Shop 'til You Drop Day

It's the first big grocery shop of the new year, so that required 4 separate stores (I did Costco yesterday). Having been impressed this week by the TLC 'Extreme Couponing' special, I made a list for each store, checked it twice, cleaned out my coupon box and the hubs and I headed out after breakfast.

Of course, the first stop was off the list...it was the fabric store (Sistos). I had gone to Capital Quilts Wednesday after work to pick up the fabric for Fiesta and struck out...coming home with the French General Petite Ecole instead...oh, and fabric.com had it on sale for substantially less than I paid for it locally, so I ordered a bunch more ... of course. But, I digress.

We got to the fabric shop and the hubs decides he'll wait in the car. I gave him the 'what, are you crazy? do you have any idea how long this is going to take' look, and went inside. This time I had a new approach. First I laid out the bolts of fabric that I thought were a darn close match to the color chart on Sindy's website. And with only giving them a quick glance, I next set about finding my own version of these fabrics,,more modern prints, less traditional small prints, less solids.

How'd I do? (If you look at the sidebar on the left, you'll see Sindy's rendition of Fiesta)

It's going to have to do. You're looking at just about 14 yards of fabric there, added to the 10 yards of black. I don't know, 24 yards of fabric sure does seem like a lot of fabric for a queen-size quilt top. We shall see.

I'd probably been in the store almost an hour and they were cutting the last length of fabric, when my cellphone rings. It's the hubs. He just wants to know one thing..."would you leave your dog in the car this long?". I didn't even have to think before I replied...."it's 30 degrees outside...let me think....yeah, I guess I would". The ladies in the shop had a good laugh, and agreed with my reply. I guess he won't be accompanying me to the Grand Reopening the weekend after next. :)

After that we went on a whirlwind minor couponing tour of Walmart (where I used $2.50 in manufacturer's coupons), Bed Bath and Beyond ($15 manufacturer coupons + $12.49 BBB coupons which was a savings of more than 60% off my total), Safeway ($7 mfg coupons) and Giant ($16.49 mfg coupons).  Clearly I didn't get $1500 of groceries for $8.49, but I didn't do bad by normal standards.

I did score one 'Extreme Couponing' worthy deal....

I got 4 of these for 2 cents each. Walmart sells them for 52 cents and I had  coupons for $1 off 2. Score!!! Even better....when we checked the price in another store, they were selling them for $1.57 each. Almost makes one want to dumpster dive for last Sunday's circulars with those coupons in them. (grin)



Since this is the first grocery shop of the year I think I'll squirrel away the coupon money and see how it adds up by the end of the year. (And having now seen the new 2011 prices for cereal  I think we're going to need every bit of it if we expect to be eating Lucky Charms in 2012...crazy! Right after Christmas our gas prices shot up a good 10 cents a gallon, and cereal went up a buck a box. What's up with that? Is our grain coming from the Middle East now too?

(I'm watching Saturday Night Live with Jim Carey...it's hilarious.)

Got our one and only Valentine decoration up. This was one of the first things I blogged about...it's a tutorial, check here:

http://quixoticcrafter.blogspot.com/2009/02/no-sew-valentines-heart-garland.html

Sadly, there's an elephant in the room:

What day is it? Okay, okay,  I'll work on that it tomorrow.