Success

I did it!  I successfully couponed!  At the advice from some friends I know who coupon already, I went to southernsavers.com and let them do the work for me.  I did, however, still spend two days working on building my list and matching up my coupons.  Given, that's not two days straight.  I have a precious, little distraction who requires a lot of my time. :)

And I have to make a confession.  The first day, I actually went to Publix to take advantage of their BOGO deals, but they didn't start until the next day.  First-timer couponer's mistake.  But it was good that I didn't get everything that first day because I had extra time to go back over the list and find more deals.  I even got PAID to buy boxes of pasta on my first try! 

So...here it is.  I saved $91.11 (61%) on all of this!!  I was so pumped when I saw that box on the receipt with my total savings!  I'm hooked!!

 

Here's the breakdown:
9 boxes of cereal
10 boxes of pasta (made $0.06 on each box!)
2 boxes of grits
2 bottles of syrup
2 jars of spaghetti sauce
4 tubs of Dean's French Onion Dip (the hubs' fave)
2 cartons of Almond Milk
4 bottles of coffee creamer
3 containers of deli turkey
2 containers of potato salad
2 large Off! table top candles
3 Off! clip-on refills (got rain checks for 2 more of these b/c they were out)
2 bags of romaine salad (not pictured-oops!)
1 mango (for FREE!)

...all for about $60!  I'm pleased to say that we'll actually use all of this!  Especially the cereal.  We'll probably go through this stash in a few months.  And for those of you concerned about the expiration dates, none of the perishables expire until August or later.  They'll be long-gone by then.

Yesterday, I was so excited to get my Sunday papers.  Can't wait to see what deals I'll get this week!

Change

We've been through a lot of changes this month.  My maternity leave ended May 15th, but we decided that I would take additional time off work.  I'll get to be home with Will until the end of August, which means he'll be 6 months when I return to work.  I am beyond grateful for the opportunity to spend more time with my little man!  The downside is obviously losing my income for a few months.  I've been dabbling in couponing lately, but I'll be getting a little more "extreme" to get us through the next few months.   I'm nervous, yet excited about seeing how much money we can save.  (I will not be as extreme as the crazies on Extreme Couponing on TLC.  We're more into buying only things that we need, and we don't need 100 bottles of mustard or 50 boxes of cake mix...)

Another major change in our lives is we got a new car!  Wayne's two-seater 1993 Honda Del Sol wasn't exactly conducive to a car seat, so we started looking a few months ago for a new car.  Last week, we found one we loved, and we bought it!

So, we had to say goodbye to Little Black Mini-Me Tic-Tac...

And hello to Foxy!

It's a 2007 Acura TL, and as Wayne said, "it's phat!"  

We are very excited about the changes going on in our lives.  I love my temporary life as a stay at home mom and am soaking up every moment I can with Will!