Saturday, July 26, 2008

Prilosec OTC "Heartburn Escape" Sweepstakes

Prilosec OTC is giving away a spa trip for two, and the winner gets to choose the spa! To enter, head over to the "Heartburn Escape" web site.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Cheesecake Factory: $1.50 slices on July 30

July 30 is National Cheesecake Day, and the Cheesecake Factory just happens to be celebrating its 30th anniversary. To celebrate with their customers, they'll be selling all of their cheesecake slices for $1.50, which was the original price of the cheesecake. (Limit one per guest, dine-in only.)

Thanks to Money Saving Mom for the heads up!

Image credit: CheesecakeFactory.com - this is the Oreo cheesecake, one of my favorites!

Monday, July 21, 2008

Joann 40% coupons

I just got an email for printable 40% off coupons for Joann Fabric and Craft Stores. The coupons are valid through Saturday. The first one for 40% off any regular priced item is valid online and in-store. The rest are for 40% off a specific category (fabric, craft, notions and floral) and valid in-store only.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

This Week in the Drugstore Game

I hit all of the big three this week and made one trip each to CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens.

At CVS, I got the free-after-ECB photo books and some free-after-coupon Sally Hansen nail polish. It was the first time I've ever used CVS's photo center, and I wasn't surprised that they were out of the 6x8 books - they were free, after all. (You could get two 6x8 books and one 4x6 book for free.) The woman working at the photo center was super nice, though, and told me she would substitute the 5x7 books and ring them up as 6x8s. None of the computers were set up for 5x7s, so it took her a while to figure out how to get that done. Then I messed up by not checking the number of pages when I did the 5x7 books so I ended up with 15 pages when the free book only came with 10. The woman was nice again, though, and didn't charge me extra for those pages when I told her I had assumed the computer just squeezed the pictures into the right number of pages. The register beeped on my $3 off manufacturer's coupon, so I only pressed her to use one of the three. They were for the larger books, and since I was getting two for free after ECB, I just wanted to make sure I didn't "overpay" on the third. I paid in two separate transactions so the math got really confusing and I even burned through almost all of my gift cards. But I know I got a good deal on the books, and I was grateful to the lady at the photo center for being so helpful that I sent CVS an email via their web site. I didn't want to say anything that might get her in trouble, so I didn't specifically mention the substitution or not charging me for the extra pages, though. Hopefully, she'll get some recognition out of the whole thing.

My stop at Rite Aid was super fast, since I only wanted the free Electrasol dishwasher detergent and the free Crest Whitening Expressions toothpaste. Actually, both of the items were moneymakers this past week. Unfortunately, by the time I got to Rite Aid, they were out of Electrasol. And the only Crest left on the shelf was the cinnamon flavor. I grabbed it anyway, since they were paying me 75 cents to buy it.

My trip to Walgreens was also short. I picked up a bottle of Powerade, two packages of Schick ST disposable razors, a bottle of L'Oreal Vive shampoo, and a matching bottle of conditioner. After coupons, the Powerade was free (with overage of 11 cents), and so was the shampoo and conditioner (they were on sale for buy one, get one free, and I had a buy one, get one free coupon). After the $2 off coupon in the July EasySaver book and a buy one, get one free coupon, the razors were a mere $1.99. With tax, I paid a total of $3.38.

To put the razor deal at Walgreens into perspective, yesterday's Friday sale at Amazonincluded a deal for three of the same packages for a whopping $16 (OK, technically, it was $15 and change). Instead of $1 per package, that works out to over $5 per pack. And that's why it's worth playing the Drugstore Game!

Read about more drugstore deals at The "Cent"sible Sawyer.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Free box of Cheerios starting July 28

You'll be able to get a free box of Cheerios starting July 28, as part of the Cheerios Challenge to lower your cholesterol by 4% in six weeks. If you head over to the site now, you can enter your email address to be reminded to request your free box when the challenge starts.

