Sunday, November 29, 2009

(Almost) free batteries!

I love a good battery deal. Paying for them online (and having your husband pick them up on his way home from work) makes it even sweeter.

I could type it out, but I simply did exactly what Life as Mom did. Details, directly from Staples, are here.

Each week from now through December 26th, I'll get $26 worth of batteries for a grand total of $1.56 in tax. Love it.

Edit to add: I've read this through several times and the offer is valid for each Staples Reward customer - I can't find any prohibition on multiple family members doing the deal. So I just signed Stewart up and did it again - wheeee!

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Target fun!

Printed out a million coupons and headed to Target for a little more fun:



All forty (!) of those wipes were $.97 each, so paired with the Target $1/off coupon they were free (I can't tell if I paid sales tax on them; the receipt is downright confusing).

The Chinet plates were $4.74 each, and were on a "buy 2 get a $5 gift card" promotion. I did two transactions and used 2 coupons (from here and here). After the value of the gift cards, I paid $1.24 for each pack of 32 plates. We don't use paper plates often (usually only when a bunch of people are here for a meal and I don't want to waste time cleaning) but they're awfully nice to have handy.

The Glade deal rocked and will rock more when I submit the receipts for the Johnson Rebate deal afterwards. See all the details here at MoneySavingMom.com! To make my deal even sweeter, I used 2 "Buy 2 refills get 1 free" coupons that I found in a recent insert; my cashier was happy to take them in addition to all of the others.

So in total, I spent:

* 40 packages of wipes: zilch (savings of $38.80)
* Chinet plates - $1.24/pack (savings of $14)
* Glade candles and refills - earned $2 and will submit to SC Johnson for $10 back (savings of $27)

Net cost: earned $7.04 after SC Johnson rebate
Net savings: $79.80


*Smooch!* Love you Target!

Monday, November 16, 2009

Nate's smart little mouth

So a few weekends ago Stewart took the boys to Charlottesville to celebrate Peepa's 78th birthday (I had a prior commitment). I was talking to them on the phone on Saturday and having a choppy speaker-phone "conversation" with Nate. At one point we were talking over each other, then a long pause, and Nate asks me what I was going to say. I told him "I was going to say that I love you and I miss you!" Another long pause, and he replies: "So say it!"

He wasn't trying to be smart, but it had Stewart and I howling.

As a side note, every time we read one of the Thomas the Train books, Jack gets to the page with Sir Topham Hatt and exclaims "Peepa!" I've given up trying to explain. Now Sir Topham Hatt is Peepa. Fine with me.

There was a second thing but for the life of me I've already forgotten it. So I'll go on to write about how it looks like Nate might actually be really smart. It's worrying us. We weren't anticipating it. But Nate keeps stuffing it in our faces, over and over, and we're getting to the point where we just can't ignore it anymore.



In the car a few days ago we were spelling words, one of his favorite things to do. We obviously spelled out Nate and then he asked me to spell out Shane with him (our friend Kari's son who stayed the weekend with us). We did, and then I asked him "What is the only letter from your name that isn't in Shane's name." He thought for a while, and then said "T!" Right on, baby.

Stewart took him on an errand walk yesterday and they were talking about the color of the leaves and Stewart told him that they turn from red to orange to yellow, then die and fall off the tree. Nate totally called him on that nonsense by pointing out the red leaves lying on the ground - that they hadn't turned to any other colors, just red. Genius boy. (He followed this conversation up by narc-ing the leaf-color nonsense out to me and giving me the chance to debunk it.)

He also used a Sesame Street alphabet book to figure out the names of the characters he didn't know - he was able to use the first letter of their names to figure it out (like using "G" to figure out that it was Grover, and "T" to figure out that it was Telly).

And a few days ago he read the word "start." He sounded out all five letters perfectly; he just failed at squshing them together to figure out what the word really said. Progress.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Almost free games from Toys 'r Us

Another fun deal today!



Toys 'R Us has all of these preschool games on sale from $8.99 to $3.99 right now, and they're also offering a $10 gift card when you buy $25 worth of games. You can make the deal even sweeter by pairing it with a rebate offer from Hasbro giving you $2 back on each game!

So it works like this:

* Buy 7 preschool games at $3.99 each (cost with tax in Maryland: $29.61).
* Get a $10 gift card to bring the net cost down to $19.61.
* Submit for the rebate (cost $.42 to mail it off) and get $14 back from Hasbro.
* Net cost for all seven games: $6.03! (Price with tax before sales, gift cards, and rebate: $66.71)

So nice, I made my Mom do it right along with me. I honestly have no idea what I'm doing with all of these games, but with all these kids around and their friends I'm confidant they'll be put to good use.

Easy deal at Target

There are some good deals at Target right now but my two favorite (and easy replicated) are these:



Use the Target coupon here to print out as many coupons as you want for $1 off the new Target brand (Up and Up) wipes. The boxes of wipes were $1.57, so they cost me 57 cents after coupon, and the toddler flushable wipes were $.97 so they were free after the coupon. You can bet I'm going back for more.

I wanted to get Nate the Leapster Tag system for his "big" Chanukah present, so I bided my time until I found this great deal:



Target just reduced the price from $49.99 to $39.99. I paired it up with a Target coupon for $10 off (in the Target holiday coupon book in the stores an in the newspaper last weekend), and a manufacturer coupon for $10 off found here. Voila: $19.99!

I love coupons so so much.