Will Be Back in the Spring

Due to the upcoming adoption of our daughter in China who will need open-heart surgery, I'm temporarily suspending posting on the blog. Lord-willing, I'll be back in March after the adoption and surgery are complete.

See you then!

Target Coupons

Target just revamped the coupon portion of their website. Now you can only print 2 of their store coupons per item. However, the great news is these can be "stacked" with manufacturer's coupons (meaning that you can use both a store coupon and a manufacturer's coupon on the same item) to maximize your savings.

Go here to see what coupons are available today.

Free Classical Christmas Music

Go to Amazon.com here to download 5 free Christmas songs. I downloaded them last week, and they are excellent recordings of some Christmas classics.

Thanks to Freebies 4 Mom for this tip.

FREE Batteries at

Between now and December 26, 2009 you can get free 20-packs of Duracell batteries. If you don't have your Staples Rewards card, sign up for it 1st. (It's free). Then twice a week you can buy a 20-pack of Duracell Batteries for $12.99 and you'll get $12.99 back in Staples Rewards. See all the details here.

I always have a hard time finding free batteries, so I'll be making twice weekly trips to our nearby Staples until this deal is over.

Thanks to Balancing Beauty and Bedlam and Money Saving Mom for the tip on this sale.

Sign up for EBates and Earn a Return on Your Christmas Purchases

Have you joined EBates yet?? All you need to do to join is go to the website here and sign up for your account. Each time you shop, via their site on the Internet, you'll earn a percentage of your purchase price in "free" money.

The great news is if you sign up now, you will get an automatic $5 credit on your account. I also like this program because Ebates mails you a check or pays you via PayPal, quarterly, if you have at least $5.01 in your account.

I ordered two Christmas presents today via Barnes and Noble and received 4% back in my EBates account. It won't make me rich, but it's nice to earn some money while I'm Christmas shopping via the Internet.

CoinStar Deal - Stretch Your Christmas Dollars

In our family we don't spend "coins". We save all of our change and put it into a clear old-fashioned milk jug. When the jug is full, we roll all the change and split the total $ amount among the 4 avid readers in the family. Then we make a trip to an old used bookstore and shop to our hearts content.

This year, in an effort to economize and further our adoption fund, we're going to turn our change into Christmas presents. So here's a deal....Take at least $40 change to your nearest CoinStar location. Redeem the change for gift cards (you can find a listing at the CoinStar website). There's no fee for converting your change to gift cards, i.e. $40 worth of coins will become $40 of gift cards.

During the Christmas season CoinStar is running a special promotion. You can see the details at the CoinStar Promotion link. They will send you a free $10 gift card for counting your $40 in change.

At our nearest CoinStar location, they offer gift certificates for Lowes, Amazon. com, Overstock. com and several other businesses. We're going to redeem ours for Amazon gift cards and then do Christmas shopping via the web.

That should help extend our holiday budget!!

Thanks to Money Saving Mom (my favorite coupon site) for spreading the word about this deal.

Rite Aid - Black Friday Deals

Check out My Frugal Adventures post for a detailed list of all the Rite Aid deals for Black Friday.

And when you are shopping at RiteAid don't forget to print your $3 off of $15 coupon. Remember, to maximize your savings, try to get your shopping order to come as close to $15 as possible (it must be at least $15). Give the cashier your 3/15 coupon and then give the cashier any other coupons you might have.

Save your RiteAid receipts and enter them at the RiteAid website to earn the following certificates:

Restaurant Certificate & Delivered Flowers

Restaurant.com is having a special Thanksgiving promotion. If you purchase one of their restaurant certificates at 70% off, you will also get a $15 gift certificate to Pro Flowers.

I went to the Pro Flowers website and found the following arrangement for $19.99.

It includes a vase and the shipping begins at $6.99 (depending on the speed of delivery and the destination). This might be a nice gift for someone.

You can enjoy a meal out at an area restaurant and send a friend or family member a flower arrangement all for $14.98 out of pocket.

We've used Restaurant.com certificates and have been very happy with their service. Make sure you read the restrictions for each restaurant before purchasing. Some restaurants will only allow you to use the certificate on certain days of the weeks. Also, the certificates have minimum purchase requirements. My favorite certificates are the ones worth $25 with a minimum purchase of $35. That means you spend $3.00 to buy the $25 gift certificate and then only $10 more at the restaurant for $35 worth of food.

