Archive for the ‘Real Life’ Category

May 18th, 2012 Diet, Real Life No Comments »

Ultrasimple = Ultraboring

Yeah, just a few days in and I am not doing too well, I did wean myself off caffeine but its still a bit of a system shock.

The UltraSimple diet has a basic meal plan of lemon in hot water, green tea and a smoothie for breakfast, rice and veggies for lunch, rice and veggies with chicken or fish for dinner and vegetable broth throughout the day.  I am going to keep up the broth as I do feel it makes me eat less, but add in some ‘normal’ foods (like potatoes) and use some gluten free recipes for wheat-free meals, because life without bread…

Which brings me to my dinner – yes, it has yeast etc which was not allowed but I need something that is a long term plan so… At the grocery store today, they had several gluten free companies doing taste tests, I needed that cookie!  But there was a pizza kit on special offer.  4 pizza bases and 4 packets of sauce by O’Doughs for around $7.    It tasted really good, not at all my idea of what frozen gluten free products taste like, lots of sauce (although two of the sauce packets were hiding between other pizza bases so I originally thought they had to be shared between 2 bases), topped with a little mozza, turkey breast and mushrooms and served with a salad, it was very filling.

So the new basic plan is to include dairy and nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes and peppers etc – I am having a hard time living without them) but include the broth and lemon water and do 2 low carb days a week.

 

May 8th, 2012 Diet, Real Life No Comments »

Back on track… again?

Despite my best intentions at the beginning of the year, life took over and everything took a backseat.  I maintained my loss on weightwatchers but have not lost anymore weight and slowed down on my online earnings.

Life really has calmed down now and I want to get back on track, a friend did a modified version of the UltraSimple diet to get back on track, she is staying on it for some time, something I don’t think I can do given how much it limits but as a cleanse, detox and back on track tool, it seems like a good idea – help me go cold turkey on all the things that have crept back into my diet.  It recommends starting it when you have no evening requirements which is not the next week or so, but I am going to start cutting down / cutting out stuff that I should not be eating to get read for starting it a week Saturday.

In other news, it appears some nasty hacker hijacked my blog so I am blacklisted on Google, so much updating this morning before I could post.

January 15th, 2012 Diet No Comments »

Weekly Update: Jan Week 1 and 2

Last week was insanely busy, so didn’t have time to update…

Week 1 : down 4.5lbs (this makes up for a gain over Christmas so not nearly as impressive as it sounds)

week 2: down 0.4lbs

So, what do you eat on weight watchers? well anything you want!  You get a set number of points per day plus a weekly point allowance for treats.   Obviously it makes sense to make the most of your points.  Lots of fruits and vegetables are zero points so load up on them.  Small changes can make a huge difference too – like using egg whites instead of whole eggs.  They show ‘good’ foods with a green triangle to indicate they are filling and good for you.

For example, a breakfast:

Copyright Weight Watchers Canada

Copyright Weight Watchers Canada

Add two slices of Weight Watchers toast if needed, and you are up to 8 Points Plus with eggs and bacon – the same as the croissant, but likely not hungry for much longer.

A favourite weekend breakfast for me is a Monte Cristo Sandwich:

Montecristo02

Monte Cristo

Typically, I would have made this with 2 slices bread, 1 egg, splash milk, 3 slices bacon or ham, 1oz cheese, 2 oz turkey, and mustard for a total of 16 points.

On weight watchers, I use 2 slices WW bread (2), liquid egg white with splash milk (1), 3 slices shaved ham (1.5), 3 slices shaved turkey (1.5) and 1oz low fat cheese (1) with mustard (0) = total 7 points.   Some minor changes save 9 points. and it still tastes amazing.  Add an orange or apple at 0 points and you are full until lunch.

This week, I also tried House Foods Tofu Shirataki Noodles, a pasta substitute that has less than 1 point per bag (the same amount of my regular pasta would have about 9 points).  They are a little more rubbery than regular pasta, but still very edible.  Hungry-Girl.com has some tips and recipes that I will try out before making up my mind about them, I suspect that they would be greatly improved by drying them before cooking like she mentions.

