Off to get me some Free Food!

I don't usually shop at my local Price Chopper Grocery Store. I have to go into 'the city' to get to them(it's a 5 minute ride!) and I find their prices are higher on average than the 2 Grocery Stores in my Teeny Tiny Town.

But they just opened a Brand New Store.....well, the building is new, the store isn't. They moved the PC out of the crime riddled old, dying shopping center by the mall, into a brand new, stand alone building. It was a move of about 1.5 miles.

So they have been running specials and nice store coupons. 2 weeks ago we got a home mailer with FREE coupons for salad dressing, steak sauce, tartar sauce and cheap ground beef, ice cream and something else I can't recall at the moment. It was worth going in that week.

So this week, on the regular sales flyer in the Sunday paper, we had an outer half page with TRIPLE VALUE COUPON Coupons. Meaning, you can put a regular manufacturer's coupons(up to $3 face value)with one of these Tripler Coupons to triple the value of your couple.

Nice, huh?

The caveat is you are limited to $3 of face value on the original coupone AND there is a limit of 2 of these Triplers per 'shopping family'. And you have to use a store loyalty card too.

Having bought 11 Sunday papers, I have 11 shopping trips to make to get 22 Triplers worth of free stuff. And the sale ends Saturday night, so I had better get crackin'!

I've spent an hour this morning pulling high value coupons and checking the PC ad for what's on special, to see what I can score for free.

There are also a few PC store coupons in the ad....99 cents 1lb. butter, $1.99 for 12-packs of Pepsi, 4 boxes of GM Cereals for $8 and some 7-Up deal. The butter doesn't require any additional purchase so I'll be stocking up on 11 lbs. of butter today for $10.89 total too!

And if they allow me to stack store Qs with MQs, I can score some free or almost free GM Cereals too!

I do need to find out about the coupon stacking at this store. I do know that they DO take Internet Printed Coupons, which I am thankful for, as neither of the grocery stores in my Teeny Tiny Town take! One is a major chain and the other is a regional chain. The major chain store has a Corporate website where you can print out Coupons.....but my particular store won't take them!

ARGH.

I really need to write one of my famout Complaint Letters to their Corporate HQ about this insanity.

So I am off to see what I can get. As long as my old legs hold out making all those trips from the parking lot to the store and back, I'll have some goodies to show in the next day or so.

With a $150 food budget this month, I really need to be all about the F-R-E-E!

Sluggy

FEBRUARY $AVING$ CHALLENGE TOTALS

If you look closely at my right sidebar, you will notice that I updated my 60K $aving$ Challenge Totals for February a couple of days ago. I had hoped to just sneak it in and not have to post about it, but alas, I was caught.

Like I mentioned before, this month is NOT pretty!

While I practically Doubled my eBay sales(thanks in part to that nice guy in The Netherlands), the loose change in the house seems to have dried up. Ok, of the two, I'd rather have more eBay sales than change.lol

We ended Feb. with a net Loss of $157.97.

Negative savings.

Not good.

EVER!

I knew mid-month when we received the Bill Trifecta-a 6 month car insurance premium notice, the unexpected auto repair & the bill for the kitchen countertops,
February would be a wash.

The last 2 items appeared on the MONSTER CREDIT CARD BILL.

Monster to the tune of $2902.85.

The countertops and the auto repair account for $2126.49 of that monster, so in reality, the normal expenditures on it were only $776.36. That includes some online paid bills, most of the gasoline purchases and some Birthdays eating out money. (Dec-Feb. is our Birthday Landmine Field for spending on eating out.)

So if you take off the unusual expenses, we 'could' have had $215.67 left at the end of the month to dump into the SCG.

But we had emergencies. That is why you have Emergency funds....the shock absorbers for buffering those monetary bumps in the road of your money.

Soooo....we deduct that negative $157.97 from our Grand Total Saved & we are down to $3216.67 Saved for the year.

The target goal for 2 months in:$10K.

We are more behinder than last month.

*sigh*

Looking at the bright side....

The credit card statement period closes on March 11th. We currently have $548.39 in purchases on it. If I can keep from buying gasoline for 7 more days, I can have a much lower Mastercard bill to pay this month.

I heart $548.39 bills alot more than $2902.85 bills.

And I have set a $150/250 Low Spend Food Budget for March(See my Food Budget Part II post). That should result in a much lower expenditure for groceries than last month's total of $863.42.

Please help me stick to this March grocery budget.

If you see me in the grocery store with a fist full of coupons and that food lust look in my eyes, throw me in a cart and wheel me out!

Looking on the Not-So-Bright side....

Coming up this month however is the yearly local tax bill and the sewage bill. The sewage bill is hardly a blip on the spending screen but the Tax Bill is significant. Even more reason to keep all other expenditures down. I like to pay it before April 1, as we get a discount if we do. And whenever any governmental entity offers you a discount, TAKE IT!

Always.

Sluggy

New Counters & Sink Revealed!

As promised, here is the close-up of the new counter color/pattern.

And here is the photo of the countertops installed.

And I just love my new sink & faucet!

The sink is super deep and oversized. What was there before was a 2 small sink arrangement. You couldn't fit a sheet pan or large roaster/griddle/saute pan in the sink to clean it properly. I always ended up soaked with water trying to clean those items. It will be wonderful to actually stay dry when doing pots & pans by hand. I know some folks like having two sinks but I never have.

