Black Friday Shopping

Hello fellow shoppers. I hope that if you decided to face the crowds this morning that you had a very successful shopping trip. If you decided to stay home and skip the chaos, then I hope you had a very relaxful and wonderful morning home with your family.

I didn't try waking up at the insanely early hour that a lot of shoppers do on this day. I waited until my daughter woke up, got her dressed and fed, and then we went out, just hitting a couple stores. I had one of those $10 off a $20 purchase or more Kohls coupon, and you know me, I can't pass those up, so off we went. They had an early bird special on their playskool toys--50% off until 1pm. I still had all of my coupons that I printed off last month and I wanted to see what they had and what great deals I could find. I was pleasantly surprised to find both the Playskool Sit 'n Spin and Walk 'n Ride in stock. I picked those up plus a little shirt for her, used my Kohls and Playskool coupons with the early bird 50% off deal, and got everything for about $11. Successful trip!--There is my daughter's Christmas toy and next birthday present all bought and ready to go.

How was your Black Friday shopping trip? Feel free to leave a comment telling us how you did. I'd love to hear.

Free Movie Tickets

Who doesn't love to see a movie during the holidays. It seems to be many families' tradition to go on Thanksgiving. Well, you can get free movie tickets when you purchase specially marked boxes of General Mills cereal. When you purchase 2 boxes and enter in the codes found inside the box on the website here, you can print out a voucher for a free ticket. That can make for a cheap ticket and cheap cereal.

This promotion will probably be running for awhile, and I will update you when I find good deals on the cereal. If you are looking to get some for this week since Thanksgiving is coming up, I know that Albertsons have their boxes of cereal on sale for 2 for $5 through tomorrow. They are the 16-19oz. size boxes too. That means you can get 2 medium size boxes of cereal and a movie ticket for only $5. And, if you happen to have any cereal coupons saved up, it could be even cheaper (I had 2 $1 off 1 HoneyNut Cheerios coupons so all in all I spent $3)

Each voucher is good towards 1 ticket (up to $12) at participating theaters (to find a participating theater, go here) and can be used even if a show is considered a "no pass/no coupon" show.

Free Holiday Cards

If you are getting ready to do your annual Christmas card, then you may want to check out this deal. You can get 50 free cards from SeeHere Photo Sharing. Just sign up for an account for them, pick a card you want, add your pictures and such, and then add 50 copies to your shopping cart. When checking out use the promo code newbaby and you will get your 50 cards (and envelopes!) for free. All you pay is $3.19 for shipping.

I am excited to get ours in the mail in a few days. I did one of their 4x8 cards, but actually designed my own card in photoshop and uploaded that as my picture, then enlarged it to cover their entire card. That is always an option if you don't like any of their designs.

thanks Money Saving Mom

Target Chinet Deal

Target is having one of their gift card deals this week: purchase 2 packs of Chinet 9" plates (72 count) or 10" plates (32 count) at $4.74 each, get a $5 gift card.

Use 2 $1 off coupons found here

Total spent after coupons and gift card = $2.48 + tax (only $1.24 per pack--and these are the big packs!)

I was really excited to do this deal. I really like the chinet brand of plates. They are very durable and sturdy. They will be perfect for our annual pie night coming up!

I have found that reserving the $5 gift card for my next gift card deal makes things a lot easier and cheaper--I always have a gift card to use in the transaction that gives me another one. That way I really do keep my out of pocket expense to a minimum. Just food for thought.

Dole Canned Pineapple

There is a great printable coupon out there for Dole Pineapple. If you go here to the Dole website and play their Flip and Win game you will be able to print a coupon for $0.50 off one 20 oz. can. After printing your coupon, if you push the back button a time or 2 you should be able to print it a second time.

I've seen some pretty good sale prices on the pineapple this week. Starting tomorrow they are on sale at Food 4 Less for $0.98 (making them only $0.50 after coupon), and tonight I found them at my local Walmart Neighborhood Market on rollback for only $0.75 per can. That makes them only $0.25 for a 20 oz. can--that is an amazing price. I love to have these on hand when I want to make frog eye salad-Yum!

"Try Me Free"

Have you ever been strolling down an aisle at the grocery store and seen stickers similar to these? I love finding offers like this when I am shopping. It is an offer for a free product. You just purchase the product and send in the mail in rebate to get a refund for the purchase price. You essentially get to try the product for the price of a postage stamp. Keep you eye open for these offers when you are out shopping.

1-800-Flowers Free $40 Gift Certificate

1-800-Flowers is running a great deal/promotion right now that you might want to take advantage of (or pass along to your husband for him to take advantage of, if you like to receive flowers from him :).

Go over to their website HERE and sign up for their Fresh Rewards Program. Then add 10 event reminders to your account calendar. You will get 40 points for each reminder you input, up to 10 events. That will give you 400 points which qualify you for a $40 savings pass that they will email to you. This can be used on their website to order something.

