Couponing Like Crazy

     Good Morning!!  What a beautiful morning we have here in Phoenix today!  I am so excited, because with the start of May, my personal, grocery shopping challenge began.  I know, how dorky to make a personal, grocery shopping challenge, but as I have said before, this is the only part of our monthly budget that I have much control of right now.  Regular bills are taking most of our money and with the price of gas ever rising, I look at the $500 I have budgeted for groceries as the only money I have to work with.
     I have mentioned before, I can do most of our shopping for $300-$400 per month.  Well, this month my goal is to get us at $200 or under (and still eat good).  That is $50 per week for a family of five.  Sounds crazy, because some of you spend $200 in one grocery shopping trip...I used to.  However, I know there are families doing it and I am determined to see how close I can get without sacrificing quality.  Besides, that will leave $300 extra each month for us...I can think of many things to do with that!
     Now, in my grocery budget I include all household and toiletry items, my newspaper subscription and my subscription to CouponSense.  However, I still think I can do it.  A few of the things I am going to do are as follows:

1. I am working on a monthly grocery list so I can buy things when they are the absolute lowest price and I can buy enough for a month.
2. Coupon like never before.  I will be on the site daily and heading out to get whatever I can for free.  I already warned Mike he may find envelopes of coupons by his keys in the morning of things I need him to pick up on the way home.  I did tell him that if I get to $200, he can have $100 of the savings to do what he wants.
3. I am going to bake my own bread.  I have a bread maker and I am going to dust it off and get to baking.  I know I can make bread for about $.08 a loaf so that will save at least $3.80 per week.  I will post the recipe and pictures later this week.
4. I am going to buy dried beans and cook them myself.  I believe I can do pinto beans for about $.48 a pound.  We have lots of Mexican food nights in our house!
5. I am going to buy a basil plant for $3 and put it in the big, yellow, empty pot in front of my door and make my own pesto. This will save about $2 per dinner.  We like this better than marinara and eat pasta at least once a week. 

     Now each of these things may not save me a fortune, but in this grocery game, every little bit counts.   I went out this last weekend and shopped for free stuff and started my challenge out pretty well.  Here is what I "bought":

 

I paid $4.46 for all these items and $2.89 tax for a total out of pocket (oop) of $7.35.

    So you can see, saving just a couple of dollars, or a nickel on the strategies above will come in handy.  Now, I was not going to put the condoms in the picture, but Mike thought someone else might need to see that even these can be gotten at a deal...I think he just wanted everyone to know that we need them.  Regardless, a pretty good start to my $200 total, I have $192.65 left for the month.  I am very excited for the grocery ads to come out tomorrow, I am almost done with my monthly grocery list and I will keep you updated on how it is going.  To read about how I do this, look back to my post: http://survivingthisazeconomy.blogspot.com/2011/04/coupon-sense.html.  If you have any ideas of more things I can make at home to save money or other grocery saving tips, please post them for all of us to read!