physical store is larger than the other RAs in town. I got these items:

Aren't my kitten's eyes gorgeous? :) I did this purchase in two transactions. First, I bought the 2 A&H kitty litter boxes. They were $12/2 and I had two $3/1 mfr coupons plus a $1vv RA coupon, so I paid $5 and got back $2 in Ups. Then I tried to do the Pepsi deal, which was supposed to be 5 12-packs for $13 using a coupon found in Sunday's insert. Of course, it didn't work right, and I was charged $17 for these sodas. The 20-oz Diet Coke was free after a mfr coupon, plus I had 5 75-cent/1 Pepsi 12-pack coupons and the $2 Ups from the litter transaction plus another $1 vv RA coupon. After the register gal fixed the total, I ended up paying $6.87 for the Pepsi.

Hey, Sluggy, do the register tape survey codes yield $3/$15 coupons anymore or am I SOL on the one I received at the end of my receipt?? (she'll know!)

Then I went next door to GiantPA and got all this:

Not as good a savings rate as I've been getting lately, but the Edamame were a treat, not on sale, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised at the outcome. The total of all the above goodies (minus the kitten) was $27.14, and my OOP after deals and doubled coupons was $14.20, so a savings of 48%.

I totally bailed on going to Walmart because the students are back and have pretty much taken over the entire store -- trying to find anything then check out is like a poor weak salmon (with a bum foot) trying to swim upstream... I may try to go after work today. I have a $7/2 KY coupon that should provide a little overage if I can find 2 of the small KY products usually priced at $2.62.

How did everyone else's shopping trips turn out? Any good RA or CVS scores??

British Actors, my Roku, Low-Carbing, and the Internet

2011-08-19T17:09:00.002-04:00

So awhile back, I finally decided to stop researching how to get streaming video from Netflix onto my big flat panel TV (something I ended up with in the divorce settlement), and decided to bite the dang bullet and just do it. So using all my free cred at amazon (thank you, Swagbucks), I ordered the Roku XD for $79 (free shipping).

It had tons of great reviews and also quite a few negative ones, but the overall gist of the negative reviews was that the unit might not pick up my home's wi-fi signal unless it was very close to the router. I realized that just because my ex plugged our wi-fi router into a certain cable outlet in a certain room of the house didn't mean that I couldn't move it. I am, after all, totally my own woman now! And if that didn't work, I'd just send the unit back to amazon for a refund and be no worse off.

I got my Roku, plugged it in, it worked perfectly with no router relocation necessary, and I've been happily watching old TV shows via Netflix instant queue streaming ever since.

One of many many suggestions that Netflix had for me, based on things I've watched and rated as enjoyable in the past, was a British murder mystery series called Midsomer Murders. I thought, sure why not!, and put it in my queue. I've been watching at least one episode a day ever since - I have fallen head over heels for this show, and that's partly due to the wonderful location shots in "Middle England," partly due to my love of murder mysteries in small hamlets/villages/towns where everyone has an evil secret or two, and mostly because of this guy: John Nettles. Seriously, if you have any opportunity to watch him in just one episode (and there are about 75 episodes available), I think you'll get it -- the man has mucho charisma and one of those just-read-me-the-phone-book-and-I'll-be-happy voices.

Apparently, I'm waaaaay behind the times, and everyone in England fell for this guy in his first major series, Bergerac.

That series still hasn't been released on US DVD, which is probably why I'd never heard of it. I'd lived in London in 1979-80 and my last trip to London was for just a week in late 1998, and Bergerac was long over at that point, running from 1981-1991. Damn, missed it completely! Apparently, the Midsomer Murders series had started a year earlier in 1997, but I guess the TV shows I flipped through a couple times at night in my hotel room didn't happen to contain an ep, or I would've been hooked back then for sure.

ANYWAY, I started poking around on the Internet, searching on his name and whatnot. He's apparently just retired from the Midsomers series in February of this year! '97-2011 - heckuvarun!

And reading all about his other acting exploits, including stints on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company, made me think of another British actor I couldn't get enough of years ago: Robin Ellis, known to most TV fans in the UK and US as Ross Poldark from the Poldark series based on Winston Graham's novels.

Interestingly, Midsomer Murders is based on books by Caroline Graham, but I haven't uncovered any mention of them being related.

Okay, so I typed Robin Ellis into google and up comes his blog! He writes a food blog now and it would seem he just published a cookbook for diabetics!!

And that means he's pretty much a low-carber. An exceedingly handsome, talented, British low-carber who lives in South France now. How cool is that! And he blogs almost every day! You can read his blog HERE.

And this is just how my mind works sometimes -- thank you, Internet, for making all this so easy to find!

Sunday Shopping

2011-08-15T14:40:00.000-04:00

Happy Monday, folks!

Had a nice, mostly relaxing 3-day weekend. I was going to go on Friday to an estate auction happening right across the street from me, but opted instead to sleep in, get my hair cut, do some housework and mostly be lazy.

On Saturday, I spent all day at the auction, but for the first time ever going to estate auctions, I didn't buy anything. I didn't even bid once on anything. Very very unlike me, but I'm currently not as interested in reselling items on ebay as I used to be, and I saw only two items I actually might have wanted for myself. Both items quickly shot up waaaay over my bid limit. In fact, that was the order of the day -- people were just throwing money at all the up-for-bid items and that's not my style. I like to get a real bargain :) In spite of that, I was out of the house on a gorgeous day and got to do some wonderful people watching. Plus I love listening to the auctioneer patter and these guys were good.

Yesterday I did my usual round-robin of shopping. I started at CVS and got this (minus the kitten):

The total of goods involved came to $27.01. The soda was on sale for $2.50/12-pack and I used 4 75-cent coupons. The CVS body wash was a coupon freebie that was available via facebook. The carmello and the flexible bandages were both free from the magic coupon machine (with overage!), the soda was free with a MyCokeRewards.com coupon, and I also had $3 in ECB from a previous trip. So after all that, my revised total was $2.57, which I put on a gift card. Yay! I also got back $1 ECB from using my green bag tag.

I loaded all that into my car in a downpour, then went into Giant next door to freeze in my wet clothes in the air conditioning. Brrrr!

All of these goodies below (minus the kitten, again):

Came to $21.61, and after deals and coupons, my OOP was $9.20 -- a 57% savings rate. Not too awful, and I will be able to feed the poor kitties for another few weeks ;)

I also did a Walmart run, but there weren't really any great deals to show you from there except 4 more free 3-packs of Cascade that cost 97-cents and I used 4 $1/1 coupons (so 12-cents overage -- oooh!).

How did everyone else do with their weekly shopping?

Another Fun Night of Beatlemania

2011-08-15T12:25:00.000-04:00

Every August in our little town, The Cast of Beatlemania drives in, sets up, and makes us all shake our money-makers again like we did 45-some years ago. It has become -- without exception -- the highlight of my year, which is pretty amazing considering when they first came to town 7 or more years ago, I refused to go because they weren't the "real" Beatles. My loss, as it turns out. Thankfully, my friends convinced me to go the next year, and I had a blast. These guys are wonderful, and if you ever get a chance, definitely check out their show. Their website is http://www.moptops.com/. There are a number of other Beatles tribute shows out there, and I'm sure they're wonderful, too, but I can definitely speak for these guys.

Here's a not-so-great pic from this year's show (during "the early years" portion). You may not think the "Paul," "Ringo" or "George" fellows are especially true-to-life looking. But click on the photo and take a gander over on the right at "John." Even without the wig, he looks a lot like Lennon, so I pretty much stare at him for the whole show :) And they do excellent talking vocal imitations as well as singing. The show is just Fab!

The Cast of Beatlemania

Only about 360 more days till they're back again!!

They're also on facebook for anyone who might be interested. Just log into facebook and search for "CAST of Beatlemania" and their page should come up.

Weekend Roundup or Just Cut My Foot Off, Please!

2011-08-08T10:19:00.000-04:00

I realize the title is a little dramatic but I have to say I am getting so fed up with my foot situation. I broke it (stress fracture of the 3rd metatarsal bone) back on May 4th, that's more than three months ago now. I was in a walking cast/boot for about a month and a half after I walked around on it broken for the first month and a half (the initial x-rays did not show the fracture so everyone thought it was a strain only). The illustration below shows the right foot bones, and I've put an oval around where my break occurred.

I've been out of the boot for about two weeks now and wearing comfy (ancient, ratty-looking) sneakers with thick, cushy socks and double foam inserts. Most days, this is adequate for me to slowly walk around my office area and my house without stressing my foot out too much. Other days, even if I do exactly the same slow, limited walking, plus applying ice at various times and taking anti-inflammatories, I end up crying from the pain, like last night.

