Zizzie Happenings

Have you ever heard of Groupon ? If you are looking to save some money but still enjoy life, Groupon is the place for you. Here is how it works... Groupon negotiates huge discounts—usually 50-90% off—with popular businesses. They send you a daily email and let you know the deals they have. You purchase the coupon and us it at that business. It's a win-win situation. You save lots of money, they get your business!

Restaurant.com is offering 80% off again. Use the code LOVE when you check out. Now is the time to buy those gift certificates. I use them all the time. Why not, it saves me money. And if you go to the ebates website first, you receive 15% back from ebates.

I don't know how long this deal is going to last so don't wait too long. Get 15% electronic rebate + 80% off Restaurant.com certificates.... here is how you do it... Go to Ebates and log in or create an account if you are a first time user From the Ebates site - click on Restaurant.com Select all the certificates you would like to purchase Go to Check out - use promotion code BIG and receive 80% off your total I just bought 5 certificates for a total of $5.20 which actually gives me $65 worth of certificates for the restaurants I selected. In addition to that great deal, just for going to Ebates first and clicking on Restaurant.com from their site, I will also receive a 15% electronic rebate. Since I only spent $5.20 I will receive $0.78 for my ebates. Of course, the more certificates you order, the more ebates you will receive also. Be sure to take advantage of this awesome deal. I would have bought more but were we live there aren't many eating places so 5 certificates...

Do you have any used DVDs laying around? I did and when I found out about SwapA DVD I signed right up. Let me tell you how it works -- because it is so easy! I listed a bunch of DVDs on the site (listing your first 10 DVD titles gets you a free credit!) and I got a free DVD credit to get started. So you can order a DVD right away - free of charge -- and have the DVD mailed directly to you! No strings attached. No gimmicks. No spam mail. Nothing. When another member selects one of my DVDs that I have listed, I mail it to them. Yes, I pay for the postage. But then I get another DVD credit and I can select a DVD that I want. So another Club Member returns the favor and mails me one of his or her DVDs free of charge. For every DVD I mail out, I get another DVD in return - a true shared system! When someone requests one of your DVDs, all you have to do is drop it in the mail. You really need to check it out . Note: I have even accumulated so many points that I have sold some of my points ...

Do you Google? If you already search for things on the Internet, you might as well get rewarded. I have some really exciting news for you. Swagbucks is celebrating their 2nd birthday. If you don't know what Swagbucks is all about, I suggest you sign up (it's free) and find out for yourself. It really is NOT too-good-to-be-true. It's NOT a gimmick. You really DO get "paid" to use the Swagbucks search engine. I joined swag bucks several months ago because I wanted to earn some gift cards. Since then I have received 2 $15 iTunes gift cards. I am already at 1200+ bucks which is well on my way to shopping at the SwagBucks store soon. This is how it works: Sign up and register at Swagbucks . Install the search box by downloading the Swagbucks Plugin (replace your Google search since they don't pay you to search). Then you search. At random, Swagbucks will reward you with a Swagbuck for using their search engine. On Fridays they have Mega Swagbucks Day and you ca...

Several years ago, in an attempt to live more frugally, we bought lots and lots of beans. I have used beans but not at the rate I thought I would. I recently found this bucket, brand new, never opened, sitting in the basement. I decided I better open it and cook some up. Well the first batch I wasn't paying much attention to and I didn't even think about it, I cooked it for a few hours and then drained the water, added chicken broth and other seasonings and made a soup. I have no idea what I was thinking. I would normally check the beans to see if they were soft but for some reason that day I didn't. So the beans in that soup weren't real hard but they weren't nice and soft like we like them. So I tried it again. This time making sure to pay close attention to the softness of the beans. Do you believe that it took ALL DAY to get them nice and soft. Is this normal? I never noticed beans taking me that long before. Could these beans just be too old? Can beans ever g...

(picture from Kelleigh Ratzlaff blog) Last year Mike and I started buying groceries in cash. I would say 80% of the time we accomplished that goal. This year we are buckling down and paying cash or debit on everything. So when I saw these cute envelopes I decided I had to make some for myself. Go to Kelleigh Ratzlaff Designs to get the free envelope template. These adorable envelopes only make paying everything in cash that much cooler! Stay tuned for pictures of my envelopes!

This year God has blessed us exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think. One of many blessings this year was paying off the truck. Yesterday Mike made the last payment on our truck. Praise the Lord after a little over a year of paying on the truck, I am happy to announce we are now DEBT FREE! We do still have our mortgage but Lord willing one day we will be able to say we have paid that off as well. Thank you God for the many blessings!

