Target Freebies!

Using some coupons that expire today and Cartwheel discounts that came out on Friday I had Hubs take me to Target this morning.

Here is what I brought home.....

2 x Head & Shoulders shampoo reg. $4.99=$9.98
2 x Bic Silky Touch razor packs reg. $2.97=$5.94
SubTotal.......$15.92

Used Spend $15 bath/body/shave/etc. toiletries Get $5 Target gift card Mobile Q
Used 1 x $4/2 Head & Shoulders ManuQ=$4.00
Used 2 x $2/1 Bic razor ManuQ=$4.00
Apply 30% off Head & Shoulders Cartwheel Discount=$3.00

Total Discounts=$11.00

$15.92-$11.00=$4.08
I used a free Target $5 gift card to pay and it now has .08¢ remaining on that one.
Received a new free Target $5 gift card.

4 free items and this is a .08¢ moneymaker.

I'll tell y'all all about my second Rite-Aid trip tomorrow.  Oh boy, you won't want to miss that! lolz


Sluggy

September To-Do List......Update

Here's the update on my September To-Do List.  I post a To-Do list on the side bar of my blog's homepage every month.
Let's see how ol' Sluggy did this month on her list, shall we? ;-)

This Update has to be reconstsructed as I blew away my To-Do List before copying it to post my October list. sigh
I hope I remember most of it.

* Pay Bills  DONE  
Everything got paid and on time, as per usual.

* Bike Something  FAIL  
Well I did do 4 mile. lolz  Must get back on this in October.

* Read 2 Books  DONE
Finished the first book, "Growing Up" by Russell Baker, then Lena Dunham's "Not That Kind of Girl" second and resumed a biography of Katherine Anne Porter by Joy Givner(which is slow going and massive in length).

* Pick Produce and Use it  DONE  We hit 39.775 lbs. of tomatoes picked and used by September, among them this interesting little fellow. lol

I've frozen all the tomatoes we haven't eaten fresh or used in the relish making.
Since I didn't get a massive amount of tomatoes to can I've been putting them whole into the freezer........

This is a super great way to keep them for the short term until you are ready to use them.
Don't boil and peel, just pop them after cleaning off into the freezer.
Then you take them out to thaw when you have enough to make sauce or use in a recipe.  When they have thawed they slip easily out of their skins, just squeeze them out. You might have to cut the core out with a small knife after squeezing but it beats heating water and your kitchen up, boiling them to skin them.  Less energy used if you have the freezer space to park them for awhile.  8-)

* Get Farm Veggies  DONE  I even ended up picking most of the peppers myself when I stumbled onto a PYO farm down the road from the Farm Stand I go to.

* Can Produce/Make Relish  DONE

5 quarts and 18 pints done!  I had picked so many peppers I could have made/canned another batch(if not another double batch).  This is just too much work to do alone anymore so I don't know if/when I'll make relish again.  Next year I do want to get to that PYO farm in time to pick tomatoes to put up.

* 1 Doctor's Appointment  DONE
Went to a medical nutritionist type educator as directed by my new dr.  Diet changes will be ensuing shortly.

* Go to Family Reunion  DONE
Yep, we went and came home.  The weather was good and as a bonus I got to spend time with my oldest son too.  Win/Win!  We are finished traveling in 2016 now.  Hubs has time off in October but between things going on plus money issues(I just can't see spending any more on travel this year with our increased expenses this year).  We may go on a few day trips in October and there may be a quickie during the Holidays to Virginia but that is it for the year.

*  List items on eBay FAIL
I didn't get around to doing this yet.  If it's going to happen it must happen in October to catch the Holiday Selling Season as most of what I have left to unload is new in the package merchandise.

* Shred Papers  FAIL
I just didn't get the time to drag out the shredding and do this.  Mostly because the pile of shredding isn't very large yet so why drag all that out and do it? lolz

* Sew Something  FAIL
Nope didn't have the urge to sew in August.  Perhaps September will see me pull out the supplies and have a go at making a shirt.  I really need to.....

4 items I didn't get to.  It was another low energy month for me(plus it was still hot here which is unusual)plus I've been fighting a touch of depression which I always seem to catch this time of year.

Onward and upward to October!  I am still compiling a To-Do List for this month so it may grow a bit longer as we go through October.

How did you do with your To-Do list for September?

Sluggy

Garden & Yard Update......Still Producing!

Even though it's a week into October with our unseasonably warm weather so far this Fall, my garden is still in production mode.
The plants are looking long in the tooth now and things are winding down but I've still got tomatoes growing out there......

You can see some pops of red and there are quite a few green fruits still on the plants.

Next week won't climb out of the 60's and Monday night we will be flirting with temps in the 30's so I think we'll be taking down the netting and pulling up the plants on Sunday.  I'll either pick all the maters or hang the plants upside down on our front porch until the last of the green ones ripen.

I made my first fried green tomatoes this past week and for some reason they just didn't seem sweet enough.  Maybe it's the variety of tomatoes I grew or something in the soil but they just aren't that awesome to be prepared that way.  

I could always buy more peppers and use the green maters left in a small batch of my pepper relish but I don't think I am up to that ordeal again.  Pickled green tomatoes instead?......maybe.  Or I can just wait them out until they turn red and eat them fresh.
So many decisions........lolz

The progression of tomato color. (And no, that Keurig on the counter does NOT belong to me!)


