Walmart Coupon Deals

Here's some items I picked up at Walmart the other week. I initially went in there just to get the baby products but then I noticed the tomatoes on sale which were too good to pass up!

Total: $5.78

Johnson & Johnson Baby Products (x3)

Sale Price: $2.47 (x3)

Coupon: -$1.00 (x3) J&J call-in

Final Price: $1.47 each 

Alymer Accents Tomatoes (x2)

Sale Price: $1.00 (x2)

Coupon: -$1.00 WUB 2

Final Price: $0.50 each

How to Budget 2012

With the arrival of our baby in the midst and the loss of income due to me being laid off from work, my hubby and I have decided to try our best to lower our OOP (out of pocket) grocery expenses this year. I never thought of myself as one who spent a lot of money. I like to watch for sales and purchase what I need when they're on for a good price. I figured by doing this I was indeed saving money and not spending so much. I never really kept track of groceries in 2011. My hubby and I were both with (what we thought were) secure jobs and so if I went over to Sobey's to get some good deals when they have their dollar days it really wasn't that big of a deal. Now we have to watch carefully what we spend and eat more from our pantry. That'll be the goal for the next year.

This year we've budgeted ourselves $200-$250 a month for groceries. CRAZY... I know. When my husband told me this I looked at him like he lost his mind. Now that I'm pregnant I drink quite a bit of milk, not to mention that I'm home all the time now so I make breakfast, lunch and dinner. When I was working I rarely ever brought lunch from home (there was no staff room and at the time I didn't drive). I went to Subway, Timmies, McDonalds or Safeway. Never an issue money wise.

It won't be without difficulty, though. Where I live, food prices are higher than normal. We also try to buy halal meat as much as we can which is very expensive if we purchase it from the butcher. My hubby is a carnivore. If there is not meat on his plate, it cannot be called dinner. So how will we do it? You got me. So far for January I'm over my budget. Around $280 we've spent. BUT in my defense, for two weeks in December I was on holiday's visiting my family meaning there were no groceries bought and hubby gobbled what was left at home so technically we're still good. Also, the hubby's been sick so trips to buy medicine have not been cheap. And giftcards do not count when we're budgeting. BOO! I used $36 in giftcards but hubby says it still goes towards our OOP. Atleast it gives me a challenge to do!

Here's what we're going to do in order to make this budget happen:

• Record what you purchase
• Do one grocery shop per week, not several. Not only will you keep better track of groceries, you'll save on gas
• Sales our your best friend. Keep an eye out for sales of items that you use regularily and stockpile them
• Cook as much as you can at home
• Ask yourself; do I really need this?
• Eat from the pantry/ stockpile- it's easy to make a list and record what you have so you're not buying things you don't need

I can't wait til Wednesday! It's February 1st which means I can go down to Superstore and stock up on some things I need. This week I plan to make a big batch of homemade pizza and freeze them. We are notorious for running out of bread so this will give my hubby something to eat for lunch if that happens. Plus it's way easier on me as I'm usually the one who makes his lunch to take to work. The cheese is on sale, too.

So what do you usually spend on groceries?

How to Make Your Own Swiffer Wetjet Pads & Refill

 Swiffer refills can get so expensive and with the baby coming soon I've been looking for ways to reduce my expenses. I stumbled upon a Youtube video showing how to refill the Wetjet solution bottle (there's several ways; easiest is to hold the plastic white lid under hot water for 10 seconds then use a cloth to help unscrew it, or you can insert a funnel into the tiny hole opening and pour your solution mixture of choice. For the solution general rule is use a capful of your preferred cleaner and then fill up the rest with water) and in the video she mentioned she uses an old teatowel as a pad. That got me thinking. I've been going through my home, reorganizing and purging things that I don't need or use and I was getting rid of some facecloths and a hand towel I no longer wanted. So here's my inexpensive and enviromentally friendly new Swiffer Wetjet pads!

Steps:

Take old cloth (oversized one preferrably), place it on your Swiffer and cut it. It will look similar to the picture below. Don't worry if it's not even, no one's going to know. You just want to ensure you cut off enough so you are not covering the sprayers. Secure with two larger size safety pins on either side, making sure cloth is not covering the sprayers.

And there ya have it! You're very own pad. The velcro on the bottom of the Swiffer really helps keep the facecloth from sliding around. Once you've used it just toss it in the laundry and wash! If you're really up for it you can sew around the edges you cut so that they won't frey.

