LeapFrog Issue and Food for the day!

Well today I had yogurt for breakfast and half a bagel.  Lunch was leftover chicken marsala and we ate dinner at my moms (homemade spaghetti sauce!).

We bought my son the Leapster 2 for Christmas last year (its like a gameboy but its ALL educational games, but the kids don't know they are learning haha) and my son absolutely loves it and so do I! He has about 7 or 8 games for it and last month he kept telling me that it was turning on by itself. Naturally I thought he was joking with me. So we had to sleep in his room one night while our bedroom was being redone and sure enough my husband got up and took the batteries out because it kept turning on! So I looked at it the next morning and I could hardly see the darn screen! I had to turn it every which way to even see anything. So I emailed LeapFrog and let them know what was happening, and they gave me somethings to try and I did try with no luck. I emailed them this morning saying it didn't work and within a couple of hours they emailed me back saying they will make an exception and send me a brand new one!


I have to say I am very impressed with their customer service. The first time I emailed them it didn't take long to respond either. We have so many LeapFrog toys and that is what I get for most of my nieces and nephews now. I'm just so happy because he uses this thing a lot and really likes it (right now the Sonic game he is playing is teaching him to count by 5's!).

If I didn't ask or take 3 minutes of my time to email them to let them know the issue I was having, I honestly would have broke down and bought another one, that is how much we love this product. But I did ask and I got an even better response then I thought!

Moral of the story: Always call if you are unsatisfied with a product, you might get more then you expect! 

$1 Restaurant.com certificate!

Hurry hurry to get 90% off your restaurant.com purchase.  You can get a $25 gift certificate for $1 by using the code NINETY.  This will also work on the $10 ones.  I looove getting these for Christmas gifts (yeah I know I am starting my shopping early), and my most favorite place is the Melting Pot.  The stipulations on this one aren't as bad as I've seen before so I'm super excited.  Me, my mom and sis usually go there for a girls few hours out, oh its soooo yummy!  I'm drooling just thinking about the chocolate fondue! 

Tiring Day!

I think this weather has me feeling tired!  I didn't sleep very good today so that didn't make for a good day back to work after the long weekend!  Here's what we ate today - all from the stockpile.

Breakfast - the boys had cereal and I had a bagel at work
Lunch - leftover chicken bruchetta
Dinner - chicken marsala, side salad and broccoli with cheese

There should be enough left over for my husband or I for a lunch tomorrow, I'll just have to figure out another lunch for the other of us!

I was surfing the net for a few before I hop on Wii Fit, and I found this interesting frugal story...read it if you have a few minutes.

Frugal Article

August Totals!

Here are my August totals I promised.  I try to stay around $250 a month and this includes feeding my hubby, me and our son.  This is for food, healthy and beauty and household items (cleaners, tp, pt, etc).

Number of items - 469
Retail value - $1,209.08
Coupon value - $957.60
Paid out of pocket - $264.19
Savings percentage - 79.2%
Cost per item - $0.62

Not too shabby I must say.  Hopefully September will be even better with the stockpile challenge.  I have to admit, we were awfully lazy today, I mean really lazy.  We had a good crockpot chicken recipe to try and neither one of us wanted to get up and make it, so we got pizza tonight.  Anyone just have those days or is it just me?

Keepin' it real

So this eating out of the stockpile thing isn't going too bad, I've had to get a couple of things but they should last us a bit and we can use them for multiple meals. 

Went to Costco and got milk, bananas, eggs, pickles (hubby and son eat this like no other and will probably last a couple of weeks) and I splurged and got myself a big tub of hummos (this will probably last a bit too, but I will take it to work for a mid day snack).  I'm having my parents, sister and aunt and uncle over today for my aunts 60th birthday so I'll have to run to Kroger in a bit to get some cheese and a veggie, for some reason I thought I had more cheese then I do, but still at least its just a few things!  Oh yeah and we also bought some beer this weekend....oyy guess this isn't going as good as I thought! 

So in honor of keeping it real and making myself accountable I figured I'd post what we eat for the rest of the month and if I had to run to the store to get anything!

