The Ups, Downs, and In-Betweens!

Life is hectic, have you noticed that?  No time for blogging lately!  But I just have to get somewhat caught up on awesomeness from lately, I hope this post isn't too much of a book. 
Firstly, I've gotten approval at work to do a coupon exchange and I'm excited about it :)  We'll have boxes set up in the breakroom where people can deposit what they don't want/need.  We'll be shipping off expired coupons for overseas military members & their families. 

Second, I'm excited because I've been emailing my local food bank and mentioned how it would be fun to do a couponing course there (they have cooking classes) and the lady I talked to was super excited, turns out she's been wanting someone to do a class on coupons for 3 years!  

The downs...I've been very frustrated lately with accusations made with couponing.  Twice at a local Safeway, a particular cashier basically accused me of fraud because he didn't understand coupon and rebate policies.  Today at a different Safeway another cashier questioned 8 coupons I had, though her manager straightened her out.  Yesterday we were in a neighboring city so we tried their Walmart with these awesome coupons we had (from 4/29 paper-$2 off any 1 Purina Beneful bag dog food) and they had the $1 mini bags that our Walmart doesn't have.  We would have been handed back $5 cash and had free dog food to donate.  The cashier rudely said we couldn't do that.  She called over her manager (took about 15 minutes for her to get there), and she said they wouldn't do it either. 

The moral of the stories?  1-always carry a copy of store coupon policies (I now have Walmart's policy printed up where it specifically states I should have been handed back cold hard cash).  2-learn to get over frustration-harder for me to actually do.  I have to learn to pick my battles.  The hardest part is the accusation of fraud-I value my honesty and good name more than they know. 

Anyway, not to end on those slightly bitter notes...

Here are my goodies aside from the good news.  All of these items between Target, Safeway, and Walgreens.....I got paid $1 to buy these (before tax)...probably cost me less than $1 after tax.  I'm actually sad because the Hershey's milk wasn't scanned right, I didn't know until later that she didn't scan the 50% off clearance upc :(    Missing from the pictures: 2 more kids toothpaste, 1 more salad. 

Aside from coupons, I got the salads and other items in the 2nd picture for free from the awesome Safeway deal they had through today-buy $50 in participating gift cards and get a $10 credit to your Safeway card.  I got these 2 Michael's coupons which I know I will actually use on supplies for lovely projects like these:

A stamp for a girl's wedding invites.  The painting was done by her sister.  This was my first time carving on the whitish gray material, I'm not a fan :-/

This awesometastic stamp was carved by yours truly but the original artwork was done by my husband.  This is the simplified version of artwork and we gave the original art and stamp to my sister-in-law for her birthday :)

And one last pretty thing to end the day: my Mother's Day flowers from my sweetheart :)  Hope you have a great day, feel free to leave comments!