Anyway, since my last update on September 22nd I've picked 46.40 more ounces(2.9 lbs.)of tomatoes for use in meals here.
This brings my Total Harvest to 682.80 ounces or 42.675 pounds of produce for 2016.

Not bad for a haphazard effort and we've still got tomatoes left to pick and use.

As for my Morning Glories..........

Still blooming as of this morning but the plants are looking a bit rattier.  I'd give them another week and they'll be dying back and by US Thanksgiving I'll be able to harvest a butt ton of seed pods.
Let me know if you want some free morning glory seeds.  8-)

And this is laying in the backyard too since Sunday evening, when some moderate wind passed through the area........

A view from an upstairs window before Hubs moved if off of our fire ring.....

That baby's 20+ feet long and had we been having a fire that night it might have fallen on us!

We need to go out this weekend and inspect all our trees and see if there are any other dead branches that we need to pay someone to have taken down before Winter sets in.
Kaching goes the money out my wallet again........sigh

In other yard news, these flowers/plants I planted in the front flower bed the last Summer before the current one reseeded themselves and we still have colorful stuff going on there.

I don't know what they are called but if you don't disturb/pull out the dead plants in the Fall and don't remulch the following growing season they will reseed.
Yes, we never got around to remulching and making the flower bed pretty this growing season.  Heck I stopped weeding it by the end of July so it's just a hot mess.
Hey, don't judge.......

Another free plant next to the retaining wall.

So what's happening in your yard/garden now?

Sluggy

My Food Spending/Tracking Method

Reader Linda asked earlier this week in a comment my method of keeping track of my food budget spending so I am here to reveal my secrets.
Secrets, riiiiiight!

Nothing hi-tech here as you can see.
Here is my secret weapon......

A good old notebook.
It sits on the bookshelf by my desk.

When I get home from the store my receipt(s) go into this notebook.........

I put all grocery/food/toiletries spending receipts in the front cover of said notebook.
When a new month rolls around and I get receipts, those receipts go into the back cover, and at some point in that next month, I purge the last month's receipts out of the front cover when I am done calculating or sending for refunds/rebates in which I need those ones.
And the process starts all over again.

The secret is to have a place to gather all your shopping receipts so you don't misplace them.  You aren't always going to have the time to immediately record your receipts(or the energy after putting all your spoils away).  When you can't get to it right away, have the receipts somewhere handy you can access them when you do have the time to record them.

When you are ready to record your spending, pull out your receipt(s) and do so.
I use a new page each month(and any overflow if I have a lot of shopping trips that month go onto the facing page.
I put the month at the top of the page, then list the date of each trip and which store I shopped at.
Across the page goes my OOP spending, the reg. retail value of that trip, how much $ was saved and then if I am not rushed for time(and feel like it)I calculate out the percentage of savings for the trip.
The only other tools you need are a pen or pencil and a calculator. 8-)

At the end of a week I will add up the columns to get a weekly Total of my spending/savings.  Then(if it isn't the first week)I pull forward the spending total to do a Month To Date entry so I can keep an eye on how much has been spent so far that month and how much I have left in the budget.

By the end of the month there is a lot of writing on those pages as you can see from the photo of the September 2016 pages.

When the month has finished I add up all my individual stores entries and get subtotals of how much was spent/saved/% at each store and then what was spent/save/% overall for the month.
From this information I can do my monthly spending total post as well as update my Food/Toiletries webpage for the year(accessed from the top tab on the site).

It's important to know how much you spend, period.  Sure, not everyone wants this much detail so do what works for you.

It's not rocket science.  Just get a system down that works for you and track that spending!

Sluggy

Rite-Aid Trip.....Cheap M&M's and Free Movie Code

Ok, so I didn't need to go to Rite-Aid this week but I went and bought this stuff here........

4 x M&M's on sale $3 each=$12.00
I used 2 x $1.50/2 IPQs(coupons dotcom)which brought the total to $9.00
I used $9 in Plenti Points to pay and earned $6 in new Plenti Points($3 wyb $10 on select Food Items Deals and $3 wyb $10 on select  Halloween Candy Items Deal).
The M&M's double dip for two different deals this week.

I also made sure to grab bags with the FREE MOVIE OFFER packaging.

After submitting a photo of the receipt I'll be sent a movie code to redeem for 1 Movie Ticket(value up to $12).

So I got 4 bags of M&M's and a movie ticket for spending down $3 in Plenti Points(each item received "cost" me .60¢ in points used).

The M&M's will go into cooking baking or gifting for the Holidays and the Movie Ticket will go into the Christmas stash.  8-)

I might go back and buy another 3 bags of candy, use another $1.50/2, paying $7.50 in Plenti points and earning another $6 in new Points for hitting at least $10 spent again on both the Food and Halloween Deals.($9 more spent plus my $2 carried over from my last purchase gets me over $10 again.)

Now it's like paying .56¢ for each of the 8 items received(7 candy, 1 movie).

Unfortunately there is a limit of 1 free Movie Offer per household so I can't get another movie ticket if I do this Deal again.

So far the regular, peanut and peanut butter M&M's are reported working for both the $3 Food and $3 Halloween Deals and double dip for Plenti points.

So I'll buy 7 bags total of M&M's for $21.
Use 3 x $1.50/2 M&M's IPQ.
$21-$4.50=$16.50
Get back $12 in new Plenti Points $16.50-$12.00=$4.50 OOP after points earned.

$4.50 for 7 bags of candy and 1 movie ticket.
An awesome deal if you can use this stuff.

Sluggy