Rite-Aid Pillaging....And 54% Savings at the Grocery Store

I shouldn't call my Rite-Aid excursions pillaging anymore should I?
Since they tightened up the deals and the coupon policy and the coupons just aren't as good this year, I don't get much for FREE.

Anyway, let's get to the details, shall we?

As of last week I had $5 in +Ups expiring on 11/6, which is today.
So last week I bought this.....

2 x Dawn dish liquid on sale for .97¢ each=$1.94
I used--
1 x .20¢/1 Dawn ManuQ
$1.94-.20=$1.74

I used $1 +Ups to pay
$1.74-$1+Up=$.74+.04¢tax=$.78 OOP

Then today I bought this......

1 x St. Joseph's Aspirin on sale=$4.99
2 x Purex Ultra Packs detergent on sale BOGO=$6.49
Subtotal......$11.48

I used--
1 x $1/1 St. Joseph's 120 ct. CatalinaQ(this spit out last month at Rite-Aid)=$1.00
1 x FREE ITEM Q Purex Ultra Packs detergent(up to $6)=$6.00 *Won from Frances' blog thanks Frances! ;-)
Total Coupons.....$7.00

$11.48-$7=$4.48

I used my $4 in +Ups I had left to pay....
$4.48-$4.00=$.48+.03¢tax=$.51

I paid .51¢ OOP and received a $4 +Ups for buying the St. Joseph's Aspirin.

Then I made an impulse buy.....uh oh......

2 x Axe Body Spray/Deodorant(this scent was on clearance 50% off so $2.99 ea.=$5.98

I paid .36¢tax so a total of $6.34 OOP.
Axe sprays/deos are Buy2/Get $3 +Ups this week on Select Unilever items, so I got back $3 +Ups AND another $2 +Ups for the purchase of Body Sprays, for a total of $5 in +Ups back.

Spend $6.34, get $5 back.
Wish I had had a couple of coupons to use too..... 8-)

Let's recap--
I got

2 dish liquids-who doesn't need this?
1 bottle baby aspirin-I use this.
2 packs of laundry detergent-who doesn't need this?
2 body sprays/deos-both son's use this.

I spent $7.63 OOP
And I have $9 in +Up Rewards to spend during the next 2 weeks.

Even if I don't get things for free paying $7.63 instead of the reg. shelf price of $36.13 and getting $9 to spend on more stuff isn't half bad, is it? ;-)

Then I went to the grocery store and did just as well!
I got $189.25 worth of groceries for $86.92.
That's a savings rate of 54.08%.

I hit the marked down meat-2 steaks for $2 lb., kielbasa for less than $2 lb., $2 off 4 packages of bacon which goes for $4.49 so $2.29 for each bacon, 85% angus burgers for $3 lb., some produce & fresh bakery muffins(for #2 Son)for 50% off, a rotisserie chicken for $3.99 to use for lunchmeat, fish fillets and grape tomatoes for BOGO, tuna fish for .74¢ a can and a can of crushed tomatoes for .50¢ after Q.
They have a deal this week if you buy $15 in Swanson/Campbell's/Pepperidge Farm items you get an instant $5 discount, so I bought 16 cans of soup on sale for $1, used $3 in Qs and after the $5 discount, paid $8 for 16 cans, so .50¢ a can.  I can use these in cooking.

Plus there was another deal-Buy 7 select Smuckers/Hungry Jack/Crisco items and get an instant $3 discount.  One of the items was 48 oz. bottles of Crisco oil on sale half off($2.14 instead of the reg. $4.29 price).  That's a great price for oil so I stocked up(#2 Son can go through some oil between making French fries and frying burritos).
So I got 6 oils and 1 pancake mix(for $2 on sale).  Total should have come to $11.48 after sale prices and $3 discount, but for some reason the register only took the $2.15 discount off of 2 bottles,  not all 6.
So since the register/computer rang the price wrong, I got 1 for free! 8-)

I also had a subtotal over $125.00 so I could use a $12 off your order coupon Weis sent me in the mail.
So my $189.25 in groceries, which should have come to $89.06 after all my discounts/coupons ended up costing me $86.92 (with an additional $2.14 subtracted for the free bottle of oil).
I am now over what I wanted to spend on food this week but I hadn't planned on such good meat deals and stocking up on oil, soup and tuna.
It's all good though since I have plenty of cash left for the month in the budget. 8-)


Sluggy

What's Going on Here Lately Besides No Heat.....

Yesterday, I went through some boxes of old ornaments I had bought years ago to sell on eBay and sorted them into keep and donate piles.   One pile of ornies is for the kids to go through and take whatever they want, as 2 of them no longer live here, so they may want tree decorations of their own.
When they get to a point where they aren't moving constantly and settle down I'll give them each the family ornaments that were bought for them while growing up.  Man, once I do that, our tree here will be practically bare! lol

So far I have 2 full cardboard boxes of ornies heading out the door.  It's a shame that Hallmark ornaments, except for a few special ones, aren't selling on eBay at ALL mostly, and the few that do sell are going for about $1 each.
sigh
So that, with a box of Ty brand stuffed animals and a box of used housewares and a swing arm wall lamp, gives me almost another full load to send off to Salvation Army in a couple of days.

Then I got up this morning and saw this report on Yahoo about Goodwill HERE.
YIKES!

Please be careful with your personal information when donating goods to any charity!
And it boggles my mind how any store manager would have let a customer buy personal documents like that......

