If you’re not already a member, I’ve written about Swagbucks before here: Swagbucks. I like getting paid to search.. :)

Christmas also came and went since last I dusted off ye olde blog, and it was great.  My daughter is three and she felt very, very strongly about getting a fish for Christmas. A real one, with no batteries!  :)  It’s so much fun to have a child old enough to appreciate the magic of the holiday season.  I personally spent the entire month of December trolling Slickdeals and forcing my child to do a ton of crafts and help with Christmas baking. She did not seem to mind much, as crafting and cookign with Mommy are two of her favorite activities…but I will say that she has not been as enthusiastic about crafting after Christmas as she was before. I think we both appreciated a little break from all the engaging, enriching activities.

I feel a bit giddy tonight because I had some excellent drug store shopping. The most interesting thing that I bought was six 1.5 quart containers of Edy’s ice cream for $.94 (total), making them almost sixteen cents a piece.  Have a Rite Aid and a Wellness card (free)?  You can do it too!  Just buy six containers of ice cream, assuming you can find them in stock. Pay $2.99 x 6 = $17.94.  Receive six $2 UPs (which print on your receipt) and one $5 Up. If you’re not a regular Rite Aid shopper, immediately tear those coupons off and spend that $17 on something in the store that you need that’s on sale. Rite Aid prices are murder if there’s not a sale.  You could actually spend that money on more ice cream, but you will only get the six $2 Ups, not the $5.  My store actually had plenty in stock, which was somewhat shocking. I also bought twelve packages of pads, making me look like a walking stereotype for PMS. :)  The manager came to the front and hovered over the cashier while I was checking out. I wonder if he thought I was going to get violent or something?  I don’t know.  The whole trip worked out to be $17 of profit and I just really love days like that.

Anyway, if you’re not familiar with Groupon, it’s a group coupon (hence the name) site that has a daily deal for a particular city. If enough people sign up for the deal, the deal is activated and you save money. For example, there was recently one for a $50 gift certificate to Gap for $25. I have also been tempted by a few random half-price kid-friendly museum/activity offers.  You can check the site to see what sort of deals they offer.  It’s pretty random, I think, but you have the potential to save some money if you follow them.

So.. if you’re interested, sign up here. I am pretty excited that there will be more local deals for me to get in on.

In addition to the deals in your particular city, you can also take part in some national deals. Sometimes, the city’s offer is for an online company, or one that will ship to you, or maybe you want to send a present to someone in another city.  Luckily, there’s a blog for that too.  It’s worth skimming through the list to see if there’s something that suits your fancy, surely. Check it out at Groupon Roundup.

Buy:

2 10-packs of 500-sheet reams of HammerMill Copy Plus Letter Sized Paper ($24.99 ea) (item 122374-QJ)
1 “filler” (a cheap item intended to boost the total over $50. I bought cap erasers for $.79 because I was in a huge hurry and couldn’t think of anything else)

Since your total was $50, you get free shipping!  Plus, you can now apply coupon code 47617, which takes off $10 ($5 per box).

Now, apply for a Staples Easy Rebate of $16 per package, for a total of $32 in rebates.

$50 – $10 – $32 = $8 / 2 = $4 each.  That’s about how much a single ream costs at Walmart.

(Plus, if you use ebates, you can get 2% cash back. Eighty cents is still eighty cents, right?)

Immediately after you  order, you can submit the rebate form online instantly.  Do it right away so you don’t forget!  This is limit two per household, and you only have to submit the form once if you bought two. It will automatically give you two $16 rebates. You can also choose to receive your rebate as a check instead of a prepaid card.

I ordered this morning, and I will note that the first time I tried, they showed up as quite a bit more expensive than $25 each.  I tried again and it worked.  Just pay attention before you order. Also, I was able to use my expiring Staples Rewards, so I only had to pay $7.xx out of pocket. That was a nice bonus. :)

Thanks,  Slickdeals!

This should last me for a while, especially since I have a box this size that I just started on.  Coupons use a lot of paper!

As much as I like getting free samples, especially with only a small amount of initial time invested, I’ll leave this one for the people who need it. :)

Enjoy!

