As if I needed another reason to love coupons...

Guess how much I paid for everything pictured:

$2.66!!!!

I paid $1.00 for the half gallons of milk, and $0.75 each for the Johnson's baby wash. Everything else was free. I also got 2 free tubes of toothpaste and $0.99 razor refill cartridges at CVS this week. And no, that's not including the one Jack shoplifted. I got these ones for free legally ;-)

I'm serious, if you're not using coupons, you're crazy. I can't wait for my Sunday paper to come each week because it's filled with FREE MONEY! I shudder to think of all the money I used to spend on groceries, just randomly throwing items into the cart, not thinking of the price. Couponing has changed my life!

Swagbucks

Even though I've been addicted to couponing for over a year now, it's been a long slow process. It took me a while to learn the ropes, find coupon blogs, and start saving big. Back when I started, I kept noticing on these coupon blogs that every single one of them was raving about this thing called Swagbucks. I'd heard of it before but it didn't seem worth it to sign up for some weird program that would probably make my computer crash. But finally, at the very end of February, I gave in and signed up for it after reading this convincing post on one of my favorite blogs. Well, downloading a small toolbar didn't cause my computer to crash and I am loving Swagbucks! I've never looked back!

Let me preface this by saying that I haven't won crazy amounts of Swagbucks, I don't spend all day at the computer doing Swagbucks searches or hunting for codes. I obviously don't have time for that. But even with the minimal amount of effort that I put into Swagbucks, I have reaped so much in rewards! It's been only about 3 1/2 months, but I have already won over $40 in free Amazon giftcards.

And when I say minimal effort, I mean it. I rarely (if ever) look for codes anymore. If there's one staring me in the face I'll obviously use it, but I almost never look for them. I haven't yet bought anything that earned me Swagbucks. I've only referred one person (my sister Rachel, she's hooked too). And I only do about 15 searches a day using the Swagbucks search engine. That's it, that's how I win free money from Amazon! I use the Swagbucks search engine in place of Google. Simple, huh?

I installed the toolbar and whenever I'm searching for something I type it in there first. If the results don't come back with what I was looking for, I move on to Google but often I've already won some Swagbucks for checking there first. And instead of bookmarking my favorite coupon blogs or websites that I visit often, I do a Swagbucks search for them. This extra step probably adds about 2-3 seconds per search, so a total of a few extra minutes per day and I win free money! Sound too good to be true? It's not! Anybody who has a computer and about 4 minutes to spare each day could win big. Even somebody living in, oh I don't know, Stanley, Idaho could win free giftcards just by using the search engine! ;-)

In all seriousness, though, Swagbucks are awesome! Even if you only earned enough for 1 $5 Amazon giftcard a month, why would you turn down free money? Even with my minimal effort, I earn an average of $10 a month in Amazon cards. And if you have more time than me to be on the internet, if you have a job or class that you do a lot of internet searches for, if you often shop online, if you have lots of friends to refer, or if you're more proactive than me in getting codes and trying to earn Swagbucks, you could potentially win much more!

If you would like to sign up (and earn me some points for referring you), here's the link:

http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/kimberleeo


I would definitely recommend reading the blog article I linked to above, she gives great tips on how to win Swagbucks.
And right now, they're having a special promotion, if you enter the code SUMMEROFSWAG when you sign up, you'll automatically receive 20 bonus Swagbucks on top of the 30 you normally receive for signing up. You'll be well on your way to free money!

Last Word on Coupons

I promise- but for those of you wanting to know what coupon resources I use, here are some coupon blogs I check daily:


The Krazy Coupon Lady - This site is mostly for West Coast stores, but I like their Safeway, Target, and drugstore deals. Plus they always have the best internet and clothing deals and I LOVE their printable coupon database. I use it all the time!

The Thrifty Mama - She has the best deals on organic and natural products plus all the drugstore and internet deals too.

Money Saving Mom - She's one of the biggest coupon bloggers out there and an inspiration to me! She and her husband have ZERO debt, not even a mortgage! They save up and pay cash for everything, isn't that incredible?!?

