Saving money and having a "plan"

THIS IS A "DEAL" POST. If you only read my blog to find out what is going on in our lives...it will probably be boring:)
Today I decided to save money by making a list, going to lots of different stores, and using coupons and gift cards.


I fueled up (my energy) by getting some frappichinoish drink from Borders on the way into town. I have a borders gift card and...I don't read, so spend it on fu-fu coffee drinks. I have done the same with a Barnes and Noble gift card I got once:)
Office Depot was in the same shopping center so I got my free 10pk DVD+R for signing up for a weekly e-mail. This is a great deal!(worth 9.99)
You can do the same here.

I went to Walgreens yesterday because the May and June deals overlap on the 30th of the month so you can use both coupon books for great deals. I also had a $10 off any $30 purchase only good on Friday, so I got some great deals...but I also got some deals that I thought were going to be great, but were only OK. To make up for it I was more organized today.

I went to Target, Safeway, and K-mart for most of this.
I nixed a trip to King Soopers because of the awesome deals at K-mart...plus with a 20 min drive home, I can only go to 2 stores for cold stuff.
I got all this for under $20.00.

The 5 boxes of Cheerios are 14oz. boxes! The strawberry containers were a $1 each, I forgot to include the eggs I got for $1, and a gallon of milk for 2.49. The lifewater was $1 each and I had a BOGO free. Most of the rest (except the Ziploc) I got for a dollar (using coupons and deals).

I also got some FREE stuff:

Free Coke from register rewards (those coupon things that you get along with your reciept at some grocery stores) Actually I think this one was sticking out of the coupon printer, and I was walking by one and no one was around so I took it:) The BBQ sauce, Dressing and Brita filter all have a mail-in rebate...so eventually they will be free. The All, Tylenol, Baby wash and Excedrin were trial size things, and I had a $1 coupon for each...so they were free.
Chex mix was on sale for 99cents at Walgreens and I had a dollar coupon.
Liveactive ceral was on sale at target for 2.99 and I had a 3.00 coupon. I watched some commercials online for about 20 min a month ago, and I got a free subscription to Good Houskeeping.

To add to my deals, our house was hit with hail during the tornado, so I asked John to make me a list of things he needed from town. First on the list was 2 new hoses. This is what the hail did to our hose. (no joking, it worked fine the day before the tornado.)


I went to Lowe's for all of his stuff. I didn't get amazing deals, but at least I saved money doing it.

I did 2 separate transactions and used a $10 off any $50 purchase, and used a 10% off coupon for the other stuff.

I plan to post some of my favorite freebees that don't have strict guidelines and don't have to be done on a certian date. In case you are more hard-core into this, I have included some of my favorite money saving sites on the "other blogs I look at" on the right hand side of my blog. They are money saving mom, freebies4mom, and centsible sawyer.