Thrifty Thursday

I love finding a good deal, don't you? It makes my day when I can find something great for cheap.

Today while I was at Goodwill, I found 3 awesome items for only $8.11 total, including tax.  I found this cake pan, brand new in box, for only $2.99.

It's going for much more on eBay, what an awesome score!   I think maybe we'll try it for my daughter's birthday, but that all depends on whether or not my husband wants to make it.  He's the cake maker in our house, I don't think I've made one of the kids' cakes but once.

I also found a cut black metal bucket, it's quite big actually, about the size of a large soup pan.   It was also brand new in the box, and had floating pumpkin candles with it.  That was only $3.99.  I'm not sure I'll be using the candles, as I don't care for floating candles, but the bucket can be used for many things. 

And my last find at goodwill was a cute little gourd basket.  I just thought it was so neat, and had to have it at only $.49!  It's green.  The picture didn't turn out though.

I also hit up Target today for a few items, and conveniently forgot the one item I went there for.  It figures I would do that, guess I'd better go back tomorrow.    While I was there, and wandering the aisles as I always do, I came across a sale on toys.  Toy sales make me happy.  I picked up a Bionicle for my son.  It was normally $12.99, but on sale for $11.99.  Not a great deal, right? It was also B1G1 Free!!  Score!  Two presents done for Christmas.  Yaay!


What good bargains have you found this week?

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It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

Scroll down to the post after you watch the video.



It really is the most wonderful time of the year. Parents all over are counting down the days till their spawn, uhh...I mean children, go back to school. Some lucky parents have already unloaded their kids to the teachers already. Any honest parent can say they really are looking forward to the start of school. And know what? I AM!!! I can't wait to have only one child at home starting September 9th. Only 3.5 more weeks! You are lying to yourself if you are not looking forward to it.

My plan is to keep me and the baby (we really should stop calling her that, she is 3.5 now and anything but a baby) busy, busy. Every 1st and 3d Tuesday of the month we go to MOPS in the morning. I've also just joined the local Mom's Meetup Group, and there is a lot of fun activities planned with them (park playdates, field trips, pumpkin patch stuff in October etc). And I'm also going to be taking her to library story time every Thursday morning. That will keep us plenty busy I think, especially with normal day to day errands. I am really looking forward to having a schedule again too.

This summer has been a bit chaotic for us. We had a month of summer vacation before we went on Vacation to Canada, spent a week there,and then came back home. Since then we've had one really, really hot week. It was at 106* one day! We've gone to the Zoo a couple times, gone to friends' houses, gone swimming in our pool, went strawberry and blueberry picking. And now the weather is cold. It has been raining and cold the last week or so, and we've only got a good 3 weeks before summer is over. My husband is coming home in two weeks, so we'll be busy then (and the kids are going to see my mom and step-dad for a weekend). But I'm just not sure what I want to do the next couple weeks. Any ideas?

The Zoo is out...maybe. We might make one more day trip out of it, but I have to see what the weather is like. I would like to take the kids to the park a few more times as well.

I've been buying school supplies and clothes throughout the summer to help break up the costs of 4 children needing new clothes, and 3 needing school supplies. But we're almost done!

All that's left to buy is:

• socks and underwear for all the kids
• new backpack (we're springing for Jansport this time so they last a bit longer)
• new tennis shoes
• the last few school supplies like water color paints and a memory stick for the twins

I was very blessed to find everything we needed on sale this year, and have the kids still fit into some things from last year. Today I bought the last of the clothes at Old Navy online. I had a 20% off $100 coupon, so I threw in a few things for the baby to get to the $100 mark. Old Navy is having their $5, $10, $15 sale, so I got a lot of stuff today and earlier this week. I think I've spent maybe $300 on every one's clothes, if not less! Shoes will not be cheap, probably $100 for 3 pairs, and our son wears men's shoes, so his shoes are not cheap.

Is anyone else rejoicing with me because their kids are going back to school? I know I can't be the only one!

Need A New Car Seat?

We bought our current 5 point harness 4.5 years ago, at Wal Mart. It's a Safety 1st Vantage. I love this seat, and it has served us well through 2 children. But now that our youngest daughter is outgrowing it, we've had to get her a new seat. The Vantage only goes up to 40lbs/40" as a 5 Pt harness, and she is also too young to be in a belt positioning booster seat.

