Albertsons: Fabule$$ Gift Card Promo!

I posted about this awesome promotion last time they had it a few months back but its back again and just in time for the holidays! Now a days it seems like gift cards are the way to go for a lot of people, the good 'ol days of racking your brain for that one perfect gift has seemed to go by the wayside and now everyone just gives gift cards. I personally am a big fan of the old fashioned way of giving actual gifts but there are quite a few people on my list this year that are getting gift cards and here is where I am going to buy them!

Buy $100 worth of participating gift cards and receive a coupon for $20 worth of FREE groceries!

Here is a list of gift cards that work:

Amazon
iTunes
JCPenney
Lowe’s
Macy’s
Regal Cinema
AMC Theaters
Sears
Cabela’s
DSW
OfficeMax
Kmart
Bass Pro Shop
Nike
TGI Friday’s
Chili’s, Macaroni Grill, Maggiano’s, On the Border
Outback Steakhouse
Applebees
California Pizza Kitchen

This deal is running now through 11/26.

Not giving gift cards this year? Where are you going to be shopping at? If you plan on buying any of your gifts at any of these locations why not buy yourself a gift card and buy the gifts with the card and then use that $20 in free groceries for your baking supplies, holiday dinner supplies or even some other gifts you can find at the grocery store like kitchenware or greeting cards?!

Fine Print: The $20 coupon will print at the bottom of your receipt and you can only earn 1 coupon per transaction. This means if you want to buy $200 worth of gift cards you need to split it up into 2 transactions to get $40 in groceries and so on. Also, the $20 coupon expires in 7 days so you need to be prepared to shop within that amount of time to get your free food.

This is an awesome deal for this time of year!

Great Wolf Lodge on Groupon!

Here is a picture of Miss Naomi on her 1st trip to Great Wolf Lodge earlier this spring! She LOVED it and still talks about wanting to go back there again. Only problem is this place is pretty spendy and discounts are few and far between!

WELL on Groupon today you can get a great deal for a stay at GWL! Only $219 for a 1 night stay for 6 people in a suite! This also includes all of your water park passes, a late checkout and a pizza dinner!

We seriously had a blast when we stayed there, the water park was too much fun, the hotel itself is full of kid-themed goodness and the rooms were cozy, there is even a Starbucks in the lobby! I am thinking this might be a fun thing to surprise Naomi with for her 4th birthday in February.

The Groupon is good for travel between 11-28 and 2-15-12, make sure you read all the fine print before you purchase!

If you are going to purchase this deal you can get an extra 3% cash back through Ebates!! Plus new members to Ebates get a $10 gift card!

Calling all Bakers! CHEAP Butter at Fred Meyer!

Sorry I don't have a photo of my butter haul tonight because I am out of town but I just couldn't pass up this great deal on butter at Fred Meyer this week and I wanted to make sure everyone knows about it!

Buy 2 Challenge Butter, 1 lb: $3.00
- use weekly in-ad coupon to make it $2.00 each {Limit 2}
- stack with $.75 off 1 blinkie box coupon available at the butter
Final Price: $1.25/lb.
Since it is a limit of 2 per transaction/customer, take a buddy with you to the store and you can each buy 2.

My stock up price on butter is usually $2.00 per pound so to get it for $1.25 this close to holiday baking season is AWESOME! I generally go through at least 4 lbs of butter each christmas with all the different cookies I make!

Here is one of my new favorite cookie recipes, I have been told they are like little pieces of Heaven haha!

CREAM WAFERS

2 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup butter
1/3 cup heavy cream
granulated sugar

Mix flour, butter and cream into a dough and chill for an hour. Roll out half at a time to 1/8" thick and cut in 1-1/2" rounds. Carefully dip both sides of cookie in sugar and place on ungreased baking sheets lined with parchment paper. Poke with a fork 4 times and bake 7-9 min. at 375 F. When cool fill with filling and sandwich together.

Creamy filling:
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla (or other flavoring such as almond or peppermint)
1/4 cup butter
food color if desired

Mix all filling ingredients until smooth, add a few drops of water if needed.

ALWAYS Check the Clearance Section!

Here is yet another great reason that you should always always always check the clearance section at your grocery and department stores! You never know what is going to be in those "Fabule$$" little bins! Fred Meyer and QFC here in Washington almost always have something I want or need and a lot of times I even have coupons for them!