The word "pain" is probably misleading. There's the incredible stab-through-the-foot-with-a-screwdriver pain I experienced when I first broke the bone, then the throbbing pain as I continued to walk around on it not knowing it was broken. So the current "pain" isn't like that at all. In fact, I would call it more of an "ache" than a pain. But it's driving me nuts nonetheless. I just want to be able to walk, and more than a block at a time, and without the damn foot aching to beat the band. If you had someone grab your 2nd toe and yank on it as hard as they could, the result would be the ache I'm talking about. It feels like my toe is being hyperextended and about to break off. It feels horrible. I hate it. I still can't stand barefoot on a hard floor like the kitchen or bathroom. I've switched to taking baths because I can't stand in the shower stall. The aching is just driving me out of my friggin mind, and I'm so tired of crying (because it's all still really near the surface from that whole affair/divorce thing of the past three-plus years).

So there's my pity-party round up for today. I see my orthopedic surgeon -- the one who keeps grunting when I say I'm in pain (me: "it really hurts"; him: "huh") -- next Thursday at which time I think he plans to take more x-rays to see continued healing of the broken bone. I've been relatively mild in my level of complaining with him so far, because he keeps telling me everything looks good in the x-rays. If, when I see him next week, I still can't stand on the foot, just STAND on it, without this toe-yank aching thing, I'm going to exclaim more loudly about how it hurts and I want some either action or reassurances here.

Meanwhile, of course, I'm 51, I've just (sorry for the TMI) stopped taking The Pill because I don't need to now that I'm divorced, so I'm staring down the barrel of menopause and the most drastic drop in bone density in a woman's life, and I can't even get through a simple toe break that's supposed to heal in 6-8 weeks. AAAUUUUGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!

My shopping! I did venture out once yesterday to get some groceries. My coupons are dwindling -- have all of you noticed this? the level of decent coupons is really dropping. Everything seems to be 40-cents off when you buy three or some nonsense like that. Piffle! So here's what I bought at Giant yesterday:

I think this is more produce than I've bought at one time all summer - LOL! But there was a "deal"!! Giant is slowly dipping its toe (ow!) into the e-coupons arena, and they sent me an email with two offers I could load on my rewards card: 3 free ears of corn, and the other offer was $1/$5 fresh produce (not including the free ears of corn). So since I stock up on lettuce at Giant each week, this was great for me!

The total of everything in the pic above was $31.26. My oop was $11.89, which is 62% savings. Yay! The corn, yogurt, and pasta was all free; the El Paso stuffers item was on sale for $2.50 and I had a $1/1 coupon that doubled so 50-cents for that. Morningstar products were on sale for $2.84 and I had a $1/1, so 84-cents there, etc. I had received some manufacturer's coupons from Hormel just for emailing them that I love their pepperoni. If you ever want to try contacting companies and sometimes receiving coupons from them (and I highly recommend it), a good starting place is over at couponing to disney's website where she has a spreadsheet all set up of companies she's contacted and what they have mailed her. It's pretty cool!

Thursday This and That

2011-08-04T10:13:00.000-04:00

I was scrolling through my Netflix streaming "instant" queue last night and saw that I'd put the TV series "Angel" in there. I'm a huuuuge Buffy fan but never watched Angel at all, so I figured this is a perfect opportunity to give it a shot. The first couple episodes were okay, but the third one - wooo! Spike arrives, and I always loved Spike -- good or bad -- then Oz shows up, too. It was a fun ep. I miss BTVS a lot and hope that Sarah Michelle Gellar's new series "Ringer" is not only good but popular enough to make it in TV land. She's got a pretty high standard to live up to! The first ep is Tuesday, Sept 13th, at 9pm on CW.

My foot is still healing, but feeling a tiny bit better each day. I decided that since trying on new shoes really aggravates it, which makes absolutely no new pair of shoes feel good, I'm going to stop trying to find new shoes until the foot is 100% again. I have the okay from my boss to wear my crappy ol' sneaks as long as I need to (because they're the only pair of shoes I own that don't hurt to wear), so I'm going to stop trying to rush the back-to-normal process faster than my foot is ready for.

BzzAgent/Dr. Scholl's gellin' inserts -- I am in this particular try-it-out-and-rave-about-it campaign from BzzAgent and Dr. Scholl's, and I received a free pair of inserts to try. Unfortunately, they made an assumption that because I'm a female, I have female-size feet. HAHAHA! They sent the women's inserts that cover sizes 6-10, and I'm a women's 12 or a men's 11, so ... not gonna work. I will be exchanging the set they sent me for a men's pair at my local Wally World, then I can give them a try and report back as to whether my life improves when I'm gellin'.

My name-changing activities continue, and so far most organizations are being very efficient and helpful, which is something of a relief. I've received all new credit cards with my new name and the same account numbers, which is great for any auto payments I had set up on a couple of them. The next big holdouts are the utility companies. A number of those are still in my ex's name, and they want me to apply for all new accounts, which makes me nervous because I'm afraid they'll take the opportunity to jack my rates somehow or change my payment plan from what I set up and am used to. But at some point, especially now that my name is the only one on the house deed, I need to get that taken care of.

How's everyone else doing this week??

Sneaking in a last Shop in July

2011-08-01T10:32:00.000-04:00

Happy August 1st, everyone!

Yesterday, while it was still July, I hit up a few stores sort of under the budget wire, because I didn't really have money left in my grocery budget but figured the cc charges wouldn't actually hit my bank accounts until after today. Ball juggling to be sure.

I didn't do a lot of shopping, but I did start at CVS for their Diet Coke deal:

In the mail last week I'd received a CVS coupon for $4/$20, so my goal was to make it to $20 in order to use that coupon. I did so by getting four 12-packs of Diet Coke (on sale for $13, giving $3 ECBs back) plus a bag of Iams cat food for $6.99 and a 20-oz Diet Coke for $1.79. That brought my original total to $21.78 plus tax. The coupon didn't want to scan, which was a little odd, but the nice cashier fellow pushed it through, then I also had a free 20-oz Coke coupon and a free bag of Iams coupon. The end result was $9+change (tax) that I put on a free CVS gift card, and I received $3 ECB back to use next time.

Then I went next door to GiantPA to make use of some coupons expiring 7/31.

All of this, according to the receipt, is worth $27.22 incl sales tax. After deals and coupons, I paid $9.60 -- a 65% savings rate. Woo! The yogurt and the Safeguard 2-bar soap were completely free after doubled coupons. The cheese sticks were on sale for $3.89 and I had $1/1 coupons that doubled (I actually did two transactions to get both coupons doubled), so each bag was $1.89. I had a $1/1 any Athenos feta, and this container was $2.43, so 43-cents after coupon. The Coffee-Mate was on sale for $2.50 and I had a 50-cent IPQ that doubled, and the kitty treats were 29-cents each after a $1/2 mfr coupon that doubled. Yay for doubled coupons!!! There are rumors that our Giant will eventually do away with doubles, or will change the double policy to only coupons up to 99-cents, like some of the other stores in the area. I seriously hope those are false rumors. I think if they do make the change, they will see a dramatic drop in sales because then there won't be any reason to go to Giant over any of the other doubling stores (Weis and Wegman's). Fingers crossed that the rumors are just rumors, nothing more!

How did everyone else do with their weekly grocery shopping?

My Review of Roku XD Player

2011-07-29T16:15:00.001-04:00

Originally submitted at Roku

The new XD steps it up with 1080p HD video quality and extended-range wireless.

Wonderful! So glad I got one!!

By CindyLooWho from Central PA on 7/29/2011

Pros: Easy to set up, Easy to use, Very responsive, Compact, Great value, High quality picture

Best Uses: Primary TV, Living room

Describe Yourself: Netflix fan

I had read many reviews that seemed to indicated that if I hooked up a Roku that wasn't within 20 feet of my wi-fi router, I would be asking for problems -- it wouldn't connect or the connection would be sketchy and intermittent at best. This kept me from getting one for months until I decided that if it didn't work, I'd try moving the router closer. If it still didn't work, I'd send it back to amazon for a full refund.

I needn't have worried at all. My router is downstairs and in a back room from the Roku upstairs in a front room, way more than 20 feet. In spite of that, setup was a breeze, everything worked perfectly the first time. I had no problems at all. I also did not buy special HDMI cables. I was prepared to if necessary, but the red, yellow, white cables that came with the Roku work just fine, and I was watching HD movies streamed from amazon right away.

I have the $7.99/mo streaming package from Netflix, and that's pretty much all I watch (unless I score free movie credits on amazon). There are so many TV series I can't wait to catch up on. The Roku with Netflix is perfect for that!

If I ever do get a smaller TV in my bedroom, I will get another Roku for that.

And the Roku is so small, much smaller than I was expecting. I can barely see it on the shelf under our 42" panel TV. But it has no problem reading the remote signal from across a big room.

