CVS + Frys 5/28

I made TWO shopping trips tonight.  No pictures this time, just trying to hurry and explain my deals and then catch some Zzzzzzz's as the Monkey will be awake by 7am. :-)

CVS

1 Revlon "PhotoReady" concealer--$10.99
2 Scott 12-pack toilet paper (1257 sq. ft each)--$6.99 each
1 Preparation H 10-count individual wipes--$3.99

I paid a TOTAL of $10.43, and have $4 ECB's in my pocket for next time.  Here's how I did it:

First transaction:  Bought the preparation-H wipes.  Ahem.  :::awkward pause:::  Actually, I bought them because I literally got PAID $2 to take them out of the store.  They cost $3.99, but there was a special where you got $3.99 in Extra Care Bucks at the end of the transaction, so essentially free.  I used a $2 coupon specifically for preparation-H wipes that I printed online, PLUS I had $2 in ECB's from a purchase last month.  So I paid a total of 18 CENTS, and then got $3.99 in ECB's.  So basically I made $2, because the $2 ECB that I used to buy them turned into $4 ECB's at the end.   So did I *need* to buy them? No.  Did they lower the price of my toilet paper?  Absolutely.  (I can see it now: "Buy Preparation-H wipes, lower your cost of toilet paper!"  Hahahaha, what an ad!  Lol, maybe I'm the only one laughing...)

Second transaction:  Bought the 2 Scott toilet papers and the Revlon concealer, using a $1/1 Scott coupon and $2/1 Revlon coupon.  I also used the $3.99 ECB's from transaction #1, plus a $4 off a $20 purchase and a $5 off a $15 purchase.  Thus my total for transaction #2 was $10.43.  I also earned $4 in ECB's for next time because I spent $10 on Revlon products.  So if you want to be really accurate, I could say I spent $6.43 total.

But even just going with the total of $10.43, AND supposing I paid that for the toilet paper alone, that's still less than half a penny per square foot of toilet paper.  And a good "stock-up" price is considered a penny per square foot.  So I got a smokin' deal (plus some prep-h wipes and concealer, lol!)!!

Phew!  Now onto frys...

FRYS

3 Wishbone salad dressings (19 cents each!)
3 Heinz catsups (40oz ea)
1 Land O'Lakes dozen eggs
5 packages Oscar Meyer beef hot dogs (FREE!)
1 Blue Bunny ice cream
1 bag Ore Ida sweet potato fries (FREE!)
3 cans Skintimate 7oz shaving cream
6 Yoplait greek yogurt (clearance for 49 cents, FREE after coupons!)
2 Kroger 16oz cottage cheese
1 gallon Milk
2 Suave lotion 18oz
2 Pantene shampoo/conditioner
1 Carefree 22-count pantyliner (FREE!)
5 Stayfree pads (14 to 18 count)
4 Kotex pads (18? count)
1 small Suave deodorant (FREE!)
4 Excedrin Extra Strength (24 count)

Total paid: $33.21
Total saved: $73.58 (71%)

And once again, my full savings is not displayed here because I used some "other store" coupons and the items were manually entered at that price rather than scanning at full price and showing the savings on the receipt.  But even so, I still saved more than 70%!  Yaaaay!  :-D

THE END.

Frys 5/22

This Week's Steals

9lbs of chicken breasts ( three ~3lb packages)
4 packages Farmer John Bacon
6 Pillsbury Grands Biscuits
20 Yoplait yogurts
3 Lawry's marinades
5 Colgate toothpastes (more than FREE!)
5 Colgate toothbrushes (more than FREE!)
2 pkgs Huggies wipes
3 Zone Perfect bars (FREE!)
2 Butterfinger candy bars (FREE!)
1 Gerber 2-pack baby food (on the clearance rack...doesn't expire until september, lol!)
2 Loreal lip gloss (on clearance rack PLUS I had coupons for each!)
2 pkgs Mission tortillas (no coupon)
1 gallon milk
1 dozen eggs
5 bananas

Total paid: $29.07
Total saved: $92.29 (76%)

I'm pretty tickled with that savings!  Especially considering I didn't have coupons for the tortillas, eggs, banans, milk, or chicken (which was $15 alone!)!!  I figured it out, and withOUT coupons, I could have bought the chicken, milk, eggs, bananas and bacon for the same price I paid for ALL of it.  OH! And I got PAID to "buy" all of the Colgate items.  They were on sale for 88 cents each, and I had a coupon for each of them worth $1...so I made 12 cents on each of them. Sweet!

And I'm making these tomorrow for the freezer.  Only I'm using bacon instead of ham (same thing, right? lol).

Last day of...

