Deals too good to pass up at Giant this week

Even in my non-couponing state, there are some deals that are just too good to pass up!

Included this week:

FREE 2 oz packages of Oscar Meyer lunch meat. They are buy 4, get $4 off instantly. Priced at just a dollar each, these are instantly free. Note: this is NOT in your circular, the deal will be detailed out on store tags. The $1 lunch meat may not have the tags, but you will see the package on the other tags nearby. Please only buy four per transaction, that way, the instant savings will ALWAYS come off. Some local couponers are mentioning problems with the turkey, but the ham worked for sure for me today. Thanks, for the mommas!

Puffs plus money maker! If you buy 3 boxes of Puffs plus cubes, at $1.25 each, you'll get 20 cents off per gallon of gas. If you have a vehicle that takes 30 gallons of gas, or can fill up a couple of gas cans to make thirty dollars, you'll save six dollars in gas for every $3.75 you spend. Sweet deal! Thanks to Ed's friend Jimmy for sending me this one.

Free Iced Tea bottles: You can print a coupon for $1 off one, or $.75 off one Gold Peak Tea, on coupons.com. The .75 off one will double to a dollar, so you can score up to four free bottles. Remember that Giant only doubles the FIRST like coupon, so you must do two transactions if you want to use two .75 off one and get both for free. If not, you'll pay .25 for one (still a nice deal).

Kashi is also providing a $5 coupon ONYO if you buy five items. Recyclebank and Coupons.com both are offering coupons that work well for this deal:

What I did:

You can print one $2 off Kashi coupon PER DAY at Recyclebank. So, I've been printing for four days, in order to have $8 off. Then, I got one $1 off a Kashi steam meal, so this was my deal:

buy four packages of Kashi TLC crackers @ $2.50 each
buy one frozen Kashi meal, @2.50
Total, $12.50
use, $9 in coupons
Pay, $3.50

Get $5 off my next order. You still have enough time to try and make this deal, but I had a LOT of recyclebank points saved up. The coupons are 75 points each. As usual, I learned all this good stuff on For The Mommas You should totally check her out, she rocks!

Stockpile goods up for grabs: Place your bids here!

It's getting closer, and closer, and closer: six weeks is NOT a lot of time to pare an entire household down to a trailer. I've got a stockpile roughly the size of the entire house to get rid of, forms of currency accepted include bartering, begging, pleading, whining. All bids should include a form of barter: for instance, what you want, plus what you are willing to do for it, and possibly a good sob story or some whining for my reading pleasure. You can send your bids to my cell phone, my email, my facebook, my husband or leave a comment here (preferred). Cash is NOT an option, it will not amuse me in the slightest and I require entertainment at the present.

Free babysitting offers get preference: no smoking environments only, and no serial killers, sex offenders, or anything else that freaks me out. This includes any number of items and should not be seen as an insult. I'm a weird helicopter parent and I know it.

Up for grabs:

six bottles of Dial lotion
twelve bottles of Garnier Fructis shampoo and conditioner
various bottles of Pantene shampoo and conditioner
Centrum Omegas
Crest Pro Health mouth wash, large bottles
Bread crumbs. Almost unlimited, multiple flavors
Flipz chocolate covered pretzels, several dozen
Taco shells, hard, about 8 packages
taco shells, soft, small, flour
cranberry sauce, ten
flavored vinegar, five, too lazy to walk downstairs and see WHAT flavors.
Shaving cream, womens, mango skintimate, about 12 bottles
Olay face soap, Regenerist, two bottles
Olay body wash, several varieties, several bottles.
All purpose flour, Wegmans, 3 bags
More items to come: I have to clean up from the massive lunch I just made my kids before I go downstairs again. Feel free to place requests, I'll take a look and get back to you!

This week's crazy coupon shopping results!

Coupon shopping can be a real, well, pain the ass. (pardon the language)

Last night I went to Shoprite with a stack of about 80 coupons, waited patiently in line, 80 items, 80 coupons, and watched the cashier sort the coupons, scan half the coupons, and put the other half in his drawer without scanning them. I told him quietly of his mistake, he denied it, and rather than argue the point, I let him finish and then went to the shiftleader on that I knew used coupons. It took twenty minutes to correct his error, but I got back over $15.

Today went better. Much, much better.

Last night and this morning, I hit CVS to do the following transactions:

12 boxes of Nabisco crackers @ $2.50 each.

