Friday Favorite

I have caught the couponing fever, my friends. I'm a regular reader of Kristen C.'s blog (see link on the side) and she has been avidly couponing and CVS-ing since January. I was totally blown away (and initially confused and overwhelmed) by how much money she saves each week - especially at CVS. I am no good at explaining things, and I'm certainly not one to provide a tutorial for others. But you can buy your groceries (especially cleaning and paper products) for close to free at CVS when you get everything set up, do a little planning, and follow through. I'm totally a believer now.

So my favorite thing for this Friday is SAVING MONEY (and who doesn't like doing that??). I didn't take a picture of all the stuff I got this week (Kristen usually does this and it's so cool to see what all she got for so little OOT - Out Of Pocket), but I am going to make a list, which isn't as great, but I'll try to remember to take pictures next time.

This week at CVS for right at $9 I got:

*2 boxes of cereal
*2 containers of Cascade dishwasher soap
*2 bottles of Febreeze fabric spray
*3 cans of Pringles
*2 tins of Icebreakers mints
*2 bottles of nail glue
*1 container of Dawn dish/hand soap
*10 picture prints from Bennett's 1 year birthday party (I'm WAY behind on scrapbooking)
Plus I have $5 Extra Care Bucks (kind of like a gift card) to use on my next purchase (so essentially it's like I spent $4 on the above items, since I also got $5 back, and to put things in perspective at how good of a deal this truly is, that's how much you'd spend for just 1 bottle of Febreeze alone).

Like I said, I'm not good at explaining things, but if you go to my link that says "Coupons" on the side, it'll take you to a blog called Money Saving Mom, and on her blog is a link that says "CVS 101" and it can explain why CVS is so amazing and how to use it.

All in all, I will be spending right under $50 for ALL of my groceries this week, INCLUDING a 92 pack of diapers for Bennett (at Target) and the CVS purchases mentioned above. The remaining groceries will come from Wal-mart, where I'll use a few coupons I clipped from the newspaper on Sunday. Not too shabby if you ask me. And this is only my 2nd week to do it all, so I fully expect I'll get better and better and save even more money as time goes by.

If you are interested in this stuff at all, let me know and we can chat about it in person. As I said before, I am no good at explaining this kind of stuff via blog.


Still to come:

1. The requested picture of my modeling debut on our new couch...(no, I haven't forgotten, and aren't you glad?)

2. Pictures of Benito's chair that my mom and I have been re-covering to match his room (bought it for $10 at a consignment shop - sweet deal.)