More Grocery Shopping This Week

Lots of little shops at the stores this week.
In between doing other things it seems I am constantly running to the grocery store.
Well at least I get some exercise shopping this way. lolz

On the way to pick up College Boy from school I stopped at the Surplus Outlet to see what they had I could use for cheap.......

2 x Mussleman's apple sauce cups for Hubs@ $1.19
2 x G2 Gatorade @ .89¢
2 x Lime Ricky drinks @ .79¢
2 x Heinz mustard(dijon and spicy brown)@ .59¢ & .79¢
2 x Chicken stock(wine wine and herbs)@ .79¢
2 x Hamburger Helper microwave cups@ .59¢(for CB)
1 x Ranch dressing@ .99¢
1 x Stone ground Grits@ .99¢
not pictured--
1 x 3lb frozen broccoli spears@ $3.19
1 x steamers frozen mix veg@ .99¢
1 x family size bag of Kisses(need this to make my fudge)@ $2.99
2 x Helluva dips@ 2/$1(but this rang up for .01¢)

Total OOP $19.04
Regular retail of $32.90

Then I hit Weis(PMITA)Markets for the Friday only Deals when we got back home.

Of course they were out of the main thing I went for but I did pick up this stuff............

4 x Scotties tissues .88¢each wyb4=$3.52
2 x Hormel chili=$2.50
1 x sandwich steaks 1/2 price sale=$5.64
1 x steak rolls 1/2 price sale=$1.64
1 x Celeste pizza for 1=$1.00
1 x OM smoked sausage 1/2 price sale=$2.49*not pictured*
SubTotal.....$16.79

Coupons Used
2 x $1/2 Scotties tissues IPQ=$2.00
1 x .55¢/2 Hormel chili IPQ(doubled to $1)=$1.00
1 x $1/2 Hormel chili Weis coupon BookQ=$1.00
1 x $1/1 OM smoked sausage CatalinaQ=$1.00
Coupon Total....$5.00

$16.79-$4=$11.79 OOP

Savings rate of 60%. I don't know why the receipt only shows $4 in coupon savings.....I guess the Weis book Q doesn't show up on this? but it did take off $5 in coupons.

After sale/coupons, the chili was .50¢ a can, the facial tissue .53¢ a box and the OM smoked sausage was $1.49.
I will also get a $1 rebate for buying the pizza from SavingStar as that is their freebie offer this weekend.

College Boy requested cheese steaks for dinner on Saturday so I changed up the menu plan and bought those steaks and rolls.  CB will also eat that pizza for lunch one day while he is home.

Saturday while at Rite-Aid to pick up an rx I bought this........

2 x Scott tp 4 packs on sale $2.99=$5.98

I used 2 x $1/1 Scott tp IPQ=$2.00

$5.98-$2=$3.98 using my Plenti points.

I earned $2 in new Plenti points so all this tp "cost" me $1.98 in points.

Then it was back to Weis as my pickle Q was expiring today....sigh.....

3 x Vlasic pickles on sale $2=$6.00
12 x Scotties tissue on sale .88¢=$10.56
2 x Nestle choc. chips on sale $1.77=$3.54
2 x Ragu sauce on sale $2=$4.00
1 x Lasagna noodles=Free wyb2 Ragu sauces
1 x Perdue cutlets on sale=$2.40
1 x 1/2 lb. deli provolone=$4.23 NOT ON SALE
1 x 1 lb. ground turkey on sale=$3.50
2 x Hillshire Farm no perservatives deli meat on sale $4.49=$8.98
SubTotal.....$43.21

Coupons Used
1 x .75¢/3 Vlasic pickles CatalinaQ=.75¢
4 x $1/3 Scotties IPQ=$4.00
1 x $1.25/2 Ragu ManuQ=$1.25
1 x .75¢/1 Perdue item(doubled to $1)=$1.00
1 x $1 instant meat sticker on ground turkey=$1.00
2 x $1 instant meat sticker on deli meats=$2.00
2 x $1/1 Hillshire Peelie Q on deli meats=$2.00
Coupon Total.......$12.00

$43.21-$12.00=$31.21 + .16¢ tax=$31.27 OOP
Savings rate of 49% plus I earned a .75¢ off ur next order Catalina for buying the pickles.

