Vacation 2011

We've been back from our 12 day road-trip vacation for 3 days now.  We're both back to work tomorrow, the little munchkin is back to preschool, and the teenager is back to riding full time for the remainder of his summer.  I feel like it was so much longer that we were away.  Probably because I've never actually had a 2-week vacation before.  Usually, we go somewhere for a week but spend 2 of those days on the road.  This trip was mostly road!

July 2-5, we spent driving.  Clovis to Salt Lake City to Casper, Wyoming, to Mount Rushmore, to Worthington, Minnesota, and finally to Bloomington, Minnesota.  While on the road, we made sure to look for license plates from other states.  We racked up a lot of them at Mount Rushmore, but over the course of the entire trip, we got all but 3 states (Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Alabama).  We even spotted plates from 5 Canadian provinces!

While in Minnesota, we saw all my siblings and their spouses and kids (minus a brother-in-law and a nephew); aunts, uncle, and cousins from my dad's side of the family; cousins and an aunt from my mom's side of the family; the town where my mom grew up; the largest boot (Red Wing Shoe Museum); Wisconsin across the Mississippi; Como Park Zoo; and the Mall of America.

On the way home, we went through Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, coming home through Yosemite.  We saw John Wayne's birthplace, which happens to be the same place where a couple of the bridges of Madison County are.  We saw 2 of them.  In Nebraska, we saw a Pony Express station, and in Wyoming, we saw a Lone Tree in the middle of the highway.  We came into Colorado up north through Laramie, Wyoming, and stayed in a ski town where it was about 58 degrees (so nice after the heat and humidity everywhere else on the trip).  In Utah, we stayed with my sister and her family for a night.  In Nevada, we just drove - it's a long way across!

Our last night on the road, we stayed in Reno, then made our way to Lake Tahoe before taking Tioga Road through Yosemite to get home.  We stayed in Staybridge Suites - it was awesome!  Lake Tahoe was beautiful.  The kids and I had never been there, and we had fun on a trail next to the edge, climbing on rocks and watching a parasailer.  The little munchkin got to see snow for the first time on Tioga Road - the road was still closed up until about a month ago, so there is still a lot of snow along the road and in the trees.  As always, Yosemite was amazing.  The falls were roaring down the rock faces, and we enjoyed the views of the valley from the road, stopping at the Tunnel View overlook to see El Cap and Half Dome one last time on the way out. 

We had a wonderful vacation, and survived all that togetherness!  We saw quite a bit of the country that we hadn't seen before, found a few geocaches, and got to meet cousins for the first time.  But, as with all vacations, it was fantastic to get home!

    

Shopping Update - Week of 6/19

For those of us in the crazy couponing world, the shopping week starts on Sunday (Wednesday for grocery stores).  I've already cut out and organized all my coupons and reviewed the ads from the Sunday paper to see what deals are out there that I just can't pass up.  This coming week, I won't be buying a lot of anything, since we're at the end of the month, and I've done the big trips earlier in the month.

This past week, though, I did stock up on some items from various stores.  I promised a shopping recap for the week, so here it is:

Vons - Spent $47.60, saved $78.13 (62%)
This was the best trip of the week, and my best savings ever at a grocery store!  I received VonsClub mailers at the beginning of the week with coupons for free products and really good discounts.  Overall, I had $10 off a $50 purchase, 10% off the entire purchase, $5 off Rancher's Reserve meat, $0.30/lb off bananas, and my other coupons.  Free items: pineapple, eggs (not pictured), soup, cereal (not pictured), and apple juice.  Items under $1: Gatorade, bread, salsa, peanut butter, mac & cheese.

Savemart - Spent $19.50, saved $27.28 (58%)

I mainly went in for the cereal promotion - Cheerios and Cinnamon Toast Crunch for $1.49 when you buy 4.  I had 3 coupons for $0.50 off each box of Cheerios (none for the CTC), so I paid just $1.12 for each box.  Another promotion was for Almond Accents and Marie's Salad Dressing for $1.99 when you buy 4.  I bought 2 of each with coupons ($1.25 off 2 Marie's and $1 off one Almond Accents).  Regular price for both products is $3.99.  I would have saved more, but I also bought milk, which is $3.09/gallon.  I didn't want to make the drive to Winco just for milk, even though I would have saved $1.60. 

CVS - Spent $7.60, saved $14.09 (58%)

This was my smallest trip of the week.  I bought Twizzler's and Pantene.  The candy was $4 for 2 packs, so I bought 4 packs, using 2 coupons for $1 off 2 packs.  The Pantene was 2 for $6.97 with $2 in ExtraBucks reward when you buy 2.  I also had a coupon for $3 off 2 products.  I also had a $3 ExtraBucks coupon from another trip.  (Note: when calculating savings and cost per item, most couponing sites count the ExtraBucks you earn toward the items just purchased, NOT toward the future purchase.  It still works out the same, as long you don't let them expire!)

