Do you have......

I am looking for the coupons for Hormel Compleats meals, SS 8/17. I would be willing to trade another coupon for as many of these ones as I can get. I will be glad to pick them up from you! Email me at theobsessiveshoper@live.com. And yes, shopper is spelt wrong, so much for being obsessive!

You Are What You Eat

I had a question asked of me this week that has really been on my mind. At a class on Monday one gal asked me what we eat. I told her we try to eat semi-vegetarian. What I mean by that is that when I cook I try to only have meat every other day. We eat a lot of veggies and fruit. Cheese and milk for cereal are the basis of our dairy but not consumed in huge amounts. Truthfully some weeks we eat better than others. It depends on the work load at home, the places we need to be each night and/or my mood!

I love trying new foods and recipes-I hate repeating meals and especially having left overs. When I cook I like to try to please everyone without cooking seven separate meals, however this is almost impossible so to make it justifiable in my mind I try to customize my cooking for my family making someones favorite one day and another's the next. I want our family to cut down on processed foods and meats so instead of start World War 3 I just settle with vegetarian every other night or at least twice a week. (I sometimes just pick the meat out of my food or I don't have that piece of steak that everyone else is enjoying.)

I guess the reason I am sharing this is to tell all of you out there that you know your families best and you must be able to choose for yourselves what to feed your families. I am lucky I don't have very picky eaters and my husband is extremely supportive and rarely complains over our food choices. He told me once he really doesn't feel like he can complain since he doesn't do the cooking as long as he is fed he is happy! (I know his least favorites and I do try to keep those choices to a minimum just to be nice.)

I will share with you a few things that have really helped me in meal preparation but please feel free to do what works best for you:

• Keep a list of favorite meals in a note book, recipe book, white board etc... when your in a pinch you can always start there to decide what to make. I broke mine down into categories like: Meatless, Beef, Chicken, Pork.
• Stock up on the things that you need to make these meals. I love, love, love this Excel worksheet from the website foodstoragemadeeasy.net it helps with breaking the meals down, giving you an idea on what you need to store for 3 months.
• Instead of planning meals then looking for what is on sale I look at what is on sale or in my pantry and ask, "What can I make with that?" I use websites like Kraft, Food Network (my favs are Ellie Kreiger and Robin Miller), Family Fun and Betty Crocker as well as Google.
• I never plan what we will have on a certain day, something always comes up or maybe we (I) don't feel like Italian that night. Instead I just make a list, usually on the back of my shopping list, of meal ideas for the week. I make sure I have all the ingredients to make the meals then plug them in when I can. I only plan about 5-6 meals to make room for left over night(sometimes you just can't avoid the dreaded lefter night!) or eating out.

I hope this helps someone out there. If you have some tips that help your family please share!

I guess if it is true you are what you eat then I would say our family has multiple personality disorder!

Smelling Twice as Nice

Thanks to another Obsessive Shopper, Megan, telling me about this deal we can all have sweet smelling homes and fatter wallets!

At Wal-Mart Regular Price $4.13, with the coupon found in SS 8/3, $4 off one regular Plug-In, Expires 9/13/08

With the savings and the product your home will be smelling twice as nice!

Thanks Megan.

If any of you ever see a great deal like this let us know. You can email me or you can post it as a comment.

Focus on Food Storage

This week I noticed a lot of items on sale that would be wonderful for food storage. I did not want to overwhelm you all but I also don't want to make the decision on what was useful for your families. I decided to just highlight the food storage products on sale this week at Macey's. These items are most likely useful for your long term storage. If you are faint hearted and get overwhelmed easy, take a deep breath and just keep in mind your personal budget and the items your family uses.

Please go to the store list and look for other items that would be great with food storage. I am only showing you the items that are 4 or more stars, which means they are a great buy for Maceys.