Our old faucet had been broken for almost a year. It was one of those cheapy lift the handle and swivel it to adjust the temperature one-handled type of faucets. Something had worn out internally that made it so you couldn't turn the water flow off by pushing down on the handle. You had to grab the base of the faucet and push down with some force to shut off the water. I had been doing that so long it feels strange to not have to 'wrassle'(southern redneck word for wrestle) with the faucet.lolol

And can you believe what they charge for a faucet anymore? Great GoogleyMoogley! Husband had to pick my jaw up off the Lowe's Warehouse Floor when we bought this one in January. It was almost $200....and that was a CHEAP model! Well, cheap for a 'not economy' value one. If I wanted to forego eating for a month, I could have bought the $600 model. Ack!

I have to give a shout out to the Installer, Dave. He was wonderful! It's rare you find someone who enjoys his work and goes the extra mile to take longer and do a job RIGHT and not just get it done quickly & haphazardly, so he can be off to the next job. He works freelance as well as contracting with Lowe's so if you are in Northeast PA and need countertop work, he's your man. Write me for his number.

Except for painting the blue tiles in the backsplash walls and fixing the ceiling damage from the Great Toilet Clog of 2007, I am finished with the kitchen fixups.
It's onward and upward to the next project on the list....the Master Bathroom redo.

Sluggy

New Counter Tops Today Yippee!!!

So we moved here 8+ yrs. ago. It was NOT the house I wanted to buy but like The Rolling Stones sang, "You can't always get what you want". I have spent the last 7 yrs. slowing fixing the kitchen up. Here's a photo of the kitchen before we cleaned it out last night.

I wish I had a photo of what it looked like when we moved in, in 2000. There was a layer of gunk & dirt on the cabinets such that you couldn't really see the grain of the oak & cheap aluminum door handles with 'patina' which turned out to be oily dirt from too much frying and not enough cleaning. The table area had a dusty BLUE ceiling fan, which matched the dusty blue duck wallborder that ran from there into the attached family room. This wallborder/fan coordinated with the dusty blue colonial dot wallpaper w/an ivory background that covered the kitchen walls. Add in ugly tan vinyl flooring and 15 yr. old white/half broken appliances and you have my kitchen in 2000.

Here's a photo of the kitchen floor AFTER hubby tried to melt a saute pan on the stove and then carry it from the stovetop to the sink. Nice molten globs of metal pattern burned into the flooring, huh?

Actually, that floor wasn't the original kitchen floor. When we took it up, we found 2 more layers of vinyl flooring under it. The original was gold & brown and SCREAMED UGLY rather than 'whispered bland'.

I have slowly been changing out everything in the kitchen except the tile backsplash.

**********

Kitchen TimeLine

2001

We cleaned the cabinets and oiled up the wood until it shone. Then we invested in quality cabinet handles and face plates. Changed out the ceiling fan and light fixture.

2002

The wallpaper came down and paint went up. We added crown molding after the painting.

2004

Ripped up the flooring and had Ceramic Tile put down in the kitchen and front hallway. Changed out the window coverings to valances and a rolled bamboo shade.

2004-2007

Replaced the stove, refridgerator & dishwasher as they broke with stainless &/or black. Also replaced the non-working stove vent hood with stainless steel one.

2008

Which brings us to today, the day I get new countertops, a sink & a new faucet.

Finally!

I hated the old countertops. You can kind of see in the AFTER CLEANING photo the color. They are not as 'tan' as they look but rather a pale washed out yellow. NOT attractive. And the SEAM running diagonally across the corner of the long 'l shaped' counter is hideous. It looks like the 2 sides of the seam never matched thicknesses, so it was always noticeable that there was a seam there. Plus at some point before we moved here, someone let the area get saturated with water for an extended period of time, and the pressboard under the formica coating swelled where the water seeped into the seam and made the seam area raise up all down the seam. Then they never cleaned the countertops and it turned black. So I had a nice pale yellow counter with a big black diagonal LINE.

Attractive?

Not on your life!

But before the day is out, that will all be in the past. and my modest costing kitchen redo will be complete. Well, except for the tile backsplash, which has baby blue accent tiles. I plan on painting or reglazing or whatever you call it on those light blue tiles, as they don't go with my vision.

I think I did a pretty frugal job of it, not going with stone/granite counters and floors and top of the line appliances when less expensive would serve just as well. Plus I never replaced anything until it either broke, wore out or I could find someone who wanted it. I couldn't justify just sending perfectly good working appliances or materials into a landfill.

Check back later tonight for photos of the new Counters!

Sluggy

The Return of the White Stuff

I was just thinking Saturday, "We haven't gotten much snow this winter. I wonder if we'll have a drought this summer?" We had that freakishly warm spell in February and ALL the snow melted. I have lived in northern/mountainous Pennsylvania for 22+ yrs. and have NEVER seen a winter where all the snow cover has melted before the spring thaw.....until this year. Could spring be close by??

Evidently not. The photo above was taken from my front porch. I woke up this morning to a new inch of snow on the ground and we have 3 inches currently. And it's still snowing sporadically.

It generally snows here until after Easter.....that would be the late April Easter.

This snow was NOT predicted to hit us!

Can I just go back to bed now?

sluggy