Target Run

Hey guys, sorry its been a while. Things have been busy around here!
I have a few post I need to be doing in the next day or 2 when I have time. Ones a fun valentines idea instead of the boring paper cards or candy. I need to finish Brendens then Il have it up! Also, a few recipes I have in mind and some to share from Super Bowl.

But I made a quick run to Target for some baking stuff I needed and spotted a few deals.

The seasonal section that has had the bulk items the last few months is on clerance. Between 15-50 % off at my store, depending on what it was.
I found the 2 packs on Barilla Pasta Whole Grain for only 1.84. They let me use my $1.00 off 2 boxes pasta on each, since there were 2 in a pack. So it ended up being only like 22 cents per box. I know you can get regular pasta basically for free a lot, but the whole wheat is more expensive. So I got a few of these.

Also, Target.com had/has a printable coupon for $1 off up&up paper towels. I used this on the 1 roll package and it made it free! They were like .97 cents. The coupon just took off .97 cents when she scanned it instead of $1.

Third good deal were these serving plates and bowls I found. They were on the end near the kitchen stuff. The bowls were only 1.08 and the plates were .54. I love the size of these!

Big boxes of Huggies diapers were also marked down to 26 from 39.99. There was some other items I wanted as well, but they had plenty so Il just wait a week or 2 and see if they go down even more.

The Next Cake Boss

Jake finally finished the 'learning tower' he was building me.
I've always wanted one of these things, but they are entirely too expensive.
http://www.littlepartners.com/products/The-Learning-Tower.html

But Brenden loves baking and helping in the kitchen. Atleast 4 times a week I found him standing on chairs helping me at the counter and I dont know how many times I had to tell him to be careful not to fall. Well that's the point of the learning tower, they cant.

So while I was on Pinterest a few weeks, well months, back I found a DYI tutorial for building one! But even better, it was foldable! And Jake being the 'handyman' he thinks he is, this was the perfect project for him. Especially since he got some new saw (as if he didnt have enough) for Christmas. I'm not sure exactly how much he went by the 14 page tutorial, because he's not one that reads directions to put something together. But they did include all mesurments for the wood you need and pictures to show you exactly what to do. The only negative I think was the 'materials' list missed some things. So we had to make multiple trips to Home Depot. One thing being it didn't mention hindges (but duh, its foldable I should have thought of that) and it says woodglue, but that we didn't use.
Anyways heres the link if your interested:
http://pinterest.com/pin/52424783131836492/


It's been done being built for a few weeks but we had to sand it down and paint it. It took a few coats. But its finally done and we used it tonight! Brenden helped bake cupcakes for our Super Bowl party tomarrow! He loved it. It worked perfectly. It's adjustable so the different spots to adjust the height act as a ladder so he can climb right up in it himself. My only negative is the paint we used, I wish we would have gotten the shinnier paint that wipes off easier. It wasnt horrible but I can tell the more I wipe it down the paint will start to fade. So we're going to buy some sealer to seal the paint. So FYI if you make one, use the wipeable paint.

Target Diapers

So today we ran out of diapers. (Well in his size anyway. I had 1 box in his closet but they're size 6 which look HUGE. I dont think he will ever fit into them.) But we've never ran our of diapers in over 2 years. This proves Im not going shopping as much :)

So we had to go out, in the rain, to get diapers.
Ended up at Target just because it's more convienent than Walmart and would be cheaper than CVS.
They actually had a great deal going!
Pampers and Huggies big boxes (Size 5 had 88 diapers I think) are on sale for 29.99. And when you buy 2 you get a $15 gift card back. So I ended up with that. Now I wont need to buy diapers for a while. Hopefully until he's potty trained! Since Im hoping that's soon! But anyways, I also had 2 $4 off Pampers box coupons that came in some boxes I bought a while back. So in the end I payed $52 and got back a $15 gift card, making the diapers only like $18 each for 88 diapers!
As Ive said in the past I usually bought diapers through Amazon, but they changed their whole Amazon Mom thing and you no longer get 30% off and there hasnt been the 20% off coupons in Parents magazine latley so I cancled our Subscribe and Save order. Thats probably why we've also run out.