Here's how I store them. I made four; two from facecloths and two from a handtowel. In order to not lose the safety pins, I took a magnet from one of my fridge magnets I wasn't fond of and taped it to the top inside lid. I purchased the box from the dollar store and was actually donating it as I didn't have much use for it. Good thing I'm slow at taking my donations to Salvation Army!



Free Baby Samples

Now that I'm expecting, I've been scouring the internet in search of baby samples and free products. So far, I've received two packages in the mail for free baby samples. Please note I do live in Canada so these apply to canadian free baby stuff.

#1) Johnson & Johnson

How: Go to jnjcanada.com, near the top of the page you'll see 'contact us', click and scroll down until you see 'Email: click here', fill out mandatory fields including your address, and in the comment/question section request a 'New parent pack'. One parent pack request per household.

What: They will send you a coupon in the mail for a free take along pack which includes lots of samples of products. They also include $1.00 off coupons for regular size J&J baby products. Go to a local store and use your coupon(s)!

#2: Shoppers Drug Mart

How: Go to shoppersdrugmart.ca, near the top of the page you will see 'baby', click and it will direct you to a page which talks about their 'V.I.B' program, sign up and wait for your package in the mail! Please note you must be a Shoppers optimum club card holder (which is a free rewards card).

What: They will send you a package in the mail which includes samples, a bib, pacifier, and also bonus point coupons you can use when you purchase certain products.

Coupon Deals

Hopefully I'll be getting into the swing of things soon and getting more deals with coupons. I was checking out the Walmart flyer the other week and could not pass up the deals I saw.

Here's what I got:

Special K Oats & Honey

Reg. Price: $4.99 approx.

Sale Price: $3.99

Coupon: Free! from websaver.ca

Final Price: Free

Kraft Smart Mac' N Cheese (x 2)

Reg. Price: $2.29 approx.

Sale Price: $1.00

Coupon: -$0.75 (x2) from save.ca

Final Price: $0.25

Dole Apple Crisp

Reg. Price: $2.49 

Coupon: -$1.25 from websaver.ca

Final Price: $1.25

A Good Mail Day

The other day I had a very good mail day. Came home from work to find all these goodies! Free Samples are the best! The Axe Bodywash Sample was a freebie via Facebook, the rest were from P&G Brandsampler. Please, do yourself a favour and go to pgbrandsampler.ca NOW! Sign up and they'll email you when samples are available. Usually it's every couple of months. First come, first served.

Christmas Exchange Cookies

Not a coupon post but I thought I'd share some pics of the cookies I made for the cookie exchange at work. It was my birthday and I made close to 9 dozen cookies! Nothing says 'happy birthday' like sugar and baking! Joking aside, I was quite pleased with how they turned out. I never make cookies to this extent and had done a trial run of the recipe before with the wrong kind of margarine (still good but not quite what I wanted, they turned out much better with the Crisco shortening the recipe called for) so I'm really glad they turned out ok! I went to my fave home accessories/decor store, Stokes, and found a cookies press for 8 bucks!! I couldn't believe it! It worked really well, too.As for couponing; I haven't been doing much lately as I've been rather 'baby brained'. I'd much rather research about the baby than worry about what stores have what. Plus my stockpile has been holding up rather well so I haven't had the need to go out and buy anything. Ah yes, excuses, excuses! Maybe it's winter blues.... who knows?

Swedish Spritz (Almond Flavou Cookies)

Have I gone Hippie? Cloth Diapering for the Modern Mom

Well, as the title may give away I'm going to be a mommy! So weird, isn't it? I remember being a little girl wishing that I'd be older and feeling as if life would never go faster, and now years go by in a blink, and my lil baby is growing even faster than I can imagine. It's nearly a pound already! When the technologist told me that I couldn't believe it. That lil bump barely popping out is my little baby.
 Now onto the topic of today; Cloth Diapering. Never before did it even cross my mind that I'd want to do cloth diapering. I'm not a hippie. I don't eat organic. I do recycle but I wouldn't  say excessively. So why the heck would I cloth diaper? I was bored one day and decided to do some research on cloth diapers. Basically just to see what they were, how the worked and why the heck people would cloth diaper in the first place. By 'research' I mean Youtube (better than google ;P). Everytime I thought about cloth diapering,  this image of disgusting, smelly, gross dirty diapers swishing around in the washing machine popped into my head. I thought how the heck is this sanitary? Then I Youtubed.  My eyes were opened to a new world of diapers! I never realized there was so much variety and so many brands! I was pleasantly surprised. Not only are the freakin' adorable, they're good for the environment and for your baby, too! And much cheaper than disposable diapers in the long run! I watched a couple videos, then some more... and more... and before you knew it, I was a convert. Disposables? Puhh-leassee that is so 2010. I dare you to youtube cloth diapering! Try not to become addicted!  

