The rules of couponing to make your experience better !

OK ladies well there is no written handbook on the rules of couponing, however, there are some out there that you would probably want to follow so you don't make people mad and make us couponers look bad!!! So why do the stores cringe and shoppers run the other way when they see a couponer? Well it is simple! Those couponers out there with bad attitudes and selfishness ruin it for the rest of us! So here are a couple of pieces of advise that will help you out and make for a great coupon haul!
1. Follow the stores coupon policy, you can find these online and print them out to keep in your binder. ( if you don't have a binder you need to make one  :) )Stores hate it when someone comes in and doesn't know what they are doing, but on the same note, make sure you are up to date with the coupon policy in case you have a cashier that doesn't have a clue either!  :)

2. Don't be a shelf clearer! Leave some for the rest of us! If you now you are wanting to get a large haul call the store, ask for a manager, and place and order for a large quantity of the item you need. Stores get shipments once or twice a week so the order will be in before the sale is over!

3. Be organized ! Nothing is more annoying than getting behind a person in line that is fumbling throw books, dropping coupons, and getting all stressed!

4. You can only use one coupon per item unless it states otherwise! So if you have four items you must have four coupons.

5. Do NOT try to use a coupon that is not for an item. For example you have a coupon for fruit cups and you try to use it on canned fruit! Doesn't really work that way and the cashier will get irritated.

6.Don't leave your binder at home ! Take it with you everywhere! :) That's way if opportunity arises you will always have your  " money" with you !

Ok, that's about all I can think of at the moment! Happy couponing!

Some cool ways to clean your house!

OK so here is my way to clean in  some cool ways! Ok you know your baseboards, I don't know about ya'll but, I have white baseboards that always get dust on them. I was using a towel and cleaning items and it would get on the walls and get gross! SOOOOO just by a fluke! I one day was cleaning and picking up toys and noticed how dirty my baseboard was! I grabbed a purex 3n1 dryer sheet and wiped down the baseboard with it on the textured side! It took the dust right off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Making my baseboard sparkling white! NO DUST NO DIRT on the wall!!!! AWESOME! so just use a dryer sheet or a purex 3n1 that has been used already in the washer, and Yoola! Clean baseboards!

OK the next tip is how to clean your microwave! I did this tonight and wow it really works! Use a glass bowl of water with 3 tablespoons of water. Heat it in the microwave for 5 minutes ! Let it sit! The steam from the water stay in the microwave for a couple of minutes! Then just open the door take out the water and wipe clean! The dirt and food comes right off!!! WOW amazing!

Ok one more! To keep your refrigerator clean! Simply put saran wrap cling paper on the shelves, Once it gets dirty peel it off and replace! SO Simple!

My couponing experience with Joe V's and Kroger

I started couponing about a year ago exactly! My husband had lost his job, and it was VERY hard to keep the bills paid etc! So I saw the first episode of extreme couponing and knew this was a way I could keep my family fed, and with personal items and keep my bills paid. So I started to do the research! I researched and researched! I came across some great websites as resources, the one I like the most is Krazycouponlady.com! I love that website, they are great! I really have to say she is the reason I am where I am today !! I have really learned alot from her and others in the couponing world! So hence a reason I write this blog! I CONSTANTLY have people asking me how to coupon, what to do etc etc! Well I am going to give you some advice! Get dedicated and study the sales ads as well as get multiple copies of papers every weekend! Then again like I have stated before look for those sales that have a coupon to match! Sales price +coupons = tons of savings! So here is what I did tonight! I live in Baytown Texas. We have recently gotten a new store called Joe V's it is a HEB company, however, they cut costs in several ways. Now I will tell you, the reviews from Joe's has not been the greatest! Baytown women really wanted a big HEB. However HEB decided that is not  what Baytown needed, the corporation instead decided to send us a Joe v's. I am personally pleased with the store!!! The prices are amazing and the selection are decent. So let me tell you a little bit about how the store is!

They have low prices of course! The have a beautiful produce section! Good meats and great meat prices! However, because of this the store isn't your typical type of grocery store, you do have to bag your own groceries, they of course give the bags to you, but you have to put your items in the bags. But that's fine with me! They do not have go karts like for the elderly or whatever, so it's small things that keep their prices down. Their selection is not a big one! Let's say instead of having 10 things of mayo hey have say 5 to choose from. That is  also is fine with me, they do have name brands, but they have alot of the HEB brand which is hill country fair. That is also fine with me, I bought that when I would shop at HEB anyways! On certain things of course ! They also stock the shelves, in an unconventional way.  One thing you may have to remember is that cheap prices bring out some characters! :) But hey that's ok! I can shop with the best of em! Here is what it looks like.

The whole store is not on pallets, but they stuff is in the boxes on the shelves. But Hey, what does that matter, when you get it home you don't care how it was sitting on the shelf!  Again, it's the way I think they keep the prices down. So here is what all I got using super low prices and coupons on top of that!

