Saving on groceries without tons of planning!

It's been quite a while since I've posted about saving money at the grocery store,
but I got such good deals yesterday that I wanted to share a quick post showing you how I saved!

This was no well-planned trip.
In fact, I just planned to run to the grocery real quick to pick up milk, toilet paper ...
you know, the things that you can't go without ;)

However, I decided to look over the sale ad before leaving & saw that there were some great deals
with the Mega Sale {buy 5, save $5}.
This is hands down, when I always get the best deals.

It's a rare occasion that I use manufacturer's coupons anymore.
We don't take the paper & I don't buy one on Sunday just for the coupons.
Truthfully, I just don't have the time to clip the coupons & plan out the trips like I used to.

What I do use are the ecoupons that I load onto my Kroger card!
There are always good ones & often times, they are picked for me based on what I buy.
Every now & then, I will get a package of coupons through the mail from Kroger,
but those don't come as often as they used to.
I think they are seeming to move towards the online coupons.

Today, I used a combo of three things to get these savings:

• ecoupons loaded to my Kroger card
• Kroger coupons that came through the mail
• coupons that printed out at the Kroger register

 

Now, I didn't plan on blogging about this, so it's not as put together as the big-time savings blogger.
It's just to show how I saved considerably with very minimal time spent.
And unfortunately, you most likely can't take advantage of every deal that I did,
because you may not have loaded the same ecoupons to your card
or have the same coupons that came by mail.
{Sorry about that.}

I can't share every single good deal, cause I had quite a few of them, but I'll show the best ones.

This one is my favorite, I think.

It was not part of the mega sale.

150 oz. Purex on sale for $7.99

- $3 off 2  ecoupon

- buy 2, get 1 free peeler coupon

$4.33 each 

Mega Sale Items {Buy 5, Save $5}

Great Lash mascara $2.49 close out price

- $1 mega sale came off

- $2 mail coupon

Free + $.51 overage

Loreal nail polish $2.49 close out price

- $1 mega sale came off

- $2 mail coupon

Free + $.51 overage 

{Being a close out item, these should not have gotten the $1 off mega sale discount.

I even asked at customer service to be sure, but for whatever reason, they still came up as part of the sale.}

Frizz-Ease $5.99

- $1 off mega sale

- $3 off 2 Kroger mail coupon

$3.49 each 

Oscar Meyer carving board lunch meat $3.49

- $1 off mega sale

- $.75 ecoupon

$1.74 

Oscar Meyer carving board lunch meat $3.49

- $1 off mega sale

- $2 ecoupon

$.49

Edy's ice cream $3.49

- $1 mega sale

- $1 ecoupon

- $1.50 register coupon

Free + .01 overage

Resolve $2.79

- $1 mega sale

- $.75 ecoupon

$1.04

Gevalia bagged coffee $6.99

- $1 mega sale

- $2.25 ecoupon

- $1.00 ecoupon

$2.74

Gevalia bagged coffee $6.99

- $1 mega sale

- $1.00 ecoupon

- $.50 ecoupon

$4.49

Freebie Friday items:

Kraft BBQ sauce

Snapple tea

I also had an ecoupon for $2 off produce.

Total savings:

coupons: $28.50

Kroger savings: $103.82

Now, remember those register coupons I mentioned above ... well, lucky me!

These printed out for me yesterday!

So, I think I'll run back up to Kroger in a bit to use these cause today is the last day of the mega sale.

The Old Orchard juice is $.99 & the Edy's is $2.49 {if you buy 5 items that are part of the sale}.

So, I'll buy 2 juices & 3 ice creams for $6.95!

The juices will be $.49 each & the ice cream will be $1.99.

And for one last big savings ... before I went grocery shopping yesterday, 

I redeemed 100 fuel points at the gas station saving $1 a gallon on gas!

All in all, I did pretty good today at Kroger!! =) 

*My tip for the best savings using ecoupons at Kroger: get on the site often.

I don't know the rhyme or reason as to when the new coupons are added,

but when they're gone, they're gone.

So check the site regularly & add any coupons that you think you may use.

 

Happy savings, everyone!

