Our shopping trip today:
We had a great shopping trip today at both Aldi and Dillons (Kroger). I especially enjoyed the Dillons trip as we were about to get two big bags of apples marked down to $1.49 each along with some skim milk marked down to $0.73. I just always love the adventure of spotting mark-downs; you never know what you might find!
I also discovered, much to my delight, that the Goody Ouchless ponytail holders were on sale for $2 so using this $2/1 coupon, we were able to get five packs free. And just in time as we somehow lost almost every ponytail holder we own when we moved (how does that happen?!). I'm guessing these are on sale at all Dillons stores and maybe some other Kroger stores so be sure to check.
Before coupons and sales, our total was around $105 at Dillons. After coupons and sale prices? $26.76! Gotta love those deals; who would ever pay full price for this stuff, though?
I ended up spending a few dollars more at Dillons than I was originally planning to so I took a few minutes before going into Aldi to cross a few things off my list that I didn't have to get this week and also took a quick inventory of how much leftover grocery money I had stashed away from staying under budget in recent weeks.
At Aldi, we picked up a few staple items we needed, 3 lbs. of sweet potatoes for $0.99, and some fruits and veggies to round out our menu. Our total there was $15.07.
So all totaled, we spent $41.83–a little over our $40 budget, but using the extra cash from the past few weeks that we've stayed a little under budget, I didn't have to have them take anything off my order! Yay! And next time, I'm going to plan a little better and make sure I don't get carried away on deals at Dillons like I seemed to do a little of this week! 🙂
Here's our menu for the week (As always, this is using ingredients purchased this week and ingredients we've stocked up in past $40 shopping trips. We didn't buy any meat or many veggies this week as our freezer is still stocked with those from past sales.):
Breakfasts
Pumpkin apple breakfast bread, yogurt
Whole-wheat pancakes, yogurt, juice
Oatmeal with bananas, flaxseed, and brown sugar
Cranberry wheat muffins, fruit, milk
Banana peanut butter smoothies, toast
Granola over yogurt with fruit
Healthy Harvest Muffins, yogurt, juice
Lunches
Egg salad sandwiches, carrots
PB&J sandwiches, pears
Cheese quesadillas, grapes
Salmonettes, muffins, apples
Steamed veggies over rice
Rice cakes, yogurt, carrots
Dinners
Enchilada casserole, green rice (I'll have to share the recipe for this sometime soon; it's a family favorite!), broccoli
Goulash, homemade bread, veggies
Church dinner–I'm bringing scalloped potatoes, apple pie, and banana bread
Chicken broccoli rice, homemade bread, grapefruit
Homemade pizza, fruit
Steak stir fry over brown rice, homemade bread
Dinner out
Snacks–Muffins, yogurt, apples, carrots
For more menu inspiration, head over to Organizing Junkie.