My favorite Past Time

I don't mean to make this into a "frugal" or "coupon" blog, but honestly "couponing" is pretty much all I have been doing lately. I taught a class on "couponing" at my church's "Super Saturday" this past weekend. I had a ton of fun preparing it and teaching it and I think others enjoyed it as well...I hope. I wanted to post a SUPER good deal I got today, not only because it is a wicked good deal, but for my friends who are just starting out this is a great way to start, because you don't need to print anything and you don't need the newspaper.


Here is the break down. Target has a promotion going on if you buy 5 certain Glade or Febreeze products you get a Target Gift Card for $5.00. Cool right. Imagine if you could use coupons to make your out of pocket expense very low. Well, you're in luck. All you need to do is find a "blinkie" machine that spits out coupons that say "buy one glade candle tin, get one refill free, (I've heard you can get them at Kroger (Fry's) and K-mart, among other places). I found two machines at Albertsons (59th Ave and the 101) you need to take 5 coupons that say "buy one glade candle tin, get one refill free". Then go to Target. There are $1.50 off one tin (or refill) inside the Glade candle tins. Since the tins aren't packaged you can open them and use the coupons on your order. Sometimes you can't find them because other people or the store takes them out (boo). Both the tins and the refills are priced at $2.50. This is what your order will look like.

5 Glade HOLIDAY candle tins-$2.50 each=$12.50 total
5 Glade HOLIDAY Candle tin refills-$2.50 each=$12.50 total

then use all 5 of your Buy one tin get a refill free- will subtract $2.50 five times=$12.50 total
then use 5 $1.50 off one tin- will subtract $1.50 5 times=$7.50

Your subtotal should be $5.00 (you'll have to pay Tax on the $25.00 original subtotal) then you'll get 2 -$5.00 Gift Cards for purchasing (which can be used on a FUTURE purchase, not the one you just made). It's like making $5.00!!!

Here's what my order looked like....


This is a nation wide promotion that is not advertised in the weekly flyers, but there should be signs at your local Target. Also remember it is only on the holiday scents, but even though the Apple Cinnamon was not with the holiday scents they rang up as part of the promotion. You can use the self price scanner to see if a particular item is part of the deal. If any of my AZ friends want to go shopping let me know, I'm always up for a trip!

P.S did you notice the grocery store ads on the counter (not on purpose) I'm super excited for one particular deal this week. Fry's Market Place has Nature Valley Nut Clusters (my other obsession, discovered them when I had a coupon...LOVE THEM) on sale for $1.57 when you buy 4. Well I have some coupons for $1.60 off of one!!! That makes for free Nut Clusters!!! I was SOOO excited when I saw this I literally danced around my apartment! Yeah for free Nuts!!

Go, Go, Go Sara

Evan and I went to see an awesome community theater play in Gilbert (on 10/10) called "Joesph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat." The set was awesome, acting was great, and the costumes exceeded my expectations. Best part about it Evan's sister was in it. She played Jacob's wife and was apart of the ensemble.This is Evan and Sara after the show. So much fun!

Family Home Evening

As a Latter-Day Saint I try to participate in the weekly ritual of Family Home Evening. This week I decided to plan the activity. We would be learning about staying within our budget, food storage, and personal preparedness. After I got home from work Evan and I headed out to K-mart. We hardly ever venture into the store, because frankly it kinda scares me and the prices are the same as my clean, well-lit Target. But alas they lured me in with the promise to double the value of my coupons. Here is a picture of our purchase.

Recap of what we purchased:

5 boxes of Kellogs Special K cereal

2 boxes of Kashi Go Lean

3 cans Campbells Tomato Soup

1 can Campbells Chicken Noodle soup

5 tubs of Huggies wipes

1 bottle of Huggies lotion

1 bottle of Huggies Shampoo

1 bottle of Huggies body wash

1 5pack of Bic highlighters

2 Men's Speed Stick deodorant

1 Arm& Hammer toothpaste

Grand total= 15 CENTS plus I got a coupon for $5.00 off my next purchase of $5.00 or more

Evan and I have come to love our little shopping "dates." As appreciation Evan even collected all the stray carts in the parking lot and put them in the cart return.