(legalese)

Change My Name Day

2011-07-27T11:59:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I took the day off from work in order to go around to various agencies and get my name changed on all the biggie documents -- Social Security, IRS, driver's license, passport, banks

I had a pretty successful morning, then things sort of fell apart for the afternoon, but I'll get to that in a minute.

First up, Social Security Administration. I went to the local office, the guard asked if I had any guns, knives, sharp instruments of any kind (all while she was yawning and could barely ask the question -- guess it was a slow day), and I answered no so she let me in. I was the only person there (and apparently not a very exciting one at that), so it took only a few moments for the nice lady behind the counter to type stuff into her machine that will change my name on my SS account, which will trigger a new card being mailed to me in approximatley 2 weeks.

The niftiest part of all this is the the SSA will also send all the same name-change info to the IRS, so I don't have to do a thing with them. Yay!

From the SSA, I drove out to our nearest state driver's license center. I was hoping they could not only give me a new license but also change my name on my car title and registration, but all they could do was provide me a new photo driver's license. I had the option of paying nothing for a little card that I would carry with my old-name license or paying $13.50 for a new license altogether. I went with the $13.50 option -- not the most frugal, but to me much more definitive and easier to explain. If I whip out my old license to prove my ID, it won't have the right name, then I show the little card that goes with it... and maybe that's okay, maybe it's not. I just got the new card, and they took the picture and issued the card right on the spot.

Then I stopped at the mall and returned a pair of shoes I'd bought thinking they'd fit and be comfy on my almost-healed foot ... but I was wrong. After that, I went to nearby Walmart and had a photo taken for a new passport.

I will have to mail those pics with my old-name passport, a form, and money off to the US govt, so I'll probably get that all together and mailed off this weekend now that I have the pics.

Then it was back to AAA (I was just there last night with the ex transferring one car title from my name to his because it's the car he's driven all along, it just happened to be in my name), and they took my car title, a form, some money, and a copy of my new driver's license and assured me I'd receive a new title in about 10 days. When that new title arrives, then I can go online and renew my vehicle registration, which will be listed under my new name (hopefully).

At this point, I was very tired and hungry even though I'd been out doing all of the above for only about 3 hours. I saw a Sheetz (like a minit-mart) and stopped for gas plus a free grilled chicken salad and drink (I have some freebie coupons from them - it really comes in handy on occasion). Then I headed home to relax and ice my foot.

Ha! I got home at 12:30-ish only to see an email from my son who's been feeling very crappy for days now, saying he felt worse and couldn't reach the doctor. I could tell he was starting to freak out about all of it, so I took him to a local medical clinic. Of course, this was the same place where I went when I broke my foot, and they said it wasn't broken. But still, much closer, cheaper, and faster than the hospital ER. As expected, they couldn't really pinpoint his problem, but gave him a stomach-bug-specific antibiotic and instructions to go only clear liquids for 12 hours and easy starches for another day after. Then I took him shopping because he had none of those things at all in his apt. I also took him back to my house for the afternoon so he could relax in central a/c. It all came out while we were talking, he'd taken way more of his adderall than he should have on Friday, Saturday it was 102 degrees (so probably about 227 degrees in his apartment), he wasn't hydrating as much as he should've been, and after not taking anymore adderall, he was still wired but losing focus and starting to stress about his upcoming move to Philly in a few weeks (he's lived here in our small town for his whole 23-year life, so this move is a big deal). I don't know if it was the a/c, getting all of that off his chest, my reassurances that he would be okay and it will all work out, the antibiotics, all the liquids I pumped into him, or some combo of all of those things, but by last evening, he was feeling much better, and I think he's gonna be okay. I just hope he remembers to never overdo the adderall again. He knows better, and now he will hopefully really know better.

And that was my day! So the part of my name-change plan that involved local banks will be waiting till Saturday morning, but that's okay - gives me something to do :)

Sunday Shopping, Foot Update

2011-07-25T12:25:00.000-04:00

Hi, everyone!

So as of Friday night, I am supposedly out of the walking-cast boot thing for good (well, on this particular break, at least). And I'm thrilled, let me tell you!! The orthopedic surgeon didn't really provide a whole lot of guidance from this point on, however. He basically said that I "probably shouldn't run or jump" on my foot for awhile. Oooookay. And I should wear "comfortable shoes." This has been an ongoing goal my entire 51-year life -- comfortable shoes. And it's very difficult for me. Without trying to sound too "woe is me" here's a list:

big feet -- women's size 12
flatter than pancake feet -- they turn in somethin' fierce
bunions -- so my big toes both point toward the outside of the foot, pushing all other toes in that direction
now, break -- whoopee!
toe length -- on my right foot (the broken one) my 2nd toe is longer than the big toe

Given all of that, and the insistence of the clothing/shoe industry to make only cute little shoes for cute little women (with arches), I have been on a mostly futile quest for decades. I often have better luck trying to find athetic men's shoes in 10.5 or 11 because they are automatically built wider in the "toe pocket" area, but even then it's a trick and a half to find a pair that fits, helps me with some combination of the above problems, and is *comfortable*.

So I spent most of Saturday scouring all the local shoe stores, emploring all the shoe store employees to help find me something (preferably in black, brown or charcoal so I can wear them at work). I finally found Gloria, who was able to find one possible pair. I'm still wearing those just around the house in case I decide they won't work and I need to take them back. Luckily, I have very flexible, lenient bosses who don't really care too much that the only pair of shoes I can wear right now is a 7-yr-old pair that looks it.

Anyway, on Sunday, I strapped on those 7-yr-old sneaks and headed out to two stores. Actually, I stopped in CVS first, planning to get the Diet Pepsi deal (4 12-packs for $10, using 4 75-cent/1 coupons for a total of $7 or $1.75/12-pack). But they didn't have much in stock, not of the kind I was hoping to get (decaf diet). So onward to GiantPA, where I got all this:

The receipt says it's all worth $51.21, and I paid $25.43 OOP, so a 50% savings rate. I actually do a little better than that because I also received a $1 ONYO for the V8 juice and a "try me free" rebate for the two Freschetta pizza-by-the-slice products. Adding that $25 to what I've already spent in the "groceries" category for this month, I'll come in just under my $100 goal if I can stay the heck away from any store through the 31st.Well, actually, I might cheat. If there are any good sales on Sunday, 7/31, and I need to use up any expiring-that-day coupons, I may just go to the store and the charge will still fall in August via the credit card company. Not really proud of having to finagle like that, but I work with what I have, and my unexpected expenses this month have been: shoes (even if I return them all, I still have to pay for them first up front) and various name-changing fee-based activities at the DMV. So my budget's getting tweaked quite a bit this week.

Anyway, after that I did something that I debated a lot with myself about first. I went to Weis and got these:

Weis is running a $2/ea special this week on all Lean Cuisines and I have a $1/2 Savingstar e-coupon that will expire on the 31st, so even though I was hoping to come up with a paper/IP coupon to make it even sweeter, I went ahead and got these 2 meals that will end up costing $1.50 each. Not too awful, but not too great either. I just happen to love LC meals :)

How did everyone else do with their grocery shopping this weekend??

Kittens, Groceries, and Car Insurance

2011-07-19T09:33:00.000-04:00

Morning, all!! I stayed indoors this past weekend to avoid the local festival crowds here in town. Actually, that's not totally true -- on Saturday, I took a 2-hour trip to another town for some mystery shopping. But basically I avoided being out and about here in this town until all the crazy festival-happy people left for another year.

That meant that my normal Sunday shopping didn't happen, and I put off getting any groceries until last night after work.

Here's what I picked up at GiantPA:

According to my receipt, this amounts to $25.64 worth of groceries. After double coupons and sales deals, I paid a whopping $10.56 for everything above. Yay! That's 59% savings, so not too shabby at all! The totally free stuff was only the bottle of Diet Coke (free coupon from MyCokeRewards.com) and the Dreamfields from a doubled $1/1 mfr coupon. The frozen veg were on sale for $1/ea. I had a $1/2 cat treat coupon and each pouch cost $1.29, so I paid 29-cents for each one after Q. I had a $1/1 Athenos feta IPQ and found a tub for $3 so it cost only $1 after doubled coupon. The Freschetta slice was priced at $2 -- small side rant here: that's insane; $2 for one slice of pizza?! It better have truffles and saffron on it at that price! But no... just chicken and shrooms -- and I had a 75-cent/1 coupon that was mailed to me, so the slice cost 50-cents, which is about what I'm willing to pay. I mean, if it were real fresh pizzeria pizza, that would be different... Anyway, I also had a $1/1 Q for the dressing and for the cheese sticks, so those were 72-cents and $1.99 respectively after doubling. All in all, a pretty good haul that should keep me fed well for a week or more.

And now some eye candy. Pics of my kitties!

