At Jewel/Shaws: How to Help a Needy Family and Make Money Doing It

Today at Jewel I checked out the prices of the Wild Harvest organic baby food. I was buying a couple pairs of bogo WH products for pennies with the $1/1 coupons, and I had Q one left over. So I tried throwing in a 79-cent (regular price) jar of baby food, wondering if I would get overage, or be able to the Q at all. My Jewel is kind of hit-or-miss about coupons.

Well, the register provided no obstacle to getting overage, and the cashier had no problem with it either. So, if your Jewel checker is cool with it -- or if you have self-checkout -- the baby food is a way to get overage with those $1/1 printables, which will print unlimited. The smaller jars are 59 cents, if you'd rather have more overage than more baby food.

I can't think of a nicer shelter donation than organic baby food. The Qs expire 1/3/09. If you could buy 100 jars of the larger baby food with coupons by then (like 10 jars each time over 10 visits) you'd earn about $20.

Grocery Deals -- Jewel 12/4 - 12/11

3-Day Sale, Thurs-Sat

red seedless or globe grapes 99 cents a pound

All Week

Jewel milk $1.99/gallon (limit 2) (same price at Dominick's, but their milk is hormone-free)

Driscoll's raspberries, blueberries or blackberries, 4 oz. $1.99 (limit 3)

Jewel marshmallows, 10.5 oz., 89 cents (I'm making 4 pans Rice Krispies treats this week so will buy these!)

Frigo cheese sticks, 24 oz., $6.99
use .50/1 from 10/5 or 11/16 RedPlum

Jewel cottage cheese, 16 oz., $2

Wild Harvest deals using the $1/1 coupon:

organic milk, $3.29 half gallon - $2.29 after coupon
organic or whole grain pasta, 12 oz., bogo @ $2.50 -- TWENTY-FIVE CENTS EACH WITH 2 COUPONS!!
organic baby carrots, 1 lb., $1.50 -- 50 cents after coupon
organic pasta sauce bogo @ $3.99 -- $1 each with 2 coupons
12 Omega-3 eggs $2.50 -- $1.50 after coupon
organic tortilla chips, 7.5-9 oz, bogo @ $2.89 -- 45 cents each with 2 coupons

Dominick's Deals 12/4 - 12/11

Super Coupons, all with $10 minimum purchase:

Cheerios, Reese's Puffs or Lucky Charms, or Nature Valley granola bars, 4 for $6
(I just got a $1/1 Cheerios coupon in a Pampers mailing)

8-pound bag navel organges, $4.88

12 rolls Charmin tp or 8 rolls Bounty towels $5.99
use .25/1 or $1/2 Charmin from 11/30 P&G (but if u buy 2 the second will be $6.99)
use $1/1 Bounty from 11/16 Parade

72 Hour Sale, Saturday, Sunday and Monday only:

Buy 2 Coke 12-packs @ $5.99, get 3 free
pay $12 for 5 packs or $2.40 each

All Week:

Lucerne milk $1.99 a gallon

Chunky Soup buy 2 @ up to $2.99 each, get 3 free
use two .50/2 from 10/5 Campbell's insert
after coupons, pay $5 for 5 cans or $1 each

Keebler bogo @ up to $4.79 (seems to be on a variety of cookies or crackers)
use two $1/1 printables for cookies
after coupons, get two boxes cookies for $2.79 or less, about $1.40 each (depending on individual prices)

16-oz Farmland bacon bogo @ $5.99
use $2/2 from 10/26 SmartSource
after coupon, pay $4 for 2 or $2 each

18-oz Safeway brand peanut butter $2

Yoplait yogurt cups, 60 cents
use .40/6 from 11/2 SmartSource or $1/8 from Dinner Made Easy booklet

Safeway Select ice cream (1.75 qt) bogo @ $5.99

Lucerne chunk or shredded cheese, 32 oz for $6.99 (I buy at anything less than $4/lb and prefer Lucerne because it is HORMONE FREE)

Shopping Nov. 29 - Dec. 2

I have been giving in to the pregnancy exhaustion this week, hence the scarcity of posts here. Thanks for your patience! I keep hoping that if I just give up and rest, I will feel better. But at this point I think I could literally sleep all day long and not wake up feeling rested. I'm 9 weeks as of tomorrow, though, so hopefully a return to higher energy levels is right around the corner.