Who doesn't love a good party?!
You can find me here linking up with these great blogs.

Monday           Amaze Me Monday  The Dedicated House
                     I Should Be Mopping the Floor     The Hankful House     The Modest Mom
Tuesday        A Delightsome Life    A Bowl Full of Lemons  
                                    Titus Tuesday  A Stroll Through Life
Wednesday   Raising Homemakers        Savvy Southern Style      
                              The Thrifty Home   A Wise Woman Builds Her Home
Thursday    Between Naps on the Porch    Katherines Corner   Lamberts Lately
Friday      Rooted in Thyme  The Thrifty Groove   Farm Blog Hop  Best of the Nest
                                French Country Cottage  The Girl Creative
Sunday    Nifty Thrifty Things  Sew Many Ways

'A Get Outta Town Saturday' Trip to the Amish Store

Some Saturdays you just need to get outta town.
That was my sweet husband's theory this past Saturday anyway.
I hadn't left the house since Sunday, under the weather in more ways than one,
& he thought it may be good for us, in both body & spirit, to take a little road trip.

Boy, he was right.
We even stopped in to visit his parents since we were in their neck of woods,
but I'll get to that in a minute.
I'm getting the buggy ahead of the horse.
;)


Our first stop was at our favorite Amish grocery.
I've posted many times about our fondness of all things Amish & shared many pics,
so I didn't snap too many on this trip.
{Since I haven't been feeling well, I was concentrating most on holding on to my buggy.}

I could not pass up taking a picture of these delectable little local-grown strawberries!
I should've bought some too.

My sweet DIL, Abigail, & I have been talking a lot about flowers & such recently.
{Gunnar & she has been planting their flower & vegetable gardens & we've been down to help them
a time or two.}
She's loving succulents right now & didn't know about 'Hens & Chickens' ...
I had to take a picture of these to show her.
My dad always grew these.

One of our favorite things to buy from the Amish store, outside of food stuffs, are hanging baskets!
They are SO big & full ... & a fraction of the price of what we see around our house.
We planned ahead & took a sheet to cover our back seat so we could load it full.
It was end to end flowers.
This is only two of them cause I couldn't fit the one to the left in the shot.
We bought one for us & one for each of our girls.
{It's so fun having girls ... did I mention that?!}

Here is the basket that didn't fit in the above pic ... fitting perfectly on my porch.
Blooms for days!!

We bought some of our usuals ... meat & cheese, lemon bars, bread, and a cart full of other things.
In all the Amish stores we've ever been in, however, I've never seen Lemon Marmalade.
I had to get a jar of that.
I've not tried it yet, but I know it'll be scrumptious.

Our second stop was to the Warm Glow candle store.
In all the hundreds of times we've passed this place, we just now stopped in for the first time.

Such a neat store & how we got out of there without buying a candle, well, I just don't know.

Next door is a cute garden shop called The Watering Can.
We fell in love with the pavilion area.
How fun would this be to have on your property ...
to have parties, play corn hole, have big outdoor dinners?!
We decided that if we ever have a country home, we'll need one of these ;)

The ceiling was our favorite!

All this shopping worked up our appetite, so we headed to dinner.
Last year while antiquing along US Highway 40, we stopped in a brand new shop in Cambridge City
called the Silver Fox Antiques & Uniques.
It was their grand opening & I entered in a drawing ... & won!
So, we used the $25 gift card towards a delicious dinner at No.9 Grill.
It was our first time to eat there but we'll be sure to come back.

Wanna take a guess which meal belonged to James?

And the icing on the cake for the whole day was dropping in on James' parents.
We had such a good visit & so wish that we were able to do that more often.
If we lived closer, we would, that's for sure.
Sometimes you just need a hug from your mom & dad.
Ya know ...?

Not sure we'll have have another 'get outta town Saturday',
so I'll cherish the memories of this one until we do.

