In a "hounding" slump...

Okay.. so today marked another day that I just didn't feel like hounding.. I looked at deals on line and that.. read through the grocery ads that came out yesterday.. just tried to get a general feel for what I needed. I'm starting to feel the "unemployment" red line (meaning I have less and less money each week available to me) so I'm really looking only for deals on things that I need. For instance, I really needed ketchup and bleach this week. I went to WAGS on Monday because I had to get $10 cash (I don't ever carry cash) so I pulled together a few fast deals and wound up spending $17 there that day. $4.xx on deals plus $2.42 in TAX plus my $10 cash.. so it was an expensive (for me) wags trip. I stopped at CVS on my way home that day just to get 1 more $1 candy to get my $5 ECB, but other than that I've not gone shopping at all.

This week I did get another rebate for the Scrubbing Bubbles shower cleaner. Works good, I'm happy with it and I got it for free so that's cool. I also got some really good FREE coupons this week. One in the mail for V8 fusion. That was one where you text for the coupon which was cool. I also got 5 free wet dog food coupons this week in Sunday's circulars (I get coupons from neighbors and my husbands grandma) and also I had 4 free wet cat food coupons from last week. I got another today at Jewel when I went for a grand RE opening which turned out to be a disaster.

I thumbed through a special circular that was sent for this grand re opening at the Jewel in another town but still very close to my house. They had some pretty good deals PLUS had some freebies/games going on I thought would be cool to check out.

So on the way I decide to stop at Target to get a few things like cat litter. I bought about 25 of those great Tidy Cat $1 off coups that came out awhile ago. If I can get litter for 77 cents a week I'm going to stock up. So I got 3 of those because of course they only had one type and I like to switch the types around. Not sure why but I'm convinced the litter doesn't smell as bad if you switch it up. Anyway.. I found some other good deals on some clearance items.. nothing great, nothing to brag or that I even took pics of. I wound up spending $14 there on nothing particular.

I drive across the street to Jewel and I see this huge group surrounding this pop up tent. I park and walk over and sure enough there is a huge slot type machine set up and you pull the arm and if you get 3 huggies you win a TV. There were several other items you could win if you got all 3 and after asking a few others standing there I heard that yes they had started at 4pm (it was now 4:15pm) and in that time 3people had won something. So I pulled the lever and got a big nothing. oh well.. my parting gifts? Another free Jewel reusable grocery bag, 2 samples of Dunkin Donuts coffee, a few coupons 1 for a free half gallon of ice cream, a sample of tide/downey laundry detergent, and a big chip bag type clip. So not a bad deal.

So inside I go to grab all the deals that are just at this location. As I'm walking in some lady is walking out and yells to me to "think about going in there" apparantly there was some computer glitch and all the registers were down. So the only register they had running was the service desk and that was backing up down the isles. By the time I got in there they had the self service registers running so that was 4 more registers shoppers could use. Because of this I decided not to try to get all the deals I wanted and actually found a few of the deals I thought I really wanted weren't exactly what I wanted so I passed on some. I get through my self check out which always takes me forever because of coupons and today I was buying beer so I had to wait for someone to come over and validate my age into the register. So I'm leaving and I had spent $32 on basically nothing.. so I decide to grab my receipt and look at what I bought... yea TOTALLY BLANK RECEIPT! nice huh? ughhh so once I got home I worked it all out and it makes sense but still I'm sorta miffed because I didn't get that much.

I gotta figure out how to make hounding work to my advantage in the food arena.. seriously.. I don't get how others get such great deals in the grocery stores. I just can't seem to pull food deals. I can get unlimited amounts of deoderant, shampoo, cleaning supplies, and in general junk food for great prices, free, or even get paid for it.. but regular every day stuff.. not at all. not sure what I'm doing wrong.. ughhh

So tonight I went to another Jewel to use the free ice cream coupon I had gotten earlier and that free V8 Fusion coupon. Wound up getting some Magic Shell (crack in a bottle) and came home and had a little ice cream party with my son and 2 nephews. Of course, they were more excited to see the juice than the ice cream.. I THINK SOMEONE SWITCHED MY KIDS AT BIRTH, THEY CAN'T BE MINE! lol!

So I've been really up in the air over doing the AXE/WAGS deal. If you buy 4 AXE deoderant/shower gel you get free 2 movie tickets.. which isn't a bad deal and at Christmas I always buy that stuff for the boys anyway.. I just don't feel like spending $16 for movie tickets! lol! Tim and I go to the $5 shows early on Friday/Saturday/Sunday or we use our freebie tickets we get once in awhile.. or we wait for it to come out on video and get it free from redbox (I just returned 3 movies I rented from redbox for free yesterday).

Anyway.. that's all that has been going on with me in the hounding world.