Couponing 101

A few months ago I decided to start couponing.  Our grocery bill was getting out of control with 4 kids, 2 in diapers and I figured it was about time to fix the problem.  I prefer to do most of my shopping at Smith's (a Kroger grocery store) that has the savings card and pays you back quarterly for shopping with them.  I shop only using their sale flyer and plan our meals around what they are offering deals on.  Snack foods for the kids are 100% sale items with coupons only.  Fruits and veggies at Smith's are just fresher that other nearby grocery stores, especially the commissary which I try to avoid at all costs. 

Last week I got $130 worth of groceries for $49.  This week (pictured above) I got $89 worth of groceries for $25.  You can see all that I got up above.  I combined sale prices, store coupons and manufacturers coupons to end up getting some of the items almost for free.  The TGIF Potato Skins (I got 2 bags) unded up being 19 cents per bag.  The Barilla Piccolini was 39 cents.  The Suave was free and the hot dogs were all 70 cents per pack for Ball Park and Oscar Mayer Premium.  The A&W was 35 cents. 

You get the picture.  There are SO many coupons out there and it doesn't take much time to do and if you think of it as a job, like making money for yourself, you'll find that you start to enjoy it.  I love my shopping trips (when I don't have kids with me, that is) because it fulfills my need to bargain hunt.  I love leaving the store and seeing that I saved 2 and 3 times more than I actually spent.  And... as much as the people behind me in line Hem and Hah while the cashier is scanning my dozens and dozens of coupons, they are always amazed in the end and comment on how they're jealous and wish they could do the same thing.  Well... you can!  You don't even have to have a newspaper subscription if you can't afford that (although if you can I do recommend it!).  Every wednesday in my mailbox I get a Red Plum flyer that has tons of coupons in it, it's free and most people just throw it away.  DON'T!  There are also a few websites to go to for printable coupons which is where I save most of my money.  Most stores accept printed coupons. 

I am putting links to the websites at the bottom.  The first 3 are the best ones.  At Target.com you'll go all the way to the bottom of the screen and in small print one of the options is "coupons".  Some of them are TARGET ONLY coupons and those are AWESOME because that means you can couple them together with a manufacturer coupon.  For example:  I had a coupon for $1 off 2 Eggo products and printable Target coupons for $1 off of 1 Eggo product.  Eggo was on sale at Target for $1.75 a few weeks ago.  That means I got 8 packs of Eggos for only 25 cents each box.  With the Target coupons you can only use 1 per product per transaction.  So... if you want to use multiple then you'll have to ring them all up separately. 

At Kraft First Taste you register with them and you'll get GREAT coupons about once a month or so.  Like $1.50 off Deli Select Lunch meat or $1.50 off 100 calorie cheese packs.  You just have to register and wait.

When you are at coupons.com you can go back and print most of them at least twice.  Once you have printed something it automatically gets moved to the back pages of the coupons and when you've printed the limit it lets you know. 

Facebook is also a valuable resource for coupons.  Many companies (Nabisco and Huggies are two) offer great coupons quite frequently when you "Like" them.  Nabisco gives coupons for a free pack of cookies when you buy cookies and milk the first Monday of each month.  Huggies gives $3 off one pack of Huggies and $2 off a pack of wipes at random times.  There are several others out there, you've just got to keep your eyes peeled.

Check out Frugal Girls and Deal Seeking Mom on FB and "Like" them.  They are invaluable in their tips and special offers.  I don't just "like" them.... I LOVE them. 

Coupons.com
Smart Source
Target printables
Eversave
Kraft

A valuable resource for online printable coupons is The Krazy Coupon Lady.  She has compiled an entire database of every printable coupon available, organized alphabetically by brand.  I LOVE IT!  I go through the entire list about every other month to make sure I didn't miss anything, but I also look for a specific thing I might be shopping for and have often found a coupon for it!  :)
The Krazy Coupon Lady
She is also on Facebook and if you "like" her then you will get all of her wonderful updates!  I highly recommend her.

