The winner of the $50 CardsDirect Gift Certificate is…
Comment number 74, Mickey Coutts, who said: “I would love Christmas cards!” Congratulations – looks like you’ll be set for your holiday greetings this year! 🙂
Archive for October, 2010
Winner: $50 CardsDirect Gift Certificate
Friday, October 29th, 2010This Week’s Shopping (Or Lack Thereof)
Wednesday, October 27th, 2010There hasn’t been much to report recently, because I haven’t been doing much shopping or cooking. I’ve had a cold for a week and half, and my doctor also started me on a new medication for my knee pain and swelling; the combination of the two things has been exhausting and pretty much killed my appetite. We’ve picked up one or two things from the store, like milk, but no “Real” shopping trips or coupon adventures to speak of. I’ve just been picking away at the food in our pantry, and going through the drive-thru to pick up a McFlurry or two – I don’t know what it is, but when I feel sick, ice cream always makes me feel better. It’s like I’m lactose super-tolerant or something!
I thought I would need to go to the store yesterday, because our fridge was looking so bare. But then this package arrived from FedEx:
I’m going to be writing a product review for El Monterey over on Contest Corner, so they sent me a huge box full of frozen entrées! Free meals, and the only cooking I have to do is press a button on the microwave – I’m pretty sure I could hear angels singing when I opened that box. 😉
Once I start feeling better, I’m looking forward to getting back into my normal routine. So in the meantime, let me live vicariously through you: Tell me in the comments what deals you’ve scored lately!
Free Bag of Food Should Taste Good Chips – First 100,000
Monday, October 25th, 2010
The first 100,000 people who click here and “Like” Food Should Taste Good on Facebook will be able to sign up for a coupon good for one free bag of chips. Thanks, Money Saving Mom!
Weekend Giveaway: $50 CardsDirect Gift Certificate – Ends 10/28
Friday, October 22nd, 2010Can you believe it’s almost Halloween already? Summer whizzed right by, as it always seems to. Now it’s time to start thinking ahead to the holiday season; and what better way to get a frugal headstart on your festive preparations than to win free greeting cards? CardsDirect have offered to give one lucky Super Coupon Girl reader a $50 coupon code, which can be redeemed towards the greeting cards of your choice. CardsDirect offer everything from Holiday Cards and Christmas Cards to customizable Photo Cards and even Baby Announcements – so the winner will be able to stock up on whatever type of cards they need!
CardsDirect also sent me my own $50 gift code, and I had fun looking through their cards and deciding what to get. I considered getting a custom photo calendar card, and toyed with an idea for the design. I found the process of adding a photo to be a little confusing, but I didn’t spend much time on it because I soon spotted a section for value assortment packs! I decided to use my code on this Assorted Economy Birthday Cards pack, containing 40 birthday cards. This card pack sells for $36.00 with $5.00 shipping, so my total was zero after the code. This will be a great addition to my card box! I love to send greeting cards for every occasion, so it saves money and time to have a supply already on hand. Between this and the cards that paid for my groceries, I will be stocked up for some time!
And one Super Coupon Girl reader will win a $50 Cards Direct gift code of their own! You can use this to get a value pack, like I did, or make 25 custom cards. Here’s how to enter:
1. For your first entry, just leave a comment and tell me what kind of cards you might like to get! Birthday, Christmas, invitations, or something else?
Want extra entries? Do any of the following, and leave a separate comment for each one:
2. Link to this post on your blog, then come back here and leave me the link!
3. Write about this on Twitter, then come back and leave me the link to your tweet! One Twitter entry per person. You can use the button at the bottom of this post to tweet with one click!
4. Post my button on your website – just copy and paste the following code, and let me know where you put it:
Rules, regulations, and other important stuff: Giveaway ends on October 28th at 11:59 PM, PST. Winner will be chosen the following day via Random.org. Giveaway is open to US residents.
Coupon Road Trip: .30 Cent Groceries at Wal-Mart
Thursday, October 21st, 2010
On our way home from Seattle last week, we stopped by a Wal-Mart that was near a friend’s house. I had a Wal-Mart gift card, and since there are none in our area, this was the perfect time for a little “Coupon Road Trip”!
