Cereal savings at Giant Eagle!

I snuck in on the last day of the sales to get my very cheap cereal. I came home with a dozen boxes...yep 12 boxes of cereal. Here's my haul:

4 Boxes of Cheerios
2 Boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios
1 Box of Cocoa Puffs
1 Box of Trix
1 Box of Multigrain Peanut Butter Cheerios.
1 Box of Cascadian Farms Raisin Bran
1 Box of Cascadian Farms Dark Chocolate Granola
1 Box Cascadian Farms Fruit Granola
1 loaf of bread
1 pack of hot dog buns
1 back of hamburger buns
1 GE Flavored water

Total OOP: $13.86
Savings: $24
I saved 63% all together.

$6.51 of my total OOP price was my breads and water. If I had stuck completely to my list and just gotten the cereal, I would have paid $7.51 for 12 boxes of cereal. That averages out to 61 cents a box!

My three year old was just as excited about all of the cereal...but for a different reason!

Whitney Farms Organics for your gardens this year!

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Whitney Farms for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Spring has finally sprung for us here and my attentions have turned to my sorely neglected gardens. They have been a mess of foliage since we moved into this house and I am determined to both tame what is here and create a vegetable garden. I've spent the winter researching gardening methods and have decided that organic gardening is as important to me as having a garden. That includes starting my seeds in organic soil and using organic plant food to provide nutrition for my fledgling garden. 

Whitney Farms has a full line of organic soils and plant foods that contain no additives, nothing toxic or artificial, just everything natural to boost the production of your food plants and give you stunning flowers and ornamentals that will be the envy of your neighborhood.  Not only are their products all natural but in comparison with traditional products, Whitney Farms products have low to no dust, no manure odor, and are easy to apply. That's especially important for novice gardeners like myself, and especially people who have allergy and scent issues. Whitney Farms products also contain beneficial microbes and specially designed protein-based blends to provide your plants with both macro and micro nutrients they need to grow and survive. 

Whitney Farms has specialty foods for your Tomatoes and Vegetables, as well as food for all of your Plants! And for our readers, they are offering a special $3 off coupon for your purchase of Whitney Farms® organic products. Simply click the link and fill in the information for your coupon. Whitney Farms®

Super Savings trip to Walgreens plus Moneymaker spotted!

Without sales, clearance, register rewards and coupons, this trip would have cost me $85.19.
I paid....
$31.74
A savings of 63%

My haul:
4 Dawn Dish soaps
2 packs of Huggies Lil Movers
1 Goody Ouchless Elastic bands
2 Aquafresh for Kids pump (FREE!)
2 20 oz Pepsi Next (FREE!)
2 Peeps ($.44 clearance)
1 2 pack of Thomas Toothbrushes ($.49 clearance)
3 12 packs of Diet Dr Pepper
3 12 packs of regular Dr Pepper.

AND there was a moneymaker in there!

Pepsi Next is on sale for $0.99 and you recieve $.99 in register rewards, making it FREE. But the deal became even better when I spotted a hanging tab of coupons for 50 cents off of one 20 oz Pepsi Next.
Keep your eyes peeled and you can make 50 cents per transaction!

Decluttering your Facebook Feed.

I've been spending my morning hiding posts by other bloggers. Not because I dislike other bloggers, but because I find that some bloggers spam incessantly and it has come to a point where the posts of my family and friends get lost in the sea of repetitive couponing posts.

How did it get this way? Well, it seems like every coupon, frugal living, mommy, and whatever else blog has a giveaway going on; in order to enter yourself in those giveaways, you have to like a large number of Facebook pages, mostly of frugal bloggers but occasionally odd pages slip in there too. This is a good way for blogs to build Facebook likes, but I wonder if the number of likes actually corresponds to more page hits or better yet, more readers. I would like to know that my posts are being read more than I would enjoy seeing my 'like' totals rise.

The problem with adding all of these pages is that when each one posts something, it comes into your feed. And there are a significant number of blogs who spam several posts at a time or the same post over and over during the day. Neither of these practices are adding to my Facebook experience nor are they giving me any incentive to visit the blog. It also seems to me that the blogs who tend to utilize such practices also do little in the way of writing, they simply copy paste ads and links. While that is helpful for a lot of people, I prefer to read as well. I like learning tips from my fellow frugal bloggers, I enjoy hearing opinions. I suppose what I am saying is that as much as I like deals, I prefer blogs with substance.

Short of opting out of blog giveaways altogether, I have only come up with two ways of combating the never ending feed, either hiding all posts by offending blogs or creating a separate facebook account simply for couponing stuff. The problem with a separate facebook page is that you have to keep switching back and forth and I guess I am just too lazy to do that. Instead, I have opted to hide posts. I choose the posts I hide by annoyance factor, I suppose. I keep all local bloggers in my feed as well as any bloggers who have liked my page, the former I do because I wish to support my local community and the latter because it is polite and I have found those who liked my page to be worth the read. At the end of the day, I still feel like there are enough blogs in my feed that I am not going to miss a deal and yet I can still find the posts of my family and friends.

I'm curious as to how others deal with this issue and wonder if it follows through to other social networking sites. I don't have a personal twitter, so all of my twitter activity is blog related, no issues there. I haven't done a lot with google+ but I assume the circles feature is helpful there.