Superbowl shopping

So we've decided to have a small superbowl party next Sunday so I knew this weeks shopping would be more expensive. However, we've decided to have alot of stuff we already have plus what I had to buy today was on sale and used coupons! So overall we are hardly spending anything :)

Total I spent 28.04 after tax, sales, coupons.
I know it doesn't look that impressive because I didnt get THAT much stuff. But if you think about it I got stuff thats normally really pricey!

The All detergent's normaly like $5 each. The Finish dishwashing packs are usually around $5-6 each. Wholly Guacamolly (which I've never bought is normally 4.99??? Really? Luckly it was on sale and I had a coupon or we would be having walmart brand guacamolly.) The Heluva dip is normally like $3-4 each. SO overall I did good :)

According to my recipe I saved $27 in coupons and $30 in sales. Totalling 68% saved :) And this isnt all for the Superbowl.

So many things!

Id like to start by appoligizing for how all over the place this blog is going to be.

January is almost over and I can honestly say I have so far suceeded in my goal of not shopping as much. Even Jake said something the other night. Normally I was going to Kohls atleast once a week. Just to look and check out the clearence. Sometimes Id even go to multiple Kohls. And I always ended up buying something or mutliple somethings. Well my scratch off (if you have a kohls card you get them every month with either 15, 20 or 30 percent off your purchase) came and of course we had 30 percent off. I didn't go at all during the 2 weeks it was good for. In fact I didn't go to kohls since Christmas until yesterday. Thats a month! For me thats huge. And the only reason I went yesterday was to return something we got online that got delivered twice. It had been sitting on our steps since Christmas. So I returned that and then got a book and 1 bra (which was needed). The Eric Carle books are the $5 books right now at Kohls. Hardback, which usually cost over $20. We have them all but they are books I use when teaching and Brenden can only see them with me. But latley Brendens became obsessed with Brown Bear Brown Bear so I wanted an extra for him to be able to look at by himself. So I got that and a $12 bra. I didn't even look at anything else!
So Id say Ive done pretty good so far!

On another note, I made a small trip to Publix today. Only spent $15 and include a few things that we wanted for Super Bowl but they were on sale this week.

But one good deal to tell you about is popcorn. The Jolly Time popcorn (I belive 4 microwave packs in box) is on sale for $1.00. A few weeks ago (again not sure exactly when) there was a .50 off coupon in the paper's coupon inserts. This doubles to $1 so it ends up free! I had 3 of them. But to make it even better, on the box is an offer for a free subscription to Weight Watchers Magazine. (Jolly Pop is a product indorsed by WW). All you have to do is fill it out and send in 2 or 3 proofs of purchase (cant remember exactly). But since I bought 3 Im good. I was so glad for this because we use to get the Magazine( actually from a free offer off this exact type of popcorn) but it had expired and now that Im back on WW Id love to get the magazine again! So overall I got 3 boxes of popcorn and 1 year subscription to WW Magazine for FREE! :)

Another thing to share is ShopRunner is offering a year membership for only $1. It's normally $79 a year. It basically gives you free 2 day shipping to hundreds of stores online. Toys R Us and Babies R Us are part of it. Many stores offer cheaper products online but once you pay shipping its not worth it. With this your shipping is free. And fast. There's also a few other perks and 'members only' items. If your interested check it out.

http://www.shoprunner.com/invite/a0QG0000004bmIlMAI

 or
https://www.shoprunner.com/one-dollar-offer?subid=60255&sid=&utm_source=Affiliate
Its totally legite and I know many people who have it. I figured since our Amazon Prime membership was about to expire so we wouldnt have free shipping with that any more Id give this a try. And for a $1 what am I loosing? I will have to remember to cancel after a year because it will automatically renew and charge you $79 if you do not.