As you can see, this was a momentary calm in the usual crazy cat storm as all three were willing to be relatively near each other on my Petco cat tree. It didn't last long!

And finally, I just received my Snapshot device from Progressive Insurance. This had originally really pissed me off. When the STBXH (soon to be ex-husband) and I started the process of disentangling our lives, I contacted our insurance agent about separating our policies. Because H's name was first on the car policy, he gets to keep all the good-driver perks that I helped us accumulate over the years -- he had the accidents, not me! And I got stuck with a new policy at the highest rate as if I were some unknown driver to the Progressive people. This really chapped my ass, I'll tell you! However, when I compared similar coverage at all the other big-name insurance companies, I found that I was going to get the same price (or higher) everywhere else. AND Progressive offered me this Snapshot deal that could lower my rates by up to 30% after the first 6 months. And that involves plugging this little do-hickey into my car so they can see how I drive:

I received it in the mail yesterday and managed to figure out where under my dashboard to plug it in, so for the next 6 months, I need to drive like a little ol' lady who drives only to church on Sundays. If I succeed, then my rates will go down from that point onward to a more manageable level for my budget. Fingers crossed!

One of the things it monitors is sudden hard-breaking stops. Ironically, I had one of those just yesterday on the way to the grocery store mentioned at the top of this post. Luckily, even though I had received the Snapshot at that point, I hadn't been able to figure out where to plug it in. Phew! Dodged a bullet there.

Anyone else use one of these thingy-do-jobbers?

Celebrate the Final Harry Potter Movie with HP Goodies!

2011-07-15T08:49:00.000-04:00

The wonderous folks at ThinkGeek.com have a collection of Hogwarts-worthy Harry Potter goodies to help all you fans celebrate the end of an amazing movie saga.

Not only that, but you can use the code SHIP40 (enter it in the discount field during checkout) to get FREE SHIPPING on orders of $40 or more!!

Getting Ready to do a Happy Dance

2011-07-14T12:03:00.000-04:00

I saw my orthopedic surgeon this morning, and after taking a new round of x-rays of my poor broken right foot, he gave me some great news. The x-rays showed that the break is healing well, and because it's not completely healed solid back together, he wants me to keep wearing the walking-cast/boot one more week (through next weekend), then -- in his words -- I "can pitch it". Wahoooo!

Of course, because the boot cost me $300 and because it's usable on either foot and because I will never again assume that since I'm not a dancer or a runner, I'll never have foot problems, I will put the boot in my hall closet for an indefinite period of time. You just never know.

But YAY! Can't wait for another week to go by then I can start wearing matching shoes again!!!

And Now -- Flax Bread

2011-07-12T11:36:00.000-04:00

I've been promising for awhile now to do a pictoral on making flax bread, so I'm finally get it posted here - yay!!

First up, the ingredients.

You'll need

2 c. ground flaxseed meal
1 tsp salt
1 T. baking powder
1-2 T. sweetener that holds up in baking (I use Splenda)
5 eggs, beaten
1/3 c. oil
1/2 c. water

First, mix together the dry ingredients. My baking powder really has a lump problem, so I tend to push it through a seive when I'm adding it to my dry bowl.

Mix all the dry ingredients, then you can start adding wet. I don't bother to mix all the wet ingredients together in a separate bowl, I just add them one at a time into the dry stuff.

Here are my 5 eggs prior to beating

Mix everything together really well so you don't have any strings of egg white or any lumps of baking powder coming back to bother you later when you're eating the finished product.

Once mixed, let the glop--- uh, I mean the batter sit for about 3 minutes. It will thicken up quite a bit. This is when I usually turn on the oven to 350-degrees for a bit of a pre-heat.

Once the batter has sat and been stirred again, pour it out onto a baking sheet lined with either parchment paper, the Reynolds no-stick aluminum foil, or a Sil-Pat silicone mat like I have here:

And then spread the mixture out with a spatula so you get a rectangle about 1/4" to 1/2" thick. It doesn't rise much and if you like it thicker that's fine. The key is really to get it mostly a uniform thickness so it cooks evenly.

Pop it in the 350-degree oven for 20-25 minutes. It won't get much browner than it already is, but if you push on it and it springs back, then it's done. Take it out of the oven, and using a couple pancake-flipping spatulas, transfer the whole thing to a cooling rack. I wouldn't advise trying it until it's completely cooled. When it's fresh-from-the-oven warm, it tastes very eggy, not like fresh bread. After it's cooled, the taste is more bread-like, even if you toast it.

I often cut the "loaf" into equal-size squares to use like 2 pieces of bread for a sandwich (if you make your "loaf" thicker, you can cut one piece in two by carefully slicing through it with a serrated knife). I also tear off chunks and use them for dipping in hummus or tomato sauce or for sopping up egg yolk when I make fried eggs.

Nutritional Information (from Laura Dolson's flax foccacia bread recipe): Each of 12 servings has less than a gram of effective carbohydrate (.7 grams to be exact) plus 5 grams fiber, 6 grams protein, and 185 calories.

Enjoy!!

Sunday Shopping - Meh

2011-07-11T10:25:00.000-04:00

I have to say that last week just ... stank. I posted about how crappy I felt on Wednesday, but then the STBXH (Soon To Be eX Husband) came over Thursday evening, we signed the last of the divorce papers, and as a result of that and starting the very long, complicated process of changing my name back on everything (every Internet acct I've ever set up anywhere), I was right back in Feelingsorryformyselfville all weekend.

But I still managed, even with that and my foot problems, to get in a little shopping yesterday morning.

First, I realized I was getting low on name-brand Diet Cola, so the best prices I could find were at CVS where 4 12-packs were $10. There was a limit of 1 deal per card, so I used STBXH's card and did the deal twice.

Since I put both $10.59 deals (incl tax) on a free gift card, I technically had no OOP, and this *should* last me awhile, hopefully through the end of July.

Next up, GiantPA for things I could get cheaply there with coupons:

I had coupons for everything except the store-brand yogurt (40-cents/cup) and the salad. My total was $21.11, and my OOP after coupons was $10.73, so about 50% savings.

Next stop: Walmart for everything I couldn't get cheaper with a coupon anywhere else. This was not pretty.

The total (and therefore my OOP) was $20.11. The nuts have gone up in price yet again -- this container had been $8.48 for quite awhile, but is now $9.48. The Hillshire deli meat was $3.28, cheaper than at any other store since my coupons are all gone. The popcorn was $2, the milk $1.89, the feta (which I didn't need but love the taste of in scrambled eggs) was $1.82, and the chocolate $1.64. It amazes me that what doesn't seem like all that much still costs $20! I know the nuts are half of that, but am hoping I can make that container last quite awhile!

Okay, then the last stop -- and I debated about this because I really just wanted to go home, but Free is Free -- was Petco for 2 FREE cans of Royal Canin kitty food:

Even though this free cat food deal was only good Fri-Sun and I went at Sunday around noon, there were tons of cans left in multiple displays throughout the store. I think most people walked right past the displays not really believing that they could just take 2 cans for free even though it's pretty clear from the labels... I was in a long checkout line, and no one else had even one can. Free, people! I was tempted to start saying something, but my luck I'd tick off some dog-only snob who didn't want to bother donating :)

My kitties ate one canfull this morning and loved it -- thank you Petco and Royal Canin!

How did everyone else's shopping go this weekend?

Careful, Whiney Post Ahead

2011-07-06T13:29:00.000-04:00

Okay, I'm gonna let it all out here because my friends are on vacation this week, my co-workers are tired of me sitting in my cube blubbering, my H is the person I'm trying to not turn to for anything these days... even my various posts in forums where I've usually gotten some sympathy have gone unanswered.

I'm feeling exceedingly sorry for myself today! My broken foot is hurting something fierce. I broke it on May 4th, so that's NINE WEEKS now that I've been dealing with this foot pain that won't stop. Some days are indeed better than others, and in fact, late last week and over the weekend were downright nice days by comparison. But as of Monday the throbbing pain has all come back with a vengeance. And I'm scared. I can't figure out why -- if the dang foot is actually healing -- it hurts worse this week than last. I spent all weekend flopped on the couch reading and watching DVDs. I did a few things around the house and limited grocery shops, but those are things I've also done every other weekend in the past 9 weeks.

Anyway, the pain is really getting to me today, I just want a hug and for someone to tell me it's going to be okay... and there's pretty much cricket-chirping emptiness out there. I have to tell you, at times like this -- even though I know there are people SO much worse off all over the world -- I just can't help but wonder what I ever did that was so bad that I deserve all that's happened to me in the past 3 years. From the time of the affair (me learning about it) to now, I've had some okay times, even occasional good/fun times, but mostly just a whole sh!tload of pain in one form or another. And I'm so tired of it. I would just really like things to go well for me in my life for a change. Not momentary good blips on the radar, but something really good, that maybe even lasts for awhile. But on days like this it feels like every time I've just started to get my legs underneath me (literally or figuratively or emotionally), something comes along and knocks me onto my ass again.