Here's my first order. Some people are a little hesitant to start cloth diapering because it's more-so pay up front then wait til you need it. You can't just go down to the local grocery store to pick up what baby runs out of. You have to plan ahead and with all the different options and types it can be quite overwhelming. Basically, you won't know what your babies favourites are until you try them on your baby. I watched a lot of videos and basically made a list of people's most common favourites. From that, I made a list of what types I'd be ordering to start my diaper stash. Once babies here, I'll test them out and order more of the ones that work. All babies are different so all cloth diapers will fit differently.

For my order I purchased:

4 Bumgenius Pocket Diaper One Size

3 Fuzzibunz Pocket Diaper One Size

2 Flip One Size

4 Doublers

1 Rock 'n Green Cloth Diaper Laundry Detergent

1 BumGenius Diaper Sprayer (attaches to toilet)

1 Package Bummis Diaper Disposable Liners

Free Samples

Greenninja.ca was having a black friday sale (even though they're Canadian- ALWAYS buy Canadian if you can please).  It was 20% off everything and free shipping. They have great customer service. I highly recommend them! In total everything with tax was around $215. Not bad for my first stash!! With the discount I saved $50 and then free shipping on top of that. I was quite pleased! I'm hoping for a boxing day sale so I can order the rest of what I'll need for my stash.

Without Further 'Adieu'...

So it's been awhile, eh? Don't worry! I neglect you no further! Please excuse my tardiness. Life's been rather hectic lately. Couponing was put on the back burner but now life is slowly returning to a normal pace once again. I decided today was the day! I marched over to my local Sobey's on my work lunchbreak and hoped to goodness that the Old El Paso taco kits I had seen there on friday were still the ones with the coupons (and they were!). I actually had a very pleasant cashier. Quite surprising. She complimented me about my jewellery and wasn't even phased by my coupons. Ahhh if only every cashier was like her. Is it just me or do you feel like as soon as you hand a cashier a coupon it seems a red flag goes up and they switch into 'hazard' mode. Like you're trying to shoplift the 'legal' way. "Aiiiiyaaaa" as my past Denny's coworker Jenny would say. Anyways, enough chitchat. Here's what I got:

Total before coupons (with tax): $16.04

Total of coupons used: -$7.19

Total afer coupons (with tax): $8.85

Deal Breakdown:

Oasis Nutrisource

Reg. Price: $4-5

Sale Price: $3.59 plus recycling deposits

Coupon: -$2.00

Final Price: $1.59

Crest Pro-Health toothpaste 85 ml (x2)

Reg. Price: $3.29

Sale Price: $2.00

Coupon: -$0.75 (x2)

Final Price: $1.25 (x2)

Old El Paso Taco Kit

Reg. Price: $4-5

Sale Price: $3.69

Coupon: see below

Final Price: $3.69 plus Free Shredded Cheese Coupon

Old El Paso Salsa 650 ml

Reg. Price: $3.69

Coupon: Free when you buy Taco Kit

Final Price: FREE!



What Can 75 cents Buy You?

Headed out to Walmart with an envelope full of soon to be expiring coupons. I really couldn't find any good deals that would really be worth buying the product for so I only picked up these two things. In the next couple days I'l raid my Sobey's and put my extra coupons with the products so people can use them up before they expire! With tax and recycling deposits the whole bill came to $0.75. Not too shabby.

Total: $0.75 with tax

Deal Breakdown:

Oasis Tropical Passion Juice

Reg. Price: $1.97

Sale Price: $1.00

Coupon: -$0.50 from gocoupon.ca

Final Price: $0.50

Satin Care Shave Gel travel size

Reg. Price: $1.54

Coupon: -$1.50 from rouge magazine

Final Price: $0.04