Whoa, it's November

Well, here we are: November. 

That fantastic work news I was hoping to be able to share never came to fruition. Actually, it was kind of the opposite. I'm still employed and everything, but there are issues. I'll keep you posted.

In other news:

So I'm back on the diet wagon. I've ballooned up to pre-2009 weight again, so it's time to do something about it. Justin and I have been doing our best to limit our caloric intake while saving money. 

No, seriously. We have to save money. Media General furloughed us, which is better than laying people off, but losing 10-20% of your paycheck every week hurts. That's part of the reason we've been eating so unhealthily lately. Healthy food is just expensive. And I don't have a lot of extra money. Really the only thing we splurge on is the whole grain double fiber bread. We just cut out most unnecessary fats (mayo, butter) and added as many fresh veggies and filler foods (pickles, pickled okra) as we could. It's a work in progress. 

But the good news on the money front is that I'll be moving back in with my parents (wait, is that good news?) in February. I promise there's a good reason. I can't really talk about it yet, but if everything comes to fruition (this is a bit more sure than that promotion that never came through), I'll be moving to Birmingham (or Tuscaloosa or Montgomery) in August. I didn't want to have to find a sublease or sign a 6-month lease, so I'll be moving back to Opelika. Honestly, I'll probably be with Justin most of the time anyway, plus my parents' house is rent-free and mostly just free in general. I'm incredibly lucky to have them. 

Cammy has gotten big. Logan loves her. She tolerates him. 

She looks so innocent when she's sleeping. #devilcat

Auburn football has been about what we expected. Baby Tigers. Growing pains. But I've made some absolutely amazing friends, so there's definitely no disappointment when it comes to this season.

Our War #Drunj Eagle tailgate crew at the Falcons/Panthers game in the ATL

Believe it or not, I've started knitting. So far I can only do one stitch in a straight line, but we'll see how that goes once I get a little more time. I hope I can make a few for Christmas presents. I'm a scarf-a-holic, but I know not everyone likes them. I'm trying to choose either super neutral colors or really unique colors. It's actually decently relaxing.

It turned into a real scarf--I promise!

Oh! I turned 24. I consider that to be officially mid-twenties so I had somewhat of a hard time with it, but I lived. My parents took us (Justin, Lauren, and me) to the beach. We had a fantastic time. It was a mini-vacation before the holiday rush at the paper. We had birthday dinner at McGuire's and had lots of raw oysters and Bloody Mary's every other night. Definitely a good time. 

Irish Wake. Yeah, it happened.

That may be all the news I have for now. My apologies for the disjointed nature of this one. Catch up post! 

But before I leave you, here's the one thing I CAN say about my immediate future plans:

I really really love this place. 

Everyone said it was beautiful, but WOW.

Until next time--

Couponing burnout

I figured it would happen sooner or later, but I didn't expect it to happen so soon.

With work turning insane and several things going on during the week, I just don't have the energy or the time to coupon properly. Or at least I haven't lately. I plan to get back on the wagon, but for now, we aren't grocery shopping very much and using our small stockpile. 

Hopefully there will be some exciting work-related news to share soon. Fingers crossed. 

Sketchy blogger

Woohoo! I've been a sketchy blogger again.

We haven't done much couponing lately. I sort of got burned out on it, but mostly, I've been too tired to fool with it when I get home from work.

But I've got exciting news :)

We got a kitten! We've been considering it for a while, and Logan needed a friend (he LOVES cats) so when Jessica's cat had kittens, we took one home.

Meet Cammy!

Isn't she precious?

She was a little less than thrilled to meet our 110 lb Lab, Logan, however. Logan may love cats, but poor Cammy is terrified of such a giant dog.

This was their first meeting. RIP back skin

But she's super playful and generally just a great kitten. I'm really looking forward to her future interactions with Logan and snuggle times :)

Kind of blurry, but I love her face in this picture.

Until next time--

I got paid to shop at Publix

So I went to Publix last night.

We usually go on Wednesdays because it's Penny Item day (Publix brand sliced cheese this week), and honestly, how can you beat a deal like that? Since Boy was knee-deep in chemistry (He's in summer school!), he had to skip last night's trip. I think he was really sad he missed it, though. But because I'm completely incapable of being by myself for an extended period of time, I asked my mommy to go with me, since she'd been curious about this whole couponing thing.

I did my usual Southern Savers prep and noticed a good amount of reasonably priced stuff.

