Heaven Cent — Noreen Berlier
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More Cheerios and Nature Valley Nut Clusters
I made another quick trip to the supermarket on Tuesday to take advantage of the Safeway buy 4 for $1.50 discounts that were ending the next day since I was able to scrounge up a few more $1.00 off coupons.
Penny For Your Thoughts Book #12 Launched
One of the things that has truly surprised me about Penny Experiment is that it hasn’t been limited to those living in the US. When I put the call out for penny postcard artists, there were a number of people from other countries asking if they could participate. That same international attitude has continued with the Penny For Your Thoughts books.
Shannon, who was in charge of launching book #12, did so “…in Second Valley, South Australia, at a celebration for my 30th Birthday. It was then handed onto a friend to take back to Canberra, Australian Capital Territory.”
Posted in Penny Book, Penny Experiment
Tagged #12, Australia, book art, Canberra, penny, Penny Book, Penny Experiment, penny for your thoughts, Second Valley, South Australia
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The Budget Mommy Gets Paid To Shop
If you thought that getting food for free (which several of the super couponers have done) was the ultimate in coupon shopping, The Budget Mommy shows in her latest shopping trip for Penny Experiment that you can actually get paid to grocery shop. That right. The Budget Mommy purchased $34.44 worth of food and got back $1.83 from the store:
Posted in Coupons, Donated Food, Penny Experiment
Tagged couponer, Coupons, food bank, food pantry, great deals, penny, Penny Experiment, super couponer
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Synchronicity #71 Penny Postcard Art
Posted in Penny Art, Penny Experiment
Tagged #71, coin art, found money, penny, Penny Art, Penny Experiment, penny postcard, pyramid art, synchronicity, triangle art
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Chocolate Cheerio Man – How To Get Boxes for 25 Cents
I continue to prove that my couponing skills are still limited to cereal with my latest purchase of 6 boxes of Chocolate Cheerios and 2 boxes of standard Cheerios:
Carie’s Coins & Cents Penny Experiment Purchases
Carie who writes the blog Carie’s Coins & Cents sent me an email letting me know that she has made 4 purchase runs for Penny Experiment over the last month. During these four shopping trips, Carie purchased $75.29 worth of food for $17.20, or a savings of 77% of of the retail value. This is what she purchased:
Posted in Coupons, Donated Food, Penny Experiment
Tagged coupon deals, Coupons, grocery coupons, grocery store deals, penny, Penny Experiment, super couponers
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A Girl’s Best Friend #62 Penny Postcard Art
A Girl’s Best Friend — Kelley Wise
Inspiration / About the Art: When I first came across Penny Experiment, I immediately wanted to do artwork featuring Marilyn Monroe. I’m not fully sure why, except that it possibly had to do with how iconic she is in American culture (an probably worldwide as well). I thought it fitting to match her up with another well known American symbol — which is, of course, the penny.
Originally I hadn’t intended to tie in the “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” angle, but as I started to plan out the actual piece, things fell into place differently than I had planned. I settled on the “Diamonds” outfit because I liked the juxtaposition of the diamonds and the penny. I figured it was a pretty decent symbolism for this project as a whole.
Significance of the Number: I picked the number 62 because 1962 was the year Marilyn Monroe died. I chose that year instead of 1926 (the year she was born) because I think more people today can connect better to (or remember) the 1960s. That time period is also well known for being all about love and compassion for other people, even during a time of crisis. I can see the parallel between that time period and now, so I wanted to attempt and communicate that every dark cloud has a silver lining and humanity can do great good — there is always hope.
Materials: pen, watercolor paints, glue and glitter.
Size: 5 inches x 8 inches
About the Artist: Kelley Wise is a 24 year old Floridian and largely self taught artist in various mediums.
In early 2008, she was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder (a form of schizophrenia with — in her case — a co-morbid diagnosis of depression). She experienced a psychotic breakdown during that period and was hospitalized later in the year. Her ability to create artwork (or do anything, really) diminished greatly during this period and she feared that she’d never be able to draw or paint again. Obviously, she overcame that issue.
Kelley is currently working again and taking college courses. Her treatment and recovery taught her much about the resiliency of the human spirit and it’s her hope to inspire others to see the strength inside themselves and others. She hopes to eventually work in psychology in the future, particularly in branches that deal with children and young adults.
You can learn more about Kelley’s artwork on her deviantart page Kelley-Michelle. You can also see her writing on her mental illness blog about living with schizoaffective disorder at From Despair to Where.
Price: This piece is not currently for sale: There are great reasons to purchase Penny Experiment art. If you would like to purchase A Girl’s Best Friend #62 or other artwork from this 100 Penny Postcard Art series, please email me and I will put you on my list to inform when this series is for sale.
