My Simple Wyoming Life

So before I get into this post some people may not be aware of my previous blog so I am going to go ahead and put a link to the old blog https://mysimplewyominglife.blogspot.com/ I did change the name of the old blog when I was trying to add a new domain name to said blog but that failed hence why I am with a new platform and bought a new domain through them!

So coming back from the UK to the USA to live after almost 10 years abroad, I personally found shopping in California to be really pricey for pretty much everything! Even the sales and the money off coupons did not seem that great! So imagine my surprise when we finally got up into Wyoming that most of the beef they sell is choice and not select! I have had to go to my father as he is better at remembering prices so I could compare if it was a better deal here in Wyoming vs California.

So Wednesday we travelled all the way to Riverton as that is where my parents bank is (which we found out that the branch there is closing so we would have to go to Casper or Laramie both are about 1+ hr drive away from us) they wanted to shop at the walmart there so we did. I personally have not seen a 3lb box of great value elbow macaroni until Wednesday and it was $2.72 which I personally thought was good and I could not find anything cheaper for that weight so we bought 4 boxes. I bought my son a new drink cup (think straw and screw on lid type) it was reduced down to $4 and some odd cents vs the almost $7 I believe it said on the price sticker I can’t fully remember everything we bought. I do remember seeing some salmon and bought a pack that was almost 1lb for $8.10 ( most likely not that cheap but it has been awhile since I had some and it sounded really good). That my mother having a fit over printer ink as she thought I had grabbed the wrong inks and that we needed cartridges (we have one of the hp refill ones) which I did not grab the wrong ink and no we did not need cartridges which I showed her the following day (to be fair she was stressed and well so was I).

After that we headed back towards home and we stopped in Rawlins on the way back because I love the city market store there! They had actual boxes of dunk-a-roos! yes I grew up with dunk-a-roos and loved them as a kid however this trip I forgot to grab at least a box as it’s a treat I like to share with my daughter plus ya know reminds me of the nice parts of my childhood! Anyway they had some great offers going on, plus digital coupons that could be used on the items that were on sale giving you additional savings, thankfully we could use the digital coupon on 5 of the same item (I know some places don’t do that so this was awesome to me!). Oscar Mayer bacon is around $6.99 on average for a 16 oz pack and city market had a coupon that made it $3.99 per pack, we got 5! They also had a coupon that brought certain Oscar Mayer hot dogs down to $1.99 per pack vs $2.99 without the coupon yes you can get Oscar Mayer hot dogs cheaper in some places with it not being on sale but this was a good price vs what we paid back in California and we gpt 4 packs. Now grapes are a little more costly here in Wyoming and city market’s price is around $2.99 a lb but it was on offer for $1.77lb so I got some grapes it’s been ages since I had some and my daughter loves grapes! I have recently gotten my son to eat cap n crunch oops all berries and he likes them so they had a digital coupon making each 11.7-13 oz box only $1.49 per box and I went and got 4 boxes of those as well as a peanut butter one and I don’t remember there being a peanut butter one! I got 2 cans of arizona ice tea with raspberry flavour again it’s been ages since I had them and each can was on offer for 88 cents. my mother wanted strawberries and those were $4.99 for 2lbs which she said was good so I’ll take her word for it! I found 3x 1lb packs of Jennie-o lean ground turkey with yellow stickers marked down to $3.35. My father picked up a 3lb pack of very lean ground beef 93/7 and I believe that was on offer making it only $13.47 for the whole pack, my father also picked up 3x 16 slices of Krogers american cheese singles he says they taste better then the others and they are cheaper we paid $1.99 per pack. We also found some broccoli with yellow stickers for only $1.55 per 12oz pack and we got three of them! I like Krogers ripple cheddar and sour cream chips and those were on offer we saved maybe 50 cents but I think they are cheaper then walmarts verison when not on sale anyway. They also had a deal on 30-36oz bags of malt-o-meal cereal if you bought 3 they were $3.99 each so we all thought that was good and we much prefer malt-o-meal mini wheats! I believe their milk was on offer for $2.49-$2.89 a gallon for whole milk which is really good! Now these next item were not on sale but I must say their smartway chewy chocolate chip cookies are really good, my father thinks the smartway fudge striped shortbreads are better then the branded ones and I will say my favourite are their fig fruit cookies they are the best store brand of fig newtons I have ever had and at $3.99 for a 28 oz pack I think its a good deal! Finally we came to the clearance isle and we found 140 some odd strawberry kool-aid packs for only 8 cents each yes we bought the lot we prefer kool-aid or tea over soda specially when we can get it really cheap! with just the offers and coupons we saved $69.78 finding the kool-aid on clearance saved us around $38, so we saved roughly $107 which is amazing!