Used:

$3 on 3 coupons
$10 CVS cash card from last week
$5 Extra bucks:

Total: $0 (That's not a couponing world zero, that's a legitimate zero).
Received $10 Cash Card

Went back today and got:
3 boxes of Nabisco crackers @2.59
3 boxes of Glade Sense and Spray $5.00 each
2 Nivea lip balm Buy one, get one half off

Used-
3-$3 off one Glade Sense and Spray
$3 off two Glade products CVS coupon
$3 off 3 Crackers,
$3 off 2 Nivea lib
$10 cash card

total- $0.00
received- $4 extra bucks

Rite aid:
Got 1 kid's Crest toothpase, $2.77
1 Oral B floss picks $2.77
1 NYC lip gloss to try out the Midtown Mulberry shade for Influenster $2.49
1 Schick trimstyle razor $8.99

Used-
$1 off Crest,
$1 off Oral B
$3 off Trimstyle
$11 up rewards

Paid $1.09, got $5 in rewards

Walgreens:

Got:
1 Diet supplement $10
Used: $2 register rewards from last week

Paid:
$8
got $10 register rewards

Got:
1 South beach bar $5.99
2 packages of Alka seltzer cold medicine $10
2 clearance cookies (filler)

Used:
$1 off South Beach
2- $2 off Alka seltzer
$10 rr

Paid- $1.59
Got $11 in RR

In the coupon world, they'd say I made money today!
Here's a picture, keep in mind twelve boxes of crackers got put away last night!

Now I just have to find a place to put all this stuff!

Cashiers with bad manners and good deals at Shoprite.

First off, thanks for the well wishes. The jackhammer in my head has subsided to a dull thump, so I think the antibiotics may be doing their job.

My results today at Shoprite were pretty darn fabulous, even if I do say so myself, and I'm done shopping for at least TWO WHOLE DAYS. Two days which will probably be spent preparing for Sunday's haul, cleaning, and splashing in the kiddie pool. Life is good.

But I digress. I woke up at six AM to complete two shopping trips prior to my husband's journey to work, One to Weis, and one to Shoprite, along with a quick visit to my dads.

What I got at Weis:
Two packages of Bounty Napkins. (2 for 5)- $1 coupon
Two bottles of tide stain releaser: $5.99 each- $6 (2-$3 coupons)
total: $11 and change. Got back a five bucks off your next order coupon, which I used promptly.
Second transaction
Two bunches of asparagus
two sacks of red grapes
three boxes of pierogies
tub of ice cream
Also $11 and change.



What I got at Shoprite:
Two packages of Turkey bacon
two packages of cooked chicken slices
12 La Yogurt
1 tub Organic salad mix
4 packages of hot dogs
2 pumps Mentadent tooth paste
1 bottle of spicy brown mustard (which feels like heaven since I never used to buy mustard just for me)
1 bottle of hot sauce

Spent out of pocket: $8.72 Savings $35.02
I would have done my little happy hop after my transaction, except I had the WORST. CASHIER. EVER. You know the one. They all look the same after a while, MEAN. I make it a point to be EXTRA SUPER NICE AND PROFESSIONAL. Anyone who knows me knows I do extra super nice and professional like it's my job. I greeted said cashier warmly- she said nothing. I informed her promptly (and perkily, I might add) that I had internet coupons. She glared.

Okay, I'm going to digress for a minute, and remind the world at large that couponing robs NO ONE, and harms NO ONE. My coupons are organized carefully, the items on the belt in the same order as I hand the coupons to the cashier, grouped by deal. I may have paid with sixteen dollars worth of coupons, but that's still sixteen dollars I'm contributing to the store's bottom line.

Back to evil cashier.

Either she doesn't like her job, or she doesn't like me, I'm not sure which. She questions my one deal, and I tell her why I think it's within the store policy, and she doesn't reply. (This is a trend, I see.)

She picks up the phone, and mutters into it.

Help arrives, in the form of a manager/shift/leader/someone with a key who also does not greet me. I say, "I've got evil internet coupons, I'm sorry," to which he laughs and says no big deal.

Then he looks at my coupons, pronouncing them fine, and starts to walk away, when she pulls him aside facing away from me, and whispers about my deal, I guess, because she's pointing at my coupons. Every once in a while they pause to look over at me. It's fun. I love bad manners.

At this point my husband is aggravated because the manager is giving me dirty looks. My day is going well. The manager says no, so I tell him that's totally cool, I don't want two of the items, and he leaves with out another word. Nothing.

At this point, protective husband gets slightly annoyed. It was all so very pleasant and relaxing!

But it was cheap. So it's okay, I guess.

No, it's not really all that okay. I drove almost fifteen miles to give that store my business because of the deals that were available, and they really acted like I was trying to rob them at knife point.

