Adventures in Couponing....the conquest continues

Hey Y'all!
I had another victory over retail prices today.  The following haul is from Walgreens, CVS & Target.  Total value (before sale prices and coupons): $65.  How much did I pay?  $15.  I saved 77%!  BOO-YAH! Of the 19 items you see below, I paid NOTHING for 7 of them.

If you ever wonder "Am I paying too much for the things I buy?"

The answer is YES.  EMPHATICALLY YES.

Couponing doesn't really take that much time, just a little commitment and the rewards are huge.  My friend Tara (who is a much more dedicated coupon-er than I am) has three growing boys to feed saved over $900 dollars during October by using coupons.

I dare you! Start saving!

Adventures in Couponing, Part II

We needed dog food, and I had coupons for lots of other stuff, so Cliff, Gareth and I made our way to Target one night.

First, we bought this:

It was on sale, and if you bought it you would recieve a $5.00 Target Gift Card.  I also had a $1/1 coupon and a Buy a Bag get a free can of dog food Coupon.  So we got the bag, the gift card and the can of food.  With that gift card, I bought this stuff:

And because of the gift card and all of my coupons, I only paid $0.74 for it.  All you see was worth 12.93!  That was a savings of 95%

I made my trip to CVS today to see what I could rustle up and ended up getting this collection of goodies:

I only paid 16.93 for everything you see even though it was worth 44.48.  That's correct, I saved 61%

Couponing takes time and patience and the willingness to wait on a good deal, but as far as I can tell - IT's TOTALLY WORTH IT!

Adventures in Couponing

Sooo...
My sister-in-law is a coupon ninja and saves tons of money all the time on groceries and stuff like that, but I've always been too intimidated to try to do it myself.  Until, that is, one of the church secretaries started couponing as well and brought me under her wing.  I won't bore you with the details of how I saved money or even got started.  Instead I will point you towards the blogs that have helped me out.  They are:

Hip2Save
WeUseCoupons
TotallyTarget
SurvivingtheStores
Coupons.com

But the real reason for this blog entry is to share with you my first outing as a serious Coupon-Mom.  So, without further ado:

My trip to CVS yielded this bounty:

Now, if I hadn't had coupons, these few items would have cost me $33.35.  Instead, I spent only 13.29.  Why yes, that is a savings of $20.06.  Or 60%

My trip to Target yielded these pickin's:
Without coupons, I would have spent 12.82.  Instead, I spent only 9.18.  So I only saved 3.64...but that's still about 28% savings.

So in total, I spent 22.47 for 11 items, saving 48.6%.  I think that's a pretty good start, don't you?

How do you save pennies when you shop?  Any websites you can recommend?