Still no action on eBay but I am selling a couple of lengths of fabric on average each day over on Etsy.  At this rate I'll run out of excess fabric by.....oh..........2016! lolz
Still loving the ease of packing and shipping fabric. 8-))

I am now down just shy of 54 lbs.  I got past the plateau I hit back in May/June and am starting to see results.  Not being able to exercise much because of my feet is not helping the cause but I have weights to use to work my arms.  I know I'd lose faster if I gave up drinking(bad, bad carbs!)but at this point I don't want to give up the 3 or 4 drinks I have a week.  There is something to be said for keeping your sanity.....

As for what I am eating.......I haven't changed content much since earlier this year after the heart problem episode, except for having to be careful I don't eat too much green leafy veggies now while I am on this Coumadin drug.
It's been 7 months now since we basically changed our diet so I think we have made it a permanent lifestyle change.  I find I no longer crave junk food or sweets most days.

I eat a lot less at a meal(portion control)and try to stay away from carbs at meals.  I don't fix a meat, carb and veg. for dinner.  Usually I'll just fix a meat and veg(or 2 vegs. sometimes if one is a carby veg.).   Sometimes I do a sauce on the meat or veg. so I am getting some carbs anyway.  I also always have a sandwich at lunch, so I get plenty of good carbs with my bread and occasionally I'll have carbs with my breakfast-either a bowl of cereal or a mini bagel with my yogurt.

The big thing is I have cut down on cheese intake drastically.  No cheese on burgers or sandwiches EVER!  And we eat/fix cheesy dishes very rarely now.  We use to throw cheese on most anything we ate here, but no more. 

I plan on losing another 6 lbs. by the end of November, even with Thanksgiving, so wish me luck!
Right now I have 46 lbs. to go to get to the weight I was at 32, BEFORE I had children.  It won't even come close to what I should weigh, but that would be awesome if I could get there without any bariatric surgery.


I am off to get blood work done, then to Rite-Aid to use my expiring +Up Rewards and then maybe to the grocery store if the feet hold out.

Sluggy

Just Some Music for a Tuesday

Just a scene from one of my favorite Musicals and one of my favorite Broadway performers, Mandy Patinkin.

 

Incidentally, the guy who played Juan Peron in the original production is Bob Gunton.  You may recognize him as the evil prison warden from the film, "The Shawshank Redemption".

Sluggy

WTF AGAIN?!

Remember just yesterday when I said the Good News is that the new heating system is working again and we now have heat?
Well, guess what wouldn't turn back on yesterday evening after I turned it off 4 hours earlier?
Yup.....the heaters.

So we are back to having expensive white boxes hanging on our walls that do NOTHING.
And for a bonus, we get to call SEARS......yet again.......

I am just so tired of this......

Sluggy

The Good, The Bad & The Sluggy

The Good News is--
I have sold 10 pieces of fabric in the last week.
The stuff isn't flying off my shelves as fast as I want it to but at least it IS selling so I can recoup some of the cash that is tied up with it.
The shipping costs are hurting sales I just know it.  It's not me asking too much as I am much lower than any fabric store with my prices.  It's good fabric it's just stuff I can't/won't use at this point in my life.

I have decided that packing/shipping fabric is WAY EASIER than the toys/collectibles New in the Box I use to sell.  Just shove that fabric into a shopping bag and then into a padded mailer and it's done.  No bubble wrap and extra padding so the boxes the stuff comes in doesn't get denting/crushed with collectible toys.  Geesh!

And speaking of toys/collectibles.......

The Bad News is--
I started putting old/unsold stuff back up on eBay for the Holiday selling/buying rush.
I've got 11 or so items up so far and all I want to know is....WHERE ARE THE BUYERS!?!?!
Seriously I have NEVER seen it so dead on eBay since I started on there in 1998.
The lack of interest on there is making the decision to take all this to the Salvation Army instead very attractive.

The Good News is--that by listing items directly on eBay I can get 50 listings for free.  I usually list through InkFrog, the auction service I have used for years now. 

The Bad News is--that I have to cut & paste all the listing photos and html codes from InkFrog into the eBay forms so listing this stuff which use to take me a few seconds in Inkfrog is taking me many many minutes.  Just getting the 11 items I got listed on Sat/Sun finished ate up half my day.
Ugh.

The Good News is--
We still had 3 apples left after I made an apple pie last week so I made Apple Dumplings Sunday night.  It was a riff on a new recipe.  I reduced the amount of sugar a bit but otherwise it was NOT low cal....lol.....

Not the traditional dumplings I make because you pour a sauce over the whole shebang before baking so it's like a wet bottom dessert(think shoo-fly pie)but really good otherwise.
It's heavy on the cinnamon(4 teaspoons!)which I really like.

If anyone would like a tutorial just say so and the next time I make it I'll take pictures and stuff.


And the Bad News is--
Our brand new HVAC mini split system is NOT heating.  We already had them out here in September because the a/c went after 2 months.  Hubs called SEARS for a solid week with no response.  I'd get a lawyer and sue their asses if I had half a mind.....

And the Good News is--
Our new a/c and heating system is FINALLY heating.
After over a week of daily phone calls to Sears, someone got their butt into gear and called the HVAC contractor to come make a service call.
It's UNREAL that a brand new, many thousands of dollars system is NOT working but even more UNREAL that the company we paid all that money to waited A WEEK to contact the service/repair guy to come out and fix it!!!
Thank goodness we also have some baseboard heating in the house or we could have frozen to death before they got around to getting someone out here.
Yah, it was in the 30's a few nights last week.
Totally unbe-freaking-lievable.......

Needless to say SEARS is on my shit list currently and they won't be redoing our kitchen or anything else here.  Too bad they ignored us for a week because they just blew selling us some other home improvement services.
Do you hear that SEARS?!?

So what's the Good/Bad News in your world?

Sluggy