Save A Lot trip today

I was armed with coupons and went to our local Save A Lot food store to buy some of the 1.00 products they are offering this month. Did not end up with much as they were pretty much out of some of the products. Then when I did cash out with what few I had found, they would only let me use one coupon per product. In other words if you purchased say two Butterball Turkey Bacon products you could only use one of your 65 cent coupons. Of course they were out of it anyhow. I have never had this happen to me before up there. Needless to say not much worth wasting my time there if they are going to be like that. I asked them when this started and they said "Oh we don't know, we think they just did this when the sale started. The register will only accept one coupon now per product." They did not even know for sure.

Coffee-Mate Free Flavor Friday Bistro Party #CMFFFParties

Friday February 4th I was lucky enough to be able to have a Coffee-Mate Free Flavor Friday Bistro Party. Several of my friends and family attended. The party started as 4PM and ended just before 1AM.
My attendees were asked to come dressed comfortable such as sweatsuits and PJ's and also house shoes or fuzzy socks. As comfortable as possible. Everyone was in such a good mood, talking, laughing, enjoying each others company and never wanting to leave. So, of course we unable to work in a movie.
We went all out with the Bistro theme. Recipes were from Rachel Ray and Giada. Pasta E Fagioli Soup, Penne Pasta with Vodka Sauce, Meatballs and Italian sausages, Lemon Ricotta Muffins, Tiramasu, Heart shaped cupcakes made with Coffee-Mate Caramel Machiatto and Caramel Machiatto Buttercream Icing. We also had Gourmet Oatmeal Cookies. For drinks we had available, coffee, tea, hot chocolate and sodas.
As each person left they were presented with a goody bag with Instant Coffee Packets, Nestle Hot Chocolate packets, chocolate candy and some recipe cards along with their Free Coffee-Mate coupon. I also made them a canned homemade jar of banana butter and wrapped them up in a very nice new red dish cloth tied up with yarn to have on toast when enjoying with their coffee flavored with Coffee-Mate. The two ladies who won the door prizes were totally thrilled! (Recipe Book and Muffin Pan). Elizabeth won the Very NICE Recipe Book from Coffee-Mate and Linda won the Very NICE Wilton Heart Shaped Cupcake pan from Coffee-Mate. My daughter and I can now wear the Apron when cooking as we decided to keep the Very NICE Coffee-Mate Apron.
The Bistro Party was a great success and we are really thankful that Coffee-Mate chose us to have one of the parties! And then sent us a Bistro Party Package filled with samples, nice gifts and FREE Coffee-Mate coupons. It was so much fun and we hope to do another party sometime soon.
We want to say THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, to Nestle Coffee-Mate for giving us this opportunity to have family and friends over to enjoy the wonderful new Coffee-Mate flavors and to have this special time to talk and visit with them.
Also we want to thank all of those who found time in their busy lives to come and spend this special time with us. You are truly the best and most wonderful friends we could have! Lots of Love to each and every one of you!
My daughter took some pictures of some of the food we served and the link is below. Also one of the ladies did not mind if we posted her picture with her door prize.
http://www.facebook.com/CoffeemateUSA#!/album.php?id=100000079804038&aid=52244

My college Roomy's Bed and Breakfast

If you love going on vacations like I do this post might interest you.
My college Roomy and her husband and opened a Bed and Breakfast
http://aplaceintimebedandbreakfast.com/. They even have a small golf course on their land. They are however close to some big ones also. Also very close to some of the best snow skiing. It is also just a few miles from the Canadian Border.
She is just a very nice person, and also a very busy person as she is a full time teacher, coach and does driver's training on the weekends. I am sure it would be a really fun stay.
I hope one day to be able to travel up that way and stay in here B&B.

Shopping at Cash and Saver for deals

Cash and Saver will not take internet coupons. They will only accept manufacturers coupons. So you may get a good deal on something they may have on sale with using those coupons. Most of their regular prices are getting very high at this store, so watch for the sales add in the local newspaper before shopping. You can normally get some good meat deals and deli products at a good price.

