WoodElves

I had a great time today shopping with my sister. Here are a couple of the deals I got:

At Target, I got Scrubbing Bubbles with the $5/1 coupon from the RedPlum and the $3/1 store coupon from the Target website. The Scrubbing Bubbles was only $7, so I knew I had to get something else to eat up the overage.

I got the Dove hairspray free with a $1/1 Dove coupon and got the Tresemme hairspray to eat up the Scrubbing Bubbles overage.

Target: Scrubbing Bubbles + 2 hairsprays = $.30


I went back to Harris Teeter Super Doubles and got these two yogurts free. Well, the lady was going to give me $1 back, but her manager told her not to, so I got them free.

Harris Teeter: 2 yogurts = FREE

I also spent $5 on produce at Fresh World, got a gallon of milk at Farm Fresh, and a loaf of bread at Walmart as well as hit up Old Navy's 30% off sale and got a pair of jeans for $8.80.

Now I realize that none of you will be as excited about this "surprise" as me, and it wasn't a surprise to me... but, here it is!!!

This week will be busy for us, but we're excited about what's going on.

(except for the busyness of Heather's work, which we are not excited about! )


Our church is involved in a community revitalization program called Serve the City this week. What it means is that our church will be teaming up with other churches in Chesapeake, the civic league and police department, and will be going out into the community to do repair, yard work, painting, cleaning, etc. in the homes of residents who need help. This program has even gained national attention, winning a national award from Neighborhoods, USA. We're really excited about being part of a church that gets out in the community, rolls up their sleeves and gets dirty showing the love of Christ in their neighborhoods. David will be involved Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Since I have to work all week, I'll only be helping on Saturday with preparing food for the community-wide picnic celebration.


Our other plans for this week include a big surprise and a big birthday, which have nothing to do with each other. Stay tuned for the big surprise later this week! :)

I LOVE finding cheese deals since cheese is so expensive! I was so excited to learn that you can get blocks of Food Lion brand cheese FREE this week at Food Lion! The small blocks of cheese ring up for $2 each. Use the $2/1 Food Lion cheese coupon here. David and I went tonight and we each got a block of cheese. Our total rang up $0.

Thanks, $30 Grocery Challenge!

We spent $5.92 at Farm Fresh today, which was 73% savings after coupons. I found the conditioner in a clearance cart for $2 each and had coupons on me for $1/1 (which doubled) so they were free. :) I also got the shaving cream for 45 cents with a coupon I had. I love the Creta Farms coupons I've gotten so that we can have fresh deli meat on the cheap - yum! The Coupon Challenge has this week's matchups HERE.

Today's post is going to be a little bit more random than most. We're going to get to the deals soon, but first I wanted to show off the delicious crab quiche that David made for dinner last night:

Doesn't it look good? Well, it is. I have to take a little bit of the credit for making the crust, but I'm sure he woulda done it if I hadn't beat him to it ;)

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I used some leftover crust dough and the good parts left of some going-rotten cherries to make a few mini cherry pies for dessert, and just had to add a little flair:
Now I know most of you don't prefer the word "mini" to precede the word "cherry pie", but I like to make these little guys sometimes for portion control and cute things just seem to taste better.


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Now on to the deals David did today. We're liking Rite Aid's new +UP program, which is almost exactly like CVS' Extra Care Bucks. The best part is that so far there is no limit to the deals, so it goes like this:
1. Spend $3.50 on 2 body washes (after B1G1 coupon).
2. Get $4 +UP rewards back.
3. Use it to pay for another 2 body washes & some Raamen noodles (or candy bars) as fillers.
4. Repeat.
We also used some of the +UP rewards to buy some cards we needed.

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The next picture is my favorite deal ever. You see, we haven't paid for anything in this picture below:

This is just a picture of our current free sample stash. Most of these products we got in the mail simply by requesting them. As you can see, it really adds up. If you think requesting freebies is a waste of time, just consider how many weeks/months David and I could go just on using up the body wash from our freebie stash. Talk about savings! Oh - and if you ever want to come visit, we're more than happy to share from any of our stashes. :)

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Lastly, I just wanted to make a confession. You have to promise you won't a) laugh at me or b) tell anyone. I suppose it could be a little embarrassing.

You see, I've found out that if I just visit the recycle drop-off once a week, I'll never have to pay for a Sunday paper again. I don't think rooting through huge dirty recycle bins with tons of empty beer bottles is David's favorite marriage-building activity, but in just a minute or two of looking around (and not digging too deep) we're able to find a few coupon inserts that will later on score us lots of good deals. To me, it's worth the little bit of time and the few drops of hand sanitizer. :)




That's it for me today. You may have noticed that today's post didn't have any pictures of us, but I'm sure that in any picture taken of me this week, I would probably have looked a little frazzled if not downright glaring. It's been one of those weeks at work, but hopefully I'm prepared enough for open enrollment. That's when all 500 of our employees choose what benefits they want for the following year, and I'm in charge of organizing all of the people and paperwork. We'll find out how I survive it next week! Stay tuned!