Rabbit hole: People who are curious about couponing always ask me how I do it, even though I've only been couponing for a short time. The answer is Southern Savers. Without all of the work Jenny puts into her sale/coupon matchups, there's no way we'd be able to approach the small amount of success we've had so far. If I ever get to meet Jenny, I'm giving her a hug or taking her out to dinner or something. She's amazing.

Back to the regularly scheduled programming:

After a slow start at the store, we finally made some headway finding the items we needed. You'd think I'd remember the aisles, considering I go there once a week and they have a guide ON THE SHOPPING CART. But you'd be wrong.

I had a fairly extensive list and if I could find almost everything on that list, not only would I be able to use 2 Penny Item coupons, but I'd be able to use my $5 off a purchase of $30 or more coupon from the Summer Breakfasts insert (I only had the 2 PI coupons because I didn't expect to get to $30 or even close to it. Should have gotten 3).

Luckily, the total before coupons was just over $30 so that $5 off coupon helped tremendously. Anyway, here's the haul. Before you remark about its small size (like Boy did), let me explain first.

Grand total: - $2.13; Total savings: $42.98

You read that correctly, folks. My grand total was NEGATIVE $2.13. And with a recent change in their coupon policy, my wonderfully sweet Publix cashier literally reached into the register and handed me $2.13. I'm not meaning to brag about this, but I was really really excited. We'd been chasing our 100% savings goal for a while, but we'd never actually avoided paying at least something out of pocket. It was crazy.

But it doesn't look like much! How as all of that $43? I know, right? It doesn't look like much at all. Let's break it down, though:

-2 boxes of pasta regularly priced at $1.99 each (purchased at $.66 each w/ sale and coupons)
-2 boxes of pasta regularly priced at $1.89 each (purchased at $.44 each w/ sale and coupons)
-1 package of imitation crab meat regularly priced at $2.99 (purchased at $.49 w/ sale and coupons)
-1 container of Greek Yogurt regularly priced at $1 (purchased at $.15 w/ sale and coupon)
-2 Publix brand American singles regularly priced at $2.99 each (purchased at $.01 each w/ PI coupons)
-2 bottles of vitamins regularly priced at $3.59 each (purchased at, wait for it, -$.41 each w/ sale and coupons)
-2 boxes of insect traps one regularly priced at $4.69 and the other at $8.29 (purchased at -$.56 each w/ sale and coupons)

It kinda added up quickly. I was going to get some $.34 Country Crock butter-type product spread (giggle), but the sale combined with some good coupons cleaned them out by the time I got there. So I got my first rain check!

Never gotten one of these before! I'm a dork.

 I was pretty excited about the savings for this trip. The extra $5 off helped a lot--it was the difference between a $2.70 bill (still really really good) and a neat situation where the store actually had to pay me the overage.

My mom was pretty interested in the amount of planning and organization it takes to really make couponing work. She'd be crazy-good at it. When she finally decides to retire, look out, grocery stores! Sara will legally rob you blind!

I do want to brag on something, though, and it has absolutely nothing to do with me. I love Publix. Love it. Kroger is usually a great shopping experience, but I have to give the best over all shopping experience award to Publix. Their slogan, "Publix, where shopping is a pleasure," is pretty much dead on. All, and I do mean every single one, of the employees I talked to were helpful and nice. Even when a couple of the coupons didn't want to scan, my cashier just manually overrode the system (after carefully studying the coupon to make sure it was valid) and kept smiling. I'm excited for the new location at the corner of North College and Shug Jordan. Two Publixes! Auburn is growing up :)

I'd say last night's trip was a good confidence booster. I wish Boy would have been able to see it, but I'm glad I had my mommy with me. We'll see how next week's Kroger visit goes. It'll be hard to top being paid to shop, though.

Oh, and just so you don't think I'm making it up, here's my receipt from last night :)

Neat, huh?

Until next time.

Guess who's back, back again

So the Publix fail discouraged me a little from couponing for about three days.

Then I recovered. We've had several successful shopping outings since then, but my favorite lately has been a recent trip we took to WalMart.

I guess before I go into detail about the trip, I should point out that we try very hard not to be hoarders. We try to buy about 6 weeks worth of most food items, if we can. I will buy extras of things like detergent and personal products, though. We have enough laundry detergent so that we don't have to buy it for a while. I think that's cool. When we get low, we'll buy some more.

We got 10 travel size tubes of toothpaste for free and the Spic and Span bottles were $.47 a piece. And we got a large bottle of brown mustard for $.62!