Shopping at Kroger with coupons

The first thing you need to do when you plan to shop at Kroger is to sign up for a Kroger Plus Shoppers Card. Sign up for Cellfire, Shortcuts, Kroger e Coupons, pgesaver, and any other loadable coupons that work with your Kroger card to take cents off coupons on products you may purchase there. Besides being able to load coupons to your Kroger Plus Card, they have some printable coupons on their website also. Also sign up for Upromise.com with your Kroger's card. You can apply coupons to your card there also that will accumulate as a savings for you that you can use in different ways. I have mine tied to my daughters college loan payoff.
Some Kroger's have double coupons up to 1.00 and will double dollar coupons, however my Kroger only doubles up to 50 cents coupons. That's fine, I am happy with 1.00 off an item especially if I have coupons loaded to my Kroger card to go along with it. Sometimes other Kroger's will even do TRIPLE COUPONS!
Some Kroger's will not let your Cellfire, Shortcuts and Kroger E Coupons all apply to an item.
I have purchased items at my Kroger's and checked my receipt and not only did I get my 50 cent coupon doubled, my Cellfire and my Shortcuts coupons loaded to my card applied also to that item and I have got many items free and have made some money on some products and that extra money off was applied to my others purchases that day.
So, I guess I am just tickled to death that my Kroger's does this and allows me to get so many items free or very cheap.
When I shop at Kroger's I usually save over $150.00 to $250.00 with coupons, internet coupons and the Kroger Card deals. I will leave that store with an overloaded grocery cart and have to worry about stuff falling out on the way to the car. I may spend 70 to 120 dollars at most. I will have a well rounded supply of products and I only do this about once a month. If I lived closer, I would do this weekly and it would be a lot easier for me.
So when you get ready to make your first coupon shopping trip to Kroger's, the first thing you need to do is to see what items are on sale at your store that week. You can do this at www.krogers.com and you will need to look up your store by your zip code. You can do this at my store on Saturday night sometime after midnight. Now my friends Kroger is in a different region than mine and her sales run Thursday to Wednesday, not Sunday to Saturday like mine. So you will need to determine what day your sales start during the week. Then look at what items are on sale for your store.
You can look on couponmom.com and slickdeals.net and see what coupons others are talking about for that weeks Kroger sales and then search out your coupons.
Check all of the coupon printing websites such as coupons.com, redplum, smartsource, coupons.com, general mills and bettycrocker.com also.
And don't forget the ones on the Kroger website. Also, check the coupons on slickdeals.net. Go to forums and then coupons and search several pages in for any items you might purchase or that is on sale a Kroger the week you go. Also, go to forums and then drug store, grocery deals and look for the latest Kroger post. Start from the last page and work backwards. Then you will get the latest information people have posted for shopping Kroger's.
Check your coupon inserts also from the Sunday paper. There may be coupons for sale items that week for Kroger's as far back as 4 to 6 Sundays ago. If you check couponmom.com she will have posted the ones she has found and what weeks insert they are in, however, your coupons, may or may not be the same as hers. So it will pay off for you to check yours yourself. She will also have some links for printable coupons that she has found online to print off for that weeks sales also.
Be sure to load your internet coupons onto your Kroger card at least one to two days before you shop there. Then print off you list of coupons that you have loaded to your card at each website. Compare the coupons from each list to see if you have the same coupon on more than one of your coupon lists. Say you have a coupon for Betty Crocker Cookie Mix on Shortcuts, Cellfire and your Kroger card also and you have paper manufacturers coupons also for them/internet printed coupons. Then you will most probably be able to get one or two of these free or very very cheap because, if they do not change the way they do the coupons at Owensboro Kroger, then this will happen. Other Kroger's, I do not know if they will or not. I do know in Indianapolis at my friends Kroger they only apply one internet coupon per product. Not several like down here.
Well, I hope I have remembered all that is important for this store, if not I will post more later.
Hope this make sense and helps you to really save some money and get some really good deals at Kroger.