I hope this post has been helpful to you and Happy Couponing to you!!

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

I enjoyed the Twilight series enough and own the books, I've seen the movies and absolutely LOVE The Host. I'd say I'm a Stephenie Meyer fan. I've read Midnight Sun on her website and really enjoyed that as an addition to Twilight. But this book I probably could have done without paying money for. I'm very glad that Stephenie made the decision to offer it for free online.

This is a Novella written about the young vampire that is killed in the end of the large battle in Eclipse. When Carlisle is going to spare her life but the Volturi come in and execute her anyway because they can't let her go. This tells of the last days of her very short vampire life. Follow her around and meet some of the other newborns. See how newborns feed and how they were assembled. Yada, yada, yada...

If you are truly a TwiHard Fan and HAVE to own every single book in the series... you wouldn't be reading reviews to decide if you wanted to buy it, you'd already own it, finished reading it and have it on your bookshelf in between Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. For the rest of us out there, through July you can read this in its entirity on the internet for free. You can't print it so you'll be stuck to your laptop for a couple of hours, but it's worth saving the $7 IMHO. Go to www.breetanner.com or click on the title of this post and it will take you there to read it for free.

I found it to be a waste of time as I could have imagined the things that went on all by myself without reading the book. But go ahead and read it for free and decide for yourself. You can always buy a copy of it after if you find that you really like it. I wish I would have read it for free first, I wouldn't have spent the money.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Water For Elephants follows Jacob Jankowski who is either 90 or 93, he can't remember, as he reminisces about his days during the most trying time in his life. He was about to graduate from Cornell with his degree in veterinary medicine when he gets word that both of his parents have died. Not only that, but he finds out that because of the economy (during the great depression) his father's veterinary business was so far under that their house is taken and the business is gone. He has nothing left but to take his final exam and somehow start a new life completely on his own. In the middle of his exam he breaks down, runs away and hops a train out of town... but it's not just any train, it ends up being a circus train for the Benzini Bros circus and they don't like stowaways. This begins a roller coaster ride that will last 3 1/2 months with a crash course in taking care of large animals, understanding business, befriending a grouchy midget and learning what love truly is.

Passion, hatred, murder and even a wild animal stampede add to the delight I found in this book. We see glimpses of the 93 yr old Jacob living in a nursing home feeling helpless followed by wonderful tales of his life on the circus train with Rosie, Walter and the lovely Marlena. I found it to be extremely well written and it flowed nicely always making you want to read on and see what will happen. Sara Gruen did a great job of switching back and forth between young and old Jacob and keeping the story just as interesting while in either time. I was just as attached to and invested in 93 yr old Jacob as I was in the young handsome veterinarian with morals and principles from Benzini Bros Circus of 1931.

I definitely recommend this book and will probably read it again once I make it through my summer TBR list.

Footnotes for my Christian friends...
The language is fairly minimal and usually confined to very heated moments of anger and such. There is one sexual encounter that is expressed in detail while the others are just stated as having happened and one other one that's left to speculation not only to the reader but to the character involved as he was quite drunk and grieving when it happened. There are fights and animal beatings and lots of alcohol, things you'd typically think of with a depression era train circus.

Matched by Ally Condie

Check out the summary and reviews for 'Matched' By Allyson Condie. Click the title of this post to get linked to Allyson Condie's website/blog. There are reveiws by some of my favorite authors and they are ALL good.

“Matched is a page-turning, dystopian love story, written with the soul of a poet. Finally, a brave new world that readers from Twilight to The Hunger Games will claim as their own.”
—Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, authors of Beautiful Creatures

“I can’t stop thinking about Matched. It’s impossible to put down this enthralling romance, set in a chilling world where every choice is predicted and even love is controlled. I need to know what happens next. More please!”
—Carrie Ryan, author of The Forest of Hands and Teeth and The Dead-Tossed Waves

Description copied directly from her blog:
"In the Society, Officials decide. Who you love. Where you work. When you die.