...the first half of my twenties!!  In a little less than 90 minutes I will be 25 years old!!  Okay, so I wasn't born until 2:45ish pm, but let's not get too technical. :-P

A quarter century old.  That kinda makes it sound old.  Makes me FEEL older too, but not necessarily in a bad way.  You know how at least one person asks you every year "so do you feel any different/older?"  The answer to that is usually no.  This year it does feel a little different.  Twenty-five kinda feels like a milestone.  I don't know why.  Eighteen kinda felt different (sorta).  Twenty-one didn't matter.  And every time someone asks me how old I am I have to catch myself from saying "22".  Yes, that's how far behind I am, lol! 

I dunno, maybe it's the Mom thing.  That alone makes me feel a little older, but again not in a bad way...just in an accomplishment sort of way.  Turning 25 kinda feels the same as when I made it to 30 weeks pregnant.  No, I don't mean I feel 30 weeks pregnant (HA!), I just mean that when I got to that point I felt like I was actually getting somewhere, lol! 

Bring on the next 25 years!! :-D

So tomorrow I will be 25, and this little girl will be 8 months old.  I know, I can't believe it!!    

Frys 5/15

Aaaaaaand, I did it again. :-D 

Got 4 newspapers at Dollar Tree today (plus the 1 in our driveway, plus the 1 from Scott's parents...thanks!) and made up my grocery list...

This time the picture first...

Everything

 From left to right:
3 Trop50 Orange juice (59oz each)
1 Sunny D
5 Totinos party pizzas
2 Bagelfuls boxes
1 RedBaron Singles pizzas
2 packages chicken breasts (buy 1 get one free, so $6.09 for both)
1 Gillette for men bodywash
1 Nivea lotion
3 packages Huggies wipes
6 Butterfinger candy bars
3 50ft rolls Reynolds Aluminum Foil
1 22ct pkg Carefree pantyliners
5 boxes Ronzoni Garden pasta (3 boxes spiral pasta, 2 boxes fettuccini)
3 boxes Hamburger Helper
2 Pillsbury Grands biscuits
2 Dannon greek yogurt
2 bags Boulder chips

What I spent: $24.70
What I saved: $60.18 (72%)

My percentage saved should be even higher, though, because I used two coupons for almost every item: a competitor store coupon AND a manufacturer coupon.  The cashier had to enter the price of the competitor coupon by hand.  For example, the Trop50 orange juce was $3.49 at Frys, but the Albertsons flyer had a store coupon for $1.99, which Frys honors.  So instead of ringing it up at $3.49 and then showing my discount of $1.50, the cashier rang it up at $1.99 by hand to start with.  So the savings from that coupon and all the others like it are not shown.  (THEN I added a $2/3 manufacturers coupon on top of it, so I got the 3 jugs of juice for $4 total). 

And here are the totally FREE items!!

FREE!!!

Sales plus coupons made all of these items free. I put the wipes and the chicken in this picture because they were essentially free.  I used $8 worth of Fresh and Easy coupons ($5 off a $25 purchase + a $3 off a $30 purchase), and the chicken + the wipes cost a little under $8, therefore I'm counting them as free.

And Frys was out of the other kind of Nivea lotion that I was supposed to get for free, so I got a raincheck (this time the raincheck IS worth it!).

So yeah.  43 items...all of which we will use...for less than 25 dollars.  I'd say I earned back the cost of my newspapers PLUS some.  I win!

(I know I know, most of you don't care about this stuff...you just want baby pictures!!!  They're coming!!)

Frys + Target

Scored some more great deals tonight using a few coupons that expired today. 
 

The Loot

Frys:
4 packs Huggies baby wipes
1 3-pack of Ivory bar soap
1 Infant toothbrush
What I paid: $6.79 (including tax)
What I saved: $6.55 (52%)

Target:
6 Nivea bodywash
2 bags Hershey's Bliss chocolates (on clearance!)
What I paid: $5.28 (including tax)
What I saved: $26.30

The Nivea bodywash would have been free at Frys, but both of the Frys by me were completely out of stock, and since my coupons expired today I went ahead and shelled out (HAHA) the $0.19 a bottle at Target. :-P

 

Grocery Game Fun!

I FINALLY got started on my couponing and Grocery Game again!!  I've spent the last few weeks resurrecting my coupon binder (with several improvements!), and went on my first shopping trip tonight after Avi was in bed.

