Today's spending and whatnot

I guess ya gotta spend to save, but today was a bit spendy to stock up on some regularly used items.   At Safeway I bought:

(4) Bertolli Meal Starter frozen meals (add pasta) Chicken Marsala. Dh LOVES this stuff and we've been having it every week. Walmart's regular price is $9.49 and Safeway had them for $7.49 each, so I stocked up a bit.
(2) Surf Laundry detergent - 8.99 ea when you buy 2.  I think the normal price I pay is $10.99 or more
(1) Purina One Dog Food 18 lb bag - $17.99.  I usually pay $20-21 if not on sales - not a stock up, but a good price and we are low on dog food. Hopefully another sale and some coupons will come out soon
(2) Lady Speedstick deodorant for Dd at $1.49 ea.
(2) Special K "crisps" boxes - $3.39 ea - more than I spend at Walmart or Target for them, but Walmart was out of them yesterday and I didn't want to go to another store just for them, so we just purchased them at Safeway --- and I needed to get over the $75 total anyway.
Total with tax came to $80.45.  I got a $10 off your next order coupon for spending $75 and also a $5 off your next "new" frozen (whatever that means) purchases. I guess I can use it on stuff marked "new" in the frozen section, so I'm not sure what I'll end up getting, but I'm sure I can find something to use it on.  I think I'll take the $10 off and go back and purchase 2 more of the Bertolli frozen meals and I will get another $5 off frozen items coupon to use later.  If I had gotten my mail yesterday I probably would have found the $10 off $50 coupon that was in my mailbox! That would have been nice to use with  my order today ~ oh well.

I had 2 $10 off a $20 purchase coupons to use at Office Max and decided to use them on some of the coffee K-cups.  We got 3 boxes of K-cups, 2 composition notebooks and pencil lead refills for $25 out of pocket. I figured a $20 savings on the K-cups is a good deal and we are pretty well stocked up on those things for awhile now.

I have only gotten fast food one night out of the last 9 so far! I was SO tempted to last night as I just did not feel like cooking, but I used my willpower and made dinner.  I plan to make dinner at home tonight (use up some of that Chicken Marsala!). I don't think we've ever gone 10 nights with only one night of fast food in forever.  

I had to do a little bit of grocery shopping yesterday - mostly for milk, bread, eggs and fruit - to fill in for my attempt at 2 week shopping from last week.  I only spent 15 minutes in the store and I was done! It was so nice and it was so nice not to have to get out of the house early this morning to get grocery shopping done (anything after 10 am on Saturday and the streets and stores are so crowded and takes twice as long to get it all done, so I always try to go pretty early).  I think this 2 week shopping and menu planning will work out well, once I get it dialed in on how much to buy of the snacks and miscellaneous stuff.  I have been trying to make up some homemade snacks from stuff in my pantry the past couple of weeks.  Hopefully that will give the snackers in this house another choice and maybe cut down a bit on pre-packaged snack costs.  Last weekend I made brownies and they lasted until Wednesday and yesterday afternoon I made some peanut butter cookies (from some Betty Crocker pouches I had gotten on a good sale some time back)

We only put 10 miles on the car today, which is good in keeping with my goal to cut down on using gas.

Dh went to the doctor again yesterday and the doctor finally agreed he needs some stronger pain meds.  After reading and signing about 5 pages of paperwork he was given a prescription to try for 2 weeks and then go back for another appointment to see how it's working.  He started it last night and said it is helping a bit more, so that is good. Just have to see if the side effects are tolerable. Luckily it's a generic type of drug, so I only have to pay the $15 copay amount. He also prescribed a different type of anit-inflammatory drug, and that ended up being part of the $4 drugs at Walmart.  If these new meds don't help his pain management, then it sounds like we will be referred to a specialist. 

UPDATE confession: I ended up ordering pizza carryout for dinner tonight...Ds's girlfriend showed up this afternoon and the Bertolli meal isn't really enough for 5 people.  At least the pizza was on a coupon for $10 plus we got cheesesticks.  Total was $17.48.  I saved the delivery fee and tip ($4 total) by driving the mile there and back to pick it up.