On Saturday we went into Laramie, we had to go to Murdochs for some dog food and I found they had a brand of hard candies I use to love as a kid sadly they did not have rootbeer barrel candies I loved as a kid but they did have a compelte butter making kit with a churn, butter paddles and a butter bell dish for $80, we thought if we found heavy whip cream or something on offer we could churn our own butter.

We went to my other favorite grocery store which is Ridleys family market in Laramie and they had some FANTASTIC deals! Now before y’all get you panties in a bunch with each of our families having our own club memberships, understand that my parents and my little family basically have our own seperate houses which by that I mean we both have working kitchens, both have our own bathrooms, bedrooms you get the idea. So anyway Ridleys had food club brand cake mixes for 79 cents when you used a digital coupon and you could get 5 boxes, same thing for their brownie mixes too! Milk was $2.99 when you bought 2 which is not bad in seeing how milk was like $4+ a gallon back in california albeit not as cheap as city market when we went midweek. They had one of the big brand yogurts on offer 10/$5, my mother likes those yogurts so we got 20 altogether between my parents and myself plus we are hoping my son will eat a little. They had their own brand cereal again for $1.99 for a 32oz bag when you used their digital coupon which their brand is not bad at all! Food club bacon was on offer for $3.89 for 16 oz packs sadly they had none of those when we went, but they did have a 3 day sale going on for bacon from a brand called daily’s you got 16oz for $3.49 which is really good and we thought what the heck lets try it! They also had large 64oz bottle of Mrs Buttersworth for only $3.99 with digital coupon which is really good. They had selected Pillsbury biscuts for $1.99 each with digital coupon which hey having a buck is great I think they were like $3 something back in california so. My son loves cherry poptarts and guess what! they had them on offer with digital for $2.99 for a 12ct box! We also found 3 packs of ground beef totaling 8.4lbs discounted for quick sale at $2.75 a pound! So 8.4lb for $23.10 I think that is fantastic! they also had choice chuck roast on sale for $4.99 lb Sadly that was supposed to be tonights dinner (Monday 10th of June) and well both my mother and myself have not been well and we did take some pain medication and allergy pills and well we did not turn the slow cooker off and well I did not know you could burn food in a slower cooker on low, now I know! So to sum it up between my parents and myself we saved a total of $107.74 shopping at Ridley’s family market that is including some stuff to stock up on for the winter because from my understanding from Oct to May is the winter months here.

We also went to walmart for a few bits,I found a cute little electric wax melt thing as well I also picked up a few wax melts to help keep my home smelling nice, I did find the small packs regardless of brand were around $2.44 – $3 and the bigger packs were $4 so I got 7 packs in total with 5 big packs and 2 small packs and thats only because I could not find the 2 in bigger packs. My favourite is by scentsationals it’s vanilla pine “walk into the forest”, it smells so good I love it and am going to get more and store it. I also got one of walmarts cheap fragrance plug ins I think it was around $6 for it as well as 2 scent plug thingys to go with it for our bathroom. We found some cute clothes albeit none of them were on offer, but I did find a cute little stitch (from lilo and stitch) shorts and short shirt set! I got a few baskets to help organize my pantry again not on sale however I think around $5 and $2 for my baskets were not bad price wise for the size of them. I do buy their 5lb bag of crinkle cute fries as unfortunately my son has a very limited range of food he is currently willing to eat and drink as he is on the specturm and yes we are going through what we need to do to get a official diagonsis here in the USA. My parents decided to get my daughter the animal crossing new horizions game even tho she has not been on her best behaviour *grandparents I swear!*. I can’t remember what else we got we did not go to walmart expecting to save money however I just remembered I got my daughter a unicorn throw blanket that was clearanced down to $4.50 and she loves it! but the thing I rememeber is it was raining like mad when we got out of the store lol!

So this week between City market and Ridleys family market we saved $177.52. I personally don’t think that is bad at all! What do you guys think? any shopping tricks you know that might be useful send them over! Until my next post have a wonderful day and a amazing week, thank you for reading!