While I am mentioning Hungry-Girl, I should mention my new favourite website, SkinnyTaste, a recipe website that is both Weight Watcher Friendly (and points are posted with each recipe) and delicious!

December 31st, 2011 Diet, Great Canadian Rebates, SmartCanucks, SwagBucks No Comments »

Happy New Year

I have really slacked at posting this year but things have calmed down in my life and I hope to be back blogging.

I joined weight watchers in September have have lost 17.5lbs (if it is a resolution of yours to lose weight and you are also thinking about joining, join through Great Canadian Rebates for a $15 rebate by paypal (plus $2 just for signing up) as well as weight watchers waiving the join fee, so under $22 a month.

I am hoping tracking about my experiences on weight watchers will help keep me on track and accountable as I slacked a little over the last few weeks.  I have to recommend skinnytaste here too, her recipes are amazing and you would never guess that they are healthier versions when tasting them.

I just hit 250 referrals on swagbucks today, so a huge achievement!  I am now earning $50ish a month without spending too much time on it, I have given up doing a lot of the time consuming things like offers and surveys.  Unfortunately we are now going back down to less SBTV wins so that will cut some of my earnings so YAY for the people who signed up under me over the last few weeks.

So… back on track for 2012

March 6th, 2011 coupons, Real Life, Savings & Product Reviews No Comments »

February Savings in Review

February update: I did stock up on some items this month but mostly it was just savings on groceries.

Purchases:

  • Regular Prices: $1,174.54
  • Shelf Prices: $636.24
  • Coupons $220.29
  • Discounts/Gift Cards $82.35
  • Spent $333.60

Money ‘Made’

  • Swagbucks $25 Amazon
  • Surveys $15 ( $5 Amazon and $10 Paypal)
  • Rebates $105.29
  • 3 free coffees & 2 donuts from Tim Hortons (he really needs to stop buying coffee every day)
February 12th, 2011 coupons, food & drink, freebies & competitions, Project Donate No Comments »

A good weekend for deals

DSCF7818The new Toonies for Tummies coupons came out this week so I popped into Longo’s last night to check and see which ones they had (and they had most of them woohoo) but even better were some of the deals.

Cat Chow Weight Management, which admittedly I would not feed my own cats, was on sale for $2.94.  It is usually $6-7 per bag so this is a steal for the feral cats.  I dont think they need to be on a diet, especially in winter, but hey, its better than not eating.  I picked up 4 bags last night and another 6 today using $2 off coupons on each.  Cat food for under $1!

Then, while browsing, I noticed Kraft Sizzling Salads were on clearance for $1.94, they are $3.99 everywhere so I haven’t really looked at them, there are better deals out there (although $2 per bottle for a cooking sauce and salad dressing is not bad).  But with the $2 coupons, they were free.  In fact Longo’s paid me $0.06 to take them.  Can’t say no to being paid to take items from a store.

So:

  • Cat Chow $2.94 x 10 = $29.40 – $20.00 coupons = $9.40 ($13.20 including taxes)
  • Kraft Sizzling Salads $1.94 x 10 = $19.40 – $20.00 = $0.60 made (no taxes)
  • So 10 bags of cat food and 10 salad kits for $8.80 (12.60 inc taxes)
January 27th, 2011 Real Life, SwagBucks No Comments »

Smart Canucks Meetup

Catching up on lost posts… over the last two weeks I attended two SmartCanucks meetups & coupon swaps.

The first was in Toronto, many of the members I had already met but we had some new people attend and lots of great coupons passed out including one each for free toothpaste.  It was great seeing everyone as we had not had a proper meetup since November and this one was very well attended.

But more exciting (not that I don’t love my Toronto gals if you are reading, but new people are exciting) was that we had our first local meetup.  Eleven of us showed up on a very cold day at Eastgate Square and took over part of the food court sharing coupons and stories of experiences in stores, where the great deals are and showing off our coupon organisation skills.  We are already talking about another meet up and a smaller Burlington meetup given the sudden Burlington explosion on smart canucks.

January 4th, 2011 coupons, food & drink, freebies & competitions, Project Donate, Reward Programs No Comments »

$1 a day can make a huge difference!

soupI mean really, I spend more than that at Tim Hortons in a week (and if I go to Starbucks, I spend it in one visit!)