Now for the obvious, I have taken a handful of ibuprofen and hopefully that will help more today (it didn't help much at all yesterday), and I have finally called the orthopedic surgeon. I tried to describe my foot pain to the nurse as specifically as I could, and she said she'd relay it to the doc if/when he calls her from surgery today. If she gets a chance to talk to him about it, then she promised she'd call me back. What I'd really like is for her to get me in for more x-rays so the doctor can see what's going on to let me know if things are okay or not. If this is just how it's supposed to feel, then ... okay, the reassurance would certainly help a little with the pain. If there's something wrong, then I'd really rather know (I think), especially if he can then do something to fix what's wrong. I'd really like to be able to walk again, without pain, without hobbling on the side of my foot or lurching around in a boot.

On a side note, the co-workers going up in the elevator with me this morning were commenting on how having more than one boot, in different colors or styles, might be nice. I proposed a company that makes boot "skins" like the skins you can buy to cover your cell phone or laptop -- I could have a whole new-looking boot every day of the week! Not a bad idea :)

Happy Fourth of July (a day late)!!

2011-07-05T10:54:00.000-04:00

I had a pretty nice 4-day weekend, thanks to Monday being a holiday and taking Friday off from work. I was a little concerned about it -- some of my recent weekends, even the regular 2-day kind, have been very tear-filled just because of the rawness from being almost divorced and completely on my own, but I made it through almost the entire 4 days in pretty good shape. I lost it last night because my (broken) foot was really acting up and aching, but before that happened, things were pretty nice.

Even though yesterday was a national holiday, many of the stores were open for their regular Monday hours, so I postponed my grocery shopping trip until yesterday morning. I just realized that I don't have my register receipts with me, so I won't be posting actual dollars and cents, just guesstimates, but I know it wasn't my best shopping trip!

Up first was a trip to Giant. I needed some items and simply didn't have any coupons to use on them. Here's what I brought home:

I did have a $1/2 coupon for the cat treats, which were on sale, so after that coupon doubled, those treats were almost free. I also had a $1/1 coupon for the Dreamfiels, so the pasta was free. The Morningstar came to $1.50 after a doubled $1/1 coupon, and the Sargento cheese was on sale for $2 and I had a 55-cent coupon that doubled, so that cost 90-cents. The Diet Coke was free after a MyCokeRewards.com coupon, and the tray cat food was on sale and I had a $1/4 coupon that doubled, so it was about half price. Somehow, though, I still managed to come in at only a 50% savings rate. One big problem was the Hillshire Farms deli meat in the red tub. Giant has their own store brand that looks identical (same red tub, same shape) and it was on sale for $3. I thought that's what I'd grabbed, but obviously not, and this tub cost $4. I also paid $3.99 for the chocolates, which should be a much better price than the other bags that are cheaper but also have fewer pieces. But I confess it was still an indulgence :) And the milk and lettuce were not on sale or couponable. So the price for everything was approx $29 and my total was approx $15, just shy of 50% (and it would've been better than 50% if I hadn't blown the deli meat purchase).

Then I popped over to Walmart where I pick up this fascinating collection of items:

I don't particularly like the look of the cushion, but all the cushions on my porch swing have been destroyed, so I'm replacing them as I see a deal. This particular cushion had been $20 and was on sale for $16. If I wait till later in the summer, I'm sure I can get better prices, but then I won't have as long to sit out on the swing and enjoy them. I figured since there's only me now, I really just need one cushion for myself to start :) The plastic jar is filled with assorted bungees that I used to put a tarp over the swing in place of the tattered/torn/destroyed awning that used to be there. None of my replacement efforts look very good, but at least I can use the swing now. The other two items were purchased mostly for overage -- I will use the 3 tabs of Cascade dish detergent, but it also provided 3-cents overage after a $1/1 coupon from Sunday's P&G supplement. And I had one final $3/1 KY coupon so that item provided me with 38-cents overage. Every little bit helps!

I hope everyone had a safe and happy Holiday weekend!!

Got an iPad? Get an iCade!!!

2011-06-29T15:33:00.000-04:00

If you have an iPad, you can get this nifty iCade from ThinkGeek.com and waste countless more hours having fun playing the old fave arcade games.

iCADE - iPad Arcade Cabinet

Check it out today at ThinkGeek.com

Another Overage Story: Eggs for A Penny!

2011-06-29T15:05:00.000-04:00

I didn't get a photo before putting these items away last night, but using 2 more of the $2/1 Dial bodywash coupons to buy two 97-cent trial-size bodywashes at Walmart last night, I put the $2.06 in overage toward a carton of 18 large eggs priced at $2.07. Eighteen eggs for a penny - woot!

Overage is our friend!

More Sunday Shopping and Overage!

2011-06-27T11:13:00.000-04:00

In spite of my foot issues (bottom line - it hurts), I decided there were some things I needed and some other things worth getting while I was out, so I made two shop stops this weekend.

First up was Giant, where I didn't do as well as I have been savings percentage-wise because of the soda (it's the usual culprit), although I did get it at a sale price with a coupon.

The total for everything above (not including my kitten who is priceless and not a grocery item) was $41.39, and after doubled coupons and sales deals, I paid $23 even. So a mere 44% savings rate this time around. Not only did I buy name-brand soda (the deal was 4 12-packs for $10 and I had a $1/1 mfr Q that doubled, so each 12-pack cost $2, which isn't bad at all these days), but I also paid full price for the block cheese and the frozen berries. Giant has a BOGO sale this week on blueberries -- buy 1 pint at $3.99, get 1 pint free, but even that didn't end up beating the frozen berry price of $3.39 for a lb. And since I'll use them frozen in smoothies, this just seemed like a better deal to me in the moment. The block cheese was $1.99/8-oz, and I totally missed the fact that I had loaded a 75-cent coupon onto my Giant rewards card for any Giant cheese (block, shred, or sliced) but the 75-cents was not deducted. I only thought about it after I got home and looked through my emails. I could go back and try to argue with them about it, but frankly, I probably won't bother. Next time, I need to print out what I loaded on the card and have that with me at the store, both for my bad memory and to show customer service if it doesn't deduct like it should. Lesson learned.

I was going to make this a single-stop shopping trip and get milk at Giant, but I realized I could get it much cheaper (as in Free) with Walmart overage and gift cards, so here's my next haul (again, kitty was not purchased at Walmart)

Total for the above came to $7.38, and after coupons, I put $1.90 onto a gift card, so free. Yay! I need to make sure I drink/use this half-gallon. I let most of the last carton spoil, which is bad. I need more calcium in my system anyway, apparently, so I had a big glass of this with dinner last night, and I also need to make up a batch of yogurt for my smoothies.

How's everyone else's shopping looking this week?

Overage at Walmart!

2011-06-25T18:53:00.000-04:00

I decided that even though I'm in this boot thing for another three weeks, I really couldn't stand to just sit around the house for another entire weekend (at least not if I wanted to stay remotely sane). So I figured I'd hobble on down to Walmart, which is literally a block from my house. It's a block that goes quite seriously downhill, so that was a bit of fun, as was hobbling back up the hill when I was finished shopping. But I made it!

And here's my haul:

I picked up everything here -- worth $22.14 -- for an OOP of $9.66 or a 56% savings rate, and I did that with coupon overage.

I had 2 $3/1 Internet Qs for any KY product excluding trial size, and the smallest non-trial-size KY costs $2.62, so each of those netted me 38-cents. I also had a $1/1 on any Secret deo (no exclusion of size at all) and the trial size is 97-cents, so another 3-cents overage. Lastly I got off ebay some of the $2/1 Dial body wash Qs (again, no exclusions at all) and the trial size is 97-cents, so 2 times $1.03 overage, resulting in $2.85 over the cost of those products toward other items I'd purchased. I also had a mfr "free" coupon for the Diet Coke, so that was another $1.48 off.

Overage can be our friend, especially at Walmart. But, even though Walmart's new coupon policy specifically says we get overage in these types of situations, I do not count on any cashier actually knowing about that policy (managers either, for that matter). So I printed out a copy, circled the specific "guideline" that talks about overage being applied to other items "in the basket" or given as cash, and I had a printout of the policy with me just in case. However, my cashier just went ahead and validated each coupon when the register asked if $3 or $1 or $2 was the valid coupon amount. I'm not sure why the registers ask this question after the coupon has been scanned, but they do. As long as the cashier pushes whatever button that means "yes," you're golden.

Has anyone else had any good overage experiences at Walmart??

Happy News!!!