Remember the Delicious Moments contest that all of you helped me win last year? As you may recall, my original motivation for entering the contest was that they were offering a Wal-Mart gift card and free coupons to the first 75 people to enter. Little did I know that I would get so much more! Once again, coupons led to great things in my life. Well, I still had the $10 gift card that I received through the contest, so this was the perfect time to use it!
Total spent: Put $10 on my Wal-Mart gift card, spent .30 cents out of pocket
View receipt
Got:
2 quarts of half & half – price: $1.68 each, final total for both: $3.36
1 lb of brown rice – price: .76 cents
2 lbs of white rice – price: $1.28
12-pack of Ramen noodles – price: $1.82
1 gallon of milk – price: $3.08
I knew we were out of milk and half & half, since I used it up before we went out of town, so this was a a great opportunity to restock on the way home. $3.08 is much more expensive than the milk prices in Oregon, but since we needed it and it cost me nothing out of pocket, I was OK with that. I had originally planned to pick up some produce with the remainder of the gift card, but since this wasn’t a Super Wal-Mart, they didn’t carry fresh items; so I stocked up on dry goods instead. We were out of rice, so I was happy to pick up two more bags. I was also starting to come down with a cold, so I bought the Ramen because it’s an easy comfort food.
Winner Wednesday: CSN Stores Gift Certificate
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010
And the winner of the $55 CSN Stores Gift Certificate is…
Comment number 44, Adrienne Gordon, who said: “Love CSN kitchen store.” Congratulations Adrienne, you’ll be able to have some fun shopping for kitchen items with this gift code!
Our Trip to Washington
Tuesday, October 19th, 2010
We had a wonderful time in Washington last week! It was great to see our friends and family, and the Maroon 5 concert that I won tickets to was amazing. If you’d like to read more about the show and see some of the videos that I took, you can click here for my recap.
Coupon Funded Menu Corner: Recipe Experiments & Stretching Leftovers
Monday, October 18th, 2010
As you know, I love to stretch my leftovers and repurpose them until every last bit has been used! And if I can’t find a recipe to use what I have, I see if I can make one up. These are my latest kitchen experiments:
I recently received a jar of raw honey to review for Contest Corner, so I used it to make a honey glaze for the pork roast I got inexpensively with a coupon. The glaze consisted of honey, soy sauce, brown sugar, olive oil, and seasoned rice vinegar – click here if you’d like the full recipe. It was a big hit!
This made enough for two separate meals, and I still had a bone left with scraps of meat and lots of nice glaze. I decided to get really experimental and see if I could make it into a soup!
I put the bone, glaze, and two potatoes in a stock pot with some water and cooked it for several hours. I ran it through the food processor to blend, then added some more water and returned to the stove. The “Soup” was so thick and rich that it was more like a sauce – so I decided to freeze it and use it later as a gravy! I think this would be great on meat or even mashed potatoes; I might use this at Thanksgiving.
Another one of my recent kitchen creations involved repurposing fast food leftovers. I had a tiny amount of nachos left over that we had gotten at a local Mexican restaurant – It wasn’t enough to feed even one person by itself, so I made a “Nacho Scramble”!
I put the nachos in a frying pan and sauteed with chopped green bell peppers and corn.
I then added a little flaxseed, eggs, cheese, and Taco Bell taco sauce – this isn’t the first meal I’ve made with leftover sauce packets!
Nachos and scrambled eggs aren’t a combination that you would automatically think of, but this turned out very tasty!
Readers: Have you come up with a unique way to use leftovers? I’d love to hear about it!
Weekend Giveaway: Pocket Full of Posies Meal Planning System – Ends 11/02
Sunday, October 17th, 2010
Meal planning is an important aspect of preparing frugal meals. By working out a game plan ahead of time, you can streamline what you buy and avoid the take-out trap. So today, Super Coupon Girl and Pocket Full of Posies have teamed up to give away a meal planning system to one reader!
Pocket Full of Posies offer a unique pocket meal planning system. The purpose of the system is to combine your week’s menu with a shopping list, creating a plan for you with the goal of reducing your workload. You are provided with a stack of cards with ingredient lists and recipes, which fit into a magnetized pocket holder that you place on your fridge. Pocket Full of Posies sent me one of their planners to try out so that I could share my thoughts on the system.