Frugal Fun and Fortune - She's on top of all the deals and always has good extra posts too, like on being vegetarian. We're not going vegetarian or anything, but we do eat a dinner or two every week without meat in it (to save money and eat more veggies) and she always has good recipes on her site.

I read a few other blogs too, but they're all local so I know what the best deals in the DC area are. I don't have much time to spend clipping coupons and planning, but I do thoroughly enjoy it so as soon as the boys go down for their morning nap I grab my coffee and head straight for the computer for my daily blog reading. It's a nice break during the day for me and I feel productive planning out ways to save money. Of course, I also check family and friends' blogs too, which negates my productivity, but what else is a stay-at-home mom to do during naptime? I can't cook and clean all of the time, right?

Oh and P.S. I know some of you are going out of your minds waiting for more pictures/videos of the boys but Brandon accidentally deleted all the pictures on my camera and I haven't been able to take any new ones today so you'll have to wait just a little longer. I'll try to put some up tomorrow though!

I Heart Coupons

I don't even think that words could adequately express my love for coupons! I feel like my life was so empty before I discovered the joy of couponing and I can't believe that I actually used to pay full price for all my groceries! I just look back on those dark pre-couponing days, shake my head, and thank the Lord that I at least discovered coupons when I did. It's saved us untold amounts of money! I've gotten our weekly grocery bill down to about $60 a week and that includes diapers and toiletries and everything. We're actually spending about 30-50% less on groceries now than we were a couple years ago when there were just two of us to feed!

One of my favorite things about coupons is that my grocery store here occasionally has "Super Double" and even TRIPLE coupon weeks! (Now that I think about it, this may be the first truly great thing about the East Coast. I have never heard of a West Coast store that triples coupons. I'd be happy to be wrong though!). Super Double week is when the store doubles the value of coupons up to $1.99 (normally they only double up to $0.99) and Triple week is when the store triples all coupons up to $ 0.99! This means that a $0.50 coupon becomes a savings of $1.50 and a $0.75 coupon becomes a savings of $2.25!!! Incredible, right?! Each week I always get one or two freebies using coupons but during these special coupon weeks I usually get tons of free stuff!

For instance, here are some free things I got this week:

Worcestershire sauce, Skinny Water, hot sauce, refried beans, taco seasoning, Land O' Lakes butter, canned chiles, Greek yogurt, McCormick spices, dish detergent, 100% apple juice, white rice, frozen veggies, tortillas, Ziploc bags, Arm & Hammer cleaners, and pasta.

Since I usually have multiples of the same coupon I got several of each of the things listed above all for free. I seriously got 6 bags of white rice! And I also got tons of other things including milk, lettuce, and shredded cheese for $0.75 cents or less!

If you're one of those people who doesn't use coupons because you think you'd end up buying things you don't need just because they're cheap/free or think that coupons only exist for junk food, think again. Granted, there are tons of coupons for junk food and if I wanted to I could probably get twice as much free stuff if I used these coupons. But I don't even bother cutting junk food coupons out, instead I only cut out coupons for the things we actually use. And before I buy anything I ask myself, "Would I buy this if I didn't have a coupon?" and "Will we actually use this?" If the answer is no, I don't buy it. Nearly everything I bought this week is healthy and something I feel good about feeding to my boys. (Well, ok, with the exception of the refried beans and taco seasoning... but you can't make 8 layer dip without them and Brandon and I can't have movie nights without our 8 layer dip!)

There are coupons for every single household staple (including milk, butter, eggs, etc.) as well as toiletries, cleaners, paper products and everything else you buy at the grocery store. And there are even many, many coupons for healthy and organic products. I regularly get organic frozen berries for less than the store brand non-organic frozen berries. I have a stockpile of Kashi cereal that I got for about 25 cents a box. I also got 3 bottles of Seventh Generation cleaners for absolutely FREE a few weeks ago. And just today, I got a big container of organic yogurt and a block of organic mozzarella cheese for less than $1.50 each. That's about half the price of non-organic yogurt and cheese! These organic and natural deals are the ones I get most excited about! And I get them a lot! Plus, I can take the money I'm not spending on paper towels or rice and use it to buy organic fruit and vegetables and they don't even make a dent in my grocery budget.

