MAJOR Grocery Savings, weight loss and other stuff

[I apologize for the lack of photos. I have been experiencing technical difficulties.]

I went to the grocery store last week and bought $344.00 worth of groceries for only $124. That is a savings of over $220 thanks to the Grocery Game!! Everything was name brand and I didn't buy anything that we didn't need. You naysayers have no idea what you could be saving. It is insane to pay full price for food when you don't have to. If you are interested in learning more, do a search on my blog (at the top of the page) for "grocery game" and you will find several posts from me on the topic.

I am about to reveal a very sensitive thing about myself-my weight. I normally would never do this, especially here on my blog, but I am totally amazed. Today marks 1 month since giving birth to my surrobabe and I am at...............124 pounds!!! It is incredible to have my body bounce back so quickly and I am eternally grateful to my genes for that. After having my 1st baby it took me about 8 months to get back to my normal weight, it took about 3 months after the second, 1 month after the third and 3 weeks after the fourth. How can it have gotten easier after each baby? I thought that it would be harder with each child. If I wasn't wired this way then I seriously wouldn't have considered being a surrogate.

Speaking of surrogacy, baby girl is doing fabulously. She is getting big and her parents are so in love. Ahhhh, isn't that sweet? It makes me feel so good to know that I played a part in helping create their family. What an honor that was! I just shipped out another cooler full of milk for her today. I love being able to continue helping them even after she was born.

Spring break is finally over, thank the Lord! My kiddos drove me nutso all week long as they were continually consumed with sheer boredom. It didn't help that we got hit with 2 different snow storms either.

Are you in the mood for a delicious treat? If so, you must try this recipe-Bliss Layer Bars. They are sinfully delicious. We found them to be best straight out of the fridge. If you let them warm up, the chocolate seems to overwhelm the peanut butter goodness on the bottom. I got this recipe from the Sunday Baker. Her yummy blog is listed on my right sidebar.

Here's another personal topic for ya-boob jobs. Have any of you gals ever considered plastic surgery? Right now I love that I am a 36C but I know that will change as soon as I stop lactating. Ugh. Why can't I just keep the ones I have now? They are perfectly shaped and full. To keep that appearance I will have to undergo surgery. Fullness is just something that I don't possess when they aren't full of milk. Have any of you undergone an augmentation or know someone who has? I would love opinions. I already have a surgery scheduled for July 10th but I don't know if I will actually go through with it. I may chicken out, lol.

Monday, Monday....(Peanut Butter, Cruises, Grocery Game, etc.)

I seem to be keeping a trend of updating the blog on Mondays. I have just been so tired lately. The ole blog has been the last thing on my mind. This past week was complete hell for me. You know that peanut butter recall thing that CNN has been talking about? Welllllll, I found out about it a little too late. I bought a box of Keebler peanut butter crackers a little while back and I ate one pack just about every day for the past week and a half. Little did I know that they were making me incredibly sick. Since I am pregnant, I just assumed that the massive headaches and nauseous stomach problems were a result of Miss Thang. Lo and behold it was the stupid crackers. I didn't catch on to the issue until after I opened the last pack this past Saturday night. When I saw the news talking about it they reported that the bad ones were made by Kellogg's. I thought mine were fine until I read the backside. Who knew that Keebler was owned by Kellogg's? Ugh. Needless to say, I won't be eating any more peanut butter crackers in the near future. I was pretty much bed ridden and miserable as a result from eating them. Now my girl scout cookies (Do-Si-Dos and Tag-Alongs-both have peanut butter) that I just ordered better be okay to eat!!

***I just learned that the girl scout cookies should be fine. Thank the Lord!***

I got my awesome new pink Blackberry Curve this week and I am in love. Having a full keyboard is way better than having 2 letters per key on the Pearl. Maybe crunching my pink Pearl in the car door wasn't such a bad thing afterall, lol.