*it was a robbery I tell you! a robbery by coupon! the sentence should be death by coupon!*

Seriously. I'm giving you business. The store is getting the money. I'm not evil, I'm sweet. Why can't you be nice back, cashier people? *sighs* First time that ever happened to me at Shoprite. The one lady there is so nice and sweet and always claps for me and my coupons. I didn't see her today.

Oh, well. I know who to avoid now in line.

Extreme Couponing has done damage to my psyche. I may sue.

Okay, I realize that I've not written in a half a week, and that's terrible in the blogging world, but I'm really sick. Okay, not actually, really sick in a life-threatening since, but the cold that wiped me out two weeks ago morphed into a sinus infection and stole my voice. I have no voice, people. This to a girl who spend all of her life waiting for two days a week so she can wait on tables is tragically scarring.

I had to call off work tonight. I have no voice, and the headaches that go with the sinus infection are kind of intense. Right this minute, it feels like someone is punching me, over and over, both in the jaw and in the nose, and tears are randomly running out of my one eye socket. In short, I look like I'm a swollen faucet. Despite all this, I had to go to the store, because even in my ailment, my children want to eat all day every day, and Thursday night I stop at the grocery store on the way home from work, so I needed that trip.

I'm not sure if it's the coupon binder, the runny nose/eye/cough, the children running everywhere screaming, or the fact that we take up an entire aisle whilst shopping, but people were avoiding me and the brood in the grocery store. I liked it.

And here's where the Extreme Couponing trauma comes in. I got 97 dollars worth of groceries for $47. Well, Forty six and change. And I'm disappointed! There is something emotionally wrong with me, that may have nothing to do with the cold med/antibiotics.

Five packages of ice cream novelties, a CASE of juice boxes, Jack Daniels bbq sauce, treats, fruit, 7 more packages of yogurt, because of the dairy sale at Giant.

I mean really. Almost a hundred dollars of groceries for less than half the usual cost and I'm upset about it? I want a seven thousand dollar order for 12 cents, and I'm going to keep going till I get it.

I don't want to be an Extreme Couponer. I want to be BETTER than an extreme couponer, and I don't want to have to dust my garage and my boxes of pasta to do it.

Blast it all, TLC.

And the day of bargaining comes to an end.

I'm tired.

Late night last night, early morning this morning, and a long day of battling with multiple cashiers has left me tired, frustrated, and a little concerned with the education system in America. I literally had to argue, with a human, in each store, to receive the deals advertised in the paper.

Whether it be an incorrectly marked items included in a sale (Target) or a missed case of soda that the cashier somehow managed to miss after she specifically ASKED me not to put it on the counter, which almost DOUBLED my bill (Weis), or the customer service guy at Weis who was, well, a little taken aback at the numbers coming out of my mouth, to the lady at Shoprite who regarded my internet coupons as if I'd conjured them in a cauldron rather than printing them off of coupons.com. Or maybe we want to talk about Walgreens, who deliberately manufactured a lesser discount than the one the coupon I handed her offered.

Ugh. At the end of the day, though, I spent a little over fifty dollars out of pocket and got ridiculous deals. At Target, I took my Cafemom gift cards, which totaled $125, and got 12 rolls of paper towels, 24 rolls of toilet paper, three boxes of tampons, a bottle of shampoo, a bottle of conditioner,bottle of baby shampoo, two pounds of deli turkey, four sticks of deodorant,6 bottles of high heat Pam, a dress, three shirts, two of those razors my husband likes, two bottles of nail polish, three garden hoses, two large bags of Iron Man, Spidermanand truck toys for the kids- roughly three hundred and fifty dollars worth of items, for only $20 out of our bank. It looked like this:

At Walgreens, I completed the deal I mentioned the other day...(small stack on the right)

The stack on the left, was $13 at Shoprite, and included, 1 pack of coffee, five boxes of tissues, a bottle of baby shampoo and a bottle of baby body wash, two boxes of pasta, a pound of cheese, and a box of bagel pizzas, (refrigerated items not shown). I got two dollars back on my next order. According to the receipt, this order was $30.

Finally, and this is a much less impressive picture and a much more impressive deal-

I spent $8 at Weis, and after breaking the customer service guy and two trips back out to the car in the pouring rain, they actually CHARGED me $8. I brought home five cases of soda, two boxes of veggie pasta, and two bags of chips. I have to say, though, the manager over there is fabulous, very friendly, very sweet, very helpful. The signage, not so much.

Oh, and one more deal I'm happy with....

Our gas bill for the week. I'm officially taking 24 hours off couponing before I get ready to do it again next week.