Well in this spread I got meat, chicken nuggets, bath and beauty products, I got deodorant for 37 cents! Stove top at 4/1.00 Fruity Pebbles for 94 cents a box! Banana's for less than a dollar!!! The listed price was 3 lbs for a dollar! My total at Joe's! 47.54!!!!

My next lot was at Krogers! Now I usually don't shop at Krogers, I am mad at them! LOL They actually were the store I started out with, but since April they stopped doubling and tripling coupons! If they still had that policy in place I would have gotten most of this stuff free! However, I didn't! But Here is what I got! 96 items and only paid 103.11 Started at 241.56, with sale prices and coupons, 103.11!!!!! 96 Items! That is only a little more than 1.00 an item!!!! In my load , I got Sunny D for about 50 cents a bottle, gold fish for 79. cents a bag! I TOTALLY stocked up on those! They are usually about 2.00 a bag! Remember when you can get a price about 75% below retail that is when you need to buy as many as possible so you can stock up til the next time they go on sale! Cheese was 1.99 a package which isn't a BIG BIG savings, but it was enough that I knew it wasn't going to be that low again for a while so I got five! I was bummed I didn't have a coupon for those! Last year I got them for 55 cents!

So anyways! This is all I got and I will not have to go to the store for groceries for a while, really just meats probably! Does this mean I stop couponing! Heck no! If I find a good deal you can be certain I will get it!!! I have noticed that the BEST time for couponing is now until maybe april-ish! Once it starts the fall season it kinda dies down. I mean of course you can still do it but not as great as now!

How to use coupons almost everywhere!

OK so unless I have a coupon I usually don't buy stuff!!! So almost anytime I go  to a store I use coupons! These days most stores will take coupons off your mobile device! So here is what you have to do to find the coupons, just Google it!!! Type in whatever coupon you are looking for. The more specific you are the better of finding it of course. The website I love the best is retailmenot.com! It has the most coupons. There is also a few other good ones.....couponcode.com and bestdeals.com. But remember the more specific you are the better  your google search!  I literally use these coupons every time I go retail stores.   And if I can't find one or one is expired, I will let other ones come available before I buy whatever it is that I wanted. So that's  that! Just google whatever  coupon you want and you save money in retail stores!!!

OMG a new childrens store I discovered!

OK for those of you who are from the Houston area you may or may not have heard about this new store for children's clothing called, CRAZY 8!!! Now if you have heard of it, maybe I am behind in the times or something, but seriously this store is right up there with Carters and a Children's Place ! This is a sister store to Gymboree! Which I love Gymboree stuff but hate the prices!!!  I have mentioned before when it comes to products I am a complete TAG WHORE ( excuse my french! ) but I am! I do not wear use or deal with hardly anything that is not a brand name! I have always lived by "you get what you pay for!" Well, shall I say, you get what the retail price says you should pay for !!! Of course ,I pay way less than I should for alot of the items I use simply because I am thrifty! : ) My children ONLY wear name brands, some of you may think this is a dumb concept, but it is just me! This is why: OK lets say you go to the dollar store that carries some not so awesome brands, you pay 5 dollars for something and then it falls apart or doesn't last, well you could have gone to Carters and gotten the same shirt or outfit on sale ,used a coupon , and paid 5 dollars and now you have a outfit that will last longer than your child can wear it! The same thing goes for toys etc etc, I just DO NOT see what people see with spending money at these places! Its just dumb to me! But to each his own right ??? Sorry I got on my soap box there for a sec!

OK back to Crazy 8!! I found it today at the Pasadena Texas location! I was actually going to go to shop for myself! Well, if you have children you know how that goes, go for yourself, end up buying for them! Anyways, I walked in and literally was in amazement! I literally stood for thirty minutes at the front display finding all kinds of goodies for my daughter. They were having a great sale today! Stuff from 2.99 and up, and most of the regular items were around 10 bucks, some less some a little more. I spend about 200 dollars, and used a couponfor 20% off  of course! The actual retail price for what I bought was 478 dollars! What an amazing savings!!! Here is a pic for y'all of all I got, I got 14 pieces for my daughter, including a pair of shoes. And 11 pieces for my son! Here is my goodies!

 Granted not a very good picture but you can see a bit of the CUTE stuff I got! Ok so here are the helpful links. Here is the link for the 20% off coupon. Basically you just need to google  crazy 8 coupon 20% off and it comes up with the couponclaim.com website. This is what you need for your coupon!http://www.couponclaim.com/coupons/baby/crazy8/

You can also go to facebook and like Crazy 8 and I believe you can get coupon codes there as well! OK I hope you all enjoyed this! And happy shopping!

The start to couponing!

Ok, so people always are asking me about my couponing and how you do it! Well it’s very simple! I have one philosophy that I must share! DO NOT PAY full price for stuff you know you can get cheaper! Well you’re probably asking yourself, how do I know what I can get cheaper?  Well,  let me tell you a couple of steps you’re going to need to follow first and then I will get back to that question! The first thing you are going to want to do to start couponing is………….

