I can't believe how fast the days go. Everyday I have good intentions to write something down and everyday at the end of the day I realize that I didn't do it.

It has been a fun week of learning about the coupon world and all the different ins and outs. Last week was a good week to start since so much was going on. The experience was like being thrown into a cold pond, getting the wind knocked out of you because of the cold, and swimming furiously just to get warm again. This week has been a little slower since there we're any double coupons.

I understand from the underworld though that next week is the big post cereal sale and it is like a madhouse at the store. I have heard talk of people with bigger families stocking up on 50 to 100 boxes of one cereal. If I did that Chris and I would be eating cereal for the next couple of years morning, noon, and night and then we would start looking like a box of cereal.

Since this is just the beginning of my adventures in Couponville I didn't have any post cereal coupons so I went to eBay and bought some. It was quite the new experience for me. Of course I sell on eBay all of the time and think I know my way around, but buying on eBay is quite a different story. The coupons I really wanted were gone between the time I saw them and the time I bid on them. All I can say is it is a crazy world out there.

If you are wondering about buying coupons on eBay I can give you the limited knowledge that I have. Apparently there are people out there that get 100's of coupon inserts and they spend their time going through the inserts and clipping out the coupons. Then they separate them like 10 and 20 coupons per group and sell them to you in a group on eBay. Let me clarify for you that they aren't selling the coupons since that is illegal, but they can request money for the time they spent clipping out the coupons and the money for shipping them to you. Which I am sure is a little higher than what they will pay.

This week in my shopping adventures I got some pretty good deals. Even though my freezer was full of Smart ones from the week before I got some Healthy Choice dinners and some Bagel Bites packages that were on sale. When I used my Chill coupon from a prior purchase to pay the bagel bites were free and the dinners came in around .11 each. I also got four Campbells soups in the microwavable packaging. For the soup they were $1 each and I had a coupon to get $1 off of four. That made the soups to be .75 cents per can. The cans I got had two servings in them so they are just perfect for Chris and I to eat at one meal.

I was just looking on the reciepts I got yesterday. I bought Healthy Choice dinners (16), Bagel Bites (4), Kellogs cereal (8), microwave Campbell soups
(8), Cream of Mushroom and Cream of Chicken soup (8), and Old Orchard frozen juice
(60) all for $19.85. (Sorry I didn't take any pictures this week) If you add in the tax for what I bought it came to a total of $26.83 that I paid out of pocket. It is so sad when the tax you are paying on all of the items is more than what you paid for the groceries themselves. It would have been a little less since I forgot to give the checker some coupons (I wasn't as organized when separating the coupons as last week) and also I chose not to use some of my chill coupons, but to keep them to use next week. Since the catalina will roll over into next week I still have $20 in chill coupons to use. I am liking this more and more.

I know what I am doing in the store(sometimes) and it is easier to keep track, but when I get home and look at the reciepts it makes my head spin. It is a good learning experience for me and it is keeping my brain a little sharper since I have to use some gray cells to be able to figure out what is the best deal. Signing off for now, but we'll be back later.