Bounty Basic Paper Towels & Pop Tarts

There are two really great deals I have to pass along.

K-Mart: Bounty Basic paper towels 15 pack/$10.00 = 0.66/roll. That's the best price I've seen in a quite a while. This deal will last through Saturday, August 23.

Wal-Mart: Our local Wal-Mart has a new size of Pop-Tarts on sale.
box of 16/$2.50 - $1/2 coupon (08/03 Kellogg insert) = $0.125 per Pop-Tart!

These deals are just too good. I had to pass them along.

Weis - Cheap Chicken

Just in case you are in the area of a Weis Grocery store this week. They have a great sale on chicken.

Perdue Oven Stuffer Roasters - on sale $0.79/lb. through Wed. Oct. 20.

Freebies

I love getting stuff for free, especially things I actually use. Over the last few weeks I've received all of the items in this picture for FREE!

I do have a few personal rules I use when requesting freebies.

First, I never request something we won't use. Second, I use a junk email account. This helps reduce the spam and junk advertising that is occasionally generated from freebie requests.

To receive your own Freebies check out these items:

Free sample of Post-it Super Sticky Recycled Notes here.

Free sample of Oatmeal Crisp Cereal here.

Thanks to "The 'Cent'sible Sawyer" for posting these freebies.

To take advantage of the free samples given away by Wal-Mart on a regular basis, go to WalMart.com; then click on the "In Stores Now" menu on the right hand side; then go down to Free Samples. You will come to a list of several items you can receive free. Take the minute required to fill out the form and you will receive your item in the mail. It usually only takes about 2 weeks to receive the item, sometimes less. I've never been bothered by unwanted emails, or junk mail by requesting these offers.

For more frugal ideas visit Frugal Friday here.

Shoppers Grocery Deals

There are a few really good deals at Shoppers this week. This is a good week to stock up.

First, they're having triple coupon days (up to $0.50) this week Aug. 14 - Aug. 17.

Here are a few other really good deals I've spotted:
Grapes (red & white seedless) - $0.99/lb.
Mueller's Pasta - $0.89/16 oz box
Ground Beef - $1.99/lb
Cottonelle Bath Tissue - $3.99/24 rolls (use $1.00 coupon from recent insert = $0.12/roll)

Any other good deals you all have spotted?

Free Children's Advil!

I stopped at CVS yesterday and picked up their August Extra Value Book. On the front cover, big as day -- Children's Advil is on sale $5.79 for 4 oz and you get $5.79 back in Extra Bucks, making it FREE!! There is a limit of 1 per customer.

To take the best advantage of this deal ...
First, go here and print the manufacturer's coupon.
Second, if you're going to add another item (of about $4.25) use a coupon found on page 30 at this website. If you use the two coupons you'll pay $2.79 out of pocket, for the Advil and then get an additional $5.79 for your next purchase.

If you are not familiar with the Extra Care Bucks (ECBs) program at CVS, do yourself a favor and sign up today. It is a great way to save money on items your family uses every day. Basically the program works like this --

1. Sign up for their loyalty card. (I've never had a problem with unwanted emails or ads since signing up).
2. Give them your card before each purchase.
3. Pay a small amount of money for your first purchase; they'll give you back a coupon (ECBs) to use with your next purchase.
4. Use your coupon to make your next purchase, trying to include another ECB item.

As you continue to rollover your ECBs, you can use manufacturer's coupons as well as ECBs to pay for items and end up using even less ECBs and cash.

While at first CVS prices may seem on the high side, if you take advantage of the ECB program you can really do quite well at saving your family some money.

In the past several months I have made purchases of over $50.00 worth of products and spent less than $3.00 out of pocket for the whole purchase.

For a more detailed description of how to save at CVS go here.

Vacationing

A Journey to Frugal is taking a vacation. We will return with our abnormally scheduled program in approximately one week (that means sometime after August 10).

Enjoy the week.

When Life Hands You Blueberries, Make Lemonade?

When life hands you blueberries, what should you do? I know what you're thinking... You can't make lemonade out of blueberries! But here's the deal; I had a blueberry MESS! And I needed to figure out what to do.

We recently picked 12 pounds of blueberries from a local farm. I made jam from some of them, but wanted to freeze a whole bunch for use later in the season and in the winter. So, after washing them, and drying them on paper towels for several hours I put them on a clean baking sheet and put them in the freezer to "flash freeze." Unfortunately, I forgot they were in there and the next time I opened the freezer door, the tray shifted and the blueberries went rolling ... EVERYWHERE! There were blueberries under the refrigerator, blueberries under the stove, even blueberries under the piano in the living room!


After we got them all cleaned up, they had to be washed ... again (since my floors are not perfectly clean!). Now I had more than a quart of mushy blueberries. What do you do with that many mushy blueberries? I certainly couldn't just throw them out after all that sweat and money! After browsing through several cookbooks, I finally came up with an idea... Blueberry Syrup!

So, I pulled out my Ball Blue Book and found the recipe for making Blueberry Syrup (it's not too difficult or intimidating, since it doesn't require a pressure canner) and proceeded to make just over 3 pints of blueberry syrup. I had enough extra to pour over the blueberry pancakes we had. It was delicious! And, now I don't have to buy or make blueberry syrup for every batch of pancakes.

So, when life hands you mushy blueberries... make blueberry syrup!

For more frugal ideas visit Frugal Friday here.