I asked my friends at Food Storage Made Easy to help give suggestions regarding this sale.
This was their suggestion:

We would probably suggest for "beginners" to look at the following items:
-Morning Moo's Wheat 45 lb. Pail hard Red or White (3 star, but very necessary - red has a stronger taste, most people prefer white in breads)
-Morning Moo's Rolled Oats Quick or Regular 50 lb. Bag (4 star and versatile)
-Morning Moo's Vital Wheat Gluten 27 oz (4 star and great for helping make bread fluffier)
-Morning Moo's Corn Meal 72 oz. (4 star and can be used in a lot of recipes)
-Saf-Instant Yeast 16 oz. (4 star - for the bread)
-WF Sugar 25 lb. (4 star - for the bread)

We have found the first place people tend to start is figuring out how to make bread at least. You could sustain yourself for not much money with ingredients for bread. For people who are more experienced and have more of the basic needs covered, there are a lot of other food storage items such as: freeze dried fruits and veggies, potato gems, sour cream powder, honey power, egg whites, dry milk.

If you don't know what your families long term needs are I suggest you visit this awesome post be sure to watch the video it is very helpful! Thanks Julie for your help!

Freebies 8-20 thru 8-26

Albertsons

*****
Ken’s Lite Accents Salad Dressing Spray, 7 oz.
2.00
Ken’s Lite Accents Salad Dressing Spray, any 7 oz. $2/1 (9-30-08) SS-8/3
FREE

*****
Beech-Nut Stage 1 Cereal, 8 oz
.40
Beech-Nut Cereal Product, any $1/1 (9-30-08) SS-6/15
FREE

*****
Powerade 32 oz.
.69
Powerade or Powerade Zero, 20 or 32 oz. bottle .75/1 (10-31-08) SS-6/8 and SS-7/13
FREE

Harmons

*****
Powerade, 32 oz
.79
Powerade or Powerade Zero, 20 or 32 oz. bottle .75/1 (10-31-08) SS-6/8 and SS-7/13
FREE

*****
Pert Plus "With Botanical Extracts" 2 in 1 shampoo, 13.5 oz (**Careful, We're not sure if "With Botanical extracts" is included in the sale)
2.50
Pert Plus with Botanical Extracts Shampoo Plus Conditioner, any excluding trial size $3/1 (8-31-08) SS-6/29
FREE

Maceys

*****
Powerade 32 oz.
.69
Powerade or Powerade Zero, 20 or 32 oz. bottle .75/1 (10-31-08) SS-6/8 Powerade or Powerade Zero, 20 oz. or 32 oz. bottle $1/1 (11-30-08) SS-7/13
FREE

Reams

*****
Powerade 32 oz. assorted drinks
.60
Powerade or Powerade Zero, 20 or 32 oz. bottle .75/1 (10-31-08) SS-6/8 and SS-7/13
FREE

Oh Happy Shopping Day

Here are the details from today's shopping.

Albertsons

5 Jolly Time Better Butter Popcorn $.20 each (the store did not allow us to use all of our coupons and have an overage on this one :(, 5 Kraft BBQ Sauce $.50 each, 2 Lipton Dry soups $1 each, 2 Wisk Laundry Detergent $1.75 each, 2 Bertolli Frozen Entrees $3 each, 4 Cottenelle Toilet Tissue $5.24 each, Bounty Paper Towels $3.99, 16 Yoplait yogurts $.35 each, 1.87 lbs Grapes $1.83

Total Spent: $51.54

Total Saved $62.10

Extra, Extra II

This was a bonus week in the Sunday paper. We had two Smart Source books a Red Plum and a General Mills book. You will see the code for the General Mills book like this GM 8/10.

Treats for your 72 Hour kits

This week you can pick up bags of Life Savers Candy for $.75 a bag after coupon at Albertson's. I like to put these in each of my 72 hour kits. Let me explain why, it gives me a good reason to rotate my kits. You may ask why, this is what I do (at least try to do). At conference time we pull out our 72 kits and update them, check expiration dates, etc. To get the family involved I let them eat the candy that I packed the last time and replace it with the new stuff. This way everyone wants to help and we can see what we have, need and update.

Check this website, Foodstoragemadeeasy.com out for more ideas on how to make a 72 hour kit and to rotate and store them.