It is as simple as that. It might take them up to 2 weeks to update your account, so be patient.

Once you have your savings pass, you might want to order your flowers from them by going through Ebates to get 10% cash back, or another website like Cashbaq that have other coupon offers for 1-800-Flowers (such as 15% off their birthday bouquets).

thanks Surviving the Stores

'Tis the Season--Toy and Game deals for the Holidays

The toy deals are starting, and well before Black Friday arrives. Here are a few that I noticed while going through my ads yesterday:

1. Walmart has some of their Playskool toys on sale in their weekly ad. The Walk and Ride or Ball Popper are only $17 this week (down from $20 normally). Use the $5 off coupons that you printed last month from coupons.com (or if you didn't print them, just head over to the side bar and click on the "see all coupons" icon to find them and print them now). This makes either toy only $12

2. Toys R Us is having a great game deal this week. They have a bunch of their Hasbro Games on Sale for $3.99 each, as well as others for $7.99 and $9.99. Here is where the deal gets sweet:

• there is a $2 mail in rebate offer per game on the $3.99 games, and a $3 mail in rebate on a few of the $9.99 games (you just need to do one rebate entry for all of them)


• You can get a $10 gift card in addition to the rebates when you purchase $25 or more of Hasbro games.

The Thrify Mama posted a great scenerio for the games:

• Buy 4 $3.99 games


• Buy 1 $9.99 game (either Scrabble or Connect 4 since it appears these are the only 2 in this price range that have the rebate offer)


• Spend $25.95 OOP


• Get $10 gift card and submit for $11 of rebates


• Essentially only spend $4.95 for 5 games

Here is a list of the different games on sale, with the link here for information on the rebate (games must be purchased at Toys R Us for rebate):

$3.99: Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, Memory, HiHo CherryO, Don't Break the Ice, Ants in the Pants

$7.99: Monopoly Jr., Boogle Jr., Scrabble Jr., Yahtzee, Monopoly Dial, Rubik’s Cube, Rubik’s 360, Rubik’s Magic

$9.99: Mouse Trap, Scrabble, Perfection, Connect 4, Boggle, Scrabble Up Words, Hullabaloo, Guess Who

Date Night Deals

I almost forgot to post a date night deal for this week. Here is one for those of you who are kids at heart--head on over to the Circus Circus hotel to see different circus acts. New acts perform every half hour from 11 am to midnight daily. Cost is free. My brother-in-law and nephews went a few weeks ago and had a blast. Hope you enjoy it too.

Disney Movie Rewards

The past couple of days I have been searching for printable coupons for the upcoming release of Disney's Up and Monsters Inc. For awhile there I wasn't having much luck, but I recently stumbled onto 2 potential deals:

1. It is possible that at some retailers there will be a sticker on certain DVDs for $10 off when you purchase both Up and Monsters. Someone spotted them on DVDs locked behind the counter at Frys, just waiting the release date next week. If anyone knows anymore about this potential deal, please leave a comment.

2. If you haven't joined Disney's Movie Rewards, then I recommend you do so, especially if you are Disney fans like we are. When you buy Disney DVDs with the movie rewards icon (all new releases have this I believe), there is a code inside the DVD container that you plug in online to earn points. You can redeem these points for a variety of Disney merchandise. Here are 2 more reasons to sign up TODAY

• today (11/5) is double points day, so if you have a bunch of dvds with codes never redeemed, then plug them all in today to get a whole slew of points.


• you can get an $8 off coupon for the new release of Monsters Inc. blue ray combo pack if you enter the UPC code in from your old DVD or VHS copy of this movie before 11/29/09. There should be a message about it in the message board when you first log in to your account.

Mailbox Goodies

Like I've mentioned before, my daily trip to my mailbox is something I really look forward to (I know--it sounds like I have no life, right?). I just get excited to see what freebies, coupons, or rebates I am getting. Sometimes there are one or two goodies for me, or sometimes there is nothing at all, which is a huge let down. I prefer the days when there is at least something.

The past couple of days have been marvelous mailbox days. It's either feast or famine, and this weekend it has been a feast of freebies. I got my 2 $10 gift cards from Emergency Essentials (one for trying their food storage analyzer and blogging about it like I mentioned here, and the other for putting their button on my blog), a $5 gift card to Paneras (for doing a survey for them), a coupon for a free can of ReddiWhip (perfect for our annual Pie Night coming up), a coupon for a free California Pizza Kitchen frozen pizza (an offer from the Kraft First Taste program for their members), and a $10 off a $10 or more purchase at Kohls (that should make for a free item or two when I check out their clearance racks). Not bad for 2 trips to the mailbox.

I definately recommend signing up for the Kraft First Taste program if you haven't yet. It's similar to VocalPoint that I've mentioned before, but you need to periodically log on to see what free offers are waiting for you. They usually don't automatically mail you coupons out like vocalpoint does. You either have to claim them and then they will mail them to you, or they are just printable coupons.