I thought this handmade system was very cute! The basic idea is that you choose one ingredient list, then pull the corresponding 5 recipe cards that go with it. You then take the ingredient list to the store and buy all of the items you will need to make five meals – two days a week are left open to utilize leftovers or eat out. You put each ingredient list and matching recipe cards in one of the meal planner pockets; the planner fits a total of 4 weeks worth of recipes. The ingredients needed are also listed on the back of each recipe card, so if you prefer to customize the meal plan, you can refer to the individual cards for your shopping list.
I’ve tried various different approaches to menu planning over the years, so I was curious to see how this would compare to my current system. Since my household is just myself and Jai, I’ve found that our meal plans need to be very flexible: I’ve tried writing out detailed plans for each day of the week, but inevitably I find it needs to change as the week goes along because we end up with more leftovers than I anticipate, or a surplus of a certain ingredient. Also, since our schedules are so hectic, it makes it hard to anticipate what will work the best on any given night; a big pot roast on Thursday may sound like a great plan on Sunday night, but if I work late it may end up being more of a Quesadilla night. So now what I do is write up a big list of all possible meals that could be made with the ingredients I have on hand, separated by category – breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Then I can decide on the day what will be most practical, while still having a detailed plan to rely on.
The recipes in the Pocket Full of Posies Monthly Pocket Package 1 Meal Planner certainly look delicious and simple to prepare! I like that you can pick which recipe you want out of that week’s pocket – somewhat similar to how I pick and choose whichever meal works the best off my list – although obviously since the menu is pre-determined that does eliminate some flexibility. The downside to this type of system is that it would be more frugal to go through your weekly grocery ads and prepare a menu based on what is on sale, rather than using a pre-made list. However, for those who may be new to meal planning, something like this could be a great way to get started. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, so this is one way you could reduce the workload and get into the rhythm of menu preparation. And if you’ve never made a meal plan before, then you will save money just by starting, since meal planning reduces waste, helps you streamline what you buy, frees up time, and reduces the temptation to call for a pizza when your family asks, “What’s for dinner?”. The most important thing is just starting, however you choose to do so – as you establish a routine and get the hang of meal planning, you will be able to make your menu more cost effective as you go along.
Reader Discount:
Pocket Full of Posies would like to offer my readers 10% off with discount code “SUPER10”.
Giveaway time!
One Super Coupon Girl reader will win a Pocket Full of Posies Monthly Pocket Package 1 with their choice of pocket design! Here’s how to enter:
1. For your first entry, just leave a comment on this post telling me how you plan your meals!
Want extra entries? Do any of the following, and leave a separate comment for each one:
2. Click here to visit the Pocket Full of Posies blog, and follow them on Google Friend Connect. Then come back here and leave a comment below letting me know that you did!
3. Link to this post on your blog, then come back here and leave me the link!
4. Write about this on Twitter, then come back and leave me the link to your tweet! One Twitter entry per person. You can use the button at the bottom of this post to tweet with one click!
5. Post my button on your website – just copy and paste the following code, and let me know where you put it:
Rules, regulations, and other important stuff: Giveaway ends on November 2nd at 11:59 PM, PST. Winner will be chosen the following day via Random.org. Winner has 48 hours to respond to my notification email, or a new winner will be chosen in their place. Giveaway is open to US and Canadian residents.
Weekend Giveaway: $5 Amazon Gift Card – Ends 11/09
Friday, October 15th, 2010I’ve talked recently about some of the great deals I’ve gotten using Amazon gift cards. So I thought it would be fun to give one of my readers a chance to snag a bargain by giving away a $5 Amazon gift code! I earned this code by redeeming Swagbucks, so it cost me nothing – and now I’m passing that savings on to you! I will email the gift code to one winner chosen at random. Here’s how to enter:
1. For your first entry, just leave a comment on this post! Anything goes – say hello, tell me about a good deal that you got, share your weekend plans, whatever!
Want extra entries? Do any of the following, and leave a separate comment for each one:
2. Link to this post on your blog, then come back here and leave me the link!
3. Write about this on Twitter, then come back and leave me the link to your tweet! One Twitter entry per person. You can use the button at the bottom of this post to tweet with one click!
4. Post my button on your website – just copy and paste the following code, and let me know where you put it:
Rules, regulations, and other important stuff: Giveaway ends on November 9th at 11:59 PM, PST. Winner will be chosen the following day via Random.org. Winner has 48 hours to respond to my notification email, or a new winner will be chosen in their place. Gift code may be redeemed by US and Canadian residents.
