Havin Hope

I’m not seeing a ton of deals of this week and I don’t plan on doing a lot of shopping anyway, but here a few decent deals. Remember I have a Central IL ad (to view your local ad go here) and my Kroger doubles all coupons that are .50 or less. I also subscribe to the Chicago Tribune, since they have much better coupons than my local paper.

First, a little good news! I was able to snag a a pack of free TP again last week! It appears that my Kroger is now stocking 4 packs of Angel Soft, regular price 1.03. But last week it was on sale for $1.00. I found one coupon in my organizer for .50/1 4 pack or larger so I was able to get one for free! SO, be on the look out for some 50 cent Angel Soft coupons to carry on the free Cottonelle legacy (because, really, who wants to PAY for toliet paper???).

Deals and Decent Sales:

Kroger Sour Cream- 1.00

Bananas- .39/lb ( I think that is cheaper than Aldi right now)

Boneless Chicken Breasts- 1.99/lb (maybe well grill up some of those for Mother’s Day)

Fuse drinks- 1.00
use .25/1 that expires TODAY
doubles to -.50
=.50

Sargento Potato Finishers- 2.50
-1.00/1 from recent insert
=1.50

Eckrich Smoked Sausages- 2.50 (they have a skinless turkey one that I would like to try)
-.55/1 coupon from recent insert
=1.95 (this price is a little cheaper than Healthy Choice, which I normally buy at Wal-mart)

Ortega products are 33% off
use 1.00/2 or .75/2 coupons from recent inserts to snag some free or almost free seasoning packets or cheap tortillas or green chilis

Pace Salsa- 1.99
-50/2
doubles to 1.00/2
=2.98 for 2 (1.49 each)

Lays and Tostinos Chips- 2.00
use 3/2 or 2/2 from SuperBowl Rebate
=1.00-2.00 for 2 (.50-1.00 each)

Loreal Vive- priced up to 4.49 and on sale for Buy One Get One
use 2 1.00/1 coupons
2.49 for 2 (1.25 each)

As I mentioned, the deals aren’t great and I apologize because apparently I don’t know where many of my coupons came from this week!

Kraft Cheese- 12-16 oz- 2.50

You can find a link to my post, along with lots of other good deals over at BeCentsable!

Sorry that my deals are a little late today, I had to sub today so my whole schedule was thrown off a bit.

Okay, on to some more deals, remember I have a Central IL ad (to view your local ad go here) and  my Kroger doubles all coupons that are .50 or less. I also subscribe to the Chicago Tribune, since they have much better coupons than my local paper.

Here are some that I see that are worth picking up:

Tyson Boneless Chicken Breasts- 1.87/lb

Pork Picnic- .99/lb

Red Seedless Grapes- .97/lb

Kraft Cheese- 12-16 oz- 2.50

Buy 1 Pepsi 2 liter @ 1.25 get a free Sierra Mist Ruby Splash 2 Liter for free
Use 2 2/1 coupons from the Pepsi Rebate to get 2 for free plus possible 3.75 overage. Or use 1 2/1 to get 2 for free and possible .75 overage.

10/10 Sale- You do not have to buy 10, everything is just a 1.00!

Kroger Sour Cream, Cottage Cheese, or dips, 12-16 oz- 1.00

Kroger Tortilla Chips- 1.00

Birds Eye, Freshlike, or Green Giant Frozen Veggies- 1.00
-.50/2 Green Giant boxed frozen veggies from 4/5 Smartsource insert (doubles to -1.00)
or 1.00/2 Steamfresh from 4/19 insert
=1.00 for 2 (.50 each)

Soft Soft-1.00
- .35/1 from recent insert, expires 4/18)
doubles to .70
=.30

Suave Deo. or Deo- 1.00
-.50 or .75 off of Suavefrom recent insert or .55 of Brut from 4/5 Smartsource
=free-.45

McCormicks Grill Mates Seasoning- 1.00
Use .25/1, .25/2, .75/1, .50/1 or 1/1 (if you didn’t use them all at Walmart last week like I did) from resent inserts
=Free-.75 each

Be sure to check out Stretching a Buck for a few more coupon match-ups that will work for our area of the country.

Also, Cellfire has some new coupons that you can add to your Kroger card, just make sure you add them by May 4th before they disappear!

You can find a link to my post, along with lots of other good deals over at BeCentsable!

I just want to say that I did awesome at Kroger today.  So awesome that I bought so much stuff that I almost went through a regular check-out instead of self-service.  But I didn’t because the lines were long AND my Kroger got a new program on their self-service lines and I wanted to check it out.  Anyway, so awesome that I took a picture.  But my card reader has a short in it and only works half of the time.  And since right now seems to the half that isn’t working, I can’t show you my great deals.

