Rite-Aid, After Christmas, Groceries and Frugal Hacks This Week

Back to Rite-Aid to finish off my buying for the week.

2 x Bic pens/pencils on sale=$2.00
5 x Nestle bottle water on sale 2/$6.50=$16.25 *not pictured*
1 x Dove men's shampoo on sale=$3.99
SubTotal........$22.24

Coupons Used
2 x $1/1 Bic writing item ManuQ=$2.00
1 x $2/1 Dove men's shampoo ManuQ=$2.00
Coupon Total......$4.00

$22.24-$4=$18.24 using Plenti points.
I earned $15 in new Plenti points($5 wyb $15 water Deal, $10 wyb $30 Bonus Deal #2 completed).
$18.24-$15 new points means I spent "down" $3.24 on my Plenti points on this transaction.

But......take that off the $31.27 I am "up" in points from earlier this week and I end here being $28.03 "up" in points.

Then I went back for this stuff........

4 x assorted dry spray deodorants on sale $5.49=$21.96
1 x Suave green bottle shampoo on sale=$2.49
SubTotal.....$24.45

I forgot to hand over my coupons before the cashier finished the transaction but $6.50 in Load2Card Qs came off.
$224.45-$6.50=$17.95+$1.08 tax=$19.03 using Plenti Points.

Even though I did the Unilvever products Deal(Spend $12/Get $4 PPs)x 2 this week I forgot that even though the dry spray deos are NOT Starting Point items and don't count toward the Bonus $10 Deals this week, they ARE giving $2 in PPs all month(limit 4 deals per card)as they are a "Buy Rite" item.
And they are at the lowest sale price in the month THIS Week so it was worth getting them now as opposed to later in January.

After paying with Plenti points, I got cash back for the $9.00 in Qs I had.
AND....I'll get $7 in Saving Star cash rebates for buying all 5 products(Dove men's deo $2, Suave 'Poo .50¢, 2 x $1.50 Degree deos, $1.50 Dove women's deo).

Spend $19.03 in PPs, get $8 in new PPs and $16 in cash for rebates/coupons making this a $4.97 "moneymaker".

Add this to the $28.03 "moneymaker"for the week that I had going into this transaction and I "made" $33.00 plus I got all the goodies I bought at Rite-Aid this week for FREE!

If it seems like I did a lot of shopping this week between After Christmas sales, grocery deals and Rite-Aid you are correct! lolz

As for the "regular" grocery store spending front this week, here are the highlights.......

Applegate natural hot dogs with sale and instant meat discount stickers 3 x $2 a package.
OJ with sale/coupon 2 x $2 a carton.
3.49 lb. of Italian sausage @$3.99 lb. marked down to $6.18 and with a $3 off instant discount sticker making it $3.18 or .91¢ per lb!  8-)))
5 x 6 packs of Diet Pepsi bottles for $9 after sale/Q.
2 x Blue Diamond almond tins for $2 per can after sale/stacked Qs.
2 x Arnold's bread for $2.99 for both after BOGO and $1 Q.
20 x Musselman's applesauce packs.........

Weis had this item on special this past sales ad(ended Wednesday) for $1.37.
Sunday's inserts had $1/2 reg. packs adn $1/2 big cup packs.  I had 5 sets of inserts so 10 Qs to use so I got 10 of each variety.

Hubs goes through a lot of applesauce cups in his workday lunches through out the year.
Usually these go on sale for $2 each around here so why not take advantage of the better sale price and stock up?
So I paid $17.40 for all these.

I also found in my coupon file a rebate on this item good through 3/31/16.

Buy 20 packs and send in the qualifiers to receive a $10 gift card to one of the listed stores/restaurants.
So I'll get a $10 Best Buy gift card for buying all these to tuck away for next Christmas's gift giving.

I also received these in the mail this week......

6 x certificates for free 12 packs of Coke products.  Over the Holidays I was able to snag 6 of these for a mere 30 Coke points each by checking their site periodically.(I also got a $10 Amazon gift code for cheap too.) This reward usually "costs" 275 points other times during the year.
I have until the end of March to cash these in but I'll wait for either a BOGO sale or a reward of some kind(drugstore points)to surface to turn these into product.  Why not make the savings go even further, right?

Added all up and it sure seems l went through some cash this week but I am not worried since I don't spend like a drunken sailor on shore leave.....albeit a frugal drunken sailor on shore leave, most of the year.
I figure it's better to spend what appears to be lots of $ now which will save me spending more $ later in the year.

Sluggy

Look What I Did Now

While out and about hauling in the After Christmas Deals I went into CVS, some place I hardly EVER go into anymore.

