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.

I can't believe how fast the time has gone. I missed posting anything yesterday since I spent all my time going to Albertsons to get a grip on how the coupon system works. I think I have it down at least for now until next week when it becomes a whole new adventure.

Some of the deals I made yesterday were quite good and some were even great. Luckily I have an Albertsons just around the corner and it is fast and easy to get to if I hear of any other good deals.

I got 4 boxes of Cocoa puffs for 77 cents each, lots of cans of Bumble Bee tuna for 09 cents a can, 5 Betty Crocker fruit snacks for 10 cents each (these are for the grandkids), two boxes of Strawberry Mini Wheats for $2.24 per box (a treat cereal for Chris), 4 four packs of yogurt for $1.00 each, and the best deal of all I got 10 Old Orchard Apple Juice products for 99 cents each.

I had two $1.00 off coupons for four cans of juice and I was able to double those coupons. This was part of the chill promotion and so when all is said and done I will have made $4.10 on this part of the transaction.

When I first started to think about couponing Chris thought it was a good idea and encouraged me to do it, but he was skeptical of it working like I said it would. When we walked away with our first 20 Smart Ones dinners from Weight Watchers for $5.00 he became a firm believer.

Now you wonder why we would want so many frozen dinners? Since there are just the two of us at home and I become really involved in what I am doing I sometimes forget to get things ready for dinner until we are both starving and these are easy to pop in the microwave. We usually split a dinner, add a little salad and something like milk or flavored water to drink and we have quite a great meal. For a procrastinator who just lost weight and doesn't want it to come back and who has a problem with following through on the reading part it doesn't take much figuring to get the points for the dinner since it is right on the front of the box in a big bold font.

Today I spent alot of my time out in the outside pantry trying to organize it and get the food up to date. It isn't quite done yet since I have to redo some of the shelves on my rotating shelf system to fit the type of cans we want in them.

Before I did the pantry I cleaned out and organized my freezer. I had to find a way to fit in all those dinners and other yummy items into it so the food didn't keep slipping out onto the floor and the door would close. Guess what it all fit, I was able to close the door, and now all I have to do is remember to eat all the food out there. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to get rid of frostbite?

My goal is to get my life more organized this year. In some areas it is going to take quite a bit of hard work, but in couponville it almost seems like a game to see what deals I can get. I am getting excited to get more into this game and maybe it will keep me younger longer since I am using a part of my brain that hasn't had alot of practice lately. Well tomorrow is another day and I hope to get the rest of the pantry done so I can start on the inside pantry. Signing off for now, but we'll be back later.

I decided that since I have lost almost 75 pounds over the last 1 1/2 years that it was time to start a new adventure that would make my head spin with the knowledge I would need to make it work properly. After being hit in the head twice about couponing (at a class at the Women's Show and a Relief Society class) I decided that it would be a good past time to get my head spinning just right. When I went to the class at the Women's Show I was just curious to see how it worked.

The woman who taught it was the founder of athriftymom.com and she had alot of information that she crammed into 90 minutes and sent us home with a handout which has come in handy with the start up of my adventure. I went away from the class very impressed, but I was at a point in life that I was just not ready to start something new that would take alot of my time.

Then a couple of weeks ago we had a class at Relief Society about couponing and it hit me that now might be a good time to start this project since I was wanting to update our food storage and what better way to do it than try to get it for the least amount of money as possible. Hopefully even free. I also thought it might be a good idea to post some of my adventures, sucesses, and yes mistakes so I decided to create the blog and since I am a computer dummy I called in my daughter Erin and my husband Chris to help me get started.

I am sure that over the next little while I will be pestering them alot more for help and advice so I will thank them in advance. I thought that since we are "empty nesters" it might be a good thing for those in our situation to learn from my happenings how to be successful when doing couponing for just a couple of people rather than a whole family. Of course the strategy still applies for the family since it is just like a recipe in a cookbook that can be doubled or tripled or more depending on what size of family you have. I also thought it might be a great way to keep my thoughts in order and maybe help me to process what I am doing since it makes thing clearer having it in writing.

I don't know what direction this blog will be taking, but I hope that what I post will be a help to all those who read it. Signing off for now, but we'll be back later.