Grand Total: $3.40; Amount Saved: $12.85

I don't mind having a ton of the toothpaste because they're small and we won't have to buy toothpaste for a while. Same with the cleaner. I don't have any excuses not to clean the kitchen anymore!

This was a fun little shopping trip that we took just to see what we could get. It ended up going well and we got some really useful stuff.

Publix tonight. Don't know how that will go, but I'm looking forward to it!

[Shopping trip redacted]

We went to Publix last night to shop. It was going to be an okay-ish trip, but we made some last minute additions to our list and I didn't hand the cashier all of our coupons (realized this in the parking lot) and it was kind of a fail.

It was my first real mistake in this process.

I had a meltdown. I don't know why.

Actually, I know exactly why. I'm Type A and put way too much pressure on myself. Perfectionism mutates into this monster where I can't handle not succeeding in something.

(On top of the fact I was already on edge emotionally before I even got to the store. That had a lot to do with it.)

I gotta get over that. This hobby is supposed to be fun, not make me cry.

So I'll try again next week. Hopefully it'll be better.

100% Challenges

We had a mission to save 100% tonight, and we nearly accomplished it. 

Under normal circumstances, you won't find us buying ridiculously large quantities of stuff just because it's free or discounted. In addition to the fact that I have zero space for a large stockpile, there's only two of us. We just don't need that much stuff. And it's reprehensible to buy way more than you need of something and leave other people who may need that product without it.

But we happened to have a lot of this past Sunday's inserts. 12 Red Plums and 8 Smart Sources. I can't tell you my secret source for these inserts, but I can assure you that it doesn't happen every week. We just lucked into it this time. 

So when WalMart and Kroger had coupon matchups (I can't thank Southern Savers enough) that corresponded with my ridiculously large number of inserts, I couldn't resist seeing what we could save.

Grand total: $.75 (tax only); Total savings: $11.99 (before tax)

At WalMart, Black Flag fly swatters and fly paper were on sale for $.98. This matched with a $1 off coupon from Red Plum, and I bought 8 fly swatters and 4 packages of fly paper. Disposable razors were also on sale for $.98, which matched with another $1 off coupon, making them free as well. 

We actually ended up paying $.75, just the tax on the items. The actual subtotal was -$.02. Even thought it was only two cents, I'd never seen a negative before. That was pretty cool.

We have every intention of giving away most of those fly swatters. We'll keep a couple around here, but who needs 8 fly swatters?

Our trip to Kroger kind of made me feel like a crazy person. 

Remember the Wisk deal going on right now? It's on sale for $3.99 and there's a $2 off coupon in the 5/15 Smart Source. Buying the Wisk will also cause a $2 Catalina coupon to print, essentially making your purchase free. 

So 8 Smart Sources, right? We may have gone a little overboard. 

Grand total: $5.48 (out of pocket); Total savings: $44.45 (before tax)

Well, actually, 7. We used one of them last night before I figured out what a good deal this was. 

But we definitely bought 7 bottles of Wisk laundry detergent. Including coupons and Catalina (We had to pay $1.99 plus tax up front to start the madness but got a $2 Catalina to use later), we spent $2.17 on those 7 bottles--basically just the tax.

The unfortunate thing was that we had to do all of it in separate transactions to get the Catalina to use on the next bottle. We could have paid for it all out of pocket and kept the Catalina to use later, but Boy wanted to see those 100% savings receipts (after the first one). 

We also got another bottle of the $1 Benefiber. Fiber supplements are expensive, so we snatched that one up. The cashier was less than thrilled about the separate transactions, but I apologized to her and she was pleasant enough.

All in all, it was pretty neat to be able to walk away from a store and feel like you were legally robbing them blind. WalMart was fun because the cashier was rude and annoyed but we won in the end.

We won't normally buy such large quantities, but tonight was a fun little game and I'm glad it produced some things we could use :)

Turn that frown upside down

It's sick that I'm actually unsatisfied with 70% in savings.

We got $42 worth of groceries for just over $14 tonight at Kroger, and I was actually disappointed. My math wasn't quite right, as I estimated our before-tax-total to be around $10, when it actually proved to be about $12.

So why am I unhappy? Your guess is as good as mine. 

We got a lot of really useful stuff for pretty good prices. We even got some freebies. But we got spoiled with the Mega Event savings. I have to be able to accept that not every shopping trip is going to be a home run, especially if we are buying things we need and not just buying things because they're cheap or free.