Cassia has always trusted their choices. It’s barely any price to pay for a long life, the perfect job, the ideal mate. So when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is the one . . . until she sees another face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. Now Cassia is faced with impossible choices: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s known and a path no one else has ever dared follow—between perfection and passion."


It looks like it's going to be a very good read! Can't wait til it comes out in November.

Under the Dome by Stephen King (audibles download)

So I am basically going to add on a review at the bottom that was not posted with my Amazon review. This added review is for my Christian friends and reading this from a Christian perspective.

Under the Dome is a huge novel, over 1000 pages, that takes place in the span of 6 days... Crazy?? No, King! Only Stephen King can take one tiny little week and create an intricate web of lives and stories that play together to form a novel of 1000+ pages and make the entire thing worth reading. The number of characters, the mass of details, and the supernatural nature of the story are all written together in such a flawless way. What is the Dome? I guess you'll have to read it to find out... no spoilers here. Dale Barbara is the somewhat lead character, or at least is very central to the plot, and he is an ex-military man turned short order cook in a local small town restaurant Briar Rose. He is mere feet away from leaving that foresaken town of Chesters Mill when the Dome crashes down, or up, or both. Many accidents and deaths occur as people learn more about the Dome and the force around it. Is it created by a terrorist sect, just a strange natural occurance, or something more. Follow the survivors of Dome Day as they figure out how to live in a society that is creating its own greenhouse effect with very little oxygen exchange from the outside. As they are now living in a place and time where the law is enforced and made up by crooked men looking for power and control, wanting to be worshipped and never questioned. How do you fight a power that cannot be taken down, and when you fail... how do you get away?

I really enjoyed this book a lot. The language was, umm, colorful to say the least. Being from Maine and having all of my family still there, I do know that this is the way they talk, King wrote it to be real and he would know since that's where he lives also! I listened to the audio book (reading the real book I may never have finished) and I had to keep this book on headphones instead of listening through my docking station or in the car because I have 4 kids and it was totally inappropiate for their ears. The audio book was well read and performed, I wish the person performing it would have had a New England accent or at least portrayed one for the story, but he still did very well. Not the greatest audio book I've encountered, but very good and made it easier to finish the book while staying busy.

Add on:
This book is written by Stephen King, so any of my Christian friends that are considering reading it are probably not super conservative about their literature. As I said earlier, the language is definitely an issue. That I can remember there is one sexual situation that was a bit uncomfortable to say the least, but goes along with the story line and is not done tastelessly. If you've read Stephen King then you know what you're getting into, if you haven't... you probably shouldn't start with this one if you are going to start at all.

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

Cameron is a teenage boy that has a twin sister named Jenna and parents that are well educated and they seem to all co-exist in a big world of denial. Jenna being the perfect child that's popular and well rounded, Cameron being the slacker son that smokes pot and hangs out in the bathroom instead of going to class. Cameron suspects his dad is having an affair with his personal assistant and that his mom is contently oblivious, choosing to immerse herself in other areas of her life. That's his life in a nutshell, until...
One day Cameron starts having strange symptoms that range from pain and delerium to all out hallucinations. After visiting several doctors a specialist finally diagnoses him with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, aka Mad Cow disease in human form, and better yet... there is no cure. Cameron is hospitalized and thus begins the journey that is known as 'Going Bovine'. Between the hypoconriac dwarf friend, fire giant attacks and an indestructible garden gnome you are left to remember that this is a boy laying on his death bed in a hospital in horrible pain living a crazy life inside his crazy mind. We follow Cameron's mind as he believes he's on a journey to find Dr. X to save the galaxy, close the wormhole, oh yeah... and get the cure for Mad Cow disease that only Dr. X has.