Step one: get a binder with some baseball card dividers; these can be bought at Wal-Mart, or the dollar store. I get mine at Wal-Mart. The store I shop at they are with the as seen on TV. stuff! Make it cute, make it match your personality if you would like, or just let it be plain J Doesn’t matter it’s your book!

Step two: Start getting the weekly paper. I personally do not have a subscription, I buy them at Walgreens or Wal-Mart or where ever I can find them.  I also get them on Saturday not Sunday! Reason? I want to get the coupons on Saturday in case I need some of them for my trip before the ads change on Sunday. Also the Saturday paper has the exact same ads and coupons as the Sunday paper. I buy four papers a week. Why four? Well, I want four copies of the one coupon I want.  As a couponing rule you can only buy however many items you have a coupon for example:  4 bottles of shampoo, needs 4 separate coupons to get a deal. You cannot apply one coupon to multiple items unless stated on the coupon. And if you find a great deal you are going to want to get multiple of that item so you do not have to pay full price for it again, until the next time a coupon for it is printed for the item and it goes on sale again. Coupon cycles, cycle about every three to six months.  If you do not want to buy papers, you can get the insert from services, one of the ones I have used was, http://coupon-wizards.com/ , this website also has tons of money saving tips on it, his style though just isn’t for me! But hey to each his own right?

Step 3: Start sorting your inserts. Now some of you say well I don’t use let’s say Wisk laundry detergent! Why would I want to cut a coupon for something I don’t need? Well, let me ask you this, if you could get laundry detergent for let’s say 1.99 or for free.  Would you use it? My answer to that is YES! Of course, as long as something is a brand name and it is a product I need, I cut the coupon and try different brands. There are some things of course I won’t budge on, but most things around the house I will just because I can get it so cheap! So cut coupons for stuff you know you need in your home, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the brand you are used too. I have found a lot of items I really like simply because I found them on a good deal and bought them!

Step 4: Sort your coupons into sections that you are comfortable with. I like to have my sections in the order I go through the grocery store. I also like to have my stuff sectioned to the aisles, when I was putting my binder together, I literally went to the store and took pictures of the signs about the aisle and put my binder in that order! I love it that way!

Step 5: Get the ads of stores! I personally go to Wal-Mart, they price match and I take all the local ads and they match the prices, so I can take the Walgreens, CVS, and Kroger ad and get all those prices at one store. For those of you who hate Wal-Mart you can just go to the different stores, there are defiantly advantages of going to Walgreens and CVS separate.

 Study the ads and look through them to find items that you know you have a coupon for. Ok people if you have not listened to anything I have said, hear this! DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT BUY SOMETHING JUST CAUSE YOU HAVE A COUPON FOR IT!!!!!! You will end of spending more money that way and waste your great coupon!  You can always, use a coupon for something if you need a item but only buy one, don’t stock up until it is on sale. Also if for some reason the item doesn’t go on sale and your coupon expires that’s ok too. Don’t think that just because your coupon is going to expire you have to use it, you can, but you don’t necessarily have too.

OK now here  is the key to couponing! You take a sales price, let’s say Shampoo is on sale normally 5.00 shampoos that is on sale for 3.00, then you have a coupon for 2.00 off, you just got that shampoo for 1 buck!!!!!!!  You can do the same scenario to get something for free, item goes on sale for 2.00 you have a 2.00 coupon, FREE! Or, to earn money! This one is a little bit more difficult to do, but on sale for 2.00 you have a 3.00 coupon, you just earned a buck!!! You can take that buck from the store, or apply it to something that you don’t have coupons for like meat or produce!

This is pretty much the basics of couponing!!!! There are a couple of sites that I like www.thekrazycouponlady.com

www.wildforwags.com

www.wildforcvs.com

www.sundaycouponpreview.com

 The Sunday preview website will tell you how many coupon inserts will be in the paper and what coupons come in them! So weeks you will not have inserts, like holiday weekends for example. As I mentioned before, you will learn as you go along what is a good price for items, however a good rule I use is, if something is 50% off the retail price it's a good price, however, if it is up to 75% off it si a STOCK UP price, get as many as you can!  You can also just Google couponing match ups and if you need to find if a coupon has a sale to go with it, you can find out that info too!  OK so these are the absolute basics!  You may be thinking this is A LOT of work, it isn’t really, and I find it fun, but just like anything if you want to do something well you have to dedicate some time to it and you will be successful! Hey, it’s saving you money, why not spend some time doing it!  :) I will post about the different methods such as Walgreens and their register rewards soon! Happy couponing people!

A Website I love!

Hey there! OK so I have this website I found that I love! Just a bit about why I like it! I used to be nice and skinny as I am sure most of you were ! Some of you may still be! But I used to be nice and skinny, I was a  ballet dancer. But 13 years and two kids later, I am now about 130 pounds heavier than I was. Well about a year and a half ago I had the lap band. It didn't really work for me the way I wanted it to! So this new year, I started doing two things. Charting my calories, and going to ZUMBA! Well I found this website I think is too cool! It is called www.myfitnesspal.com. It is completely free and you can count all your calories . It has literally EVERY kind of food from restaurants etc etc! Its really cool!
Enjoy!