Who doesn't love a good party?!
You can find me here linking up with these great blogs.
Monday           Amaze Me Monday  The Dedicated House
                     I Should Be Mopping the Floor     The Hankful House     The Modest Mom
Tuesday        A Delightsome Life    A Bowl Full of Lemons   So Much At Home
                                    Titus Tuesday  A Stroll Through Life
Wednesday   Raising Homemakers        Savvy Southern Style      
                              The Thrifty Home   A Wise Woman Builds Her Home
Thursday    Between Naps on the Porch    Katherines Corner   Lamberts Lately
Friday      Rooted in Thyme  The Thrifty Groove   Farm Blog Hop  Best of the Nest
                                French Country Cottage  The Girl Creative
Sunday    Nifty Thrifty Things  Sew Many Ways

June Blooms

credit

In June

I saw a charming group

of roses all begin

to droop.

I pepped them up

with chicken soup!

Sprinkle once

sprinkle twice

sprinkle chicken soup

with rice.

a poem from one of my favorite authors

Chicken Soup with Rice ~ A Book of Months

by Maurice Sendak

I think the 'June' month in this delightful book is my favorite.

The mere thought of pepping up my little 'Knock Out' Rose bush
with chicken soup with rice makes me giggle.

Some of the blooms are fading, while others are in their prime.

 And the anticipation of all these little buds opening makes me happy.
This bush is loaded with them.

And if I decide to experiment with chicken soup as a fertilizer,
I'll let you know ;)

Ha - imagine the buzz that would create in Blogland & in Pinterestville.

Happy June 1st, everyone~

Shopping For The Garden

I can't remember the last time I went through the gardening area to look at something other than flowers.
I take care of that department ... and James takes care of the vegetable plants, etc.

However, we got a new Rural King recently & they have a delightful bunch of interesting plants!
I couldn't help but snap a few pictures of them -- such a wide variety.

A Citronella plant ... a Stevia plant ... how neat are these?

Cinnamon basil ... never knew there was such a thing.
There were maybe 5 or 6 different varieties of basil!
We bought the sweet basil plant.

And the lemon balm smelled perfectly lemony.

We went through smelling every other plant ;)

I could've gone on & on snapping pics of plants I'd never seen before.
By the time we were done, we were wishing our garden was a bit bigger.

We made our purchases & put them in the raised bed garden as soon as we got home.
(Gunnar built it two years ago -- take a look at it if you haven't before.)

Here's the little sweet basil.
It's ganna be delicious in something Italian.

All done.
We've got it chock full ... maybe too full.
Along the back side of the bed, we planted our tomato plants in containers
& we planted a couple cucumber plants under the tree.
That was an experiment, so we'll see how it goes.

You can see the bunch of chives in the above pic.

We planted those two years ago.

I cut off a whole mess of those & soaked them in a bowl of ice water to clean them.

I let them dry on a kitchen towel, chopped them a bit finer & bagged them up ...

one for us & one each for our married children.

We've been enjoying these chives in salads & potato dishes.

 

And this lovely bouquet of flowers, well, these are from the chives too!
The lavender blooms are actually edible too, but we never have.

And lastly, this adorable bunch of flowers are been sitting in my window sill too, waiting to be planted.

These were a gift from my sweet young friend, Hannah, as a Mother's Day prize.

Aren't they so fun?

We are looking forward to all our vegetable plants taking off ... and it'll be good eating soon.

Nothing like fresh, homegrown garden food.

All the flowers in the front garden, along with the pots & containers in the back have been planted too.

I'll show you those tomorrow.

Take care, sweet friends~

Who doesn't love a good party?!
You can find me here linking up with these great blogs.
Monday           Amaze Me Monday  The Dedicated House
                     I Should Be Mopping the Floor     The Hankful House     The Modest Mom
Tuesday        A Delightsome Life    A Bowl Full of Lemons   So Much At Home
                                    Titus Tuesday  A Stroll Through Life
Wednesday   Raising Homemakers        Savvy Southern Style      
                              The Thrifty Home   A Wise Woman Builds Her Home
Thursday    Between Naps on the Porch    Katherines Corner   Lamberts Lately
Friday      Rooted in Thyme  The Thrifty Groove   Farm Blog Hop  Best of the Nest
                                French Country Cottage  The Girl Creative
Sunday    Nifty Thrifty Things  Sew Many Ways

Something About Sunflowers

I LOVE sunflowers

A contrast between delicate
and strong

A variety of components
all working together to make
something beautifully unique

A name perfectly suited ...
a ray flower with each petal
ensconcing the center

A yellow flower that looks amazingly
similar to the 'sun' I drew
when I was a little girl







And another point of symbolism with this majestic flower ...
it's one of the rare ones that looks as gorgeous when it's dying
as it does when it's full of life.