The kids were out of school today so we went to see "Hotel for Dogs" at the theatre. It was really cute and the kids seemed to like it. I was really only there for the buttery popcorn and cherry slushie though. Yum....

Anyone have any cruise line recommendations? We are looking at going to the Mexican Riviera sometime this year (Cabo San Lucas, Mazutlan, Puerto Vallarta) but we are not sure who to book with. We took a Carnival cruise to the western Caribbean for our honeymoon and while it was alot of fun, we feel that another cruise line may suit us better. I am really looking at Royal Caribbean at the moment. Their ships seem really impressive. We would like to look at Norwegian and Princess too. Anyone know anything about the differences between lines?

There has much talk lately about saving money at the grocery store. I cannot stress it enough but if you are truly interested in doing something about it other than buying generics, shopping at Wal-Mart (which is the pit of hell in my book and I boycotted them years ago-GO TARGET!) or only buying sales items, then you need to change your way of shopping. The Grocery Game is the best and most reliable way to get your weekly grocery bill down all the while causing you to build a nice stash of groceries. I have been doing the GG for over 3 years now and it has changed my way of grocery shopping forever. There is a 4 week trial that you can do for a dollar but it really takes about 12 weeks to see it in full effect. The reason I prefer the GG over other sites is simply because Teri makes it so easy. I don't have to put together the sales lists at all because it is already done for me every week. I went to King Sooper's (yes, that name is completely idiotic, lol) last week and got $116 worth of groceries for $50.35. I did not buy any generics. I simply used coupons from the Sunday paper on name-brand items to achieve that nice discount. The list told me what was on the best sale and what week's newspaper the corresponding coupons for the items came from. It's that simple. If you decide to give the site a try, I would love to have your referral so that I can earn free weeks. Just use my email address of: brandylogan@gmail.com

BTW, if you want to see my previous posts on the Grocery Game, click here to read them. I have pictures of my loot plus a 2006 year-end savings report. Those old posts help describe just how the GG works.

Well, where in the heck have I been??

Sorry for the lapse in between posts. Emerson kept us on our toes this past weekend and I have been exhausted. Poor guy threw up a gazillion times and you don't even want to know about his other issues. We went through 3 solid days of cleaning up yucky stuff all around the house. Luckily, Hayden never got it. Mom, on the other hand, did. Ugh. E's last day of sickness was Sunday. He never ran a fever nor did he have a problem holding down food on Monday, so I decided to take the kiddos to school on Tuesday. All went well except that I started feeling nauseous during breakfast with the Mom's Club. It wasn't too bad so I didn't think much of it. Heck, I have been feeling nausea since the beginning of December because I think that I have an ulcer. Anyhoo, I went to pick up the kids and everything was fine until I got home. Suddenly, it felt like I had been in street fight and lost. My body began to ache, my stomach was hurting, and my head felt like it had been run over by a steamroller. It is amazing how fast this virus took over my body. I took a nap while the kids did, but Clayton didn't relieve me from the kids until 7pm due to being in Atlanta all day on business. When he finally got home, I was able to take some medicine to put me to sleep. This morning I woke up feeling like the sickness had never happened. It was so weird. I couldn't believe that I had just spent the previous night laying on the cold bathroom floor in pain. Thank gosh it is gone. I pray that Hayden and Clayton don't have it now.

Last weekend I went to the grocery store and you will never believe what happened. I spent $.90 on over $47 worth of groceries! That is 98% savings!! I kid you not. In fact, the total was originally -$5.56 and they owed ME money to take their groceries out of the store!! Crazy huh? They made me grab a few things to bring the total up to a positive number. My store was tripling coupons that day for the first time since I have been doing the Grocery Game. Other Harris Teeters in NC do it more often, but mine stinks about that and so they rarely do it. I can see why now, lol.

