It's always nice when grocery store sales & coupons align just right, and it seems like it's been awhile for me since I had a great trip. I've just been picking up a few things here & there, but I don't know that I've been spending less doing it this way or not.

Well, yesterday after work, I bought a back seat full of groceries, stopping at 3 stores (all on my way home).



Total cost: $30.02. Coupon savings: $34.65. Future savings: $14 (with a $4 coupon to use on a future purchase, and a $10 rebate to send away for). I also think something scanned double on my receipt, so I was overcharged about 50c. My picture angle is horrible - those candy bars aren't that HUGE!

Anyhow, that was for:
3 liter diet cola
1 frozen pizza
5 loaves of bread
1 gal bleach
1 gal milk
softsoap body wash...generated the $4 coupon for next time
5 jars peanut butter
4 jars olives
2 cans pineapple...free after coupon!
1 bunch bananas
24 oz cottage cheese
16 oz cheese slices
1 can mushrooms
8 oz shredded cheese
1 lb smoked sausage
Little Debbie brownies...diet, what diet?
2 big candy bars...ditto!
4 packs gum
1 soy candle...free after coupon!
2 lbs. deli roast beef...paid just over $2 after coupons, and it will give me the $10 rebate.

If I hadn't bought the chocolate & gum, I would have been ahead about $3, but sometimes those really are necessities so I have no regrets about wasting $3.

I'm off to the garden to pick green beans soon. I missed the past two days so I may be there awhile! I'll add whatever I get to the pickings from earlier in the week, and freeze a batch today. We don't have all that many plants, but it seems they are producing a lot!

I worked like a dog yesterday. Ok, wait a minute, who came up with that saying? My dog lays around most of the time, sleeping, and that is most definitely NOT what I did!

I got up early and checked on a litter of puppies, noticed one bunch of horses needed water, filled their tank. Decided since I was already there, I might as well feed them. Then, fed another group as well just to get them out of the way for the day. Oops, part of their fence needed fixing. Since I was there anyhow, and had water going, might as well hook up another hose and water out farther. Well, since I was there, I might as well take them some grain. Oh, another group came up out of the field, I'll take them grain as well. Just one pen left, so I fed them. They're near the garden so I checked on the veges.

A quick glance told me I would have to make multiple trips if I gathered up armfuls so I found a box in one of our buildings and picked. An hour later, I carried in a banana box filled with squash, green beans, tomatoes and radishes. It was 9 am. I was starving for breakfast, and so happy to have accomplished all that!!

My plans were to prepare all the bounty for the freezer, do a little zucchini bread baking, get some laundry done, etc. But hubby had different plans. He needed some parts he'd ordered from town, so while he went one direction to get a pickup inspected so we could re-license it (6 months overdue!), I went to pick up the parts...and go to the bank, recycle, gas station, grocery store, and I think somewhere else. These were all not in my plan, but since I was going anyway, might as well.

Rather than keep all the veges, I bagged up two sacks of squash & green beans. One for my hairdresser who mentioned just this week she really liked zucchini bread but messed up the one batch she tried to make, and she didn't have any more zucchini. The second bag went to the man at the parts store. My hubby's family has brought them veges for many, many years, so he thought why not?

While I was making all the rounds, hubby called and said hurry home, we might need you to drive the hay truck. There were 350 square bales of hay to load. I came home, but found no one in the house. Rather than go look for them, I snuck in a quick 10-minute tidying & vacuuming session. I was dreading the hay, not because I would be driving, but because I know better. Hubby is in no physical condition to load the hay, so it would be me & DSS loading while hubby drove. I snuck in a quick trip to check on the puppies again, and cleaned up old hay in the barn where I knew we'd be stacking the new.

And then, we had an unusual stroke of lucky timing. Brother-in-law showed up with his trailer, not a total surprise, but he came at the right time. A cousin called & hubby told him to come on over. (He works for us, and had missed work yesterday, so he was checking to see if we needed him.) And, another guy & girl (late teens/early 20's) that come to clean stalls showed up much earlier than we expected. We were using the tractor they use already, so hubby offered to pay them to help with the hay. The young girl drove, and with 2 guys on the trailer, and the rest on the ground tossing the hay up onto the trailer for stacking, we were able to get thru it all in two trips and three hours. Actually my 2nd trip was different. I forked loose hay from broken bales onto a separate trailer while hubby drove.

The rest of the evening was then filled by a 2nd feeding of some of the horses, checking again on puppies, 2 loads of laundry, watering the garden, burning some trash, a little bit of lawn mowing, vege prep (for freezing this morning and making zucchini bread), and of course dinner.

Somewhere in there I tripped climbing thru a barbed wire fence, and my legs are slashed in about 5 places. That was getting to the burn barrel so I could burn trash.

Today, I am sore all over. Legs, arms, back, you name it. But I have a happy smile on my face that it all went so well yesterday, and that I personally accomplished a TON of stuff!

I'm not quite so ambitious today, as all I've done so far is checked on the puppies, picked a few more veges, and checked in with you guys. But, I'm off to do the freezing & baking now. Horses & lawn mowing will come later, if it doesn't rain. Okay, wait, that didn't come out right. The horses get fed rain or shine. I would also like to organize my desk and figure out which stack of papers is to be filed and which is bills to be paid. That's kind of important, but I don't always prioritize in the right order, so it will probably wait for last.

I just spent the last several days gathering information for a loan application to try to refinance. It's a lot of information to pull together, and it took me several evenings to dig through and find all the paperwork to pull the figures from. Now we just have to sit back and wait. Keep your fingers crossed, please. We really NEED this to go through!

When I went to the post office to mail everything, I pulled out an old, old Priority Mail stamp. I used to buy them 4 or 5 at a time, since I mailed invoices to a client. It was for $3.85 or $3.95, so that probably goes back 3 or 4 years. I tried to lick it and stick it to the envelope and it just fell off! LOL. The clerk glued it on and then added the extra postage needed. I've been waiting a long time to use up that stamp!! I had to dig around my office for about 15 minutes before I remembered where I put it. It was 15 minutes well spent.

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I've found a few coins here & there lately, almost a penny a day. Now if only I weren't wasting several times that amount on snacks, it would be great. If I don't quit that and get my act together, I won't make my weight loss goal in the challenge I entered. Sometimes, it's as if my brain shuts out all the logical thoughts like "is this a need or a want?" and "will this bring you closer to your goals?". I can KNOW I'm sabotaging myself both financially and healthily, and the evil lizajane just wins out.

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I've had several thoughts of things I want to blog about lately, but haven't had time to sit down & do it. It's too late tonight for me to start anything requiring real thoughts. This is just a brain dump of things going on lately, so it requires almost no thought! I also am way behind on updating any of my totals, other than when I find money on the ground.

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Anyone check out the meteor showers the past few nights? I spent about 10 minutes outside around midnight last night and saw 2. I'd like to do it again, but I'm heading to bed instead.

My latest health risk assessment showed that, even though I've lost some weight, my cholesterol is up, triglycerides are up, and blood pressure up slightly. It was suggested that I might try fish oil, I think to bring the triglycerides down. So, I was wondering, does anyone here take fish oil pills?

I looked at 2 different kinds at Walgreens. Nature's Bounty (or maybe it was Nature's Finest) is buy-1-get-1-free this week. I think the smallest bottle was something like 9.99 or 10.99. It would be roughly 400 pills. I don't remember the exact details, but it mentioned they are coated to aid digestion and alleviate "fish burps". Oh, yum. The other kind was just the "W" brand, and with a coupon, it would be about the same price. It didn't say anything about a special coating.

Has anyone tried either of these brands? Any fish-y problems?