Today I went to my local QFC in Redmond to stock up on some essentials that are on sale this week for cheap but I happened to stroll by the "Manager's Special" area and saw a bunch of the new Huggies Slip-On diapers that they just came out with recently. They must have had an excessive supply at the store because there were about 8 bags of diapers marked down to only $4.79 per pack! Even without a coupon these are a good deal at about $.18/diaper which is less than Costco's price on Huggies.

BUT - there just happened to be a $3.00 off any pack of Huggies Slip-On Diapers in the 10/23 SS inserts! So I got 2 packs of diapers (49 in total) for $3.58 or $.07/diaper!

Coupon Connections is reporting a Catalina that's printing as well on Huggies, although I did not get this to print today when I bought my 2 packs so I am going to be calling Catalina about it to get my $3.00 catalina making both packs essentially $.58!

Happy Halloween! Thrifty Style!

How was everyone's Halloween last night? I have always loved this "holiday", maybe because it's the day before my birthday and I used to have Halloween/Birthday parties every year growing up. Trick or Treating and dressing up was my favorite! We would always go to the best neighborhood every year to get the best candy and see the most decorated houses!

I also always love shopping the Halloween clearance sales every year! Last year at Target I got a bunch of decorations for under $10 so I was excited to have Naomi help me put all the new stuff out this year. She also loves Halloween which makes it that much better for James and I!


Since we went to the Dominican Republic on our family vacation last week I didn't have a whole lot of time to plan for Halloween this year. I sold a couple of costumes on eBay before I left but I still had no idea what Naomi wanted to be or what we could afford. She had her heart set on Belle there for a while but everything I found at the thrift or consignment stores was too big. BTW - ALWAYS buy Disney store costumes when you find them for cheap! They re-sell for a minimum of $20 at Halloween so buy 'em up and save them til after Labor Day!

Mr. Mason was a little monkey, which is very fitting for him since we call him our little monkey! I found this Baby Gap costume for $2.99 at Value Village a few weeks ago! I should be able to re-sell his costume on eBay or at a consignment sale next year for around $10-15! Gotta love it when you can use something and make a profit on it too!


Now let's talk about my little drama queen, Miss Naomi Grace. Gosh I love my daughter to pieces but 3 years old - this is a hard age! She is in-decisive and for a bit there I thought for sure we were going to be going trick or treating in her ratty Sleeping Beauty costume as a Princess since we couldn't agree on anything else! Then we went to the good old thrift store a few days before we left for vacation and found a Disney Store Minnie Mouse dress for $2.99! YAY! She loved it and it had a good "twirl" too it so we were set! I just needed some ears... Luckily, my local consignment store had a pair in red and white for only three bucks! We had the red tights from last year's costume and the shoes from her flower girl debut this fall so the whole costume only cost $6.00!


The dress is obviously pre-owned but hey, for 3 bucks I figure she can play in it all year and we'll re-donate it next fall or I'll try and make a few bucks back on it at next year's consignment sales. If I sell it along with the ears I can probably make at least my $6 back. Win! Here is the same dress that recently sold on eBay.

I also didn't have a chance to coupon for any good candy this year, plus I am trying to avoid buying any candy as we just plain don't need it in our house! We took the kids to an event at my husband's work where they do trick or treating around the offices and they have pumpkin painting and a train ride. The people were literally shoving HANDFULLS of candy into Nay's bucket so we came home with a ton of candy and Naomi had fun when I let her "share" it with the few trick or treaters we got at our place last night.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with the rest of the candy besides eat gobs of it! Naomi's dentist office does a candy buy-back program that we might participate in. They will give her $.50 per pound of candy that she turns in and will donate the candy to our troops over seas, not bad for all that free candy and we don't have to worry about eating all those calories!

Wait... did I just manage to make money on Halloween this year?!

Thrifty Thursday: My Little Ponies!

Everyone remember back in the 80's when My Little Pony first came out? I swear I probably still have a few in my grandmother's attic somewhere! Either that or I sold them all for a quarter a piece back when I didn't play them anymore. Well, while out thrifting one day a couple of months back I came across a couple of very well played with MLP's from 1986! The hair was matted on one of them and they were both very dirty but I had read somewhere that some of these were super collectible and I figured that for $2.99 Naomi could play with them if they were worth nothing!

I actually took forever to get them listed, I bought them back in July and they have been sitting in my "To List" pile for months. I finally bought a Magic Eraser and cleaned the ponies up a little a couple weeks back and they looked pretty nice. When I researched their names and checked the completeds on eBay for these the blue one looked like it would for sure go for at least $10 and the white one I could probably get $5 for. "Better then looking at them everyday" I thought to myself so I listed them both at $.99 for a 1 week auction.

