Saving by Spending?

I found a great site, thanks to my friend Angela, that is all about saving money when shopping. I decided to try it out to see if it would work for me. It involves a little labor of collecting coupons from the Sunday paper and printing some from the Internet. So far, it has been totally worth it.
Today I went to Target and saved $54!
Here's how I did it: I split my items into two purchases at the register
Purchase 1:

I used the Target sale to my advantage and got a $5 Target gift card for buying 3 qualifying items. I use this stuff anyway, so buying it when its on sale is a good idea for me. Of course, I had a couple coupons. They only took $2 off, but its still a savings.
My total for this purchase was $11.37 (or $6.37 if you count the gift card).

Purchase 2:

I used coupons for almost all the items, making some of them free, and some just pennies. I referred to my two recent favorite sites Hip2Save and Totally Target to know what's on sale, what coupons to use, how to use them well and get the most for my money. This is what I got!
My total for the second purchase was $3.26! I used the $5 gift card to pay for it ... and still have some left for next time =) We don't usually use all the toiletries, but since they were free, I thought I'd pick them up anyway and donate them to a charity or include them in boxes to be sent to soldiers.

Check out my receipt!

To make this deal even sweeter, some of my free items will qualify for two $5 SC Johnson rebates! That's another $10 in savings!

And to brighten my day a little more, I found this little treasure in my mailbox when I got home.