$5.50 is all it took to buy all of this food for the food bank (plus I got HBC Rewards points)

  • 14 x Knorr Sidekicks @ $0.99 – 10% SPC discount – $1 WUB2 = $0.39 each ($5.46 total)
  • 24 x Campbells Soups @ $0.50 – 10% SPC discount – $1 WUB2 = $0.05 made on each one ($1.20 made total)
  • 4 x cans tuna on sale @ $0.35 – 10% SPC discount (no coupon) = $0.32 each ($1.26 total)

With the money made on the soup, all this came to $5.52 (my third full case of free soup dropped off to different food banks and I bought 10 SideKicks before Xmas too)

sidekicks-tuna

January 1st, 2011 coupons, Great Canadian Rebates, Real Life, Reward Programs, SmartCanucks, SwagBucks No Comments »

New Year … New Goals

As I mentioned in my earlier posts on my couponing resolutions (posts one & two), this year I wanted to be better organised to maximize savings

1. Organize coupons better – CHECK! My binder system seems to be working well for me and I have my new huge accordian file for trading.  I went through both for expired coupons yesterday after shopping and since I only have a pitiful collection of coupons left, they are well organised :)

2. Track spending and savings – As I mentioned, a member of SmartCanucks supplied great excel tracking sheets and I downloaded a yearly tracker where I can put the totals from each shop in a monthly chart and it updates a summary sheet with total savings over the year.

3. Make better use of loyalty programs – There is actually 20x the points at Shoppers Drug Mart today but there is nothing we need enough to bother going out and spending money.  I think we may live off the stockpile for a while.  I did just redeem 160 Airmiles for a $20 Gift Card to Metro for groceries.

4. Maximize savings by using Great Canadian Rebates etc – I have shopped online over the last few days but none of them were listed, but I did get a 5% discount on a new harddrive I bought from ebay for paying with paypal.

5. Keep better track of surveys and rebates – check! I added a sheet to my excel chart to track these

6. Track the above on here – well that is exactly what I am doing so check!

7. Login to GSN every day and do the daily questions etc – I have been slacking on this a little but hey its a new year and my resolution starts today right?

8. Use the Airmiles toolbar daily – I have slacked on this a little too but I did earn 20 Airmiles for using it for December.

So to start January:

Thanks to many new referrals on Swagbucks, I have enough to get five $5 gift cards to Amazon (it is two prizes per day so these will be bought over the next few days) = $25 and some left over to decide what to spend them on.  I am also trading $10 of Amazon.com GCs earned on it for Amazon.ca with another SmartCanucker who uses Amazon.com = $35

Thanks to many bonus offers on Airmiles, I had enough to redeem for a $20 gift card to Metro to be used towards groceries = $20

ThermoKittyFrom GSN I redeemed my oodles for a thermo-kitty bed for the cats.  When we first got Quincy he destroyed many of their beds and we didn’t replace them because he was still a tornado of destruction but he seems to have calmed down so they get the bed shown, worth $45-60 depending on where you buy it (plus shipping).  According to the description:  Super soft orthopedic foam base complete with a 4 watt heater enclosed so they should love it

Not bad for the start of the year, $100 of free stuff on the way and some survey companies soon to credit also!

December 8th, 2010 coupons, Real Life, Reward Programs, Savings & Product Reviews No Comments »

Follow up to New Years Resolutions

In this post I talked about my couponing / saving resolutions and I am adding some more.

Maximising rewards:

  • Log onto GSN.com each day to do the daily oodle opportunities, I have enough for some decent prizes and barely put any effort into it
  • Use the airmiles toolbar to search the questions on GSN, this will easily net me 30 Airmiles each month. 160 Airmiles is a $20 gift certificate to Metro supermarket, 175 gets you $25 Rexall Gift Card = $50 a year without ever spending using my Airmiles Card
  • If something is the same price at Shoppers Drug Mart as other stores, buy it there so I get Optimum Points and buy a gift card beforehand to double my points.

Buy a freezer and a new shelving system so that I can better stockpile