Slackers

The price of the Sunday paper recently quadrupled here, and so we've been slackers in the couponing realm. However, we have been finding a lot of coupons through free samples, not to mention you get free samples, so it's a very win-win situation. We get said samples here, at hip2save.com/category/freebies, and we love it! It's like getting little gifts in the mail! So, until we get back on the real couponing bandwagon, this is pulling us through and still getting us some good coupons and sweet samples.

Living on a budget

The above picture is from a receipt at Smith's. We spent $11. We saved almost $45! Amazing savings, thanks to couponing and finding some good sales!

As we're trying to save up for adoption, we've been living on a really tight budget. We've been spending $120 a month on groceries, rather than the $260 we used to spend. Now I know we could be spending less than that even, but we're trying to eat healthy as well, and take good care of ourselves, so I think we're doing pretty good. Every week we'll spend $15 on fresh produce from the farmer's market, and then every 2 weeks we'll spend $30 on other stuff, an sometimes more produce too. This week we got really lucky and only spent $20.45 of the $30.00 we had budgeted for pay day groceries. We also spent a bit less on the produce lately. We've been able to still get plenty of food. Today we got hot dogs for free pretty much, and found some good deals on cereal. What's more, we had a $25 coupon to Smiths for opening a rewards master card. It was a good week for grocery savings!

Capris for $3

Now really, I'm not a big advocate of having tons of credit cards, and one for each store you like. But I LOVE my JCPenney credit card, because we get coupons for $10 off any purchase for cool things like Mothers Day and Fathers Day. For Mothers Day we bought Shaun a new pair of shorts with this coupon. They look awesome on him, and we paid $7 out of pocket. And for Fathers Day, we bought me some capris that I just love, and they were only $2.99 plus tax. We saved $29.01 on them!

http://www4.jcpenney.com/jcp/X6.aspx?GrpTyp=SIZ&ItemID=1921ff4&Ntt=St.+Johns+Bay%C2%AE+Belted+Denim+Cuffed+Capri&hdnOnGo=true&Ne=4+877+878+5+961+6+29+3+598+11+15+12+506+10+23+585+596+1031+8+18+904+903+840+969+949+833&submit%20search.y=0&SearchString=St.+Johns+Bay%C2%AE+Belted+Denim+Cuffed+Capri&submit%20search.x=0&N=4294959029&Nao=0&SO=0&PSO=0&CmCatId=searchresults

We got paid to buy 3 Sure Deodorants

We got 2 Sure Deodorants for FREE a few weeks ago at Smith's, with coupons, plus there was a mail in rebate so we made money. They sent our rebate with more coupons, so we went back and did it all over again, with THREE FREE DEODORANTS! Except they were BETTER than free--we got paid about .80 cents to buy them! Now *that* is a sweet deal =)

Free and FUN!

Where to start???

First, Yesterday we celebrated fish free in Utah by going to Bajio's and eating free fish tacos.

They were as good as they look!

After our free tacos, we celebrated national donut day with 3 free donuts from

They were great!

Finally with the combination of coupons, and in-store deals we got everything in this picture 100% free!

Free is fabulous

Two big bottles + Two coupons = Zero dollars. Amazing!

We love this couponing stuff.

A bit of a rut

This past payday we didn't have rockin' savings like the last last paycheck, but we did scrimp a few coupons out to whack $10 off a would've-been $80 shopping trip to Walmart. So we're thankful for that! We also have some Lindt chocolate coupons we'll be using, as it's the chocolate time of month. Even though we're not having ginormous savings at this moment, we're thankful for the savings these coupons ARE giving us!