Target - Spent 39.29, saved $28.55 (42%)

I might have saved more at Target had the refrigerated section not been out of service due to the extensive remodel.  That's OK - 42% is still a decent savings.  The best deals from this trip were the Sally Hansen nail polish and top coats (I ended up getting them for $1.09 each), Crystal Light packets ($1.22 each), and BBQ sauce (87 cents for one brand, 91 cents for another).  The grocery section of Target is getting bigger, and Target has a TON of printable coupons that can be matched with manufacturer coupons for really great savings on a lot of products.

Total Spent $113.99

Total Saved $143.05 (55%)

OCD

Yes, I have it.  Obsessive Couponing Disorder.  I admit it.

I already had the bug (read about it here), but this week I really stepped it up.  I had a binder, but I had to upgrade to a bigger one to fit all the new coupons I printed (target.com, coupons.com, couponnetwork.com, smartsource.com, redplum.com, and many more).  My old binder had a loose organizational system, but when I found the contents and dividers pages at thekrazycouponlady.com, I knew I had to have them.

I printed, I tabbed, and I reorganized.  I used plastic sheet protectors for the divider pages, Post-it tabs to number the categories, and trading card pages for the coupons.  I had to buy another 3 packs of trading card pages (total of 6 so far) to have enough (just made it - phew!). 

I have an awesome coupon binder, and I am ready to save!

Coming Sunday: Shopping trip update from this past week....  Stay tuned!

Extreme Couponing - California Style

I am hooked on that Extreme Couponing show.  I am amazed by what those shoppers can achieve at the checkout line.  I am jealous of their 96% savings.  I am flabbergasted by their $25,000 stockpiles.  I am in awe of the time spent on couponing.  You get the idea....

But I can't do what they do where I live.  There is no longer a grocery store that double coupons, since Ralphs closed about 5  years ago.  And we aren't allowed to do coupon stacking, the process by which a shopper can use multiple manufacturer coupons on one item to bring the price down, sometimes all the way to zero.  So how extreme can I actually get?

Well... I can save almost half every time I go to the store.  For me, for this area, I think that's pretty darn good.  But it takes work, every week to keep it up.  I go to 6 different stores almost every week, and the trick to being successful is knowing the "regular" price of the items we use all the time.  There will never be a $25,000 stockpile in my garage, but I do stock up on what we use.

There are tricks to maximizing savings.  Each Sunday, I clip coupons for items we use and things we might want to try.  Then I go through the ads for the stores where I know I can get the best deals: CVS, Walgreen's, and Target (grocery store ads show up on Tuesday or Wednesday).  I look for, again, only the things we use.  I always try to match up sales with coupons.  I also look for rewards that the stores give, so I can save money on the next trip.  I had $5 in reward coupons from Walgreen's - Christian and I got our movie candy free!  I do the same at Vons and Savemart - at those stores, I ONLY shop for sale items that I have coupons for; otherwise, they are just too expensive.  And my final stop is Winco for everything else. 

Winco rocks!  Let me just put it to you this way: I save almost $3 a box on my Kashi cereal (and I buy 3 boxes at a time), almost $4 a bag on Christian's spicy chicken wings, and over $1 a gallon for milk.  Just on those items alone, I save $20 by shopping at Winco every pay period.  And that's just a small example of what I save there.

My mom taught me how to coupon when I was a kid.  I've done it off and on for years, but this year we got serious, and I am getting a lot more out of our grocery budget.  While I may not be able to save 96%, I am still proud of what I am able to do.  Want to learn more about my methods?  Message me on Facebook! 

Adventures in Gardening

I am not a gardener.  I am got good at keeping plants alive, so I never kept any.  But since we moved into our house, I have found that some plants can pretty much keep themselves alive.  The poppies that come up every March, for example, are extremely hardy and need absolutely no interference on my part to do their thing (you know, make my front yard gorgeous for a few months each year).  The roses in our back yard, as well, have fared without me doing much of anything, other than annual pruning.

But this year, our rose bushes have not done so well.  They grow well and are producing large, beautiful roses, but they appear to have some sort of fungus and they are full of aphids.  We don't like to use pesticides on our plants, so off HC went to OSH to buy some ladybugs.  Tonight, after hosing down the rose bushes and waiting for them to be out of the sun, we released our new little friends.

We all had fun, trying to shake them out onto the plants while many of them flew away and many crawled over our hands and arms.  Finally, we got a large number of them onto the bushes, happily wandering, drinking water, and searching for food.  According to the container, in a couple weeks, our bugs will lay eggs.  I hope in the next couple months, we have lots of larvae and many more ladybugs.

For not being a gardener, I sure am enjoying have living plants in my yard!  I have no idea what to do about the fungus on my poor rose bushes, but once our little friends eat those pesky aphids, we'll move on to that.

One of these days, I will post photos about our wildflower garden (which takes no work, either)! 

Happy May Day!