Yesterday we had yogurt for breakfast, and then we bought lunch at the Toledo zoo, (it was only $13 for 3 of us which I thought was good!) and then for dinner we had grilled chicken sandwiches, rice and a salad. 

Today was a pop tart or cereal for breakfast, lunch was pb&j with fruit and a few chips, and tonight will be chicken bruchetta with salad and a veggie (I'm thinking asparagus). 

That's all I got for today, I'll be posting my August totals later on today, enjoy the gorgeous weather!

Friday Shopping!

Betcha can't guess how much all of this was?!?!?  $2 and some change!  Yep, you read it right, I paid under $3 for all of this.  I know its a little hard to see so here is what I got!

Target

4 GM cereal cups - $1.00 each
     Use 4 $1 off GM cereal Target coupon here

8 Chef Michael dog food - $4.26 each
     Use 8 $1.50 off Chef Michael Target coupon here AND $3 off Chef Michael from 8/23 RP

4 Gerber bottles - $1.00 each
     Use $1 off Gerber feeding accessory Target coupon here

2 Kit Kats (oops already ate them haha) - $.52 each

5 Schick Quattro Razors - $6.99 each
     Use $4 off Target coupon from 8/30 SS AND $4 manufacture coupon from 8/23 SS

7 64 count Kotex liners - $2.94 each
     Use $2 Target coupon from 7/26 AND $1 manufacture coupon from 7/19 SS or 8/23 SS

12 Chef Michael wet dog food - $.84 each
     Use BOGO Target coupon from here or 8/30 SS AND BOGO coupon from 8/23 RP

I did this between two different Targets and the first transaction went crazy.  I think the BOGO coupons actually applied to the dog food because it looks like $4.26 was taken off instead of the .84 for the cans!  I ended up having to take back 4 or 5 coupons back and still ended up with a negative $1.22.  So thats why I had to grab the two candy bars - ended up being .58 for that transaction.

The second transaction I had to take back a couple of the BOGO can food coupons because of the overage I got from the razors - usually you don't get overage but this lady just kept scanning!  My total on that transaction was $1.23.

Kmart

1 Leapster game - $19.99
     Used $5 printable coupon and $5 Kmart Q - Xmas present for my little one

5 Ponds cloths - $2.50 each
     Used $1.25 Q from 6/28 RP

8 Kotex liners - $1.29 each
     Used $1 or .75 Q from 7/19 SS or 8/23 SS

1 Suave hair gel - $2.49

1 Neutra Air - $2.67
     Used $1.50 Q from 7/12 SS

10 different kinds of dog treats - $2.50 each to $3.99

This was done at two different stores, and my total for both stores was $12.12 - $9.99 of which was the Leapster game! 

Anybody get any good deals this week?

I <3 Kmart

Well I finished my two finals today - I know I got an A in one class, and I'm hoping for a C in my Stats class....yeah needless to say I didn't care for that class!

I started making my stuffed pepper soup to have for this week and realized I needed tomato sauce so I ran to Aldi's.  I also got some squash for the crockpot soup I'll make later in the week.  As I was leaving I saw this HUGE cloud of black smoke, so me being curious I tried to "follow" the smoke.  I thought it was literally half a mile up the road so I went about 1.5 miles and then realized it was still far away.  On my way home there was a Kmart calling my name!

Here is the quick run down from Kmart:

3 Beggin Strips - 2.50 each
3 Canadian Bacon Strips - 2.50 each
2 Pupperoni treats - 2.99 each
3 Trio building sets - 4.99 each (after instant $5 off for the monthly ad)
2 Scotch tape pop up holders - 2.49 each

Total was 43.xx

Coupons used:

3 - 1.00 off Beggin Strips
3 - 1.50 off Beggin Strips
2 - 1.00  off Pupperoni
3 - 5.00 off Trio building set
2 - 2.00 off scotch tape

My total was .07!!  The ladies behind me were so amazed it was hilarious!  I hope I can grab some coupons from my mom tomorrow and get some more loot! 

Anyone else get any good deals this week so far?