Boy, to his credit, has a much healthier perspective on it and is really happy with our savings tonight. I need to get on his level. 

Here is our haul from tonight, minus some free oatmeal that I forgot to include (like a dumb dumb):

Final cost: $14.64; Total Savings: $29.73

In the interest of full disclosure, the milk was a separate transaction. The Wisk detergent was a great price at $3.99, minus a $2 coupon, and then it printed $2 in Catalina after that. We used the Catlina on the 2 half gallons of milk. If you need milk, go to Kroger. Half gallons are $1 right now, making a gallon $2, as opposed to the 1 gallon container price of $2.89.

The Garnier shampoo and conditioner were on closeout and with a coupon, were just $.88 cents each. The cereal, the biscuits, and the cheese were all under $.80 after coupons and the Benefiber and the Almond Breeze milk were $1 after coupons.

We had an oatmeal freebie, but I forgot to include it in the picture. 

All in all, we got a lot of great stuff. Breaking it down just now made me feel better about it. The Wisk is an especially good deal. We have a plan that we're going to try tomorrow, and if it goes well, I'm sure you'll hear about it :)

In excellent news, I borrowed my old computer back from my mom and I'm able to print the coupons.com coupons. I've heard of several other people who can't print them on Macs (and other people who can), so I don't really know what to do about my actual computer. I'll cross that bridge when I get there. 

Kabobs and vino

So we've been known to experiment in the kitchen a little. But to keep weekday meals simple, we buy ground beef or turkey and chicken thighs when they're on sale (Yes, I know the breast is leaner and healthier. I do. But Boy and I both detest chicken breasts and I'll sacrifice the calories for edibility) and freeze them. It keeps us from constantly having to run to the grocery store for something to cook for dinner.

Thankfully, our penchant for keeping weekday meals easy helped us get our cooking experiment off the ground this weekend.

After watching a Bizarre Foods where Andrew ate kabobs (probably some exotic meat or organ), Boy wanted to make some for dinner. We had already marinaded some chicken thighs (we de-bone them and take the skin off) so it was the perfect scenario.

[Rabbit hole: Boy's marinade is the best. It's actually his dad's, but it's so simple and delicious. We throw the protein in a zipper bag, cover it with low sodium soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and garlic. Fresh garlic is a lot better, but Boy had used it all in the veggie marinade, so garlic salt worked just as well.]

We cubed some zucchini, sliced some onion, and skewered whole baby portabellas--next time we're springing for the big container. We combined it all in a bag and covered it with olive oil, fresh garlic, salt, and pepper. I should probably point out that this is where I got in trouble. I kept plucking zucchini pieces off of the plate and that got me yelled at :)

After we soaked the skewers for a couple of hours (100 bamboo skewers were on sale at Kroger for $1.50), we assembled the kabobs, keeping vegetables and protein separate.

Raw chicken grosses me out, but here is the "before" shot with kabobs assembled.

We have a gas grill my parents gave us so we fired it up and Boy went to work on the cookin. I'm not a huge fan of warm tomatoes, but he wanted some so we put a few of the yummy cherry tomatoes in a foil packet with some olive oil and veggies that broke during the skewering process and threw it on the grill.

I love tomatoes. Probably my favorite food. But not so much the warm ones. These were good though.

After laboring over the hot grill all afternoon (or for like 30 minutes, whatever), Boy brought everything inside. Keeping the veggies and protein separate was a great idea, because raw vegetables are one of my biggest pet peeves about kabobs. Vegetables and meats cook at different rates, so keeping everything separate helped us keep our kabobs perfectly cooked.

I think Boy did a pretty good job.

Grilled onions, zucchini, mushrooms, and chicken: On a stick!

This was really one of my favorite "random" meals that we've cooked. That marinade for the chicken (we use it for steaks, too) is just so good and grilled vegetables are one of my favorite foods. It was a nice, light change from the hamburgers we had the night before.

Oh! At the suggestion of a friend and co-worker, I tried a new brand of wine. Lucky Duck is inexpensive but really really good. I opened a bottle of the Shiraz while we were cooking and it was the perfect complement to the hectic kitchen.

I love ducks :)

We also bought the Sauvignon Blanc, so look out world.

I love summer for a ton of reasons but grilling is up there near the top. Can't wait to experiment a little more and see what we an come up with!

Well yay.

Looks like the posts came back. 

Thanks, Blogger! 

Rebekah saved the day!