Recently we have kept a pretty accurate expense report sheet and as September draws to a near I am proud to announce to my posterity (and to the rest of you) that we have spent $61.86 on groceries ($163.14 UNDER budget), $11.16 on household items ($3.84 Under budget), $9.96 on personal hygiene products ($5.04 Under budget), $35.47 on gifts ($10.47 OVER budget; but considering it included 7 baby shower gifts, a Christmas gift for my nephew and a Christmas gift for my niece AND the wrappings to go with it, I'm ok with going over 11 dollars).

All in all I think we had a productive family night and reviewed the basics of budgeting and personal preparedness.

I still Love BYU

Evan was able to get tickets to the BYU vs. Florida State football game, and since growing up he was a Seminoles fan, I felt like it was a good excuse to take a break and head up there. Since the airline flights conflicted with his weekly exam he decided to drive. He invited a friend to drive up with him so that they could study in the car (surprisingly they did study). At the last minute I decided to tag along. We left after Evan took a quiz in one of his classes around 2pm and made it to my sister Heather's house in Provo around 1am. My mom kept texting me and telling me to take pictures, even with those reminders I still only managed to get a few pictures.



Saturday morning I drove to Salt Lake to watch Hannah play in a powder puff tournament against other chapters in her sorority. They didn't loose any of their games, but since they didn't score as many points as another team they didn't advance. Hannah was pretty bummed about this. She did a great job though. She is sure athletic and competitve. She played center. Then I drove her back to her dorm so she could shower and pack for the sleep over at Heather's house. It took us about 40 minutes to get back to her dorms, she only knows how to get places using the "red shuttle." It was pretty funny and she even let me use one of her guest passes so we could eat in the cafeteria for lunch. Soft serve ice cream..YUM

Evan and Mark before the game started. Our seats were right above the 40 yard line. We rushed to get to the game early to see the players preform the "haka" but they didn't do it this game :(

Evan and me once the sun finally went behind the stadium. My dad was watching the game from home and said he saw me on tv when they scanned the crowd. Of course I was sending my sister a text, so perhaps I didn't look like a true fan, but I assure you that I am. We lost big time and our ranking dropped, but I still am a huge BYU fan and will always bleed blue. GO COUGS!!

After seeing my old roomates and hanging out with my sisters some more. I finally went to bed for a few hours, then headed back for Arizona early Sunday morning.

Retail therepy

Since I follow a few "frugle" blogs I came across an AWESOME coupon. $10.00 off any purchase in the juniors department at Sears (NO MINIMUM PURCHASE)!! At my Sears right now they are having a sale on their clearance...40% off the already marked down clothes. So I found two tops. They rang up with tax 9.09. I gave the cashier my coupon and paid $0.00 out of pocket! Then I raced home to print off two more coupons, when I realized that the "juniors" bathing suits were not in the Juniors section, but with all the other bathing suits. Both bathing suits rang up at $8.99. I did two seperate transactions to get both tops for free!! Can you believe that?? I still can't believe it.

Also Seventeen Magazine was doing a promo with ULTA, a beauty supply store, if you bring in a printed copy of Seventeen Magazine's home page you get a free FULL SIZE Bad gal's Mascarra. If you haven't heard of this mascara lets just say it's "pricey." I got over to Ulta a couple hours after it opened and got the last one!

Back to school

Evan headed back to school on August 31. I wasn't quite ready for him to go back, but I think he was. Good thing he really enjoys what he does. He has been studying a lot more this year than he did last year. Some say that this year (2nd year) is the hardest of the four years of school. (residence is a whole different story)

Here he is on the first day of school. His shirt says "Trust me i'm a doctor." We went to the outlet mall in Anthem to go school shopping and he got this shirt one other shirt, 3 pairs of clearance board shorts, and a new pair of running shoes. All pretty good deals (except the shoes, why are they SO expensive, oh well he was way overdue for some new shoes)

Back to School BBQ

We got together with some friends and had a little BBQ before the husbands headed back to school. It was a little warm (what can you expect from an August evening in Arizona?), but the food with tasty and the pool temperature was perfect.

Some of the ladies...

The Gents...

My niece and nephew swimming away in the pool.

Evan swimming with his nephews

Performing tricks in the pool. Evan is going to be such a great father one day.