Within 2 hours I already had a bid on "Bright Eyes", the more collectible of the two. And by the end of day two I had 9 watchers on that one and 3 on the other! That's when I get excited!

Princess Tiffany - not as collectible ended up selling to someone in Canada for $4.25 + $6 shipping. Enough to "pay for" both ponies at the thrift store!

Bright Eyes - she was one of the twinkle eye ponies from the 2nd season or something and if you ever find her friend, Mimic, who is an orange unicorn you can guarantee at least $90 for her. Bright Eyes here is also collectible though and she sold to someone in Norway for $33 + $10 shipping! So glad I took a chance on buying these and next time I won't hold on to them so long!

Wordless Wednesday: Brother & Sister

Consignment Sale Re-Cap

I am so so pleased with my last two consignment sale experiences! Between the two JBF sales that I did in October I am coming away with a little over $400! Combine that with my checks from the two spring sales I participated in and I've made over $700 in consignment sales this year!

After I had Naomi I knew we wanted another baby so I saved most of her clothes, towels, blankets, hats and all of her toys. Then when we had Mr. Mason come along we were over run by pink! Luckily all baby toys are pretty gender neutral and all of our baby equipment like the swing and pack & play was all neutral colors as well so we are able to re-use all of that. I saved a few things to make a baby clothes quilt for Naomi's 1st baby someday but a lot of the stuff I decided to add to the sale.

So along with all of her old things plus about $50 in other items that I have collected from garage sales and thrift stores for really cheap I made about a $350 profit! I keep track of the items I buy for re-sale on a handy dandy spreadsheet that my husband helped me make a few years ago. That way I can keep track of what I spend vs. what I sell it for and how much my profit is for each and every item.

I found that grouping items together into outfits and packs and pricing them relatively low really helped. For example, I priced a group of 5 onesies at $5 with the option to go 1/2 price on the last day of the sale. Most of those sold at full price making me $.65 for each onesie! At a garage sale I would have stuck a $.25 price tag on each piece so I definitely raised my profit margin by doing the sale! I also grouped together towels & wash clothes or a bag of various bath toys. People like getting the most for their money.

I had over 255 items in the system and ended up with about 75 items at the end. What to do with those 75 items you ask? Well I have already listed a few things on eBay at fixed price listings and the rest is going to my local consignment store. I get 50% of whatever the items sell for there and they are on the floor for 6 weeks and donated after that if they don't sell which I am totally fine with. Most of the time I use the money I make at the consignment store to buy other items for re-sale or clothes for my kids.

I have already started buying for the spring sales for 2012! Much to my dear husband's dismay I store the clothes and other items I find in bins out in the garage and then when the time comes I destroy my dining room for about a week with tagging and hanging all of my items! I can't wait for the spring sales! My goal is to take 500 items to the next sale I participate in and not invest more than $.50-$1.00 for each item.

Stay tuned for the next couple of weeks, when I get back from vacation I am going to do a post on how I dress both of my kids for "free"!

Winning!

Wow I can't believe there were so few entries for the JBF sale giveaway last week!

Congrats to Emily and Devon for each winning a $25 gift certificate to the sale!

Lucky Ladies!!

Thrifty Tuesday: John Deere ROCKS!

You know those grab bags when you go to the thrift store that are always filled with random crap whether it be a bunch of random toys or kitchen supplies? Well one day a couple weeks back I happened to be browsing through the toy section and came across a grab bag of John Deere tractor toys for $1.99. I almost didn't buy it because I wasn't sure how well or if they would sell at all and my son is not even close to being of age to play with tractors!

Well I am SO glad I bought it! I came home and it was a set of 20 pieces including model tractors and trailers with a farmer dude, a horse, a tractor crossing sign and three boulders plus a cool diecast bi-plane toy. After a couple quick searches on eBay for these things I decided to list the farm set and the airplane separately. I put the set up as an auction for a week with free shipping and the airplane as an auction plus buy it now listing.

After a week at auction this tractor set sold for $31.00 with free shipping!! An awesome profit on a $1.99 investment/risk!

But wait, it gets better! Remember the little plane that was in the bag too?

In the last 15 minutes of the auction with no bids this little puppy sold at the BIN price of $19.99 + $10 shipping to the UK!

When you factor in all of the ridiculous fees from Paypal and eBay and the shipping costs plus initial investment my profit for the $1.99 grab bag ended up being $40.49! As I said in the title, John Deere ROCKS!