2011-06-24T08:44:00.000-04:00

Well, here's the moral of the story for you right up front: ALWAYS get a second opinion, if you have the option. Luckily, my health insurance coverage provides for a second opinion if I want to get one, so I hobbled my way over to an orthopedic surgeon's office, told him my sad broken foot story, he looked at the CT-scan I had gotten last Friday and pronounced my foot already on the mend. NO SURGERY necessary -- woooooo!!!!! If I coulda danced a jig right then, I woulda :) I do have to keep wearing my nifty "boot"/walking cast for another 3 weeks, then he'll take more x-rays to see how things are doing. But such great news! I can't tell you how stressed I was getting about having 3 incisions in my foot, plates, screws, pins, bone cutting, etc., performed on my foot, then lying on my back with my foot up in the air for 8-10 weeks. Talk about messing with my summer!

So this orthopedic surgeon is now my new foot doc, by the way - LOL!

I also had a DEXA bone density scan yesterday, which I'm hoping does *not* show that my bones are prone to more fractures, but I'll have to wait for 3 weeks to find out the test results and what that might mean. Cross your fingers and toes for me that my foot heals and I don't need to start on those fossamax bone-building drugs. I know I should get more exercise, and weight-bearing exercise is supposed to really help rebuild leeched bones, so I may end up being a body builder babe after all!

And, yes, I'm already aware that drinking a lot of cola and caffeine can contribute to bone loss, so my Diet Coke intake may have to be curtail (waaaaahhhhh), but I'll take that lump when it comes.

Sunday Shop and Foot Update...

2011-06-19T11:55:00.000-04:00

Well, since it looks like I'm in for foot surgery followed by months of not being able to walk (see below for more on that), I figured part of my Sunday shopping routine should be to use up any ECBs and +Ups I have because it would cause me a lot of angst to just let them expire while I'm stuck in bed.

First stop, CVS. I had $5.99 in ECB on DH's card, so I picked up these 2 cans of Planter's mixed nuts for $6 and put the 1-cent on a free gift card. Yay!

On my CVS card, I had $15.99 in ECBs, so I grabbed the 12-pack Coke deal of 5 12-packs any Coke product for $13, then added another can of nuts to bring my total up to $16. After ECBs, I put another 1-cent onto my free gift card. Yay!

I didn't feel like hauling 4 more 12-packs of soda upstairs for photographing purposes, so just imagine the products below PLUS another four 12-packs. All for one penny :)

Then I went to GiantPA where I tried to use up some coupons that will expire at the end of June. I got all this (incuding a box of Dreamfields angel hair pasta that I managed to leave mostly out of the frame)

The subtotal price was $22.07 and after coupons, I paid $8.40 OOP, 62% savings rate. I actually thought I'd do better than $8 but the lettuce was $2.25, the frozen veg was $1, the cheesestix were $2.59, the cat food was $1.50, and both rices had about 50-cents each left after coupons, so yeah, $8 with tax.

Then I had $5 in Rite Aid +Ups to use this week and here's what I bought:

The soda was 3 12-packs for $12 or $4/pack, the scrubber (which I desperately need) was from the $1 aisle or 90-cents after my Wellness discount, and the chocolate was 45-cents after discount. I used the $5 +Ups and my total was 37-cents, which went on a free gift card.

As for my foot... It turns out that back on May 2nd, I broke my middle toe bone but behind the toe line (so in the middle of my foot, not an actual toe), and since the docs I saw at that time both assured me there was no fracture at all, I've been walking on a broken bone ever since, which goes a long way toward explaining all the friggin' pain I've been in. That means it's healing badly, so the foot specialist wants to cut me open and insert pins to put everything back in place. That means 2+ months of no weight bearing at all (some bed at first, then some crutches or other similar device) followed by more months in a walking cast. I cannot TELL you how excited I am (not) about this.

I didn't really have any summer plans at all, but if I did, they're shot to hell now. I hope my dad does okay because I won't be able to visit. I just adopted a new kitten and have no clue if I'll be up to keeping her since I certainly won't be able to chase her around and pull her down off climbing the curtains or whatever new thing she's discovered she can do.

This just sucks bad. I'm already sad and lonely enough without all of this heaped on top. Really, what did I do to piss the cosmos off this much...?

Well, tomorrow is another day and another trip to the doctor's. Since I've been walking on this broken bone anyway, I'm half tempted to put the brakes on her rush to surgery and go see my family doc for a reference to someone else for a second opinion. All of which could land me right back in the same place I am now just a few weeks later... At least it's not snowing yet! LOL!

How's everyone else doing this fine Father's Day?

Quick Shop and The Boot

2011-06-15T09:54:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was not what I would call a fun day. I don't know if you remember, but very early in May, I did something to my foot that left me writhing on my floor thinking I'd broken a bone or several. A trip to the emergency clinic where they took x-rays showed no breakage or fractures, so the docs there diagnosed Plantar Fasciitis and told me to stay off of it, take anti-inflammatories, and ice it whenever possible.

I did all that for that past month and a half, and while a lot of the initial pain went away, not all of it did. So yesterday I went to see a foot specialist. She took more x-rays, but this time I was standing on the foot when the pics were taken. And apparently that showed that I do have fractures. She gave me a shot of steroids in one toe (OMG, did that ever HURT!!??) then taped my foot up with an orthotic pad, and insisted I start wearing a walking boot (see pic below). It's a PITA, big time, but I'm trying to stay optimistic -- it's not a cast. I can (and do) take it off to drive and to sleep. I go back Friday morning for more details on what's actually wrong and how long this might take. *sigh*

So besides all that fun, I made a very quick stop yesterday at GiantPA. I've been using a lot of eggs recently to make that foccacia flaxmeal bread I mentioned (I still need to take and post pics), and I had another 50-cent/1 Egglands Q that Giant would double, plus they have Egglands dozen large eggs on sale this week for $1.88, so 88-cent eggs! I had a facebook coupon for $1/1 Light & Fit yogurt 4-packs, and Giant's price is $1.89, so free after doubling. And I used a MyCokeRewards.com free coupon for another 20-oz Diet Coke.

My total was $5.93 before coupons and 88-cents OOP after coupons. 85% savings rate - yay!

And here's a pic of me in my boot. I've already announced on fb that I may very well spray paint it metallic pink, just to jazz things up a bit ;)

Sunday Shops

2011-06-13T13:37:00.000-04:00

I had a pretty good shopping trip yesterday. I'm really trying to keep spending down, but still get some of the things I need and/or want (like Diet Coke...).

So here's what I brought home from Giant (there should also be a 20-oz Diet Coke bottle shown here but I drank it on the way home.)

According to the receipt, the total worth of the haul pictured above is $40.59, and my OOP after specials and doubled coupons was $13.28, which is a 67% savings rate. Not too shabby, especially since the name-brand soda was involved.

My two other stops were Walmart, where I scored serious overage thanks to an $8/1 Iams kitty food coupon from my vet. The coupon was good on "any" Iams cat food, any size, so I bought a $4.67 bag and put the overage toward my grocery purchases - yay!

The other stop was CVS where I lucked out and found the last two 5-ct Zyrtec packages. Seriously, I got to that store within half an hour of its opening Sunday morning, and there were only these 2 packages left (and one of them was hidden behind a whole row of larger-sized packages!)

The deal with the Zyrtec is that CVS has it on sale for $5.99 and producing a $5.99 ECB. I had two "free" coupons mailed to me, so I used one coupon with one Zyrtec 5-ct package on each CVS card (DH has a card, but I'm keeping it!), paid nothing, and left with two $5.99 ECBs. Yay!

How did everyone else do with their shopping this week(end)?

First Tomato Harvest of 2011

2011-06-10T13:15:00.000-04:00

Yay! The tomato plants I planted in late April are producing nicely, and I plucked my very first little ripe tomato this morning. Lookie:

Isn't it purrrty?! Surrounding the little tomato-lette is some fresh-picked basil. I got the basil plant at the Master Gardener Expo and Plant Sale I attended a few weekends ago. I've been putting a few leaves into my lunch salad every day, and today I added my first little tomato to my salad. What a wonderfully delicious salad it was!!!

My brussels sprout plants are still growing, but from the looks of the leaves, I'd say the squirrels are having a royal feast of cabbage, so I don't know if I'll actually get any edible sprouts from the plants or not.

How's everyone else's gardening going??

Wow It's Hot Out! (Quick Trip to Rite Aid)

2011-06-09T09:06:00.000-04:00

I know the weather does whatever Mother Nature wants each day, but it really feels more like August out than early June! This still beats winter by a long shot, but I kind of like the 60s and 70s of "spring"... Oh well!

Among all the places where I could find air conditioning yesterday was the Rite Aid at the far end of town. I was already down that way for a much-needed therapy session (my soon-to-be-ex has let me know he's got a new "special friend" so I had plenty to talk to my shrink about!), and I decided to see if I could luck out and score this week's Veet deal. I did, but once again, I apparently didn't really understand the deal going in so it worked out differently than I expected. Better, but differently.