I did end up shopping a bit this week. We went to an indoor "winter farmer's market" fundraiser event, where a natural, no-hormone no-antibiotic rancher was selling grass-fed beef for less than I pay at the regular farmer's markets. I paid something like $4.67 a pound for some ground beef; I usually pay $6. I also got ground pork and some organic potatoes. Altogether I think I spent around $35 there.

Then I stopped into Jewel to take advantage of their one-day sale on cheese Sunday. I will be honest and admit that I am too lazy to get off the couch and look for that receipt right now. I'm guessing I spent around $22, which included 3 or 4 pounds of cheese and four more Wild Harvest products using the $1/1 coupons. I was delighted to see that the WH whole grain pastas were still bogo @ $2.50 -- with the coupons I got two more boxes of spaghetti for a quarter each. I also got a pound each of organic carrots and celery for a buck apiece after the coupon. Can't beat that!

I also stopped into Dominick's to pick up a scrip and collect the $30 gift card with coupon, which expired Sunday. Oh, I forgot to tell you! There was a new $25 gift card offer in this Sunday's CVS flyer! If you didn't get one, you might check the flyers at your store to see if any are still available.

So while I didn't have the shopping-free week I'd planned, I did just fine. This coming week, I plan to spend $78 as normal (I used to have an $80 budget but when I went crazy one week buying coffee on sale I had to borrow $2 each from many, many future weeks to cover it). We're nearly out of fruit, so that's on the list, as well as eggs and flour and milk and peanut butter. We're ok for meat, of course, and we still have plenty of frozen veggies in the fridge.

We have eaten nearly every last bit of Thanksgiving leftovers, thank God -- except the sweet potato casserole. No one really liked that, and it's a flavor I haven't been able to stomach in pregnancy. Unfortunately I've let it sit in the fridge for a full week now so I will probably have to chuck it. They were $1.50/lb. organic sweet potatoes, too.

Coupon Alerts

Walgreens $5/$25, good tomorrow and the next day.

There are several coupons in the P&G booklet in today's paper that sweeten the Black Friday deals at CVS running through today. Such as: buy a Cover Girl foundation, get any face product free. Use the coupon and pay only $6.99 for both, then get the full $12 in ExtraBucks. There's also $2/2 Aussie coupon in there.

There are some Hallmark coupons in the Parade magazine today as well.

Cool CVS CRT and a Warning

First, the cool: I finally gathered up all my coupons and dragged one of the kids over to CVS early this evening. On my first transaction, I received a CRT coupon for $5 off liquid makeup. The text was confusing -- it contained several descriptive words about the makeup, but nothing that I recognized as a brand name. I almost just ignored it because it sounded like it as for something specific.

But since I was getting two different kinds of liquid makeup in my next transaction, I showed it to the cashier -- one of the nice ones -- and told her I wasn't sure what it was for. She tried scanning it, and it worked. So instead of owing about $4 off my gift card, I had to grab one of those free after ECBs Hershey bars and ended up owing only 30 cents tax.

My visit successfully turned 5ECBs into about 21ECBs in just two transactions. I actually went up to the register for a third, $30 transaction, only to be informed that the coupon I was trying to use was for my other account. For which I have no ECBs, so I just ended up voiding it.

And the warning: I tried to click through to the coupons in two of my CVS emails today, and they are no longer available. Which sucks because they are supposed to be good through Sunday, and one was through Dec. 4. Why do they remove the coupons before they expire??? Thought I would let you know, so in the future you can make sure to print those Qs as soon as you get them. I will be.

Tales From the Front and a Free Coffee at McDonald's

In case you're like me and slept in this morning, you can read first hand accounts of what the stores in Chicago were like here. I used to HATE reporting the day-after-Thanksgiving shopping story because it is so boring. Always the same -- you go out and see people shopping, ask them what they're shopping for, whether they're cutting back, if they're getting good deals. I actually like the idea of this blog and will loook for it if I want to shop Black Friday next year -- because they could tell you if your target store is crowded before you head out.

And here's a deal that even layabouts like me can get: Today's Tribune has a coupon for a free small hot mocha at McDonald's, good 11/28- 12/3. Section 1, p. 13.

Dang, is it Nov. 28 already? I have GOT to get out there and use those coupons (which my in-laws gave me) for digital converter boxes. They expire in 2 days. I obviously didn't want to brave Target today since I wasn't after a doorbuster. (And FORGET about Wal-Mart, eh?) Maybe tomorrow.