In the game now

Well, I got sucked in to playing the CVS game. I've been noticing several ladies in the blog world talking about shopping at CVS Pharmacy. I thought, well, that works for them, but I don't have time to do that and I don't have a store nearby.

Anyways, now that we've moved and it would greatly benefit us to get things for almost free, I've decided to try it out. Now I don't live near a CVS, but every week I go into a town that does when I take Leiah to speech therapy. I had planned to go last week, but a big storm prevented me. I finally got to go today.

This was my first trip ever and I didn't have any coupons. So, my transactions will look quite expensive compared to others. The whole thing with CVS, for those who don't know, they have a card you can get called an Extra Care Card. If you get one, then you can get special deals. Every week they advertise certain products that will get you 'ECBs' or Extra Care Bucks, which is like extra money.

So, today, if you buy $20 of Charmin toilet paper, Bounty paper towels or Duracell batteries, you would get $10 in ECBs. Then you could use that 'money' on your next transaction. If I had coupons for any of those items, then I would pay less. I may subscribe to the Sunday paper just for the coupons, because it helps! There are also lots of places online that you can print coupons, but my printer isn't working. For more info go to www.moneymakingmom.com. That's where I started learning.

So here are my purchases for today:

In my first transaction, I bought the toilet paper and batteries, $20 worth, and the swiffer duster and febreeze combo, $10 worth, generated $15 in ECBs. The total came to $38.88

My second transaction I had lots of buy one get one free items. Ibuprofen, deodorant, and dish soap, and the pantyliners were 66 cents. (I gave the extra ibuprofen to my mom and bought some Nerds for Leiah, not pictured because she ate them.) I only had to pay .63 cents for the second transaction. I would have paid zero, but for some reason 'it' wouldn't let the register ring it up like that. Still...

So, I went into this knowing it might cost me a bit up front, but I still have $6 ECBs to use next time, and if I find some good coupons, I could go back, get more stuff and make more ECBs.

Very confusing, but it's starting to make sense to me. Now dh has deodorant to last the next 6 months, we have enough Febreeze to last like, a year, and dish soap to last several months. And that was just one visit to the store. Whatever I can get for free or practically free, I will just store up. Someday I will have enough stuff to give away to people who need it.

Also pictured were the fresh garden new potatoes my mom dug up today and blessed me with. I was going to peel and mash regular russets, but now I have fresh new potatoes to eat with our beef roast tonight.

I love fresh flowers, and lately I've noticed you can get very lovely ones for free. Just stop along side the road! Seriously, the yellow and pink ones are from the roadside. The hydrangea arrangement is from my mom's flowers. It's not hard to make things pretty or find things for free, you just have to keep your eyes open :)

I was going to take pics of the kitchen and dining area and forgot. Will try again later :)