I did my research, and since we're on a budget, I decided to go with another Safety 1st Seat. I really like their products, and since this seat held up so well, I figured another one would. I purchased a new Safety 1st Apex 65 seat from Albee Baby. The ladies over at Car-Seat.Org were very helpful in giving me any sort of information I needed on this seat, including the height of the top tether strap (17.25"!!). So if you're looking for a good, AFFORDABLE seat, this one is available on Albeebaby for only 94.94, including UPS Ground shipping. If you buy it elsewhere, expect to pay upwards of $130 US for it.

What I love about this seat is that it puts the child in a 5 pt harness till 65lbs and 57" tall! I don't think I'll keep her in the 5pt harness till she is 57" tall, but at least till kindergarten. That's only 2 years away anyway! Right now she is 40" tall and 38lbs, and you have to get a new seat once your child has outgrown either of the height and weight limits. I don't think she'll outgrow this one for awhile. Once the 5pt harness has been outgrown, the seat can be used as a belt positioning booster to 100lbs. And it also uses a LATCH, which we have in our van. Our LATCH is only good for weights up to 48lbs, and after that only the tether can be used. And thankfully, we have both!

I know my husband thinks I'm a little crazy for wanting her in a 5pt harness still because she's 3.5, but I just feel safer that way. We didn't know any better with the older 3 kids, and put them in a booster quite early. His reasoning for putting her in a belt positioning booster seat was just because we did it with the other kids, so why not her? I don't exactly recall how old the twins were, but it was a lot younger than they needed to be. We didn't know any better. And with our middle daughter, she moved out of the current seat once she hit the height and weight limit, right around 3.5 too if I recall.

At least now I have peace of mind, and I'm happy with that.

The Yearly Yardsale

Ever year, for the last three years, the kids and I have gone to a huge yard sale at a local middle school. I love it, because I get a ton of stuff for cheap. It's run by the homeless coordinator for the school district, and she collects donations all year long for this huge sale.

So this week it finally happened. I look forward to it every year. This morning we got up bright and early and drover over to the middle school and gorged ourselves on deals.

I only spent about $7, but all the stuff I bought, I just rounded up to an even $10. I do that because the proceeds help the homeless students and families in this particular school district, so I don't mind giving extra. Sometimes I go more than once during the week, and I might again on Friday. I'm not sure yet though.

Prices at the sale are cheap, super super cheap.

Winter jackets were $0.25

Halloween costumes were $0.05

Jeans were $0.15

Tops were $0.10

Sweatshirts/Hoodies were $0.10

Shoes were $.025

Misc/Toys were $0.05

I came home with 3 winter jackets (one is a dark purple DOWN coat for my 3 year old), a Gap jacket for my oldest, a light weight Lands End coat for one of the girls, 3 pairs of jeans, 3 skirts, numerous hoodies (and I mean numerous, I have 4 kids to buy for), a few sweaters for each girl, 2 pairs of shoes, a few tops for the girls, about 10 different Halloween costumes for dress up and maybe Halloween this year. I got 3 tops and a hoodie for myself too. And we probably got at least a dollar's worth of toys/purses/stationary.

You know those big huge blue Ikea bags? I came home with TWO of those stuffed and bulging, plus two large reusable bags from Ikea also stuffed full. A few of the brands we came home with were Fox, Aeropostale, Gap, Lands End, Puma, Hurley, and Old Navy.

I love a good bargain!

Sharing My Deals

I had a few errands to run today, and I was looking forward to getting out of the house. The weather hasn't been the greatest, so we've been home the last few days. While we were out and about, I found some awesome deals and was very happy to save money.

Our first stop today was the mall because I had a $10 rewards coupon from The Children's Place. I had planned on using it for one of my kids, I wasn't sure who, but landed up buying a ton of clothing for my sister in law, who is due in February. I thought I was getting a great deal, since I had $10 free, plus there was an additional 30% off sale prices. Score! The sales associate informed me that if I joined the mall's family club (FREE), I would get a discount card for various participating stores. Children's Place was 15% off your purchase. So with my rewards, the 30% and 15% off, I got the following for only $13.94 Yaay!