Here's what I ended up getting:

The two Veet products were shelf priced at $6.49 each, not on sale, so I figured with my 10% Wellness discount, they would ring up at $5.84 each. The sodas ring up at $1.34 after the discount, and the vitamins are on BOGO, so I expected those to ring up at the full price of one bottle, $11.49. That should have given me a starting total of $27.39.

I planned to use a $3/$15 survey coupon, an in-ad $2 veet coupon, a $1 Veet vv coupon (now I know that I can't use two RA49-coded coupons on the same product, but my understanding in this case is that the in-ad coupon went to one of the Veet products and the $1 vv Q went to the other Veet product...?), a $1 vv bonus Q, two $3/1 Veet mfr IPQs, and a $2/1 NatureMade IPQ. That should have brought my total down to $12.39, and I was planning to use my $10 +Ups from the last cat litter deal, a free Coke mfr Q, and that should have left me with approx $1 + tax to pay on a gift card.

But no, nothing ever goes the way I expect at RA. It turns out that the Veet products rang up at $4.49 (the shelf price minus another $2 - I don't know why), so not only did I not need to use my free Coke coupon, but I needed filler, which is why there are two Hershey's chocolate bars in the picture (more for my son)!

Anyway, the final total due came to a whopping 39-cents, which I happily put on a gift card and received $5 +Ups back from buying two Veet products.

The register gal tried to stop me from using the $3/1 Veet IPQs, her reasoning being that since I'd already used in-store RA Veet coupons, the $3/1 mfr coupons would lower the total of each Veet to less than $0 (overage, in other words). Since I didn't know (and didn't notice on the reigster screen) that an extra $2/product was being deducted for those items, I assured her that my coupons did not come to more than the $6.49 shelf price even after my Wellness discount. And everything scanned in just fine - no beeps. In retrospect, I guess I was in the wrong about the whole Veet deal, but it wasn't deliberate.

Because of the rather oppressive heat, I've been trying to eat lighter than usual. I had a little frozen WW entree for lunch, and then for dinner I had a bowl of fresh fruit followed by some Flax Focaccia Bread with hummus. I will probably make up a new batch of the flax bread this weekend - it's ridiculously easy and very low-carb (and yummy!), so that will be another post with pics!

How's everyone else doing this week? Keeping cool??

Hurray for Free Kitty Litter and Eggs!

2011-06-06T09:56:00.000-04:00

Thanks to a blogger buddy, I started my kitty litter purchases on Friday with a $3/$15 survey coupon, and I decided to use my H's Wellness card. I also used three $3/1 mfr coupons, a $1/1 vv coupon and $1 +Up. I put the remaining $7-something on a gift card so no actual OOP and got $10 +Ups back, plus another $3/$15 receipt survey code. YAY! That got me three 14-lb boxes of A&H multi-cat litter.

On Saturday, I took the new $3/$15 coupon, my own Wellness card, the $10 +Ups, another three $3/1 mfr Qs and another $1/1 vv and went back to get more litter. The one thing that caught me by surprise was that my 10% Wellness card silver-level discount actually *did* kick in. The litter was $8.39/box, on sale with a B1Get50%O deal, so the first two boxes I grabbed stuck with the sale price ($8.39 + $4.19) but the third box didn't trigger another BOG50%O, so my 10% discount applied and that box was $7.55. I hadn't figured on that happening, but luckily that still took the price before coupons to $20.13 -- enough to trigger another $10 +Ups. Phew! Okay, so because I miscalculated from the get-go, I grabbed a dozen eggs for the $1.55 in overage I thought I was going to have, but was still left with $1.28 in overage after handing over all my Qs and +Ups. Ack! In retrospect, I should have grabbed a 20-oz Diet Coke. I love the stuff and it would have taken up almost exactly that amount in overage. But I don't think well on the fly, I panic, so luckily the cashier is an avid couponer herself and directed me to counter filler items.

As a result, I -- the low-carb person -- bought 2 Dove chocolate bars and a cow tail. LOL! I figured I'd give them to my son who's vegetarian but definitely loves carbs.

I headed off to a party after that so I was in no condition to take photos of all this when I got home. But I ended up with 6 boxes of kitty litter, a dozen eggs, 2 Dove bars and a cowtail for ... nothing OOP. And I received another $10 +Ups to use on something else before 6/18. Yay!

Oh, and I also received another $3/$15 survey receipt code. Yay again!

Rite Aid - Where Are The Surveys??

2011-06-03T09:03:00.000-04:00

Well, my theory about how I would maybe get some $3/$15 surveys on my register receipts from RA in June has proven to be a total bust. I've stopped at two different Rite Aids three different times since 6/1, and I had an OOP purchase one time (well, not really OOP - I put it on a gift card, but my RA shops haven't all been freebies in case that mattered), but not one survey. :P

So I haven't done the A&H kitty litter scenario that I outlined in a previous post. I did pick up one +Up reward, so this is what my litter scenario will look like:

3 boxes A&H litter (on sale B1G50%Off) = $20.39
3 $3/1 mfr Qs
1 $1/1 vv bonus Q
1 $1 +Up
Revised total = $9.39 on a gift card, and getting $10 +Up back for spending more than $20

It's not bad -- technically I walk out of the store with free litter (always good with 3 cats!) but at the same time if I just use my $3/1 mfr Qs on the same litter at the grocery store - where the 10lb boxes are $5.50 instead of $8-something - then each box would be $2.50-ish OOP, but no rewards or ONYOs or anything back. Also, you do realize that if I do this scenario at Rite Aid without a $3/$15 survey coupon, I will finally get one on this receipt, after the fact... I guess I could always do the litter scenario a second time since I do have DH's Wellness card (he doesn't care about saving money). Come to think of it, that would be a great way to roll the $10 +Up for a lot more free litter. Hmmmmm....!

Which would you go for? Spend a little more per box of litter but get the rewards to buy something else next time (or roll into more litter), or spend a little less per box of litter and skip the rewards. I'm open to ideas here :)

PS: Didicoffeegirl -- great savings on your Wally's shopping trip!!! Yay coupon overage!!!!

My Sunday Shopping (on Monday)!

2011-05-31T14:26:00.000-04:00

These 3-day weekends where Monday is a holiday often throw me for a total loop, and this one was/is no exception. I keep thinking today is Monday and therefore yesterday (when I did my shopping) was Sunday.

So we'll pretend. If I screw up the days in the rest of this post, try to overlook it (thank you).

I started out by going to the Rite Aid on the other end of town. What I really want/need at this point is one of those receipt survey codes so I can get a $3/$15 coupon, but I have not gotten on in my last 3-4 trips, and yesterday was another bust. I bought just one 20-oz bottle of Diet Coke and used a freebie coupon solely so I could get a receipt.... with nothing on the bottom. It occurs to me that even though I keep reading about other people getting lots of them, maybe for whatever reason, I'm done for the month. In which case, I'll wait till tomorrow and try again in a new month. If I get the $3/$15 coupon, here's what I'd like to do:

A&H cat litter is on sale B1G50%Off and is also part of a promotion where buying $20 or more generates $10 +Ups back. So if I get a $3/$15 coupon, I will get three boxes of litter (that comes to $20.98 with the B1G50% sale), I'll use the $3/$15, a $1 vv RA Q, and 3 $3/1 A&H mfr Qs to bring the total down to $7.98. I can put that on a gift card so no OOP and get $10 in Ups back. Woo! And with my new kitty, I definitely need to keep stockpiling the litter!

Okay, so that trip hasn't happened yet. But where I stopped next was CVS, and I got all this:

Well, maybe using the word ALL isn't really accurate since there are only three items in the photo. My first purchase was the Prep H wipes for $3.99. I had a $2/1 IPQ so I put the remaining $1.99 on a gift card (no OOP). My receipt contained the $3.99 ECB for this Prep H deal plus another $1 ECB from my green bag tag. I used those ECBs along with a $7/2 IPQ for Benefiber on the other two products in the pic. The Benefiber deal was buy $20 or more, get $10 ECB back. The two containers pictured here came to $20.28 before coupons and $8.29 after coupons and ECBs. I put that on the same free gift card and received my $10 ECB back. Woo! I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to use the $10 ECB on, but I definitely needed the Benefiber (down to zero at home) and I'm sure I can figure out a way to spend them before 6/29.

Then I went next door to GiantPA and got this lot of groceries:

The total before coupons/deals was $29.73. After deals and coupons, the revised total I paid was $6.08, which if I'm operating my calculator correctly is an 80% savings rate. Yay! From the photo above, the totally free items were the two 4-packs of Ocean Spray diet cranberry sparkle (great mixer with vodka!!!), the Mrs. T's Pierogies, the two boxes of Dreamfields angel hair, the two pouches of Temptations cat treats, and the Diet Coke. Oh and one can of the cat food which was free if I bought the other 3 cans.