Then I bought $100 in gift cards using household maintenance and eating out funds for 2016.........

This earned me a $10 off your next order Catalina and 20 gas points.
I plan on using that $10 oyno Q to help pay for the roast I am going to cook for Christmas dinner.

This brings my weekly grocery spending to $100.21 on $213.64 reg. retail worth of groceries so I am at 53.10% savings rate for this week.
Even so, I am going to have to slow down if I am going to stay at/under $350 of spending for the month.

Sluggy

A Giving Opportunity Courtesy of Rite-Aid

I am stoked because I just saw an opportunity coming the week after Christmas at Rite-Aid to get a boat load of goodies for free to give to my local food bank!
I am posting this scenario in case anyone else out there feels like doing this Deal for their community or if you know someone who can use some free shampoo and detergent.

The December 27th-January 2nd Sales Ad has a double dipping Deal on some P&G items.
You can see scans of that ad at I Heart Rite-Aid .

If you spend $30 on items tagged as "2016 Starting Points" items in a single transaction you'll receive $10 in Plenti Points.
R-A is also running a Spend $30/Get $10 in Plenti Points Deal on some P&G items that week which means buy $30 of these P&G items and you'll get $20 in Plenti Points back.

You can do each of these Deals on each Wellness card 2 times.

With the P&G coupons coming out in the Dec. 27th inserts I can buy--

12 Pantene 'Poos=$41.88
4 Tide Detergents=$21.36
SubTotal......$63.24

Use 4 x $5/3 Pantene Qs=$20
Use 4 x $2/1 Tide Qs=$8
SubTotal.......$28.00

$63.24-$28.00=$35.24 OOP

Use my Plenti Points instead of cash and earn back $40 in new Plenti Points.
It looks like a $4+ moneymaker until you factor in tax and the extra newspapers you'll have to purchase to get multiple coupon inserts.  These 2 factors will absorb most of the overage and make them "just free".
I can live with free. lolz

After doing this deal twice on each card,  that will be 24 bottles of Pantene and 8 jugs of Tide for the food bank.
I don't think the food bank will turn that donation down, do you?  8-)))

Sluggy

Christmas Has Been Out of Control for Centuries

*I saved this newspaper article I read from a local edition here on Dec. 24, 2006 and recently uncovered it again in a stack of my papers.
I thought it apropos to post here word-for-word this Holiday Season.
The book it highlights is worth seeking out for a read if you are a fan of social history.

Please note, that the figures quoted at the end of the article are for 2006 so it's a tad higher in today's 2015 figures.

Sluggy

Credit to writer Matt Crenson of the Associated Press.
***********************************************

Christmas Has Been Out of Control for Centuries

Once upon a time the holiday season was a quiet time spent with family and friends--simpler, less commercial, more spiritual, nothing like today's frenzied orgy of souless consumption.

"There are worlds of money wasted, at this time of year, in getting things that nobody wants, and nobody cares for after they are got", one observer noted recently.

Well not so recently.

Harriet Beecher Stowe worth those words in 1850.  By then, the holiday was already well on its way to becoming the retail orgy it is today.

"Every generation for the last 250 years tends to think it was only in the last generation that it got commercialized, " said Stephen Nissenbaum, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

In his book "The Battle for Christmas", Nissenbaum puts that myth to rest by tracing the history of the holiday from colonial New England to the turn of the 20th Century.

Nissenbaum shows that powerful social interests have always advanced their agendas through Christmas, and describes how the holiday we celebrate today had its orgins in the New York City of the 1820's.  Christmas. it seems, has always been a holiday of excess.

For most of its history Christmas was a free-for-all, more New Year's Eve or Mardi Gras than the domestic idyll described in Clement Clarke Moore's 1823 poem, "A Visit from Saint Nicholas"(better known as "The Night Before Christmas").

