Aspects of a Weekend

Sunday night's dinner was loaf-based: Homemade bread from the bread machine, and the Twenty-Dollar Meatloaf. It's actually my sister Amy's recipe, but at our house it is the Twenty-Dollar Meatloaf, because I once called Amy to get the recipe, and instead of dialing her Skype-In number (a free call), I accidentally dialed her landline in Australia, using my cell phone. Our two-minute conversation cost twenty dollars. (In that two minutes, she reminded me that the meatloaf contains cumin and shredded cheese, so it was money well spent. She has a way with the loaf!) I also made a tomato salad with feta cheese and onion, tossed with a balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing. Usually this calls for cucumbers, but when I realized I didn't have a cucumber, I used leftover frozen peas. And it was so much better than with cucumbers! A little sweet and unexpected. Something about a cucumber is so, I don't know, dull and earnest. But the peas were delightful. Also, Mom and Dad were passing through, on their first trip to their mountain house since Mom's surgery, so it was great to see them and feed them.

Speaking of Amy, she forwarded me a nice idea: whenever your kids say something funny, write it down that minute on whatever scrap of paper is near, then date it and put it in a jar that you keep for this purpose. Sounds so much better than counting on yourself to remember it later for your journal or even your blog. My favorite is this exchange she had with her four year-old:

Amy: Ava, do you wanna wear a headband to church?
Ava: That's okay, I have a crown in my bag.

A girl has got to be prepared. And in that spirit, I gathered up my coupons and headed to CVS on Sunday, planning to maybe do the St. Ives deal, where you spend $10 on any of their skincare and get 5 ecb's. I have the BOGO coupon for the St. Ives Elements and the $1/off St. Ives coup, which would have made that deal a tiny moneymaker, I think. I was also planning to (gasp) spend some ecb's on the Scott paper towels that were on sale. They were advertised as being $5.29 for an 8-pack, and I had a $1/off coupon. And we need paper towels. But my nearest CVS didn't have the Scott. It wasn't that they had run out. They didn't even have a space for them. And the stockboy I asked was like, "Huh, Scott who? Paper what?" So in a fit of pique I left with nothing but a thirteen-cent bag of marshmallows from clearance.

At Publix, though, I spent $63 and "saved" $72. I wouldn't have spent that much, but back by the clearance shelf, they had Filtrete air-conditioner filters BOGO. This deal was not advertised in the circular I saw--don't know if it was only my store, but dang, check into it. So the filters, in assorted sizes, were $12.99, AND there were $2 peelies on the display. So I bought four filters, used four coupons, and paid about $4.50 each. And they were the micro-allergen kind. It does not take much to make me happy. I also scooped up:

Two bags of dogfood for $6 apiece from clearance. You never know what's back there.

Juicy Juice 2 for $5, with printable coupons making them $1.50 each. (Always check Fiddledeedee for printable coups!)

Organic Valley Milk, two half-gallons. Stacked the manufacturer coupons from Greenwise with one Publix Baby Club coup, making it $3.50/gallon.

BOGO Goldfish crackers, no coupon or nothin'.

BOGO Kozy Shack rice pudding. I had already used the Kozy Shack coupons on an earlier bogo. But I am so hooked that I just bought the stuff. And my kids don't eat it so it's all mine. I am running wild over here.

And I bought cumin for the Twenty-Dollar Meatloaf, which wasn't cheap. And there was more, but it was boring. How did y'all do?