My thoughts on how to begin shopping for CVS deals

If you are serious about wanting to save money, then CVS is a good place to start. You will be able to save lots of money on a variety of personal, cleaning, medicinal, and food items.
The most important thing to do first is sign up for an Extra Care Card. This card is a must for getting deals. This could mean very cheap items, free items, or items they pay you to walk away with because you were smart enough to bring in a coupon for that item. It could be also, that they sent you a coupon for that item. You may have a coupon for it and they sent you one also, so you get to use both coupons on that item.
Once you have obtained your CVS Extra Care card, then you need to sign up for their emails at https://www.cvs.com/CVSApp/user/extracare/extracare.jsp , if at all possible. The reason being this is where you get most of the CVS coupons. They email them to you. Once in a great while they will snail mail one to you. Most probably upon signing up you will get an email for $4.00 off a $20.00 purchase.
Also sign up for Upromise.com as items you may purchase at CVS may apply to that and you can request a check or have the money you accumulate in your account used as a savings for college for your children or grandchildren or to help to pay off someones college loan. I have mine applied to my daughters college loan to help pay off what I can on hers with my earning from them.
If you belong to recyclebank.com you will see that when you acquire enough points, that you often are able to purchase a $5.00 off $25.00 coupon to use at CVS also. You acquire points there by recycling products in your home in certain cities and other ways. So even if your city doesn't cooperate, there are still other ways to qualify for these.
When you scan your extra bucks card when entering the CVS store you may also score a 4 off 20.00 coupon, 5 off 25.00 and so on. You may also just get free extra bucks. The other day it just shot me out a 2.00 off extra buck. Be sure to keep scanning your card until it quits shooting out coupons. Now they do this quarterly for everyone if you spend money there that quarter. I usually get anywhere from 2 to 7.00 extra bucks quarterly when the first day of the quarterly payout arrives.
There are CVS coupons to print off their website also. They can be combined with manufacturers coupons that are in weekly inserts or printed offline. Combining these coupons will really get you some great deals. Many websites will call this stacking your coupons.
As you can see, CVS really wants your business and they are willing to put out the coupons and extra bucks deals to get you to shop there.
The first thing to do when getting ready to shop is to get a CVS weekly add or go online and search out the CVS add for your area. It should most probably be ready to view around 12AM PT. So whatever time that is at your home, then that is when you might expect them to have it ready for viewing at www.cvs.com. You will have to enter a search for the weekly add with your zip code. Make your shopping list while browsing whats one sale and print it off.
When looking at the add you will see something called Extra Care Bucks listed with some of the items that week. When purchasing these items you will get these extra care bucks printed at the bottom of your cash register tape. There will be a limit listed of how many of these items you can purchase and get extra bucks. The limit may be 1 or more depending on the item.
These EC Bucks are basically CVS money that they give you if you purchase their items offering EC Bucks. In other words, it is money in your pocket, billfold, piggybank, or whatever, because you can spend this money in their store and bank yours in your billfold. You can turn around and spend this "CVS money/EC Bucks" on most items in the store, but not on cigarettes, liquor and some others items that will be printed for you to see. The item may be on sale for 5.99 and you may get back 5.99 or maybe they will say another amount if you purchase the item. Many times you will get back the full amount in extra bucks. Often times, you will also have a manufacturers coupon to use when purchasing the item, allowing you to make a profit off the deal. It could be the item you purchased was taxable and this coupon would then help to cover the tax on that item.
Granted you will not need or be able to use all of these items that you will be able to get for free unless you have a very large family. Therefore, I suggest you help out those in your immediate family who are in need, your local food banks, animal shelters, etc. I have even donated some items I have gotten to schools. They appreciate blood sugar monitoring machines and all sorts of school items. One school asked for little items to put in their little store they allow the children to shop in for gifts for their parents and family members for Christmas with points they had earned in school so far that year for doing good on their assignments, etc.
There are two places that I search out CVS adds several weeks before shopping that week. www.iheartcvs.com and www.slickdeals.net. You will see post listed there for maybe as much as 3 or 4 weeks ahead. It is a good idea to look at these and search out what coupons you may have for that week. It is also a good idea to print out any coupons they may have listed on the weekly sales that you plan on using around 1 week before the sale. Do not wait until Saturday night before the sale week as they may have shut down the print of the coupon because the amount they intended on printing has already been reached.
Usually on Friday night or the Saturday before the sale I will see on facebook that many of the blogs I watch will post what good deals they see for the Sunday sale and where to find the coupons in the weekly inserts and if there are any available on websites to print for that week.
Some of those I watch are Coupon Pro, Coupon Mom, Deal Seeking Mom and Coupon Cravings.
I check out all of these because each deal is not caught by each blogger and then I am prepared for most of the deals without having to search out all of this information by myself.
Be sure to check out two weeks before if any coupons are on any of the coupons websites that match up with the sales also. These websites are www.coupons.com, Smartsource and Redplum.
Also, check the CVS coupon area for any you might be able to use. There is one more place you may want to go to look for coupons and that is Facebook. Check the products on sale at CVS on Facebook and like them if you can, as there may be a good coupon to print off there.
One last thing I can think of at this point is to look at your shopping list and see how much money you will be getting back in extra bucks. If it is, say over $20.00, you may want to divide your shopping list into more than one trip to CVS and use your extra bucks that print on the first trip, on your second trip, to help pay for some of the products and the next trip also, if needed. This way you will not tie so much money up in extra bucks. Often I make two or more trips to CVS weekly in order to keep my extra bucks amount low.
Well, there is a lot of things to know and learn about CVS. I sure hope this makes sense to you and that it will help you to get lots of free stuff. That you will be able to make your money stretch further and possibly even to help others with all your goodies you accumulate.
Happy CVS shopping, with those EXTRA BUCKS, you will be saving!