I thought all hope was lost for the Publix win, CVS fail post when Blogger kind of lost it, but Rebekah told me her posts were still in Google Reader. Mine were too! So here's the lost blog post. Thanks again, Rebekah!

-----

We've settled on a shopping routine. Kroger on Mondays (or even Sunday nights if we have time) and Publix on Wednesdays.  

This afternoon, after a WalMart trip that made me cringe (so few sales, so few coupons but this one was Boy's project so whatever), we went to Publix with a very specific list and a very specific plan. 

I think we came out pretty well, even though some of the deals had already expired unexpectedly. We were fortunate enough to run across some tear pad coupons that we weren't expecting and that really helped with the bottom line.

Plus it was Penny Coupon day!

Grand total: $5.55; Total savings: $29.07

 The Yogurt was was completely free (printables and store coupons, score!) and the dish soap and the mac and cheese were both under $.30. Originally I had a coupon for $.55 off of one jar of pickles (BOGO priced at $1.34), but there was a tear pad that spit out two coupons for $.75 off so we ended up with an even better deal and got two jars instead of one. The bug spray was another fortunate find. It was BOGO priced and there was an on-product $.55 off coupon. We had coupons for everything we bought, including the Penny Item (Publix paper towels--they may feel like sandpaper, but hey, they were a penny).

I think the cashier was a little annoyed with the number of coupons we had, but she was pleasant enough. I really do love the Publix people. Even though they have to be nice, it's refreshing for store employes not to be rude (cough cough WalMart cough cough). 

So Publix was a win today. Lots of good deals and useful stuff. 

CVS, however, was a big fat fail. 

I had two coupons I was going to try to use with a store coupon to get enough off to make spending at least $15 to get 7 Extra Care Bucks worth it. But they didn't have any of those products listed on my coupons. I couldn't really tell if they were out of stock or if they didn't carry them at all. And unfortunately, I had no backup plan (so unlike me). So I abandoned it. 

Luckily, I had another coupon for brownie mix so the trip wasn't a total wash.

$.44 brownie mix. I'll take it.

CVS will take more practice. I might try it again next week. But grocery shopping is going okay so at least there's that :)

What the heck, Blogger?

My whole post about Publix and CVS just disappeared. What in the world? I clicked the direct link I posted on Twitter and Facebook and it says that that post doesn't exist.
Wtf? Grrr.

Publix #win, CVS #fail

We've settled on a shopping routine. Kroger on Mondays (or even Sunday nights if we have time) and Publix on Wednesdays. 

This afternoon, after a WalMart trip that made me cringe (so few sales, so few coupons but this one was Boy's project so whatever), we went to Publix with a very specific list and a very specific plan. 

I think we came out pretty well, even though some of the deals had already expired unexpectedly. We were fortunate enough to run across some tear pad coupons that we weren't expecting and that really helped with the bottom line.

Plus it was Penny Coupon day!

Grand total: $5.55; Total savings: $29.07

The Yogurt was was completely free (printables and store coupons, score!) and the dish soap and the mac and cheese were both under $.30. Originally I had a coupon for $.55 off of one jar of pickles (BOGO priced at $1.34), but there was a tear pad that spit out two coupons for $.75 off so we ended up with an even better deal and got two jars instead of one. The bug spray was another fortunate find. It was BOGO priced and there was an on-product $.55 off coupon. We had coupons for everything we bought, including the Penny Item (Publix paper towels--they may feel like sandpaper, but hey, they were a penny). 

I think the cashier was a little annoyed with the number of coupons we had, but she was pleasant enough. I really do love the Publix people. Even though they have to be nice, it's refreshing for store employes not to be rude (cough cough WalMart cough cough). 

So Publix was a win today. Lots of good deals and useful stuff. 

CVS, however, was a big fat fail. 

I had two coupons I was going to try to use with a store coupon to get enough off to make spending at least $15 to get 7 Extra Care Bucks worth it. But they didn't have any of those products listed on my coupons. I couldn't really tell if they were out of stock or if they didn't carry them at all. And unfortunately, I had no backup plan (so unlike me). So I abandoned it. 

Luckily, I had another coupon for brownie mix so the trip wasn't a total wash. 

$.44 brownie mix. I'll take it.

CVS will take more practice. I might try it again next week. But grocery shopping is going okay so at least there's that :)

Quick shopping update

We went back to Kroger after I spent a little time on Southern Savers designing a 10-item Mega Event list. Separating each Mega Event group into individual lists helps with organization and counting (things I struggle with sometimes). I was pretty excited with how it turned out. We only had to get one .49 water (our Mega Event fall-back) and got a lot of other great deals!