Hayden's birthday is coming up on the 29th. He is sooo excited! We are going to celebrate with 9 of his buddies at Fun Depot. It is a fun place with go-carts, mini bowling, video games, a huge soft-play area, etc. It seems like his birthday is always so far away since he is the last of all his friends to have one. We have a group of friends where one child has a birthday in each month starting in June and ending in January. I am so thankful that it worked out that way. It is so much easier to buy one gift per month. Having the break between Hayden and Emma's birthdays is really nice. Hayden just hates having to wait patiently for his big day to roll around. Oh well, they say that you save the best for last, right?

2006 Grocery Savings Report

OK, it is finally time to post the report to my blog. I am so happy to say that I saved a bundle over the past year thanks to The Grocery Game! If you are interested in getting more info. on the GG, click on this link. It only costs $1 for a 4 week trial. If you decide to give it a go, I would appreciate being your referral. :)

$2570-Amount spent at Harris Teeter from 1/1/06-12/31/06
$5492-Value of groceries

That means that I saved $2922 for the whole year! Mind you, everything I buy is name brand (except pretzels) and I shop in one of the nicest grocery stores in town. I love the GG!!!

I also do the GG for Walgreens, but I did not keep track of it the way that I did for Harris Teeter. I will say that I have gotten back over $1000 by doing their rebate program and using the list from the GG. Whoo hoo!!!

My apologies

I am so sorry that I haven't been updating my blog. Life has been crazy lately. Here's some updates:

Surrogacy Stuff
Clayton and I flew out to Denver on 5/23 (Tues.) and came back on 5/25 (Thurs.). We weren't even there for 24 hours if you don't count the time we spent waiting at the airport. It was insane. We spent all day Wednesday at the clinic (CCRM). It was really cool to be in the #1 clinic in America for infertility. They made us take drug tests, blood tests, and have a psychological evaluation. I also had to do a routine exam, internal ultrasound, the MMPI (a 500+ question personality test), and a hysteroscopy. We left at 11:55pm that night and got home at 8am the next day.

I found out that everything checked out okay this week with the exception of not being immune to Varicella (chicken pox). I have been exposed to them on 3 occasions, but have never gotten them. Yesterday, I got the shot from the nasty health department. No one else had it in stock because it is a vaccine that needs special storage and it expires quickly; therefore, not many doctors have it on hand (except maybe pediatricians).

Around the 13th of this month, we will do a mock cycle to see how my body reacts to the drugs. Hopefully, that will all go well and we will be able to move on to the real cycle :)

Emerson
He has been going to physical therapy for the past month and I am happy to report that he is walking. By walking, I mean that he is choosing to walk rather than crawl so he is finally up off his knees. Thank the Lord! His therapy will continue for several more months to make sure that he quits walking on the inside of his left foot. All in all, he is doing really well.

Grocery Gaming
You guys that haven't tried this, really should. I can't believe that people still think that you can save more at Wal-Mart and by buying generics. That is what they want you to think. I have been gaming religiously since September 2005 and I have saved a ton of money. Last week, I spent $50 and saved $94. That is $144 worth of groceries for only $50. So far for 2006, I have spent a total of $971 on $2407 worth of groceries!!! That is a savings of $1436 and my percentage is 60%. I have a program that figures all of that out for me. Anyway, I don't buy generics nor do I shop at Wal-Mart. I shop at Harris Teeter and I buy all name brand products. HT is one of the more expensive stores, but that means that they have the best sales. When you use coupons on top of the sales, you really save big. To try the grocery game, click on my link listed on the right and feel free to use me as a referral ;)

Special Visitor
Grandma Christie (Clayton's mom) will be visiting us next week. We are excited to see her again and the kiddos are anxious to be spoiled rotten for a few days. It will be a fun week.

What was once lost is now found
I found my Digi Rebel charger so I should be posting photos again soon. Yay!

