Our Grocery Shopping Trip

Some of you may already know that I am a big fan of www.moneysavingmom.com. Through her website I find lots of links to coupons, free samples, encouragements, and other ways to save money. Her recent series 31 Days to a Better Grocery Budget has got me back on the money saving bandwagon especially when it comes to food and grocery items. Over the last couple of months I had not been paying as close attention to our grocery budget and could not believe how much I let it get off track (especially on take out food.) So this month I am determined to turn it back around. I spent some time clipping coupons, checking out sale adds, and money saving mom for deal match ups. Then I wrote out our Monthly Meal Plan. I usually buy enough dinners and household supplies for one month and do a weekly shopping trip for things like bread, produce, milk, and lunch meat. I went to Alps yesterday to buy the items I needed out of their sale flyer. Today we headed to Texarkana TX to do the rest of our shopping which is a 1 hour and 20 minute drive, but we had to go anyway for supplies to work on the family room. There is also no tax on food in Texas and a much better variety of stores with a bigger selection. Our trip went great! We split up the children and I took 3 shopping with me and Art took 3 to Lowes. I will not bore you with all the details of everything I bought, but I saved $32.75 in coupons, plus no tax, and the items I bought on sale. Some of my best buys today at Target were: free band aids,free Johnson's Buddies Soap, .50 toothpaste, and 2 pks of Huggies Diapers for $5.99 each. Some of my best buys at Walmart were: $1 Baby Wipes, .37 cream cheese, .50 mustard, .50 yogurt, $1.00 Jelly, and .50 Lunchable. Not to mention that a gallon of Milk was only $2.77 there compared to $3.43 here (we go through about 6 gallons a week.) It was definitely worth the trip and will probably continue to head to Texarkana once a month to go grocery shopping.