Here's what I got:
15 bags Quakes rice snacks
8 boxes Rice Krispies (for making rice krispy treats, yum!)
8 Pure Protein bars
8 Power Bars (4 were FREE!)
6 boxes CapNCrunch
6 Dannon Greek yogurts
5 Garnier Fructis shampoos and conditioners
5 Garnier Fructis styling products (3 hairspray, 2 mousse)
4 Nivea mens shaving cream
4 pounds 93% lean ground beef (no coupon, just on sale)
3 Desitin diaper cream (2oz tubes)
3 Johnson & Johnson baby oil gel
2 Laughing Cow cheese wheels
2 French's mustard
1 KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce
1 Silk Chocolate Almondmilk
1 Frank's Red Hot sauce (FREE!)
1 Nivea women's bodywash (FREE!)
1 Sally Hansen nailpolish (shiny silver, lol!)
1 Halls coughdrops
1 Mentos 15 piece gum (FREE!)
1 bag Boulder BBQ chips
1 box Uncle Ben's rice
1 Yakisoba noodle meal (FREE!)
1 bag American Beauty shell pasta (FREE!)
1 Philadelphia cooking 'creme'
1 Kraft Mayo

Total spent: $89.17
Total saved: $187.60
Which is 68%!!!  

Not my best ever, but not too shabby!  Several of the items I was going to get for free were out of stock.  I wanted to get 7 more Nivea body wash, several toothbrushes, listerine pocket packs, Sunny D, and a few other things.  I could have gotten rainchecks I suppose, but that's a pain.  SO since I wasn't able to get these items, that drove my "percent saved" down.  Oh well.

Overall, my first shopping trip back-in-the-game = SUCCESS!

The spread...

I think I might cry!

My baby is sleeping all by herself...in her own room...in her CRIB!  This has been the goal for the past few months, right???  :::sniff, sniff:::

Avi has been sleeping in her swing at night since the day we brought her home, and when she outgrew the swing we moved her to her carseat to maintain the upright position that seemed most comfortable for her due to acid reflux.  We did attempt a crib transition when she outgrew the swing, but a few sleepless nights later we just decided to embrace the carseat idea where she slept for 10-12 hours straight.  Other babies sleep in their carseats too, right?  We didn't care, at least we were sleeping. :-) 

For the past month she's been sleeping 12 hours straight almost every night.  But a few nights ago Avi decided to wake up every two hours after midnight.  The first two times she put herself back to sleep fairly quickly.  The third time I decided to go check on her (we moved her out of our room a couple weeks ago).  It's a good thing I did, because given another couple of minutes and she would have fallen out of her carseat onto the floor (the carseat snaps into the Graco swing base)...it's only a ~1 foot drop, but still.  So I got her back to sleep and put the carseat inside the crib.  That worked until morning.  The next night she again slept in the carseat which was inside the crib.  In the morning when I heard her normal happy chattering over the monitor I went in to get her and she was out of the carseat, laying sideways in the corner of the crib!  Goodbye carseat sleeping...

The next two nights were not fun for Daddy.  I was at work.  Let's just say they both only got about 5 hours of sleep each night.  She has proved that she is capable of sleeping 12 hours straight, she just doesn't like sleeping in her crib.  Last night I got cancelled, so we decided to do her bedtime routine like normal and put her to bed in her crib and see how long it took her to go to sleep. She cried off and on for 90 minutes.  It was never a frantic cry (which I would have responded to), but it was still hard to listen to.  She was in the crib by 7:19pm and the last peep I heard was at 9:12pm.  Scott and I tiptoed in together to see her before we went to bed around 10:30 and she was snoring away.  We probably looked ridiculous, haha. But she didn't wake up until right before 6am!!  And if she did she didn't make enough noise to wake me up over the monitor (and it doesn't take much). 

Tonight she didn't cry at all.  I put her to bed in the exact same way.  I kissed her goodnight, laid her down, and she immediately rolled onto her side and reached for her seahorse (which I had turned on) and started talking to it.  She was asleep within 10 minutes and still is (almost 3 hours later).  We've heard two momentary cries over the monitor, but she's gone back to sleep very quickly.  I just peeked on her:



My Sleeping Monkey

 :::Big Sigh:::  Our baby is growing up!!  Which I know sounds silly to say at 5 1/2 months, but I looked at Scott tonight and said "She's sleeping by herself!  In her crib!"  This is so weird.  This is what we wanted, right?  

So my baby is sleeping in her own bed all night long, has two teeth, can sit up pretty well by herself, is rolling all over the place, can scoot backwards, can get up on her hands and knees and rock, laughs a LOT, has a ticklish spot right under her ribs (found that today!), is eating bananas, peaches, pears, sweet potatoes, avocado, rice and oatmeal......

Where did my baby go????????????

5 Months!

I really can't believe it.  Where have the last 5 months gone?  Really, where has the past year gone?  I feel like it was just yesterday that I was sitting here holding my breath for my next ultrasound and praying we'd still see a heartbeat...

And now our precious girl is five months old!! A few things she's doing lately:

--Rolling around like crazy...although she hasn't quite figured out that she can use rolling as a mode of transportation yet...

--Eating "solid" food.  So far, bananas and brown rice cereal.  She's had a bite of avocado, but promptly gave me the worst icky face ever and spit it all back out.  We'll be trying it again, lol.