The holiday has its origins in the Roman festival of Saturnalia, a week long Winter Solstice celebration that featured feasting, drinking gambling and sex.  Men dressed as women, women dressed like men, and masters waited on their slaves in a raucous reversal of the social hierarchy.

Such behavior was almost inevitable during the weeks surrounding the Winter Solstice in the pre-industrial societies of norther Europe, thanks to what Nissenbaum refers to as a "combustible mix" of leisure time, abundance and alcohol.

In the northern Europe of the late Middle Ages, gangs of young men would engage in "wassailing", a cross between Christmas caroling and home invasion.  The gangs would visit wealthy homes, often in disguise, and sing songs that threatened violence if they were not invited in for food and drink.

In agrarians societies, practices like wassailing served as a critical safety valve, giving people at the bottom of the social ladder a release that wold keep them in line during the rest of the year.
But with the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, factory owners didn't want their employees wandering off for weeks of drunken merriment.

During the 1820's after a series of particularly raucous holiday seasons in New York, the city's elite began campaigning for a more restrained, domestic Christmas.  Central to that campaign was the tradition of purchasing gifts, especially for children.

"Christmas and American's consumer culture have fed off one another ever since", said Russell Belk, a professor of business at the University of Utah.  His research has shown that the more materialistic people are about Christmas, the less satisfaction they derive from the holiday.

There's no doubt that Americans are materialistic about Christmas.  Almost half of all Americans crammed stores on the day after Thanksgiving this year, the traditional beginning of the holiday shopping season.  By the time the Christmas shopping season is over, the country will have spent in the neighborhood of $150 billion, most of it on gifts.  That's an average of $500 for every man, woman and child.

Our Trip to IL.......Part 5 Saying Goodbye, Coming Home & Secrets Revealed

On Thursday morning we bid adieu to Sonya Ann and Den.....well Den was at work so we said our goodbyes to him the night before.

Before we get into how this day went I want to say a few things about my cousin, Sonya.
She had a serious Halloween addiction.
The glimpses of her Halloween decorating she has shared on her BLOG are just the tip of the iceberg!
Oh yes!

Sonya Ann and Den are very serious about Halloween.
Not like those people who do stuff like THIS or THIS......yet!
Yah, she'll probably get some ideas from these clips, right? ;-)

She does do decorating the outside the house.  Her hedges were spider webbed and lit up plus there is a freestanding ghoul by the front door,  but I forgot to take a picture of all that.
But not only does she decorate outside her house for Halloween, she decorates inside too!
And I don't mean a pumpkin or witch or two.
No.

Every freaking room was outfitted for Oct. 31st!!
Even the bedroom with the "crippler" in it had Halloweenie stuff on the dresser.

THIS is what greets you at the back door.........

And in the kitchen she's got this on the fridge........

And this one by the stove......

Here's the living room.......

All the framed art is covered in black, the lamp too, the sofas have sheets on them and the curio cabinet in the corner looks like a gigantic Grim Reeper.

If you sit on the sofa and look out her picture window this is what you see(you see a part of the giant spider outside on the hedge too)......

Can you tell he is my favorite? lolz

And the "piece de resistance" is the satanic altar by the front door............

To me, Ms. Minimalist Decorations Sluggy, this all is way over the top.
But hey, I know people who do this and more for Christmas decorating.
Why not Halloween if that floats your boat?!?

I have to admit it is fun.........as long as "I" don't have to put all this away on Nov. 1st. ;-)


I have done a pretty thorough paper trail/family tree genealogy on Cousin Sonya but I discovered something on this trip that makes me doubt if we are really related.

I may have to convince SA to take a dna test because I suspect there is some Greek blood in her somewhere that I haven't found in the family tree.

And just why do I suspect she's got some Greek in her?
Why this.......

A bottle of generic Windex.

This is Sonya's constant companion when she is home.  She if forever cleaning!  
Oh the horrors!!!