I think the beauty of this one is that theoretically, you’d be getting free stuff if you buy something you’d have to buy anyway.  If you don’t happen to have a large expensive car part that you need right now, then you can consider it 33% off if you want to take the opportunity to stock up on car supplies–that may or may not be worth it to you.

Advance Auto Parts – spend $100, save $50.

Get the coupon!

Big Lots sells furniture, and we have been sorely tempted to buy a new couch there when these coupons have been released in the past.  It’s probably good that we don’t have a truck to get one home. :)

When the waitress (finally) arrived to ask for drink orders, I asked her about the promotion.  She said that she thought it had already ended, but it was still in the computer so she’d bring me a menu of the eligible items.  So she did, and we ordered food (which turned out to be quite good!) and we had a lovely lovely evening.

Also, before this dinner event, I sent my husband to CVS to pick up Pepsi while I went to Walgreens with the baby, and I actually combined this lovely evening with drugstore shopping. How much better does it get?  I’m too embarrassed to post a picture of the heaping pile of stuff we bought at Walgreens, though. I had a LOT of RRs from the Bayer monitors to use.  It mainly went for Pepsi products (we are stocked up through approximately August, and we drink quite a lot of it..if that tells you anything) and a humidifier.

Anyway, my point is–it doesn’t hurt to ask, in situations like this.  The worst they’re going to say is no, and you just might get what you want.  And for the record, this was just posted about at slickdeals so I don’t think that it’s an ended promotion, regardless of what our waitress said.  Feel free to try it out in your area.  I was pleased to see that the options on the menu were actually good ones–it usually feels like those special menus have less appealing entrees than the real menu.

But! Take the Big Lots sale paper to Wal-Mart or Target and price-match the Big Lots sale, and then you can use coupons to make it an even bigger savings!   (Big Lots doesn’t accept coupons.)  There were $1/1 All, $1/1 Surf and $3/2 All coupons in a recent insert–probably the 1/3/10.

Buy 2 All, use one $3/2 coupon = $1 each.

Buy 1 All or Surf, use one $1/1 coupon = $1.50 each.

Remembering that $3/1 Surf coupon fondly right now… it’d be lovely to make this a MM, wouldn’t it? Still–good price on detergent.

(I have ten copies of each coupon, which would be a total of forty bottles/boxes of detergent.  That would be a bit of overkill, I think, but it’s nice to be well-supplied, right?  hehe.  Don’t worry, I won’t be buying that many!)

First of all,  if you’re going to order from them, you should click through a shopping portal like Bing Cash Back, which currently gives a whopping 50% back on magazines.com orders. (Bing deserves its own post–I haven’t been using it long but when it is good, it is fabulous.) Anyway.  Percentages change rapidly, but right now, it’s also at 21% at Ebates and 30% at Mr. Rebates.  So if you find a $10 magazine subscription, you’ll get $5 back from Bing, or $2.10 from Ebates or $3 from Mr. Rebates. I usually just check around to see who has the highest percentage before I order.  Then you just click on their link and place your order. (Note: you can’t combine them and get percentages back from all of the sites, and you need to make sure you don’t click on any competitor links after you do your click-thru. Read my post about Ebates for more info on these types of sites–the other sites are fairly similar. )

So there you have a pretty cheap magazine subscription.  The best part, though, is that they occasionally send $5 gift cards in their email newsletter!  (Sign up on their website to start receiving the newsletter.)  I received one last week that I just now redeemed.  I ordered Family Fun magazine for $9.95.  After my gift card was applied, I paid $4.95 out of pocket, and I will receive $4.98 back from Bing.  A tiny bit better than free!  (Technically, I will also get 1% back from my credit card, so that’s what? Eight cents of profit total?  It won’t pay the bills but it’s better than a poke with a sharp stick.)  I used my last gift card code (a $10 one!)  last month to get Food Network magazine for a profit of $2.50… and I’ve been eyeing that one for ages. I was even considering paying for it!

Now I just need to find time to read all of these magazine subscriptions. :)