Hat Tip: More Than Enough.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Free Hannah Montana download

Many thanks to Danielle for letting me know about specially marked Kellogg's packages that can be purchased at Wal-Mart. They contain a code that will let you download a live version of the Hannah Montana song, "Rock Star." For details, visit Danielle at Kids Meal Crowd.

Alas, I don't have a Wal-Mart nearby, otherwise I would get this for myself! (Yes, yes, I admit to liking Hannah's music. I'm not a huge fan of Miley's songs, though.)

Monday, July 14, 2008

Free Electrasol (with overage)

Thanks to Consumer World for alerting me to a great deal at Rite Aid this week:

Electrasol dishwasher detergent is on sale for $2.99. There is also a Single Check Rebate of $2.00 (#257) this month. And, there was a coupon for $2.25 off Electrasol in yesterday's newspaper, which turns the deal into a money-maker. You'll pay 74 cents at the store, and get $2 back on your SCR. Not bad!

(Note: Apparently not all areas got the $2.25 off coupon - I hope yours did!)

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Coupon giveaway at Common Sense with Money

Mercedes is giving away two sets of baby-related coupons and two sets of grocery coupons at Common Sense with Money. The baby coupons include CVS and Target coupons that can be stacked with the manufacturer coupons she's including. And the grocery coupons include some coupons that have been extremely popular on the coupon forums that I read, so I know they can get you a really sweet deal. Head on over to enter the giveaways!

Saturday, July 05, 2008

Free Pantene Beautiful Expressions

Mercedes of Common Sense with Money is truly the Walgreen deal queen. If you can get the P&G coupons from tomorrow's paper today, you can take advantage of this week's sale using tomorrow's coupons to get some Pantene Beautiful Expressions for free after rebate. Check out Mercedes's post for details.

Image credit: Pantene.com.

Friday, July 04, 2008

Happy 4th of July!

Cross-posted at Chief Family Officer.

One of our favorite books to read with Alex is the one pictured here: Lane Smith's award-winner, John, Paul, George & Ben.The art is great, the story is great, and it's somewhat educational. There is a short and irreverent vignette about each Founding Father - John Hancock, Paul Revere, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. John Hancock, for example, is shown writing his name in huge letters on a chalkboard in elementary school.

So yesterday, Marc was explaining the significance of July 4th to Alex. He gave a rough description of King George and taxes, and explained how Jefferson ("Independent Tom") wrote the Declaration of Independence. And then, as Marc explained that John was the first of many leading colonists to sign the Declaration, the courage of these men really struck me.

I probably haven't reflected on American history much since my U.S. History class in college. But it was truly remarkable what these men did, putting pen quills to paper and just daring the English to kill them and quash their independence. And after they won the revolution, they didn't stop. They went on to craft the Constitution and our system of government, which, while not perfect, is better than any other system out there. I'm so proud and grateful to be an American.

God bless America.

P.S. My sentimentality might be attributed to the novel I'm currently reading for my book club, Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club.It's a murder mystery set in the late 1800's, with famous poets as the main characters and Dante's Divine Comedy as a primary plot point. I'm about halfway through - the first 100 pages or so were exceedingly slow, but the last 100+ pages have gone quickly and I'm quite curious to find out what happens next.

Image credit: Amazon.com - John, Paul, George & Ben(affiliate link).

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Free Coke Zero from My Coke Rewards

Update 7/5/08: At the moment, if you sign in and search for "taste of victory", there is a 0-point Coke Zero reward that comes up.

Update: This deal is now dead. Thanks to Sadie and Diana for the update.

My Coke Rewards is giving away a 20-oz. bottle of Coke Zero. After you've signed in, you can search for "coke zero" or scroll through the rewards in the 25-points and under category. You'll see a 20-oz. bottle of Coke Zero available for redemption at 0 points.

Via FatWallet.

Image credit: Coca-Cola Company.