Posted in Penny Art, Penny Experiment
Tagged #62, 1962, diamonds, glitter art, mariln Monroe, marilyn Monroe art, pen art, penny, Penny Art, Penny Experiment, penny postcard, watercolor art
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Teaching Food Banks to Become Super Couponers
On Thursday, we packed up the car:
and made our second food bank trip to Open Heart Kitchen:
Where we delivered the food Open Heart Kitchen’s food storage area:
While there I met with one of the volunteer coordinating directors of the Open Heart Kitchen program and explained what Penny Experiment is doing and how we use of coupons to get deals on food. He was intrigued and asked me to sit down and talk to him about it.
What I learned was that there were a lot of groups that wanted to volunteer to help the food bank, but wanted to be able to do so from home instead of having to come down to the food bank to volunteer. We both agreed that setting up a “coupon” program could be a good way to use these people that want to volunteer, but the food bank has not been able to utilize well in the past.
One of the big limiting factors when it comes to getting coupon deals is that it is tough to get a large number of coupons for the great deals when they are available. Most Internet coupons are limited to printing one or two coupons per computer. Creating a mass of at home volunteers that were willing to print out these coupons for the food bank to use could make it much easier to secure great deals in large quantities.
While we are still in the planning stages, the basics of the plan have been worked out. There will need to be a volunteer coupon coordinator who will look at what deals are available each week. When a good deal is found that the food bank can use, the coordinator will send out an email to the volunteer list to print out the coupons needed. We are still working on the best way to collect the coupons. Once collected, the coordinator will go to the grocery store with all the coupons and make the purchase saving the food bank money and stocking them up with that particular items for months.
Once we get it going and work out the inevitable kinks that go along with it, we hope to be able to pass the information on to any food bank so that they can easily set up the same coupon saving program to help fill their shelves. While none of this will count directly toward the Penny Experiment $1 million worth of food goal, it is a far more powerful extension that could ultimately feed a lot more hungry people in the US. I will definitely make updates as this progresses and is put into action.
My $146.67 Worth of Food for $16.48 Trip
I made a grocery shopping run late last week ans was able to get $146.67 worth of food for $16.48 which is a savings of 89% and that includes a stupid mistake I made that added on a few more dollars that I should have paid if I were paying better attention.
The Safeway advertising flier said that Safeway was selling Cheerios for $1.50 a box when you purchased them in groups of 4. Since I had 4 $1.00 coupons from signing up with Cheerios to get them sent to me by email, that meant that each box was only $0.50. Then I still had a $1.50 off my next purchase coupon which I had left over from my last shopping trip which allowed me to buy the 4 boxes of Cheerios (a $13.96 value) for a total 50 cents.
While I was at the store I realized that they were running a number of other discount deals that I had coupons for at home, so I went back for another trip. This time I purchased 20 bags of Nature Valley Nut Clusters, 5 boxes of Quaker Oatmeal and 4 Bertolli frozen meals. The total came to $19.98 which was more than I had anticipated.
This trip made clear that when you use a lot of coupons, you really need to know exactly what the final price should be because there are often mistakes. In this case, the discount for buying the Nature Valley Nut Clusters in groups of four didn’t all go through meaning that I paid regular price for 4 of them. This meant a trip to the service counter to get that money refunded.
My big mistake was with the Quaker Oatmeal boxes. They were on sale where if you purchased 2 boxes, you received 3 free. Their regular price was $4.99, but somehow I got it into my mind that I only had to pay $4.99 (not the $9.98 for 2 boxes) to get the deal. I thought I was buying 5 boxes for $0.99 after using four $1 coupons I had, but in reality it came out to $5.99 for the five boxes. That is $1.25 a box which I would have assumed was great in the past, but I know it is possible to get them for $0.50 a piece so it was a rather big mistake on my part (I am amazed that I have progressed enough in couponing that I can actually make that statement)
The 4 Bertolli frozen meals I had coupons to get them for free. They come up on the receipt at $6.99 each, but their regular price was $8.99 each. That meant that I ended up getting $132.71 worth of food for $15.98 on the second trip for a savings of 88%. Combining the two trips, I purchased $146.67 worth of food for $16.48 and this is what I ended up with:
Cheerios – 4 boxes
Nature Valley Nut Clusters – 20 bags
Bertolli frozen dinners – 4 bags
Quaker Instant Oatmeal – 5 boxes
All this will be added to the master list of all the food purchased for Penny Experiment. Couponers have now purchased $923.06 worth of food for $95.74 with $999,076.94 left to go to reach the $1 million goal…
Posted in Coupons, Donated Food, Penny Experiment
Tagged coupon savings, Coupons, food bank purchase, grocery coupons, Safeway, super couponers
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