Shopping Day

Albertsons

4 Jolly Time Popcorn's FREE, 2 Curves Cereal @ $1.25 each, *Tide Detergent $7.49, 4 Kraft BBQ Sauce @ $.50 each, 6 *Pringles @ $.75 each, 3 *Puffs Tissues @ $.50 each, 4 Softsoap handsoap @ &.65 each, 8 Lifesavers @ $.75 each, 2 pkgs Grip pens (not shown) $1, 2 pkgs Wheat Pita Bread @ $1.50 each (not shown), 90 ct corn totillas (going to seperate and freeze) $ 2.49

Total Spent $36.26

Total Saved $61.38

*Bottom Line prince includes a $5 coupon toward our next shopping trip

Smith's

8 Malt-O-Meal Cereals FREE, 2.13 lbs of red grapes $2.13, 2 Pampers Jumbo Diapers @ $7.99 each, 4 Pampers Easy Ups @ $7.99 each, 6 loaves Grandma Sycamore Wheat bread @ $1.50 each,

Total Spent $61.61

Total Saved $61.33

Come see me at the Cache County Fair!

This weekend I will be at the Cache County Fair with a booth just for teaching people how to save money on their groceries and household items.

Come visit and enter a drawing for $100 in free groceries. Sign up to be a hostess and enter twice!

I can't wait to see you all there.

Freebies August 6-12

Here is the list of free items this week:

Albertson's


*****
Powerade 32 oz.
.69
Powerade or Powerade Zero, 20 or 32 oz. bottle .75/1 (10-31-08) SS-6/8 and SS-7/13
FREE


*****
Bic Round or Classic stick pens, 10 ct
.50
1.00 off 2 Printable at Group A print it twice
Free


****
Rubbermaid Produce Saver 5 cup
3.00
In-ad manufacturer's coupon: Buy 1, get a FREE Rubbermaid TakeAlongs 3-4 pack
3.00 + free item


*****
Jolly Time Popcorn, 3 pack (to make the most of this freebie follow the instructions on the list regarding the Mega Sale. This coupon used in conjunction with the Mega Sale creates an overage of 50 cents you can use on the other items*)1.00/.50
1.00 off 1 Printable at this link
Free


Smith's


*****
Promo: Buy 4 bags of these cereals, get $4 off instantly Limit: 8 Bags Malt O Meal Cereal: "21 oz Marshmallow Mateys", "22.5 oz Tootie Fruties", "25.5 oz Golden Puffs", 27 oz Frosted Mini Spooners"
2.00/1.00
1.00 off 1 printables at this link and this link **Don't Photocopy printable coupons, it's fraud and you can be prosecuted!
Free

Harmon's


*****
Powerade, 32 oz
.59
Powerade or Powerade Zero, 20 or 32 oz. bottle .75/1 (10-31-08) SS-6/8 and SS-7/13
Free


*****
-All month long- Pert Plus "With Botanical Extracts" 2 in 1 shampoo, 13.5 oz (**Careful, We're not sure if "With Botanical extracts" is included in the sale)
2.50
Pert Plus with Botanical Extracts Shampoo Plus Conditioner, any excluding trial size $3/1 (8-31-08) SS-6/29
Free

Macey's


*****
Powerade 32 oz.
.79
Powerade or Powerade Zero, 20 or 32 oz. bottle .75/1 (10-31-08) SS-6/8 and SS-7/13
Free

Ream's


*****
Powerade Energy Drinks 32 oz.
.69
Powerade or Powerade Zero, 20 or 32 oz. bottle .75/1 (10-31-08) SS-6/8 and SS-7/13
FREE


*Subject to store policies

Extra, Extra

In this Sunday's paper there was an extra book of coupons from Kellogg's. This is what it looked like:

If you haven't already pulled it out be sure to do so before you send your papers out for recycling. I am going to file this on in my fourth hanging file folder with Sunday's date on it. It will show on the lists as KLG. If you don't have a clue what I am talking about go to this post for an explaination or email me to schedule a sit down where I can explain it all to you!