But I can tell you about them!

Meat, I got meat.  Lots of meat.  Well, chicken.  And ground beef.  Tyson all natural chicken thighs were marked down to .59/lb!  And I got ground chuck for 1.19/lb. I also got some bone-in chicken breasts advertised for .99/lb. My store also had an instore special on one pound packages of Land O Frost lunch meat priced at 1.99!

I combined some coupons with the 10/10 sale.

There were THREE clearance tables today and I found some 4 packs of Olay bar soap clearanced at 1.59.  I used the 2/1 bar pack Q from the a recent P & G insert to get them for free plus a little overage.

The best part was that my total out of pocket was only 13.38 because I still had a 21.63 credit from the RX Walgreens coupon that they accepted last week when I was filling a prescription.  Not bad for over 21 lbs of meat plus a bunch of other stuff.  I will post the picture soon so you can see just how much!

Okay, on to some more deals, remember I have a Central IL ad (to view your local ad go here) and  my Kroger doubles all coupons that are .50 or less.

Bone-in Chicken- .99/lb

Ground Chuck- 1.67/lb

Pride of the Farm Seasoned Turkey- 1.00/roll (we really like this and I just found it at Wal-mart yesterday marked at 1.00/roll)

Here’s a weird, but great deal:
Buy 3 boxes of General Mills Cereal, Fiber One bars, or Natural Valley Bars, or Chex Mix bars and get 3 half gallons of milk.

Bars and Cereal are priced at 2.00 each.
There are several coupons out there that make this a good deal, if you have 3 1/1 or a .50/1 that will double you can get three boxes of bars or cereal plus 1 1/2 gallons of milk for only $3! That’s a little over the price of just one gallon of milk!
Possible coupons to use-
Add .60/1 Nature Valley and .55/1 General Mills Cereal from Short.cuts
.50/1 (doubles to 1.00) off of Nature Valley Trail Mix Bars from recent newspaper insert
1/2 General Mills Cereal from recent newspaper insert (combine with shortcuts coupons!)
There are probably more out there! I had some .60/1 Fiber One printables but they had expired.

10/10 Sale- You do not have to buy 10, everything is just a 1.00.
Kroger Sour Cream

Kroger Tortilla Chips

Soft Soft-1.00
- .35/1 from recent insert, expires 4/18)
doubles to .70
=.30

Suave Deo.- 1.00
-.50 or .75 from recent insert
=free-.25

McCormicks Grill Mates Seasoning- 1.00
Use .25/1, .25/2, .75/1, or 1/1 (if you didn’t use them all at Walmart last week like I did)
=Free-.75 each

You can find a link to my post, along with lots of other good deals over at BeCentsable!

Please note that this post has nothing to do with the tax related tea dumping that happened today, but instead with all of the tea that I drank while visiting my grandparents over Easter in Boston! I know that we were drinking tea in many of the pictures that I took but in the one above you can actually see some tea cups and the “creamer cow”.  You can also see my grandparents, my aunt and her family, and my hubbie and kiddo.

To see more pictures, go here to see the pics that Jake posted in super-large size.

We had a great visit with my grandparents and other family this week, we relaxed, shopped at my favorite discount store out there- Building 19, had numerous Easter Eggs Hunts for Jonah, and of course, drank lots of tea!

I think I first learned to drink hot tea on my last visit to Boston- five years ago when Jonah was a baby and he and I flew out alone and my grandma happened to have a box of Sleepy Time.  I’m not sure why she had it.  Nor why my aunt had a jar of decaf because according to them if its flavored, has the word herbal in it, or its decaf then its not real tea, so why bother.  But I enjoy tea time at Grandma’s House and probably drank as much this week as I have all winter!

Here’s me, my sweet Granparents, and my not-so-sweet son who squeezed into the picture to make a silly face!

Jake and I flew once together, when we were first married.  And Jonah and I took a trip when he was a baby.  And Jake flies all of the time for work.  But this was our first family trip on an airplane.

It went well.  Jonah proved to be an excellent traveler despite his double ear infection.

On our flight home we had a short time to make it to our connecting  flight and took quite the tour of O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.  At one point when we were zooming down walking sidewalks and down escalators I looked over at a mom who is carrying 2 backpacks and 2 duffles.  Her son, who had to be a few years older than Jonah,  is walking behind her slowly, holding only a gameboy.  I’m proud to say that Jonah handled his Power Ranger luggage all on his own.