We also booked a trip to Disney World for the end of Febuary! We are really excited! My parents came up with the idea and invited us, but I was incharge of planning. We are staying at one of the Value Resorts on Disney property (All Star Music) since we wanted 2 rooms and ours being a suite. It was still pretty costly just because its Disney but much cheaper than the nicer resorts they have. I figure it has everything we need as far as space and heated pools and a playgroud. Still on Disney property so the parks are just a bus ride away. So it will work for us :) Maybe next time we can save up to stay in one of the nicer resorts. This trip was very last minute but we are still excited and it will be fun! So my point, if anyone has ANY advice/tips about going to Disney with a toddler Id greatly appreciate them! Jake and I have been a few years ago so we generally know what's there and our way around. But of course then we wernt checking out the hottest kids activities.

We've also devolped a budget chart that we are going to start writing down EVERYTHING we spend into differnt catagories and and at the end of the month see exactly where our money goes. We are going to start Feb 1. Il make an entry in the next day or 2 of exactly what I did and show you.

I'm off tonight to actually join a discussion/lecture with Maci Bookout from Teen Mom. I was invited to listen and share about being a parent and completing college at the same time. I'm not going to lie Im pretty excited to meet her :) The show is so stupid and totally dramatized for the camera but I still watch it....

Aldi

Has anyone ever shopped at Aldi?
For those that dont know what it is, it's a small grocery store that only carries it's own brand of products. But many of them are very similar to name brand. Even the packaging is almost exact!
I've been a few time's but using coupons most times you get the name brand for much cheaper than the store brand. But they do have awesome prices on fruit so sometimes if I need a ton thats where I go.
BUT the downside to it is you have to pay $.25 for a cart, you get it back when you return it, and they dont have bags/bag your groceries so you have to do that too. So with a 2 year old it's not the easiest grocery store. And it's about a 20 minute drive from our house so that's another reason I dont make it there as often. But today we had the time and all we needed for the week would be fine in off brand and nothing I had coupons for. So off we went. And luckily Brenden did pretty good. We downloaded some new Apps so he was into those :)
There fruit was so cheap this week!!

We got:
4 1lb packages of strawberrys. They were only .99 each! Normally at publix their 3.99 for one. That was a big steal! We go through strawberries like crazy in this house but I hadnt bought them in a while since they wernt really in season so they were even pricer. But these ones were actually the best looking strawberrys Ive gotten in a LONG time. You'd think there so cheap that the majority of the package would be mushy or bad. NO. They're so cheap that more people buy them so they restock them quite often. Not one strawberry was mushy in all 4 packs.
We also got 3 bags of bananas. Something else we go through. They were only .42 a lb and each bag was about a lb and half.
A loaf of bread for only 1.29
Cataloup for only .88 cents! They were running low on these so they had a 1 each limit.
We also needed lunch meat and I didnt see stoping somewhere else for just that. So I got that as well. A thing of premuium lean turkey very similar to the hillshire farms I usually buy for only 2.28
While we were there I also picked up a pack of cheese/pb crackers for brenden that were .99 for a pack of 12 (each one has 4 crackers). And also some pork chops for dinner tomarrow. They werent greatly priced, but not any worse than at Kroger or Publix. but only like $4.50 for a pack of 4. Any good recipes for these?? My husband insist he doesnt like pork chops but Iv actually never seen him eat one in 7 years. So Im just going to make them and see if he eats it. So a REALLY good recipe is needed. If he doesnt like it he'll never try pork chops again.
Anyways..Thats all for today. If anyone else shops at ALDI's what are some items you get that you like??

Homemade chicken tenders

Well I don't know if you'd call these homemade or not. But they were damn good and healthy too! I sliced/chucked up some boneless skinless chicken breat and then used shake n bake. I did half with the original extra crispy and half with the crispy buffalo. My secret is to place a cooling rack on top of your cookie sheet then place your chicken pieces. This way the air circulates all around the chicken and the liquid drains onto your pan. They turn out much more crispier this way!! Loved them for WW as well. The shake n bake only adds 1 point to the chicken!