Black Friday and some other shopping

Last week was a busy week and I did not spend a lot on Groceries. I had two mystery shops which helped me get the deals I wanted without spending money out of pocket which was nice because it left me with money to do some more Christmas Shopping. :) I did not see anything worth going to Meijer for last week so I completely skipped it. This week there are two or three things worth going for so I will head over there at some point to pick them up. I need to make it back into Rite Aid to use my $9 in coupons for another pack of diapers. I also need to find my receipt so I can return the size 3's I had to get to finish the deal and exchange them. It's not always easy saving money. :) I did my usual Monday run to Aldi and picked up a few things we were out of and my usual bananas for the monkeys in this house. I also needed to go to Sam's club. I was trying to save some money by using up some powdered dishwasher detergent my dishes were coming out with a film on them so I gave up. Sam's carries the huge containers of Electrosol Finish that works best. 90 washes for less than $14. It will last a long time and I will be happy with my clean dishes. We also picked up a Rotisserie chicken to make some chicken pot pie with. While I was there I found some roast marked down. Angus beef roast for $2.30 a pound which is a good price. I brought them home and froze them and will pull them back out when I am ready to throw them in the crock pot.

The other thing to check into if you have a Sam's club or other club membership and you need a lot of gift cards for Christmas that is the place to do it. I was able to get 4 Itunes cards worth $60 for only $48. I still need a 5th card and I will get it somewhere else for full price but at least I saved $12 and will have happy nieces and nephews.

I have decided that I am not cut out to be an in store black friday shopper. Toys R Us has some great prices on stuff I really wanted for Scotty. I knew I was not going to out and stand in line on Thanksgiving night in the pouring rain and fight for the things I wanted. I had been in the store on Wednesday and they didn't even have what I wanted but swore up and down they would by the next day. I wasn't even sure I believed them. So I sat at my computer watching the website since most things were supposed to be on sale there as well. At 9:55 they marked it all down even the stuff that wasn't going on sale in the store until 5am. I did a free trial of a shopping service to get free shipping on my items. So without anything more out of pocket I got just what I wanted sitting on my bed in my pajamas. Got the Wonder Pets School house that I had been wanting for Scott for a while for $10, a fold and go train for the same price. Gifts from his aunt and uncle and they didn't go broke. I also got him the Bugsby reader to go with the Wonder Pets book my friend picked up for him on clearance and the little Engine the Could book to go with it since he loves trains. All for under $40.

Friday morning I thought I will just head out and see if they still had this little cake I wanted for Scott's birthday at Target. I knew it was going to be bad when I got there because you couldn't really park in the parking lot but I had no idea it was because you couldn't check out not because it was crazy with people shopping. It was at least a two hour wait to check out. I didn't see the cake on the shelf anyway and there was no way I was standing in that line to check out. So off the Build a Bear I went to see if they had the cute light up moose for $5. Thankfully they did but even with just 10 or so people in front of me I waited at least 15 minutes to check out. I thought about checking out a couple of other stores but there were so many people in the mall around 6:30 that I just came home. I got online and looked up the cake and found it on Amazon where I have free shipping for just 50 cents more so I got it too. All in all it was a good deal day but more online than in store and I was happy. Next year I think most of my deals will be done online! Christmas Shopping to begin right after Christmas this year for next year. :) I got a lot of my stuff for this year that way last year. All my stocking stuffers for Scott were bought that way as well as some of his gifts.