Last Week's Thrifty Moves

After nearly two weeks without grocery shopping I headed into Albertsons to take advantage of some really good sales items.  This is what I got:

Four boxes of cereal on sale - 3 for $1.88 each less a 50¢ coupon made the final priced $1.38 and a box of Captain Crunch on sale for $1.99 just because I wanted it. J

4 cans of soup - 2/$1

4 cans of green beans and 2 cans of corn - 49¢ each

6 cans of spaghetti sauce - 77¢ each

6 boxes of breakfast sausage links - 77¢ each

2 cartons of fruit punch - $1 each

2 cartons of eggs - 89¢ each

I also picked up a package of lean ground beef on markdown for $2.29 and a pot roast on sale for $9.00.  The bagels were in the markdown bin at the bakery for 99¢.

On my birthday I found a rug at Fred Meyer that would be perfect in our living room.  I almost bought it for $129.00 but my gut told me to wait for it to go on sale.  I am so happy that I waited because I was able to buy it on sale last week and save a whopping $40!  It looks great.

We veered from our menu plan quite a bit.  Instead of the meatloaf I had originally planned for our Sunday dinner I made the pot roast I got on sale.  I used the leftover roast to make a batch of Bolognese and invited a friend over for supper.  Then I saved the last of the roast to make some beef barley soup.

Thursday we made a pizza and used up quite a few leftover items in the fridge.  We had leftover cheese, mushrooms, pepperoni, bell pepper, diced onion and diced ham.  Even the dough was leftover as I had made breadsticks to go with the Bolegnese using half the recipe of dough.  It was an awesome pizza and it sure didn't taste like it was made of leftovers. 

My slow cooker was looking pretty dingy so I put 2 Tbs. of bleach in it and filled it up with hot water.  After letting it soak for about 20 minutes it looked good as new.  Before I dumped it out I used some of the water to clean a tea stain out of the bottom of one of my white coffee cups.

Before

After

I went to the movies on "Tightwad Tuesday" for only $5 a ticket.  I used a gift card I got for Christmas last year to pay for my ticket and saw Dracula Untold.  Loved it!

A couple of weeks ago I unpacked my son's old Sega Genesis game and set it up for the girls to use on our old TV set.  They were able to determine one of the controllers wasn't working anymore.  I found a set of replacement controllers on eBay for $6.88 with free shipping.  They arrived this week and work perfectly.  The girls are in hog heaven.

Thursday after work I went to ShopKo to exchange a pair of my daughter's jeans and pick up some new mini blinds that were on sale.  I was able to get two new blinds for $7.19 each.  I also had a $5 store coupon to use on my purchase.

While I was there I happened upon four packages of pudding cups on a clearance shelf for 50¢ each.  These will be great for the kid's lunches.

When I left the store I didn't make it to my vehicle and I knew I was heading back inside to make another purchase.  I bought this adorable ceramic jack-o-lantern for our front porch.  It was on sale for $19.99 and I had a $10 store coupon ShopKo had given me for my birthday so I just had to use it.  Now I have a jack-o-lantern on the porch the squirrels can't eat and make a mess all over the place.

Isn't he cute?!

Not so thrifty, but necessary, was to purchase a book of stamps at the post office.  Since I was there I picked up a book of Christmas stamps to.  I like to use those after Halloween to send mail as well as my Christmas cards.  I will be paying myself back for the stamps I use for cards out of the Christmas Budget.

One of the managers at work gave me some Friendship Bread starter.  The last starter I had going for 11 years.  I let it go when we moved so I am extra excited to get it going again.  We loooooove Friendship Bread.

I watched a cooking show on PBS online for free.  Now I am anxious to try making Artisan Bread.  I've heard it is delicious and dead easy.

We watched Castle and The Goldberg's on our Roku.

I baked four loaves of whole wheat bread and my oldest made a batch of chocolate chip cookies.

I went through all of my partially used labels and used them up to make return address labels and all the mailing labels I will need for Christmas.

I also burned three music CDs to give as gifts.  I already had blank discs, cases and CD labels in my office supplies making this a no cost project.

How was your thrifty week?  Any great bargains?