I could go on and on but I'll stop preaching to you all about coupons. I got so excited about triple coupon week that I just had to share though! If you don't use coupons, you probably think I'm crazy. But guess what- I think you're crazy! Haha, in all seriousness though, coupons are AWESOME! They've completely changed my life!

My Very First Sewing Project

This is photographic proof that I did in fact sew something. It was much more tedious than I ever expected, what with all the pressing, measuring, cutting, pinning, and stitching/re-stitching. And I swear, I thought I was going to wear out my seam-ripper! I had to re-stitch a lot of the quilt because I had either stitched the wrong sides together or hadn't sewn it in a straight line. But it was all worth it for my niece Violet! I was so emotionally invested in it, and I worked like mad to get it done. I'm so glad I had such a fun project for my first sewing experience!

I bought a "quilt-kit" at Joann's which was super convenient and which I highly recommend because it had 6 pieces of fabric that all matched and went together beautifully. It saved me the hassle of measuring at the fabric store and the time of having to pick out coordinating fabrics. As my first step, I ironed all the creases out of the fabric.

Then I set to work cutting most of the fabric pieces into 7 1/2 x 8 in. squares. I also cut the side strips and back lining out of two other pieces of fabric.

Here are my squares all ready to be sewn together.

Next, I sewed 3 squares together into a row. I did this with all of the squares.

Brandon even tried out sewing! I think he liked it too!

This is a finished row. I then sewed all 4 of my rows together.

Next, I sewed the chenille sides onto the finished block of squares.

Then I pinned the front of the quilt to the back and made sure that all the sides were exactly even before I sewed them together. Then I just flipped the quilt right-side out, pushed the corners out and hand-stitched the closure.

And Viola! The finished project!

Today, I pulled out several clothing items that I've been saving for someday when I had a sewing machine. Many of them need to either be repaired or taken in a tiny bit and I haven't been able to wear any of them in years.

I also bought a pair of jeans on sale at Nordstrom's while I was in California and rather than paying the $15 charge to have them hemmed at Nordy's, I decided to take a risk and try to hem them myself! I may be crazy, but I figure that if I screw it up, I can always take them back to the store and pay to have them hemmed. But I might as well try, right?! (It helps that the jeans are skinny jeans and have navy blue thread so if the hem isn't perfect, it will be very hard to tell.) I'm going to try to get to these projects this week, if I'm successful I will practically have a whole new wardrobe!

Dirt Cheap Diapers!

I read several money-saving blogs and I saw this post on the $30 Weekly Grocery Challenge and couldn't pass up diapers this cheap so I thought I'd pass it along!

Typically, diapers cost around $ 0.24 each, even Costco diapers. I usually use Target coupons to buy Up & Up diapers for around $ 0.13 each which I think is a pretty good deal. But this Diapers.com deal gets you diapers for as cheap as $ 0.06 each!! That's unheard of! So of course I jumped at it!

The only catch is that you do have to submit for a rebate (which I usually never do because I think they're generally a hassle) but this is a huge rebate so I think it's definitely worth it. It was really simple, I just printed my receipt, filled out my name and address on the sheet and mailed it in already. Also, it says in the fine print that you have to be a new customer to Diapers.com to get the rebate and use the $10 off discount code. Lucky for me, I had never ordered there before so this worked perfectly for me! Just a heads up though, I don't want anybody to miss that part and get overcharged.

Here's how you get the dirt cheap diapers:

Go to www.diapers.com

Buy 7 packs Luvs Jumbo Diapers $6.99 each = $48.93
Buy a small filler item like Pampers travel wipes for $1.99 to get your total to $49 to get Free Shipping
Total = 50.92
Use code BRAN4234 to get $10 off
Pay: $40.92 and submit for $14.97 rebate
Final Cost: $25.95 for 7 packs of diapers and travel wipes!

I love getting deals so I was pretty darn excited about this one! By using the code above, not only do you get $10 off, but I also will get a $5 credit to Diapers.com. Then once you register, you can pass along your own referral code to other moms and get money too! If even one person uses my code to do this deal, I will be ecstatic. $5 in free diapers? Yes please!

So if any of you moms out there want to help me and help yourselves to get super-cheap diapers delivered right to your door, do this! Thanks!