I've officially become a coupon geek.

You don't want to get in line behind me at the grocery store, is all I'm sayin'. 'Cause I've become that woman with stacks and stacks of manufacturers coupons who knows each store's coupon policies better than the clerks themselves.

This morning I managed to get all this food and schtuff for $17.59 That's:

• 2 small boxes of jello
• 2 small boxes of Wheat Thins
• 2 bags of Brachs Autumn Mix (I like the pumpkins best!)
• 2 bags of halloween M&Ms
• Olay Creme Ribbons body wash
• Chapstick in Green Tea flavor
• 2 packs of Trident Layers gum
• 2 four packs of Yo-Plus yogurt
• 3 bags of Halloween candy (stocking up now!)
• 11 cans of Pillsbury crescent rolls
• 4 packs of Bumblebee albacore tuna
• 4 cartons of Tropicana OJ (the only kind Asia will drink)
• 3 pounds of ripe bananas (I need to make muffins for Kyler's track meet on Saturday)

Without coupons, it all would have cost me $64.26.

I had an acquaintance in line behind me at Fred Meyer who caught up to me afterwards and said "How did you do that?" in reference to my savings...

I told her about a couple of my favorite 'frugal blogs'... sites where women do all the work of matching up the sale items with coupons.

Here are some I rely on heavily:

• Money Saving Mom
• Deal Seeking Mom
• Frugal Chic Living
• La Vida Cheapo

The first two are focused on more national stores and have lots of posts about stores that don't exist in the Northwest, so I can scroll through a lot of posts without wasting too much time. The last two are specific to deals for stores in Spokane - but would apply to many Northwest stores.

I also use Hot Coupon World's forums to find previews of many of the upcoming ads so I can plan ahead.

It is time consuming. I find that I spend about an hour a week clipping and organizing my coupons and probably about that long planning my shopping trips. Over the summer, it was much harder for me to get out and take advantage of the best deals because the kids didn't have the patience required to go around to all the stores to get the best deals. I tried to avoid leaving them home any more often than I had to for work, so I really didn't pursue the deals much at all during that time. But now that they're back in school, I can devote myself to it again.

I don't make nearly as much money as I used to before the store closed... and being a mostly stay-at-home mom, I consider it a part of my job work hard to be as frugal as I can be with the resources we have.

I'm not going to change this into a couponing blog, because there are plenty of blogs out there that perform that particular service WAY better than I ever could. But I wanted to share - because it's become a big part of what makes me tick as a mom - woman - wife. I LOVE to find good deals and then come home and ask everyone "Guess how much I paid for all of this?"

(Today would have been a great day for that because my trip to Walgreens produced the Jello, the Wheat Thins, the Brachs mix, the M&Ms, the Olay and the Chapstick for $.10. Yes. Ten cents. I'm not kidding... how fun is that?)

So there you have it. A blog post by a coupon lady.

And that's that.

Happy Wednesday, friends! Smooches to you.