A few days ago I read about stocking a 90 day supply of food "just in case" of a number of situations that could take place in our lives. I don't want to go crazy with the idea but I do want to get some ingredients for meals that I can make. I also want to keep things organized and well stocked. Of course I don't have the money to just go out and buy a 90 day supply of food all at once but I got off to a good start last week. Publix had a great sale on spaghetti sauce and chicken broth. I was able to buy 5 big 32 oz cartons of chicken broth for 40 cents each and 10 jars of spaghetti sauce for 80 cents each. So I am off to a great start. I am going to make up some recipe cards for the meals I can make with the items I will be stocking. Do you have any good meal ideas that you can share with me? I would love to hear from you.

It is very important to familiarize yourself with a store's coupon policy. Take for example Publix...they offer store coupons that you can use in conjunction with manufacturer coupons. You can tell a Publix store coupon because it will say LU#(followed by a number) I was recently able to take advantage of a great sale at Publix that resulted in me going home with 6 free bags of Fresh Express lettuce. Let me explain how it all worked out. Publix had a Buy One Get One (BOGO) free sale on Fresh Express lettuce bags. I had some manufacturer coupons to use but when I walked into Publix I picked up their coupon booklet and noticed a store coupon saving $2 when buying 2 bags of Fresh Express lettuce. So I bought 6 bags of lettuce, used 6 $1 manufacturer coupons and 3 Publix store coupons and got them all for free. God has really opened my eyes to using money more wisely and also being patient with purchases. If you use coupons at the right time you can maximise your savings.

Kroger had some really good sales this week. I got 10 packs of Cottonelle toilet paper for free... it's priced at 99 cents for a 4 pack and I used 50 cent coupons which doubled to make the toilet paper free. I bought 22 bottled of Fuze drink. I have never tried this drink before but I had 50 cent coupons and the drink was on sale for $1, so I got all those for free. I bought some 6 bags of Bliss mint flavored chocolates that were on sale $1.50 a bag because of after Christmas sales. I had 3 coupons for buy 2 bags and save $2.50, so I got the chocolates for 25 cents a bag. Two other great after Christmas sales were Graham cracker crusts for $1 and Mini marshmallows for 50 cents a bag. I didn't have any coupons to use with these but I thought the sale price was still a good deal. Kroger is currently having a great Procter and Gamble sale. Buy $25 worth of P&G products and get $5 off at the register. This was exactly what I was waiting for because we needed to buy some dog foo...

Have you ever heard of Cellfire or Shortcuts ? It's just another great way to save money. I went to Kroger today, I bought 4-4pack Cottonelle toilet paper and 8oz Kroger shredded cheese and I paid 40 cents. How did I do this you ask? Well here it goes... Go to Cellfire , sign up with your cell phone #. Browse the coupons and select the ones you are interested in and get them downloaded onto your preferred customer store card. I use Kroger but if you have something different in your area see if it will accept that store card. Go to Shortcuts , sign up and register your preferred customer store cards. Select the coupons you want and have them added to your card. When you check out and purchase these items, it will automatically give you the discount at the register as long as you use your preferred customer card. I had four 50 cent coupons for Cottonelle (which Kroger doubles for me). The 4 pack of toilet paper costs 99 cents. So I got them all for free with my coupons but I also h...

Before church this morning Mike and I stopped at Publix and got some great deals. We bought all of this plus 2 bags of lettuce (not pictured above because we ate it at church for lunch ~ I made taco salad with it) and only paid $13.31 and saved $68.91. 6 packages of Chinet napkins 1 box graham cracker crumbs 1 white grape juice (this was the mystery 1 cent item) 10 boxes of Betty Crocker brownies 10 boxes of Betty Crocker potatoes 4 boxes of brown sugar 1 box of powdered sugar 5 bags of croutons 2 bags of lettuce Now for my sad CVS story - are you ready for it? After church I convinced Mike to take me to CVS for a quick shopping spree because I have $35 ECBs that expire 12/26 and CVS has a great Sunday/Monday sale going on right now. Well I get to CVS look for my the first item on my list... out of stock... look for my second item on the list... out of stock... look for my third item on the list... out of stock... look for the fourth item on my list... guess what... you guessed it... ...