After that trip, I made a stop at Walmart because my house was being invaded by large, black ants (anyone ever seen "Them"? It was like that) -- this happens every year, so I should have been better prepared but I wasn't. I needed the barrier-type spray for outside both doors and then some of the little baited traps that I can hide so the ants find them but the cats don't. I happened to have a $12.75 check from Gerber toward any powdered formula. I found some "sensitive" for $11.49, so that overage of $1.26 helped get the cost of my ant-fighting supplies down a little lower. Gotta love overage, and all the formula goes to the Food Bank.

How did everyone else do with their weekend shopping??

And just so everyone can finish reading this by saying, "Awwwwwww!" here's a pic of my new kitty sacked out on my lap, all worn out from playing:

Blogger Commenting Problems

2011-05-31T09:05:00.000-04:00

Well, it looks like it's not just me :) Thank heavens! I know DidiCoffeeGirl was/is also having an issue trying to leave comments. I'm unable to leave comments on any blogger blog, including my own, except as Anonymous.

So this morning, I checked the Blogger "known issues" blog and saw this:

We're investigating an issue which is preventing login and comment posting for some users, and hope to have a fix released shortly.

Okay, good. As long as they know about it and are working on it, I won't worry too much about it. For anyone who would like to comment on my blog posts but keeps getting sent into a never-ending google logon screen loop, just pick the option of posting either Anonymously or by typing your name, then you can at least leave a message until this problem is fixed.

Thanks for your patience!!!

My New Kitten!!

2011-05-28T16:53:00.000-04:00

Here she is, folks: Dantooine (Dante for short)!! I just brought her home from the PAWS adoption center this afternoon

And here she is, definitely NOT intimidating my oldest cat, Boki

Details - born March 15, 2011, she currently weighs 2 lbs 1 oz (wow!), she has two brothers who are still up for adoption, and her PAWS name was Mimi.

I have since renamed her Dantooine. For those of you not well versed in the Star Wars universe, Dantooine is a lovely green planet that the Death Star is trying to destroy at the end of the very "first" Star Wars movie (ep IV A New Hope) when Luke trusts The Force and shoots the blast that finally gets in the hole and blows up the bad guys.

Off to take a nap - she's been playing very hard since we got home, and I'm exhausted!

Bad News for Rite Aid Shoppers

2011-05-26T08:57:00.000-04:00

I'm truly surprised that I haven't seen this RA coupon policy change talked about yet on blogs like Hip2Save.com or MojoSavings.com (or maybe they talked about them days ago and I just missed it), but this morning I caught a blurb on TheCouponProject.com about Rite Aid's NEW coupon policy, and there are a few pretty radical changes, I'm afraid.

You can read the full blog post HERE

Basically the part that made me go "aw, crap!" was that no longer will we couponers be able to use a BOGO (buy-1-get-1 free) coupon with a BOGO sale. AND no longer will we couponers be able to use 2 cents-off coupons on both items in a BOGO sale.

So for example, if NatureMade vitamins were on BOGO at Rite Aid this week, and you happened to have a NatureMade manufacturer's BOGO coupon, under the old policy, you could use that coupon and get 2 bottles of NatureMade vitamins free. Not any more.

Also, under the old policy, if those same NatureMade vitamins cost $10 and were on BOGO (so you would get 2 bottles for $10 at the register), you could use two different cents-off coupons -- one on each bottle, even the "free" bottle. So with our $10 BOGO sale vitamins, if you had two $5/1 mfr coupons for any NatureMade vitamin, you would end up with two bottles FREE ($10 - $5 - $5). Not any more. Now you can use only one of those $5/1 coupons, so the two bottles would still cost $5. Not a bad deal at all, but no longer free.

There will also be limits on items with coupons, so people hopefully can't buy 20 coupons off ebay and then clear the shelves any longer, at least not all in one transaction.

Again, if you want to read more about this, click over HERE.

Sunday Shops

2011-05-23T09:32:00.000-04:00

I did some quick shopping on Sunday since I seem to have a number of large invoice-y type things coming up (doctor's bills, for example) and am trying to not spend elsewhere... Of course, the kitty tree was an exception to that plan, but I promise it was an extremely frugal exception involving trading/bartering and paypal credits :)

Anyway, I had some expiring coupons that I wanted to make use of at Rite Aid, so I got the items below for $1, on my gift card so $0 OOP.

And at GiantPA, I got everything you see below. The register receipt says the total value is $20.11, and after store deals, a $1 ONYO, and double coupons, I paid $3.84 OOP.

A savings of 81% - yay! The salad and cheesesticks are my take-to-work lunch items. The black bean burgers and Dreamfields are dinners and the kitteh treats should be pretty self-explanatory. I was very happy to see that Giant had restocked this specific treat (the Temptations Mix-Ups) since that's what I had coupons for.

How did everyone else do on their shopping this weekend?

New Kitty Tree! Plus a Quick Trip to the Grocery Store

2011-05-21T08:28:00.000-04:00

So in my frugal fashion, I figured out a way to get a great deal on something that seems to be a perfect fit to my household and new lifestyle. People keep telling me to do things for myself, things that I enjoy, help myself heal and not sit around dwelling on what's gone/past/lost/broken, etc. I was talking with a buddy the other night and she mentioned watching a new show on Animal Planet called "My Cat From Hell". It sounds a bit like the feline version of Dog Whisperer mixed with reality TV's the Nanny shows about kids from heck and how the nanny sweeps in and straightens them out. But with cats.

Anyway, I don't get that channel so can't see the show just yet (I am hopeful it will arrive on hulu at some point), but my friend said basically the cat whisperer tells the owners of these hellish cats to give cats what they need -- play time, lots of vertical climbing space, etc. And I realized that in my effort to banish all things cluttery from my house (ie, most of DH's stuff), I've ended up with a pretty Spartan-looking abode. And that means not many places for the cats to climb anymore -- no multi-height dressers by the windows, no more bookcases, no piles of stuff all over the place to explore, etc. Poor kitties!

So I did some research, read reviews, counted my Swagbucks, checked my paypal account, and took a jar of coins to the Coinstar machine, and voila! Here is my new piece of classy-ass furniture: The Kitty Tree

Complete with kitties! So far the older, smaller cat (the one lower in the picture above) has become much more adept at climbing up, down and around on this thing. The larger higher-up cat looking out the window ended up jumping to the floor from where you see her in this photo, and it looked and sounded like she hit *hard*. She didn't try to figure out a way to get down more easily, so she's got some learning to do (I hope - I'd hate to think she'll just start breaking her legs over this thing). Anyway, there are lots of bare corners in most rooms of the house where I could have put this, but where it is now affords me the perfect view so I can be as entertained by the cats as they (hopefully) are by the new tree fort.

The other thing I did after work yesterday -- and before coming home to assemble the kitty tree, which was blessedly simple! -- was a quick trip to GiantPA. I have a whole bunch of $1/1 Qs for specific cat treats, which would mean each bag of treats is free after doubling. However, Giant has been out of the specific kind the Q is limited to for a week now, and these Qs expire in early June so I'm getting a little nervous. I may check out Target and Walmart and take a bit of a loss to use the Qs there if there's a sale. Here's what I did get at Giant:

I had 3 Qs left for BOGO on the kitty food trays, *and* for buying 4 of the trays I received a $1 ONYO back at the register (woo!). Wish I'd had more Qs. Anyway, the Homestyle mac-n-cheese was $2 so free after my $1/1 IPQ doubled. The tuna was $1.09 so 9-cents after my 50-cent IPQ doubled, and the Dreamfields was $1.69 so free after my $1/1 mfr Q doubled. In other words $9 worth of stuff for $1.81 OOP (incl tax) plus $1 back for next time. Woo!

We're actually experiencing some sunshine here today (amazing!), so I hope to get out to a garden show a little later this morning. What does everyone else have planned for this weekend??

smiley360.com—Be Heard. Be Happy.

2011-05-19T13:43:00.000-04:00

This organization -- smiley360.com -- is a fun way to try new products, share the results, earn points for rewards. Give them a click-thru and sign up. Currently, I'm testing out something called AlternaVites, which are vitamins in stick-powder form. So imagine one of those little drink mix sticks that you open up and dump in a bottle of water. Well, with AlternaVites, you just open the little stick and dump the powder right on your tongue for a day's worth of vitamins. Sort of like a Pixie Stix (this really dates me, I'm afraid).

smiley360.com—Be Heard. Be Happy.

Here's the official description:

Can’t swallow vitamin pills? Now you don’t have to. alternaVites is the multivitamin & mineral designed specially for those who have difficulty swallowing pills. alternaVites contains 23 essential vitamins and minerals in a new crystal powder form that melts in your mouth.