Grand total: $5.97; Total savings: $17.18

I was surprised at what good prices we were able to get on some of the "healthy" foods. The garden and whole wheat pastas were free with our coupons (4 more freebies!), but they were $.49 with just the Mega Event and Kroger card pricing. The Silk Pure Almond milk was $.74 with the coupons and the Mom's Best cereal was $.24. The pretzel was  $.79 (just the Mega Event and Kroger card price--our printable coupon didn't print correctly dang it) and the Sunny D was only $.74. Most of our money went to the Cheez-Its (a bit of a splurge) at $1.38.

The good news is I got my printer and we started gathering internet printables! All of my coupons for the Mega Event were printables (except for one e-coupon on my Kroger card). We were excited. Being able to pair those with paper inserts and e-coupons will help a ton. 

I have a problem getting the coupons.com coupon installer to properly install on my computer, though. It keeps asking me to re-install even though I've already installed (like 4 times) and none of the coupon websites that use that particular application will print. I've missed a couple of freebies because of this, and it's not a huge deal but it's still sort of irritating. I've contacted the website people, so maybe they'll be able to help me. Or I'll have to steal my roommate's computer. We'll see. 

We are trying our first CVS trip tomorrow. We have a couple of coupons and we'll only buy a few things. CVS is a bit overwhelming right now, so we are taking it slowly. Really slowly. But if we play our cards right, we'll spend roughly $8 (after coupons) and get 7 Extra Care Bucks to use later. 

Fingers crossed :)

Big scary first shopping trip

Well we did it.

We went on our first shopping trip with coupons. We've bought individual items with coupons before, but before tonight, we'd never gone out on our regular shopping trip with the intention of using coupons for most everything. 

Since it's pretty terrifying, we decided to keep it small and only buy the few items that we had coupons for, that were on sale, or both.

Publix was having some great BOGO deals and combined with a few manufacturer's coupons, we managed some pretty nice savings.

Grand total: $15.44; Total savings: $22.05

We saved $8.80 with coupons and $13.25 with in-store savings. Since the Publix BOGO policy allows you to just buy one at half off, the Shout spray, priced at $1.50 with BOGO, became $.70 when we put a $.40 coupon (doubled) with it. We thought that was pretty cool. 

And the dog treats (way in the back behind everything--sorry for the crummy picture) were on sale for $3 per  bag and with 2 $2 off coupons, we snagged them for $1 each. Unfortunately Logan is a giant dog and can eat 6 of the little treats at a time, but since they were only a dollar, I guess it's okay. 

The only items we didn't have coupons for were the hotdogs (half off with BOGO) and the Knorr sides ($.74). Not too shabby. 

Then we ventured over to Kroger to get our own Kroger cards (we'd both been using our parents') and picked up some items from their Mega Event (Get $5 off when you buy 10 participating items).

Deer Park 3 liter waters, regularly $1.19, became $.99 cents with the Kroger card and $.49 with the Mega Event. Needless to say, we bought 10. 

Rabbit hole: We buy water because Auburn City water tastes like sewage. We've debated a filter, but buying the gallons and having them cold in the fridge is just too convenient. Finding nice deals like this Mega Event allows us to stock up and donate the rest. 

I also picked up 10 Campbell's Soups, averaging out to $.89 a piece, thanks to the Mega Event. 

And in one of the more exciting parts of the night, I got another freebie! Mahatma 1 lb bags of rice were 10 for 10 with the Kroger card. I had a coupon for $.50 off and since Kroger doubles $.50 and under, the rice was free! 

This may all be extremely boring to you, but we had so much fun tonight. The Publix trip was awesome super easy because we were well prepared. I printed off a detailed list from Southern Savers, gathered our coupons and organized them before we left, and only bought what was on the list. 

We are definitely looking forward to gathering more coupon inserts (the size of our advertising market makes it difficult to get all of the coupons. See Phillip's awesome breakdown here), getting better organized, building a little bit of a stockpile, and becoming more comfortable with store policies and coupons in general.

We are need to get comfortable with printables. The first step in that process, though, is getting my printer from my parents' house. Since I can't print coupons at work (can't download the applications onto work computers), I'm stuck until I can get my own. It'll just take a little time.

But for now, we're pretty happy.

Scary first shopping trip: Check.