Last week I went to a craft show with some ladies from church. We had some time before the show so we decided to go to some thrift stores. I love thrift stores but I don't like the system they have of organizing all their clothes in color order instead of size. For most normal sized people this may work out just fine but since I am not a normal size I end up spending most of my day going through all these clothes that wont fit me. I don't really care about name brands, for me as long as it fits, looks good and I can buy it for a good price I am thrilled. We stopped at this high end thrift store called My Secret Closet, Inc. They only sell name brand items and they only sell things that look good. You know what I mean? You wont find any shirts from the 80's or anything like that. At first I just looked around. They had a nice wall of shoes that looked brand new but I really didn't need any shoes (thanks to Kathy). They had a wall of purses (Coach, Brighton and lots of ot...

With gas prices going up, this year for Christmas I am going to do more online shopping. If you are like me and want to save on gas but would be even happier saving more money than join Ebates. Ebates is awesome. It's a shopping site that gives you up to 25% Cash Back every time you shop online. You can shop at over 900 stores; plus you get additional savings with exclusive coupons, free shipping offers, and limited-time sales! Check it out for yourself, sign up with Ebates today and you get a $5 bonus when you make your first purchase!

Saturday Mike went skeet shooting with my brothers and some other guys and I went to the North GA Outlet Mall. I have never actually walked up and down and looked at all the stores so my plan was to walk the entire Mall. I found this kitchen store called Le Gourmet Chef. They were having this huge BOGO (buy one, get one free) sale of all their clearance priced items. I must have spent atleast an hour in this store alone. There were alot of things I would've loved to buy but I tried to control myself. Those spatula looking things are called Switch Its and they are wonderful. Bread Beckers sells them for $10 each and I haven't found many places that carry them. I bought those 2 for $2.50 each. The See & Store boxes are the coolest thing. I have been wanting these for my craft room but I never wanted to spend the money. Well they were clearance priced at $12 so I got them for $6 each. Now I can try and get all those little pieces organized in my craft room. I am on the lookou...

I think CVS offers the best deals out of all the stores. My problem is finding everything in stock but this weekend wasn't a problem at all. We went early Saturday before Mike went skeet shooting and I went to the Outlet mall. Here is what I got 6 bottles of Suave body wash (Buy one, get one free coupon, 2 $1 coupons) 1 Dawn Botanical (50 cent coupon) 2 Tylenol Extra Strength (2 $1 coupons) 1 Goody's 4 count (CVS coupon that printed out for me when I scanned my card) 2 Covergirl lipgloss (Buy one, get one free coupon) I had $15 ECBs from my last trip All of this for $2.98 OOP (out of pocket) and I walked away with $9.99 ECBs for next trip.

We went to Walmart on Friday night to pick up a few things. I got a GREAT deal on veggies. I had 2 printed $1 coupons for Green Giant Steamer frozen veggies. Walmart had those on sale for $1.23 a bag so I got 2 bags of veggies for 46 cents. Mike was still shopping around looking at things, so I decided to do the same thing. I know, bad mistake right. Well I did get some good deals... you just have to keep telling yourself, "you have to spend money to save money" right :-) I found a George Foreman grill (that I have been wanting for a while now) for only $15. I had looked at a few other stores and they were always $25 or more for the same size grill. Then I found these really neat plastic plates, bowls and cups. The colors were awesome and I thought it would be nice to have when we wanted to do a cookout with family or friends. They were on sale for half off which made it a pack of 4 for $1. So I bought a pack of plates and bowls of each color purple, green, pink and blue. Wh...

My wonderful good friend Rebecca came and picked me up today. We went to lunch and then Goodwill. I decided I could really use a few more church clothes so off I went to search through the rows and rows of clothes. God was good to me and blessed me with a beautiful outfit for church. I ended up with 3 shirts and 1 skirt. The skirt is brand new still has the tags on it. The clearance price tag on it from the original store was $63.99 and I got it for $4. How can you pass up a deal like that. Here is my new church outfit... I just love it. Thanks Rebecca!

Last night Mike and I had to go pick up our mower that was being repaired. We were going to be near a Publix so I brought all my coupons along. Of course this wasn't my normal Publix so finding things took alittle longer but I got some good deals so I am grateful that were able to stop. My total savings was $42.50, my out of pocket expense was $6.91 So here is what I got: 8 boxes of Barilla pasta (with coupon ended up being 10 cents a box) 8 boxes of Zatarain's rice mixes (I don't normally buy this but its good to donate or to use at church functions) 4 Sundown vitamin bottles (coupon from magazine in front of store) 2 Wishbone salad dressings 3 Publix Apple Juice (this was the one cent item although they would only give me 1 for a penny, I had to buy the others to bring my total up to $35 so I could use the $5 coupon I had) $5 off $35 coupon I was in a hurry so I did forget to stop by the frozen isle and get my Lenders bagels... they are on sale buy one get one free and I ...