--*Almost* sitting...she can sit for a few seconds, but then falls backwards or sideways unless someone is sitting behind her.

--Sleeping 12 hours (almost) every night.  This seems crazy, and every night I wonder if she's going to wake up.  She goes to bed between 7 and 8pm and wakes up between 7 and 8am.  Which has been wonderful for my work schedule too, because she's ready to eat when I get home at 8am in the morning! :-)
--Smiling and laughing like crazy
--LOVING her jumperoo...she goes nuts in that thing! 
--Getting SO much better at falling asleep by herself, with the help of her musical seahorse (plays soft music for 6 minutes).  This has been so wonderful for nap times and and quick night wakings, we just turn the seahorse on and she's usually asleep before it's done playing.
--She weighs ~17lbs 14oz now!  (weighed w/clothes and diaper on at her vaccine appt today)

The last few days I've been working on a "schedule" with her.  Routine is probably a better word, as I don't want to be controlled by the clock, but rather stick to a close order of the day.  Now that she has a pretty typical night schedule and waking up at roughly the same time every morning, this will work better.  I am reading the books Baby Wise, and really liking the principles in it.  Scott is going to read them too, although I've told him about some of it already.  I did not and do not agree with a structured feeding/sleeping schedule for newborns (who really do need to eat "on-demand"...it's not a heart issue but a health issue as newborns), but for babies over 4 months I'm beginning to believe it's not only good but necessary.  The book says a baby should be sleeping all night long by 6 to 8 weeks, which just seems crazy.  It also said they won't just start sleeping all night on their own without training.  Well, Avi did.  Right at 4 months she started sleeping 10 hours straight and that has now extended to 12 hours most nights.  All we've done is stuck to the same bedtime routine since she was about 2 weeks old.  And she's already responding well to more "routine" during the day too, even in just a couple of days.  One example is the naps.  I tell her "it's naptime, Avi, time to go to sleep" and put her in her crib, turn on the seahorse and leave the room.  She fusses for a few minutes, and then falls asleep, usually within 3 to 5 minutes.  When she wakes up I don't go get her right away.  She doesn't get to decide when the nap is over, I do.  If she's crying I go in and tell her she needs to stop (which I know she doesn't understand yet...) and when she pauses for just a few seconds I pick her up and tell her good job.  She will learn. 

Anyway, that's what's happening lately!  I hope the next 5 months slows down a little, or she's going to be a year old before we know it!!  And walking!! AAAHHHHH!!!

A very blessed wife and mama,
~Abigail~

21 Weeks...

*Sigh*  I'm such a sentimental weirdo!  This morning (and last night) at work all I could think was that 21 weeks ago we were there...my water had broken and we were awaiting our sweet girl's arrival.  And then this morning at 5:16am I thought (out loud to the 2 nurses who were at the desk with me...) "Aww, she's 21 weeks old now! 21 weeks and 10 minutes!!"  :::insert sniffles here::::  Told you I'm a weirdo...

And I remember a year ago we were in the midst of one of the loooongest weeks of my entire life.  And I say MYentire life because Scott swears he knew that everything would be fine.  But I couldn't bring myself to have that much faith or be that positive. 

Thank you Jesus for answering our prayers and blessing us with our healthy September baby!  She truly is our little miracle.

01-11-10

Yes, I meant to write 01-11-10.  Although today's date is pretty awesome too, 01-11-10 is the same forwards as it is backwards...but it's also the day we found out our precious little girl existed.  Of course we wouldn't know she was a SHE for a few more months, but just knowing she was there was a dream come true.  I won't go into how scared I/we was/were, because I spent the majority of the past year posting about that. :-P  I am just SOOOO so thankful that this day last year turned out the way it did...and that TODAY we have an incredibly happy, smiley, healthy and beautiful almost-four-month-old daughter in our arms!

I keep thinking to myself how fast she is growing, and how I wish she would stay small longer.  But since I can't keep her little, I will praise God for each and every passing day (both the good and the challenging) that He blesses me to be her Mommy!!  While I know every parent wants their baby to stay a baby as long as possible, it is also soooo much fun to watch her grow and reach new milestones!  And I imagine that continues forever. :-)

So THIS is what it's supposed to feel like on the one year anniversary of a positive pregnancy test...arms full of wiggly baby, shirt full of spit-up (lol) and a heart overflowing.  I could do this a million times!  HA, okay maybe not.  But it feels pretty great.  :-)

From day one, I knew this baby had to be special.  If we hadn't gone through the challenges we did, she wouldn't be here.  I know God has a special plan for her...I wonder what it is?  I can't wait to see it unfold. :-)

I love you, my sweet Avi girl!!

(And yes, I know I need to post a recent picture...but my computer has a virus it would be a miracle if I figured out how to get a picture on here from Scott's Mac!  So I apologize for the lack of pictures...)