My first attempt

I've recently been motivated by a certain friend to start doing the "coupon game." I've used coupons here and there, but never tried to plan when and where I would use them. So, I wanted to give it a shot after I saw all the money that was being saved. So, I had a small list for Publix and a slightly bigger list for Ingles. I had coupons for everything at Publix but there were a few items at Ingles that I didn't have coupons for but were on sale. Oh, one more thing...I signed up for a trial membership to The Grocery Game. Have any of you used this? The trial membership is $1 for 4 weeks so I thought I would see how useful it is. I'm having a hard time wanting to pay $10 (every 8 weeks) for something that is there to help me save money...it bothers me a little. But, I will say it did help me out in deciding which store had the best deals and what coupons to use.

Let's just say that I walked out of Publix feeling like I had just saved the world...see the picture below...all of that cost me only $3.06! That jar of peanut butter was only .22 cents! Now you professional coupons girls (Nancy, Donna) don't laugh at me...you probably could have gotten all that for under a dollar, but hey, it was my first time! :) Oh, and the best thing about this trip was that some nice shopper had left a stack of $2.00 off coupons on the Ziploc bag shelf. I was going to use a .40 cent coupon but this one was a lot better...I did take a few more to use at a later date too.
Well, my feeling of euphoria soon left me because I didn't do as well at Ingles. I was buying some higher price items (vitamins, soy milk, chinese dinner) but I still thought I would do better than I did - $21.84. I forgot to take a picture of just the Ingles stuff so the picture below includes everything I bought at both stores.

Can I just say that Don has fallen in love with me all over again...nothing makes him happier than NOT spending money. He's keeping his fingers crossed I keep this up.Here's me looking a little tired...shopping at 2 different stores and having to do that much math wore me out.
So, here's my list of what I got:
Publix (total spent $3.06)
2 boxes Ziploc bags (1.00)
2 boxes Old ElPaso dinner kit (1.69)
1 jar of Peter Pan peanut better (.22)

Ingles (total spent $21.84)
2 soy milk (6.00)
2 Ken's salad dressings (1.00)
1 spray starch (.98)
1 K.Pao Chicken dinner (2.98)
1 Flintstones vitamins (4.98)
1 box of Ingles brand oatmeal (2.27)
3 boxes of Kleenex (3.02) this bugged me because I thought I could get these cheaper

Okay all you coupons queens/bargain shoppers out there...where did I mess up and what can I do better next time???