Best grocery trip (so far)

Oh my gosh, I paid $46 for $146 worth of groceries today!!! Can you believe that? Clayton and I were both stunned when we had to pay. That is just insane. Whoo hooooooooo :)

To all you gals doubting the Grocery Game, a photo for you:

Today I had the best grocery trip ever! I got all of the above for $66. My savings was $81. It was amazing to get 5 boxes of Toaster Strudels and 4 cans of chicken broth for *FREE*!!! The strudels were on sale for $1.34 and I had 5 coupons for $.75 off. My store doubles coupons so the coupon value exceeded the price, thus making it free. The broth was 2 cans for $1 and I had 2 coupons for $.50 off of 2 cans, thus making all 4 of them free. Here's what all I got:

-15 boxes of yummy frozen Green Giant veggies
-4 boxes of frozen Tyson chicken
-2 6-packs of bottled Coke
-1 8-pack of Coke Zero
-1 2-litre of Coke Zero
-2 packs of frozen biscuits
-2 packs of flavored bottled water
-2 boxes of Mini Swirlz cereal
-4 brownie mixes by Duncan Heinz
-2 cake mixes by Duncan Heinz
-1 Bic pack of 10 razors
-1 pack of 5 daisy razors by Gillette
-1 bag of grapes
-2 boxes of Aunt Jemima pancake mix
-1 box of Kraft Mac and Cheese
-1 bag of Sanitas corn chips
-1 bag of Harris Teeter pretzels (the only generic thing I bought)
-1 bag of french vanilla coffee from New England Coffee
-2 wrapped sweet potatoes for the microwave
-4 cans of Sweet Sue chicken broth
-1 jar of Newman's own pineapple salsa
-6 cans of Green Giant green beans
-2 cans of Planter's cashews
-1 box Mrs. Smith's frozen honey buns
-1 pound ground beef

So, to all those doubters, you should be envious right now! This whole list would have originally cost me almost $150. 

Check it out-You could be saving a bundle at the grocery store.

Here is the latest view of my pantry. Isn't it lovely? I will let you all in on a little secret. I have been subscribing to a website called the Grocery Game since the end of August. It has saved me oodles of money since I started. Every week, I collect the coupons from the Sunday paper and then I match them up with the sale list that the GG has for me. You would think that you could just match your coupons up with the sales ads every week, but you would be mistaken if you think that will save you loads of $. This gal has figured out sales trends since 2000 and she knows when a sale is rock bottom and when it is a "phantom" sale designed to trick you into using your coupon before the item hits its lowest price. The first week, I save $40 and I thought that was great. Little did I know that it was going to get better each week. I saved more and more each week until I hit over the $100 mark this past Sunday. My receipt shows that I save $101.69 on my order and I can post a photo if you need me to prove it, LOL. I should frame it! They actually had to call a manager over to approve the transaction because the savings amount was over the expected amount. I was thrilled. I ended up buying $250 worth of groceries for $150. That is simply amazing. I pay the GG $10 every 8 weeks for her list of sales and recommended coupons. It is an amazing deal. She offers a $1 trial for 4 weeks and I highly recommend giving it a go. Now mind you, it is hard starting out because she will rely on coupons from a few months earlier and you won't have them. You have to gather up your coupons each week and after around 12 weeks, you will have all the same coupons she uses. Check it out and see if any of your local grocery stores are offered. I use Harris Teeter. Food Lion is also an option for me, but their coupon policy sucks. They do not double them. HT doubles up to 20 coupons that are $.99 and below. They rock! Oh, I forgot to mention that the GG helps you learn to stockpile so that you won't need to go out and grab something unexpectedly because you ran out. Instead, you end up only buying necessities when they are on rock bottom sale. I heard on 2 peas that it takes a couple of months to build your supply. One gal said that you spend the same amount on groceries as usual your first couple of months, but you bring home almost twice the groceries. She claimed that somewhere between month 3 and 4, you will start spending less and your stockpile begins to stabilize. If you are interested in the GG, check the website at http://www.thegrocerygame.com . Feel free to use me as a referral. I sure wouldn't mind :)