Children's Place

I did not get her the short sleeved romper, I didn't like that, but I did get her the blanket. So $50 worth of merchandise for only $13.94. Pretty good, huh?

My next stop was Dollar Tree. Everyone knows how good Dollar Tree is, so I need not elaborate on that one, but I did get some good cleaning supplies I was needing and only paid $1 each.

Lastly, we stopped at The Grocery Outlet, which is a discount grocery store. Here I was very happy, as I only paid $39.62 for a LOT of food.

Eggs $.99 ($2 at WM)
Foster Farms Boneless Skinless Chicken Tenders $6.99 (usually $10 at WM)
6lbs Fuji Apples $3 ($6-8 at WM)
Best Foods Light Mayo $.79 ($3 at WM)
2.5lb Family pack of Kix Cereal $3.99
1lb bag of Kraft All natural Cheddar Cheese $1.99
4 Cheese Garlic Bread Digorno Pizza $3.99 ($6 at WM)
2lbs Cubed Cooked ham $3.99 (need this for my Skillet recipe)

Those were my best deals. The only thing with the Grocery Outlet is that you have to be prepared to not find what you need because they are an outlet store. I won't always find The chicken tenders there, and I would have bought more, but I don't have a lot of freezer space. And a lot of the brands change, but might still have the same product. When I used to shop there more often, years ago, I would purchase whatever I could there, and then supplement the rest at Safeway (we didn't have a Super Wal Mart then). They sell almost everything there, including dairy and other meat products. I just had no need of those today, so I skipped out.

With the economy the way it is, I am pretty certain I will continue shopping there as much as I can. I really abhor shopping at Wal Mart, I detest going in there because it is so big, something is always out of stock, and I just don't like it. I tend to avoid going there as much as possible, unless I absolutely have to. Actually, when I run out of something in between shopping trips at WM, I get the bulk of my items at Target, which I prefer to shop at anyway, plus it is closer to our house.

My total today at Grocery Outlet was $39.62 and compared with other grocery stores, I saved $35.58! So $75 worth of groceries for only $40. It makes me happy to find a good deal.

My FANTASTIC Deals Today!

Not many of you would consider this a big deal, but to us die-hard gymboree shoppers, it is. I was invited to go "back-room" shopping. Does anyone know how big of a deal this is? they have all of the clearance stuff there, from last year and sometimes before. Only select customers get asked/invited. All of the clothes are very highly discounted. So needless to say, I was sooooo excited!! I shopped for all 4 kids today and got over 1K dollars worth of merchandise. 55 pieces. How much do you think I paid for all of it? just guess.

$163.00
yep, ,that's it! Everything was on sale for 20% off, plus the stuff was already discounted, PLUS...I had a 20% off coupon!

And I earned 3 gymbucks!

I forgot to add, my best deal of the day was a t-shirt for the boy. It was marked down to $.49 cents. I got it for $.29 after all the discounts!!!

Awesome Deal I Got Today

only have a minute to write as I am off to the gym. I'm forcing myself to go today! ugh!!

Anyway, awhile back I found a 15% off code for The Children's Place, on a message board I frequent. It was for online only, but I didnt think I would use it. Well, when we were in the actual store last weekend buying clothes, the SA gave me a coupon for free shipping b/c I couldn't find my middle kid jeans. So a lightbulb went off in my head today! lol

I did find her jeans at Value Village for the summer, brand new. But today I looked at TCP's website and found the baby 3 pairs of jeans for the fall for REALLY cheap. They were on sale already, so I got 3 pairs of jeans for $15.45. Free shipping, and a 15% off coupon let me save around 6 or 7 dollars. I only paid for the jeans and tax, and the jeans were $4.75 each. Score!!!

The grey jeans I actually have for her in her current size, as well as the dark wash ones with the flare. I didnt like the grey jeans at first, but in person they are really really cute!

And yes, I did look for the other kids too, but there was nothing on sale that was as good of a deal as this! How can you beat $4.75 for jeans?






I LOVE the children's place, they have such cute clothes and great deals!
Now off to work out...blech!