Sounds a bit like a life lesson to me ...

The petals are closing in, signs that the days of living are almost gone.

Yet they still stand ... gorgeous, strong & tall.

Thank you, Gunnar & Abigail, for blessing me on Mother's Day.

Who doesn't love a good party?!
You can find me here linking up with these great blogs.
Monday           Amaze Me Monday  The Dedicated House
                     I Should Be Mopping the Floor     The Hankful House     The Modest Mom
Tuesday        A Delightsome Life    A Bowl Full of Lemons   So Much At Home
                                    Titus Tuesday  A Stroll Through Life
Wednesday   Raising Homemakers        Savvy Southern Style      
                              The Thrifty Home   A Wise Woman Builds Her Home
Thursday    Between Naps on the Porch    Katherines Corner   Lamberts Lately
Friday      Rooted in Thyme  The Thrifty Groove   Farm Blog Hop  Best of the Nest
                                French Country Cottage  The Girl Creative
Sunday    Nifty Thrifty Things  Sew Many Ways

White Hot Baked Cheese Dip

Hello there, sweet friends!
Hope this finds all of you doing well & enjoying the spring season!
We've had a bit of a cold snap here in Indiana ... in fact, I made a big pot of chili last night to warm us up!
It'll be back up into the 80s by the weekend though, so I'm enjoying this cooler weather while it's here.

I can hardly believe that it's already Memorial Weekend!
Goodness gracious = Time, slow down!
Our major plan for this holiday weekend, we'll be starting on a big project here at home.
We're getting a hardwood floor in the living room!
James will be doing the installation & I'll be sure to show before & after pics.

 

I've wanted to share this recipe on here for a while now & thought this would be the perfect time.
You may need a new dish to make over Memorial weekend ... maybe for a pitch-in
or to just enjoy around the house as you are doing your weekend activities.

We LOVE this dip cause it's super cheesy & we are cheese lovers around here.
And it's so easy & quick ... you can have it stirred together & in the oven in just a few minutes.

Hot White Baked Cheese Dip

2   8 ounce packages cream cheese

1/2 cup of chopped onions

1 Tbsp. garlic powder

1/2 cup of mayonnaise

1   16 ounce package of shredded Monterrey jack cheese

1   16 ounce package of shredded Parmesan cheese 

Bake at 400 for 20 minutes.

Bring cream cheese to room temp or zap in the microwave for 30 seconds to soften.
Stir in onions, garlic salt, & mayo.
Lastly, add in all the shredded cheeses & mix together.
Put mixture in a baking dish coated with cooking spray.

Bake at 400 for 20 minutes or until browned & bubbly around the edges.
Serve with tortilla chips.

 James loves burnt cheese so he likes the part that's all browned on top.

I've taken this to our church fellowship meal several times & it's always gobbled up in no time.
Hope it's a hit for you too!

Happy Memorial Day to all <3

Who doesn't love a good party?!
You can find me here linking up with these great blogs.
Monday           C.R.A.F.T    Amaze Me Monday  The Dedicated House
                     I Should Be Mopping the Floor     The Hankful House     The Modest Mom
Tuesday        A Delightsome Life    A Bowl Full of Lemons   So Much At Home
                                    Titus Tuesday  A Stroll Through Life
Wednesday   Raising Homemakers        Savvy Southern Style         Adorned From Above
                              The Thrifty Home   A Wise Woman Builds Her Home
Thursday    Between Naps on the Porch   Serving Joyfully    Katherines Corner   Lamberts Lately
Friday      Rooted in Thyme  The Thrifty Groove   Farm Blog Hop  Best of the Nest
                                French Country Cottage  The Girl Creative
Sunday    Nifty Thrifty Things  Sew Many Ways