Coupons, coupons, coupons

My friend Cheryl and I have discovered the joy of couponing again.

I used to use coupons quite often when my 9 yr old was a baby. Then life got busy with the addition of two other kids and I gave it up for a while.

Even before the show Extreme Couponing on TLC came out, Cheryl and I have been scouring the coupon matching blogs , making our lists, cutting our coupons and meeting weekly to find some awesome deals.

Now, we really don't eat a ton of processed foods here. We try and cook from scratch as much as we can and eat lots of whole grains, fruits and veggies and less sugar.( We don't cut chips and stuff completely. Everything in moderation I say. But we typically do not buy pre made meals and things like that)

Plus we have a child who is lactose intolorant so we have to buy lactose free milk for her. ( which is not cheap and rarely has coupons. Aldi typically carries 1/2 gallons for about $2.79)

You might ask, well what can you buy with coupons then?

LOTS!

We get a lot of health and beauty items( dental floss, toothpaste, body wash, deodorant, lotion) either free or really cheap.

This week instead of spreading out my trips over multiple days. I tried to get to most of my stops in one day and stay around $50 total. This trip was a mix of grocery , cleaning and health and beauty items. A couple items I am planning on donating to the kids school but most is for our household.

All in all I got the following:

12 Fruit Natural cups

3 Bags of Rice Cakes

2 Boxes of Mom's Best Naturals Cereal

4 Boxes Of Clif Z bars for Kids

1 2 liter of Pepsi Max- FREE with coupon when you buy tostitos and salsa

1 Bag of Tostitos

1 Jar of salsa

2 Pkgs of Magic Erasers

1 Lysol Disinfectant Wipes

3 Mother's Day cards

1 Coffee Mate creamer- FREE with House Party coupon

10 Dannon yogurts

1 Secret Clinical Deodorant- FREE with coupon + 93 cent overage

1 BBQ sauce

2 Colgate MaxFresh Toothpaste

1 Bic Soliel Refillable Razor- FREE using Extra Care Bucks

1 box of Puffs

3 half gallons of Smart Ones Lactose Free Milk

4 Mentos Gum

4- 50oz bottles of Purex Laundry Soap

10 Lbs of Chicken thighs

4 pkgs of Jimmy Dean Sausage Crumbles- FREE with sale and coupons

I had to stop at 4 different stores and had a list with all my coupons ready to go. I spent $57.36 OOP( out of pocket) for everything plus I have a CVS Extra Care Buck worth $5.54 to spend on my next trip.

The cashier at Kroger goofed up my coupons on the Clif bars. Said two of them woulndn't scan. So i really should have saved an additional $2. I didn't have time to hash it out as I was running late to pick up my daughter. But I still got two boxes for 99 cents each and the other two for $1.99 each which still isn't too bad.

But had I got all my coupons and if you factor in my Extra Care bucks my total would be $49.82. When I shop though I like to use my out of pocket price as my guide though since that is what I end up paying when I shop.;-)

Now I still have to go pick up my weekly produce. I usually stop at Aldi for the basics as they are almost always the cheapest. If there is a special produce item I need, I try to hit Meijer first because they often give catalina/ mperks coupons for produce.

I have a few more smaller hauls to share with you later too.

A couple of my favorite coupons blogs to check out are BargainstoBounty.com and Totallytarget.com

Check them out and maybe you might find a love for couponing too once you find out much you can get for very little money!

Cupcakes!

I love to bake , especially cupakes and brownies.

These little yummies turned out so good I had to take a pic and share. Does anyone have any great cupcake recipes to share?

Chair part 1

I have started recovering the chair in the living room.

Chair before and after I took off the cushions:

The cushion on the back was attached and I wanted it to be a loose unattached cushion so that is why the back has foam showing.

And I got the cushions done. Here is the seat cushion:

Mieze Home Makeover Phase 1

I have decided it is time to update some things around the house.

The kitchen chairs have been driving me crazy for ever so they were first on my list.

The kitchen table was an estate sale find by my darling hubby. It came with 5 chairs. He spent months upon months toiling away refinishing the table, chairs and a buffet. They turned out great.

Well, one of the chairs broke a while back so we replaced it with a random IKEA chair.

Then we added a sixth member to our family. We ended up getting two more different random IKEA chairs with white cushions. So, now we have 6 chairs- 3 from the estate sale that match the table and 3 from IKEA.

So, in order to create some sort of cohesiveness with the dining area. I decided to cover the cushions on the chairs in the same print.

The chairs that came with the table my hubby covered in a green leaf print when he finished the table.

I wanted to cover them in something darkish again as we have 4 kids and nothing white in this house ever stays white..

So, here is the before and after

Super Cutie Custom Goodies....

By popular demand , the initial T's are ready to be custom made just for you.
You can get capital or lowercase letters. Maybe even a number for someone's birthday!
You can even order a pair of matching Josephine pants....hmmmm
T-shirts are $20 each
Check back in the next few days for a sample of the birthday T-shirt too!!

Eastern Market Artisan Village

Last Saturday was my first ( of hopefully many more..) Saturdays as a vendor at the Detroit Eastern Market Artisan Village

The Artisan Village is located between shed 5 and the Market Offices . Off Russell Street and Wilkins.

http://www.detroiteasternmarket.com/page.php?p=1&s=50

We will be at this location in the market through Oct then we will be moving to Shed 4 through December.

In April we will open again behind Shed 5 near the offices..

It was a great , but cold, day. Met lots of great people. Traffic was fair and will hopefully increase as awareness of our presence increases.

Here are some pics of last Sat.

Stop and check out out!! Tell your friends!!

Ribbon Blossoms