Yesterday was the 66th anniversary of Operation Overlord, otherwise known as D-Day.

That was the day that thousands of Allied troops - our grandfathers and great uncles and friends - parachuted into or ran up the beaches of Normandy, France in the greatest invasion of all time.


We spent some time last night watching veterans' interviews on YouTube and talking about D-Day. (See, we're even still homeschooling ourselves!)


Ambrose Redmoon has said that courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.


"I heard guys say they weren't scared, but I say everybody was at least a little bit scared."

Thankfully for us, our troops at D-Day decided that freedom and the truth that no one race is higher than another was more important to them than their fear.

No matter how much we read about D-Day or watch videos about it or see museum exhibits, we don't have any concept of what it must have been like to be there.

To parachute into enemy territory while being gunned down and entire planes above you bursting into flames, risking landing in trees or worse, water...



To have the door go down on your LSI and find yourself immediately under the fire of hundreds of guns shooting down from the high ground, weighed down with all your gear in water past your knees...


To navigate through mines and bullets and the bodies of your friends...

To make your way up the beaches through constant firing, to eventually take those German guns on the ridge, to take the towns in France one at a time, to eventually sit through a frigid, bloody winter at Bastogne...



While I can't imagine what it must have been like to be there and have all of those events be my own memories, we are profoundly grateful to and reverent of the men who were.

Thank you.

Friday was National Donut Day so we stopped at Dunkin' Donuts on our way to work to get a free donut with the purchase of a drink.





Saturday morning I made mango strawberry pineapple smoothies with some of the mangoes David picked up.


Saturday evening we hung out with the College and Career group from church and went to a Norfolk Tides game. It was so hot and humid and the Tides gave the game away, but we enjoyed the College and Career group!



Thankfully, for most of the weekend we were able to take it easy and just enjoyed spending time together. :)

Today's trip to Rite Aid: We spent $13.12 and are getting $13 back in rebates and got a $4 coupon to use on our next trip to Rite Aid.

The ramen noodles were on clearance for 12 cents each.

The coupon matchups for our transaction can be found at Southern Savers.

We did pretty good with our grocery shopping this week. Of course, we don't really need any groceries with all the barbecue leftovers, so that made it easy. We made a quick trip to Harris Teeter and Farm Fresh.

At Harris Teeter we got eggs and used a $.50 catalina we had from last time but we needed to get another item to use up some of the overage from the catalina so we got a cucumber. We spent $.47.

HT: eggs + cucumber = 47 cents


At Farm Fresh we had a grand old time and then on the way home I realized I had picked up the box of Oreos but forgot to get out the coupon! David returned them today and we got our money back so these totals are not counting the Oreos.

We did the yogurt deal and I was SO excited to find some of the yogurt I was already going to *make money* on were on Manager's Special for an additional 50 cents off!

Also, the Solo plates and cups we were going to get for free after coupon didn't come in on the truck so they let me pick out any Solo items I wanted as a substitute for the same price so I ended up getting the bigger, not-holiday themed packages for free. :) :)

We also used several coupons we got in the mail from Kraft First Taste for free items such as crackers, macaroni and cheese and lunchmeat.

FF: 5 4-packs of yogurt + bread + freebies + plates + cups = $6.44 - $5 catalina to use on our next trip

I'll be making money buying yogurt at Farm Fresh tonight. Here's how:

When you buy any 5 participating dairy products, you will get a $5 catalina to spend on your next trip to Farm Fresh.

The Yo Plus, Fiber One and Yoplait Delights yogurt 4-packs are included. They are priced at $2.79 each and all 3 have $1/1 coupons available on Coupons.com right now.


Here's how the deal will look:
Buy 5 yogurts at $2.79 each
Use 5 $1/1 coupons
The coupons will double today only, so will be in effect $.79 each
Spend $3.95 plus tax out of pocket
Get back $5 for my next trip to Farm Fresh

This month you can "make money" buying Neutrogena Facial Bar soaps at Walgreens.


When you buy any 3 Neutrogena products, you will earn $10 in Register Rewards. This deal is working on the facial bar soaps which at some Walgreens start at $2.69.


Buy 3 bars at $2.69
Spend $8.07 out of pocket plus tax (depends on prices at your Walgreens)
Get back $10 to spend on your next trip to Walgreens.

Thanks, Deal Seeking Mom!