The only problem was that his carseat decided not to get on the plane in Boston when we did.  Fortunatly, we only live a few blocks from our teeny tiny local airport so it wasn’t a problem for me to pick up this morning (and give them back the one they loned to us) after it flew in last night.

So depending on if my ad is delivered to my door tomorrow night I may or may not have any deals to post for next week since we are headed to Boston for Spring Break.   But be sure to check out the Kroger deals posted over at BeCentsable!

I did find that THIS week (I don’t think this was in the ad so who knows how long they will be at this price) that Duncan Hines cake mixes are $1.  Use the .35 off coupon from a recent insert, it will double to make the final price .30 each!

My son has a terrible ear infection in both ears (which makes us a little nervous about getting on a plane in a couple of days) so I was picking up his prescriptions at the Kroger Pharmacy.  I had read on another blog (I can’t remember whose) that Kroger would add a $25 credit to your Kroger card when you filled a prescription.  It turned out that you had to have a coupon for that, it had to be send to you in the mail (they are randomly sent out via the address that is connected to your Kroger card).  But they also take other store’s coupons!  Did you hear that?  I gave them a WAGS $25 coupon and she added $25 to my card (and it was a good thing since even after insurance his drops alone were $40).   YEA!

I hope to have a few more deals to post tomorrow, but if not, hopefully there will be some good ones to post about next week!

So apparently the FBI not only doesn’t like my fingerprints but they are forgetful as well.

I’ve complained a lot recently about the “live scan” fingerprint system that involves a computer instead of an ink pad and although less messy, not conducive to skinny- fingered-dull-print’s- girls like myself.   I’ve also complained about how the FBI made me have my prints taken twice (and both times, right on the screen the fingerprint person got the error message: FAILED PRINTS) only to do a name check on me.

That name check was suppose to take a couple of days.  It instead has taken a couple of months.

Today I find out that I have been cleared for a couple of months (I wasn’t told the exact day), they just forgot to notify both the adoption agency and myself.

I guess the FBI has more important things to deal with.  At least we are cleared, which means that our agency can officially show our profile (our little family scrapbook) to potential birthmoms.

How many birthmoms will see our profile?  How many others are they being shown?  How long will it take now?

I don’t know, there is no way of knowing.  The only timetable we are given is “up to two years”.

So now we wait.  Oh wait, haven’t I already been doing that for a LONG time?  Like years?  Oh yeah.  Its a good thing I’m good at it!

The deals don’t look too plentiful this week which is a good thing since I’m mad at my particular Kroger store.  I was in my store this week using up a few coupons that were expiring at the end of March and was notified at the checkout that my store is no longer taking printables.  Heart attack right then and there, folks!

Of course I went right home and called Kroger Corporate Office.  This is what they said:
-each Kroger store has the right to decide what kind/if they take coupons printed on the internet at all
-in my particular area there has been an increase of “fake” internet coupons being used
-my store WILL take printable less than $1 as long as they do not end in bar code #36314
-my store will not take printables ending in the above bar code as well as printables for $1 or more off and for free items
-they could change this at anytime
-it is not confirmed whether this is true for the other 3 Kroger in my town

Needless to say, I’m a little upset about this but am determined to continue to work my deals and hope that they will soon take this ban off of said printables. Really, its the “cents off” coupons that are so valuable at Kroger anyway, right? I’m trying to make myself feel better and not be angry at the “fakers” who are ruining it for us rule following couponers!

Enough about that, remember that I have a Central IL ad (to view your local ad go here) and  my Kroger doubles all coupons that are .50 or less.

Here are some deals worth picking up:
Idaho Potatoes- .97/5 lb bag

Eckrich Smoked Sausage- 2.50
-.55 from 3/29 insert
=1.95

Tortilla Chips- 1.00

Nabisco Snack Crackers- 2.00
- 2/1 Wheat Thins or Triscuits from recent insert
=3.00 for 2 (1.50 ea)

Land of Lakes Butter- 2.00
-.55 from 3/29 insert
=1.45

Kroger Ibuprofen 24 ct- 1.00 (I’m not sure if this is a great deal or not, but I really need some).

Stretching a Buck has some coupon match-ups and a list of the P & G Mix and Match Sale. For this sale, you must buy 3 items to get $3 off at the register. We should be getting a P & G insert in this Sunday’s paper so maybe the deals will get better, but for now, I’m not really seeing any!

But don’t forget to check out all of the new P & G ESAVER coupons here, these can be added right to your Kroger card and combined with manufacturer coupons (that will hopefully come in the paper this Sunday and be good ones!),

You can find a link to my post, along with lots of other good deals over at BeCentsable!