You can go to the following link and find participating restaurants in you area:

Take 70% off Restaurant.com $25 Gift Cert. orders + receive FREE $15 gift code from ProFlowers. Use code THANKS and Pay $3 thru 11/26/09.

The promotion ends on November 26th at midnight but the flower gift code doesn't expire until December 24th. This might be the perfect Christmas gift for that "hard to buy for" relative.

Rite Aid Coupons

After Christmas I'll be running a Couponing 101 series to help those of you new to the coupon game. But for now I'll be posting some of my favorite new coupons and deals.

One of the best ways to save money on toiletries (and food for that matter) is to "stack" a store coupon with a manufacturer's coupon. Then to further sweeten the deal you can use a $3 off $15 coupon or other similar coupon.

Let me give you an example of how I'll use a series of coupons at RiteAid this week...

My family loves Honey Nut Cherrios, and I won't spend any more than $2/box for cereal. This week at RiteAid they have Honey Nut Cherrios on sale 2 for $5.00.

***This is revised from the original post. My calculations were WAY off the 1st time. That's what I get for posting while holding a squirming 3 year old in my lap!***

I will pick up 6 boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios. After the cashier rings up the cereal (for a total of $15), I'll hand the cashier this coupon at link here.

Then I will hand the cashier 2 coupons from a newspaper insert. Each coupon is $1.00/2 boxes of Honey Nut Cherrios. You can also use coupons found on the Kelloggs website...here.

My total for 6 boxes of cereal will be $10.00...just $1.67 a box.

I'll pay for the transaction with a Rite Aid gift that I earned by transferring a prescription to Rite Aid. The net transaction will cost me $0 out of pocket.

Transferring prescriptions is one of the best ways to earn gift cards at both Rite Aid and CVS. Rite Aid has coupons in almost every weeks sales paper offering a $25 gift card for transferring a prescription to Rite Aid. Since CVS honors all competitor's coupons, they will also honor the $25 gift card offer.

So this is how it works...
I fill a prescription at CVS. When I need a refill (and unfortunately our family has several ongoing prescriptions), I transfer the prescription to Rite Aid and earn a $25 Rite Aid gift card. I usually refill it once at Rite Aid (just to make sure to be "fair" to the store), and then I transfer the prescription back to CVS and earn a $25 gift card to CVS. Since we live near both a CVS and RiteAid, filling prescriptions at either store is convenient for us.

**Harris Teeter has the same size box of Honey Nut Cherrios on sale 3 for $6. If you're making a trip to HT for other groceries, you might want to use your Honey Nut Cheerios there. ***

#1 Organizational Tip of the Year

I read my best organizational tip of the year in The Duggars book, 20 and Counting. I only have a family with 4 daughters (soon to be 5), but I still find my laundry and closet organization is always a challenge.

After reading how the Duggars handled their laundry, for a family with 18 children - at the time of the book writing, I decided to give it a try. This is what the Duggars say, "We would no longer use bedroom closets for clothing....No more carrying clean clothes all the way to the bedrooms and putting them away in drawers and closets. Now they're sorted and put away right in the laundry room..."

I decided this was a brilliant concept and gave it a try. My long-suffering husband installed a hanging rod in our laundry room.


Now we hang all the clothes for the youngest 3 girls directly in the laundry room. This one organizational tip saves me countless minutes each day...carrying laundry up to each bedroom, putting it away in closets and dresser drawers, or worse, sending the children up with the clothes only to find the clothes half-hanging on hangers or sticking out of drawers.

Now all the clothes are within fingertip reach. It makes the entire laundry chore easier, and the girls bedrooms stay much neater. And since our girls share bedrooms, it also leaves more room for them to store their toys and belongings in our small bedroom closets.

In addition to putting up a hanging rod, we also installed a shelf above it. It is a great place to store out of season clothes and hand-me downs. I use free copy paper boxes and just label them with the sizes/seasons. This saves both time and money as I don't overbuy for a season.



If you're interested in getting the Duggars book, which is full of helpful tips, you can go to Vision Forum website. They currently have the book on sale and are offering flat rate shipping of $5.00 for any size order. We've ordered from this company many times and have never been disappointed with their quality or timeliness of shipping.