In Going Bovine I found a thoroughly entertaining story that at times made me sad, remembering that Cameron is actually going to die, and other times made me soak in the creativity that Libba Bray has put out there. I initially got this book because I loved the Gemma Doyle trilogy. I had read all of the warnings that this was way different from 'Gemma' but I like different and I have a good sense of humor (a must if you are going to read this book). I found myself chuckling out loud at some parts and loved the wit that she injects into the lead character.

I'm not sure what this book is categorized as (YA or Adult fiction) but I wouldn't really recommend it for the YA age group. A lot of language, drug and alcohol use amongst the teens and a couple of sexual situations with no use of protection (which is noted in the book as being a completely stupid thing... but he's dying anyway so he doesn't care... not to mention the fact that it's all actually a hallucination).

This is a very different book and so unique from anything I have ever read. I really enjoyed it and tried to explain it to my husband while in the middle of reading it only to get a blank stare back, so I know it's not for everyone. Gemma and Bovine can in no way be compared and if you read them unknowingly you would have no clue it was even the same author. Read it on its own merits and know that it is as original and creative as the Gemma series while vastly different in topic and character.

The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray

This is the concluding book in the Gemma Doyle trilogy. In The Sweet Far Thing we follow Gemma and her two dear friends Felicity and Anne as they continue on their journeys through the Realms and into the winterland. Kartik has vanished leaving Gemma to wonder what has happened to him and if he is still safe. The construction continues at Spence Academy in the rebuilding of the wing that burned years ago leaving the founder, Mrs. Eugenia Spence, dead. Gemma must discern who among her acquaintances can truly be trusted as there is a huge web of lies being woven all around her. She doesn't know if she can even trust her own thoughts anymore. With the help of her friends and those she comes to rely upon she must defeat the evil within the winterlands that mean to unleash the magic and open the realms leaving no barrier between the mortal world and themselves. Can she make the choices necessary and what will the cost be?

I have listened to the entire Gemma Doyle trilogy on unabridged audiobook and am writing this review on both the audiobook and the novel itself. First on the audio and the narrator. I absolutely loved the story as told by the story teller, as she truly was a storyteller and added such emotion and zest to the story. She did a great job of varying her voice for each character to the point that I didn't even need the written side notes of "Felicity said" or "Anne exclaimed" because I could recognize the voice without it. Much more entertaining and easy to listen to than other audiobooks I have had and I highly recommend it. I enjoy audiobooks while I'm cleaning or driving but still love my real books in my hand when I have the time to sit and enjoy them (with 4 kids that seems a rarity now).

As far as The Sweet Far Thing the novel, I loved it just as much as the first two which is something that doesn't happen very often! It had the adventure and the action and the romance with a great build up to the climax and an ending that left me longing for the characters to still be with me but yet so very happy that things were wrapped up with such finality. No loose threads here. I got to 'watch' as Gemma has finally grown into the woman that can stand on her own confidently with no regrets and know that she has a place in this world all on her own.

The lands that are painted for us in this novel are vivid and full of life. I can picture each area of the realms and the creatures that inhabit these places. Libba Bray's trilogy is definitely going to be at the top of my list of YA series to recommend. It was so tastefully written from start to finish. Only at the end of the 3rd book as things come to a climax was there anything that might be questionable for a girl to read depending on what you find questionable but in the case that you are reading this review because you have a daughter that wants to read the series..... Here is a little elaboration only for the purpose of informing those that would want to be informed, skip this part if you are an adult looking for yourself and don't need the heads up.

****************SPOILER ALERT******************

There are a couple of instances (3 I think) between Gemma and Kartik that get a little heated with heavy kissing and he grabs her breasts while they are both fully clothed.
We find out toward the end of book 3 that Felicity and Pippa are gay and in love with eachother (shocker for me) and Felicity ends up moving to Paris where she has heard there are "others like her" so that she may fall in love again.
The language picks up a little more in the end too with at least one use of B***h and A** among a few other things.
And... of course the entire series is written about magic and death and other worlds. Gemma does not believe in God as Christianity sees Him, she doesn't exactly know what she believes but there is a lot of talk of 'gods'.