And this stuff followed me home..............

When you purchase $15 in select Gold Emblem/Abound snacks/nuts this week you earn a $5 Extra Bucks Reward.
I happened to print off some CVS Qs for these items before I went and all 6 items were also on sale(not all that qualify for this offer are on sale).

$15.96 before Qs, $4 off w/Qs  made this $11.96 OOP.

$5 ECB back.
Now I just have to make sure I remember to go back to CVS before this expires to roll/use it.
All but the crackers are for College Boy to take back to school as part of his "snack/alternate meal 'because the dining hall food is inedible tonight' stash".  ;-)

I have spent quite a bit this week restocking College Boy with goodies for next semester and it's all coming out of the $100 I put aside of the $300 food budget this month for that use.

Frankly I don't care to be playing more than one Drugstore Game at the time and I will be bowing out of CVS-ing again as soon as I can.  I just wanted to reacquaint myself with CVS again since my beloved Rite-Aids will be becoming Walgreens later this year and I don't see a future for us together when this comes to pass.  8-(

Sluggy

The After Christmas Haul....Mostly Rite-Aid

Once we got back to PA I spent a goodly amount of time earlier this week hitting all the after Christmas sales.
Well not ALL of them, just the ones at Rite-Aid(3 different stores), 1 Walmart(since I was driving by it and the parking lot wasn't a ZOO!)and 1 Weis(PMITA)Markets near that Walmart.

Here is my haul from Rite-Aid.......

The 3 shops at Rite-Aids included cologne set and women's bath set, some large metal jingle bells(for a wreath I plan on making next Christmas), 2 gift boxes of chocolates, 4 boxes of chocolate covered cherries, 1 Terry Chocolate Orange, 2 huge peppermint sticks, a Megasized 1 lb. York peppermint patty, 2 pair of Holiday toe socks, a large bag of Kisses, 4 bags of Snickers, 6 bags of PB M&Ms, 2 bags of Reese cups, 2 bags of RS coconut Santas, a snowman tin of cocoa mix, a box of peeps with a Santa Peep stuffed ornament/toy, 2 boxes of Andes mints, 3 pine candles and 1 pine air spray.
All this stuff---the cologne, bath set, peeps, York pp patty,  chocie Orange, Andes mints, 2 boxes of chocolates, socks and peppermint sticks are destined for gift giving either next Christmas or for February and April birthdays/Valentine's/Easter during this coming year.
The kisses are to make my bourbon fudge next Christmas, the PB M&M's and Snickers are destined for cookie baking.  Hershey's kisses and m&ms keep like forever it put in a cool place during the Summer. 8-)
The chocolate covered cherries are all mine however! ;-)

Also from Rite-Aid(that I couldn't fit in the photo above)I bought 3 large cinnamon candles(for burning next Fall) and assorted Christmas cards(as we were on our last 2 boxes this year).
And not pictured was one of those big decorative popcorn tins I got for College Boy to munch on until he goes back to school.

Everything was 75% off.
I keep these purchases separate from my regular Rite-Aid shopping and pay cash.
All this cost me $65.89 OOP w/tax.

The rookies descend on the sale goodies at 50% off but I wait until things go down to 75% off. 8-)

At the Walmart I stopped into I got all this for $17.48 w/tax.  The gingerbread marshmallows(most excellent in hot cocoa!)were .50¢ a bag, the peppermint M&M's(I will use for next Christmas baking)were .72¢, the mincemeat was $2.50 a jar(Hubs adores mincemeat pie and I owe him a couple of pies!), the nut tin was $4 and the nut brittle was $3.50.  The gift box was $2.47.

I don't usually splurge on $4 tins of nuts but I figured whattheheck this year! ;-)

Also picked up at Weis(PMITA)Markets was this oversized mug for $1.24(gift stash)......

3 rolls of Star Wars paper for .75¢ per roll,  Rudolph ring pops(.32¢ each)for stocking stuffers next Christmas and 2 boxes of Russell Stover's Pecan Delights for $2.49 each.  The pecan delights weren't Christmas clearance but this Weis was discontinuing to carry this variety of RS so they were 75% off.

My Valentine's Day and Easter candy spending is done!  Woot!!

Total spent at Weis.....$9.97 w/tax.

So the Christmas 2016 spending has already begun!

8 Christmas gifts already checked off my list now.

I'll keep my receipts for all this stuff separated so that when the Holidays roll around again I can add what I spent here for the Holidays to what I spend for the Holidays later this year.

Only 351 more days until Christmas......

