Rite Aid Savings and some other ways to save

Today I ventured out to Rite Aid again. I never feel quite so scatterbrained as I do when I am shopping with coupons. Seriously, I am like a chicken with my head cut off. I WILL press on and one day this will be second nature to me. Or not.

So today at Rite Aid, after walking around like a crazy person for quite some time, I found some good deals. Here they are:

Why yes, that IS more cereal. 9 boxes to be exact. I had to promise Darin that unless I can get cereal for under 50 cents, I will not buy any more until we are down to 5 boxes in our pantry. Anyways, back to the savings. In addition to the cereal, I bought 2 3 packs of Ziploc containers, 2 Colgate Total toothpastes, 2 3 packs of invisible tape, 2 fun Scotch tape products, an Airwick air freshener kit, and 2 energy efficient light bulbs.

My checker today, Sharon, was like super meticulous with checking all my coupons and wouldn't let me use the $5 off $25 until AFTER everything had been rung up AND the coupons had been rung up. That lessened any chance I had to try and make a couple dollars, but it is what it is. (Note to self, avoid Sharon's lane). I ended up spending $26.31 oop for all of these items and will be receiving $15.49 back in rebates, for a total of $10.82 being spent after rebates. Not as exciting as my last shopping trip, but it was still fun.

I only paid $1 for the Airwick thing, the cereal was $1.99 and I had coupons for a total of $4 off, The Scotch tapes were better than free, the light bulbs will end up being $1.50 after rebate, The toothpaste will end up being 25 cents for both thanks to coupons and a rebate and the cereal and Ziploc containers earned me a $5 rebate! See, I am learning, it just takes me a very long time and kind of makes my brain hurt.

In other news, we tried to avoid the grocery store this week. I think Darin ran out for milk (free!), some bread, and fruit, and yogurt, but that was it. We needed those items because we had Arts Camp at our church (like VBS) and I had to pack lunches for the kids and myself. Other than that, we ate what we had on hand. We had frozen pizza (a couple times), meatballs that my mom had frozen when she was here, spaghetti sauce that my brother Danny had made when he was visiting, quesadillas, fish sticks for the kids, and sandwiches or a bowl of cereal as filler. I am so glad we stuck to it and ate some stuff that has just been sitting around for a few weeks instead of going out and buying more.

We also had a little harvest from our garden. Check this out.

I did say a "little" harvest and that is exactly what we've had. We've picked 4 beans off of our tiny plants and last night I cut some teeny tiny lettuce leaves to make a salad. Our carrots are still way too tiny to pick. We are not sure if they will ever actually grow. Thankfully we have friends with an abundance of garden goodness. I'm still looking for more tomatoes if any of you Michiganders have some!

One last thing, there is a great deal going on in most parts of the country through Kraft. Go to Kraftsupervalu.com for the details. Sadly I cannot participate because there isn't a store in our area that has partnered with Kraft. Save-a-lot DID, but then it fell through. So sad. Seriously, it's a great deal, so check it out!

I promise to write about some more family stuff soon and lay off the couponing for a while!