Every time I turned around she was squirting generic Windex on something or someone, just like Gus Portokalos.........

So now I have outed you Sonya.
Here's your sign.......

So back to the travelogue--
We left Thursday morning after a couple of photos to memorialize the day.
First Sonya tried to hide behind the cat.........

That's better.......

We waved goodbye and hit the road toward Southern Illinois.  We decided to take a more Southerly route back east to avoid the Indiana and Ohio Turnpike(and all those tolls).  We still had to pass through Illinois Toll Hell until we got past Chicagoland(and I already blogged about the clusterf**k of not having a tollbooth on some exits).

Here are the sights driving along the highway--
A Cubs billboard, right after they lost the title to the Mets.
I told Hubs(who is a diehard Mets fan)we really needed to get out of Chi-Town fast before someone found out he rooted against the Cubs.

Now you don't see billboards like this were I live.
$10 Tuesdays at the strip club......

We got behind a fleet of shiny new fire engines at one tollbooth going South to their new homes..

So we made good time traveling South and we had arranged to stop in Mattoon to see Hubs sister.
This is the same sister who we went out to see 2 Summers ago when she got married(not that that marriage "stuck").
We had lunch and I snapped this photo of them before we left town.........

Man was it hot for late October!  Look at this bank sign........

We had to drive through Charleston IL after our lunch date and right by the University.....the main building of which looks like a castle.......

I spied the King and Queen of the castle standing on the sidewalk outside.........wtf?
It couldn't have been Homecoming or something because it was a Thursday??

We drove until dark and stopped on the eastern edge of Indiana for the night.
Next morning we overslept and missed the free hot breakfast at the motel so we hit Taco Bell after filling the car and before hitting the highway.......

I had my first taco biscuit.  It was strange but tasty.

But I can't think of the word "biscuit" anymore without thinking of that Honey Boo Boo Show and Mama June's definition of a "biscuit".  *snort*


Our approach into Columbus......big buildings............

We stopped mid afternoon for a snack when we refilled the gas tank in the car.

1 little WC slider kept our tummies from rumbling until we stopped for dinner at a truck stop with a Denny's.

I was tempted by this t-shirt at the truck stop(after so long in a car for 2 days with Hubs ya know!).....

The scenery on the trip home through western and central PA was a bit more colorful that it had been on the trip out to IL......

We got home before dark after an uneventful 2 day drive home in which we didn't stop even one time to buy liquor.  Shocking I know!
Sometimes uneventful is GOOD. ;-)

It seems like it's been 6 months since we took this trip but it hasn't even been 2 months yet.
We had fun and enjoyed good company and I am ready to do it all again.
Thanks for hosting us Sonya and Den!  8-))

Sluggy

A Little More Rite-Aid

Getting some more gift cards today 2 Kohl's on son's wellness card and the rest on my card.  I had to go to the R-A downtown as my store was out of the Subway cards.

Earned $52 in Plenti Points(4 x $10 each Kohl's, $6 Subway, $6 Red Robin)on spending out of the Eating-Out and Clothing budget categories for 2016.

Then on son's card I got some TP and a bottle of shampoo to finish off earning $4 in points(the poo cost $4.15 so it's a .15¢ bottle of poo)......

After sale, coupons and Plenti points earned back each pack of TP "cost" .99¢.
I may have to go back Saturday and use my card to get 2 more packs at that price! ;-)

Then on my card I bought the free after points earned KickStart drinks and 5 Hr. Energy shots.......

$12 in points spent, $12 in points earned.
I need to regroup after this week is done to see where my Plenti points are with both cards as I have no clue right at this moment where things stand with that.  I've got something like $70 in points, I think?

And that's all I got today.
I've got to go work on some Salvation Army donations for Hubs to drop off tomorrow.
I have neglected taking things in to donate for a good part of the year and now it's crunch time to get this in under 2015 as December is about half over....yikes!

And I still need to start making tonight's dinner too.

Sluggy