Sluggy

Christmas Time & Beyond in Pictures

Our Christmas in pictures......

Christmas Eve Day we saw this wine bottle tree outside of the beer making supplies store....very clever.  You can't see it well but it had lights rigged up inside the bottles for nighttime veiwing.

While the Santa box and Santa bear and Santa snow globe kept watch over the house, we had out traditional Christmas Eve meal at the local Chinese Restaurant.........

Then it was back home and off to bed to await a visit from the jolly old elf himself!

Santa came!

 Hubs gets a thrift store mug with his home state on it!

Nothing says Christmas like Transformers wrapping paper that is 8 years old. lol

I got me a fancy Vera Bradley wallet to hold my vast amounts of cash.....yeah, right!

Some one left a comment on the blog about showing off a photo of my nativity set that I just rediscovered in the basement after I got it set up.
It doesn't photograph well but here it is.
It's glazed ceramic.  The color is called Royal Copenhagen.

Christmas day we had a nice prime rib dinner with the brother in-law and nephew then exchanged gifts that evening.
It was so warm we had to open windows....crazy weather!

I spent the day after Christmas making this gift to give my sister in-law.

It's a crepe paper snowball.  You use an entire roll of it to wrap the present and then watch the recipient be tortured by having to unroll it all to get at the gift.


I saw this idea online and thought it would be fun to do.
More on this later.

On Sunday we were off to Virginia!

This was the car's dashboard temperature around about the time we hit Maryland.  December 27th and 72F?  Nuts I tell ya'!

We stopped for gas at the Virginia/Maryland border.
$1.89?
Coming from the land $2.39 a gallon this was a good kind of nuts. lolz

A sign at the gas station.....welcome to the South.

And if you have any doubts where you were now, here is a replica of a Confederate ironclad ship at the gas station too. lolz

About dusk saw us crossing the Chesapeake Bay to Virginia Beach.

Oh how I miss living near the water..........

After dinner at my brother's house we settled in for a visit and exchanged gifts.
Here's my sister in-law unwrapping one of her gifts, that snowball......


The next night I took us out for barbecue to the Beach.

Me and the Santa pigs in a heavy rain.

I bought a Groupon for the restaurant and we got this FAMILY FEAST for $25!  Drinks and taxes set us back another $14.00  My brother covered the tip.......

Good food and good company and we even took leftovers back to the house!

They drove us by this house in their neighborhood that they thought I'd like.

The whole yard was done in purple lights!

There was one pink reindeer amid it all.  It was stunning in person, not so much in photos.

We went to the big ass liquor store the next day so Hubs could buy some goodies for himself.

Oh, if they had only made this wine when my kids were little...."Mommy's Time Out".lolz

And the weather got even crazier....

It actually got a few more degrees warmer that day.
Crazy talk for December 29th, even in Virginia!!

The next morning we hit the road toward Fredericksburg.  It was quite foggy once we got to Hampton/the Peninsula.

We got off the interstate to get lunch at Pierce's BBQ and made a wrong turn, ending up at the old entrance to "The Pottery" as we have always called it.

No photos from lunch as Pierce's was an absolute ZOO instead.  It was so bad a couple actually ate their lunch outside on an umbrella shaded picnic table in the pouring rain!!   Must have been some soggy ass Q!  lolz

We went to our son's apartment and then accompanied him grocery shopping and to his big ass liquor store where Hubs bought more goodies.

Then we checked into our hotel and went out to dinner, our son's treat.
I had a Long Island Iced Tea with dinner and they had to pour me back into the car. lolz
Then back to son's apartment to chat until his GF got off work and then we exchanged gifts.

Back to the hotel to get a little sleep.

Breakfast and a swim were the first order of business on New Year's Eve day.

Then we were off to downtown F'burg for lunch.

Pretzel as big as your head and really REALLY good pimento cheese spread with baguette......mmmm

And I didn't even drink there!  No, really I didn't......the menfolk did imbibe however.

The GF looking thrilled here to be having her photo taken, doesn't she? lolz

Group photo outside went much better.....

Back to the hotel for a nap and then eldest son came over to swim too.

We reconvened at dinner time for a corned beef feast cooked by eldest son and we watched a movie until the GF got back from work at 11:30pm.
We had some champagne toasts and ushered in the New Year......

All under the watchful gaze of the Grandkitty......

The next morning it was back on the road to PA.......

A late lunch/early dinner stop in Carlisle and then we headed home.  The last hour of driving was dicey as the snow was falling in fits and bursts.  We could have done without that.

And that is how we closed out the Holidays.

Sluggy