Coupons????

Well, this week I decided to jump in to this whole "coupon" thing. Our neighbors so sweetly bring me the newspaper and ads every week once they are done, and so I can clip all the coupons! Yay! I stayed up all night last week, clipping away, and cross-referencing my finds with another lady's blog that is dedicated to rebates, coupons, and thrifty deals and ideas.

We have been blessed with the opportunity to watch children for a financial class on Sunday nights, so Jonathan has said I can have that money to spend on my hearts desires! Uh...which means food for now, lol!

Also, some friends of ours at the church have blessed us with a couple bags of groceries, and it is SUCH a huge blessing! I have had so much fun creating meals with all the goodies that I might not have bought myself, because of choice OR budget :) Praise the Lord for a wonderful church family, and wonderful friends! We are So so so blessed! (FYI, Jon's job is still going well, but because of economic reasons, their customers can't always pay on-time, which means paychecks get delayed).

BACK TO THE COUPONS......
On Tuesday night, after ladies bible study, I went to try my hand at getting all these "awesome" deals. Supposedly I was gonna hit 4 stores, spend a total of $20, and come home with bags and bags of groceries.

NOPE.
I felt like crying, so I called Andy (my sister, and queen coupon-shopper of late...) so she could tell me what in the WORLD I did wrong! 2 stores were sold out of all the items I was gonna purchase, one store had items that were the wrong amount of oz on sale that coordinated with the MFG coupons, so didn't get anything there. Lowes, I did pretty good, but accidentally miscalculated and spent over my budget, so my shopping ended there. So, out of frustration, I took my $10 walmart giftcard that I worked to earn on mypoints for the past 4 months, and bought milk, bread, and eggs. Pretty sad.

Anyhow, Andy made me feel better, but when I came home I still felt like such a failure. Not only was I out all night chasing phantom deals, but the house was a mess, I had missed dinner, Micah was hungry and cranky, and I had only about 4 bags of groceries and an empty wallet to show for it. Ugh.

IT'S OKAY THOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Another week of ads has come...

So, today Jon took me to town to do "real" shopping at Lowes, and I was able (by some miracle) to organize all the coupons and a list of deals, and with *My Grocery Money* (doesn't that sound WONDERFUL!?? :D ), I went shopping. It was perfect, and the kids did really good (Jason had his own little basket alongside me), and I was able to get awesome deals in record time! And I did it! Yay! Coupon things do work!

Total savings on the receipt: $64.11
PLUS, We got $5 fresh rewards coupon(basically like a Lowes certificate), and are just pennies away in our account for another one to print off!!

*Sigh* Today was a good day in Heather's life, to say the least :)

Oh, and there is a link/button in the right column of my blog, to the lady's blog that I got alot of the deals info from, if ya'll wanna check it out!