I went to Smile both on Wednesday and Thursday. I sorta collect old tin spinning tops (if they are cheap enough) and I found one for $1 this week. Also bought a vintage (?) apron with embroidery for $2 (for ebay). Also bought some Baby Einstein vhs for .50 each.

Almost bought a Sony S90 digital camera on clearance at Staples today, with a coupon it would have been $209. I was going to buy it but they didn't have any more left. Sheesh, then why do they still have it on display?? That irks me when stores do that.

Free Hat with Haircut

I spotted this ad in our local newspaper and it amused me. Ok, you all know I love free stuff...but this ad doesn't give me confidence to get a haircut done tomorrow if they have to give you a free hat afterwards....

My buys from last Saturday:

.25 bottle of Canoe cologne
.25 each, bottles of Estee Lauder products (foamy gel cleanser, deep clean mask, lotion etc)
.25 small cookbook: BBQ with Budweiser
.50 large baggy full of Mighty Beanz toys
.25 two brand in package (fake) diamond tennis bracelets

Then at a church yardsale (where nothing was marked), I filled up a grocery bag full of stuff and then at checkout, the cashier would name a price. My bag of stuff was only $2. In my bag, I bought two brand new packages of freezer storage containers, Blues Clues software, a new zipper pull with my son's name on it, a Plankton (Spongebob character) watch in decorative container, a few books, a Tweety bird ceramic spoonrest, several small toys, a button that says "I am not your maid" and some other junk.

Buys this week

I went to Smile on Wed, Thurs and today (Friday) and bought stuff each day. (They are closed Sun-Tues so that is why I never have any Smile purchases on those days - haha). On Wednesday I bought some vintage melted plastic Halloween decorations (paid .50 each, they are destined for ebay since there are a lot of people who collect vintage Halloween). I also bought a bunch of women's books (by authors Lori Wick and Beverly Lewis) for .50 each that should also sell well.

Also bought some vintage souvenirs (.50 for the Bermuda tray and .75 for both of the Florida ones). I love Bermuda - I went once back in my 20's for Spring Break and would love to go back someday.

Also bought some Beatle's music. For $2 I bought "Snoopy's Beatles Classiks on Toys". It features the Peanut's Gang doing renditions of Penny Lane, She Loves You, Yesterday etc. all done on children's musical toys.

For $4, I bought two nice storage bins with hinged lids. The kind that small stores use when restocking their shelves. They were probably stolen from somewhere and somehow ended up at my thrift, where they had them for sale.

On Wednesday I went to V V (it was a .30 day). I found a great Dockers Golf shirt in my husband's size for .30. Also bought a vintage Rainbow Brite doll (.50) and a vintage Halloween witch decoration for .50.

Today at Target my bargain was on some clearanced Tilex cleaner for $3.48 - it was specially packaged and included two Clorox Bleach pens. I bought two. I just love those Clorox Bleach pens and it was cheaper than buying the bleach pens individually, and plus I got the bottles of Tilex.

In the mail I got another free coupon for a can of Starbucks's Doubleshot. I got one a few weeks ago when I filled out the info at www.doubleshot.com (click on where it says "This one's on us" and today for some reason, they sent me another.

Also in the mail was a certificate for a 60 day free membership at our local BJ's Warehouse. That works for me! I always hear good things about shopping at Costco, but we don't have one anywhere close, so BJ's is the next best thing. Pretty soon I'll have some new local stores to shop at, we are getting an Old Navy, Best Buy and a Ross. Right now if I wanted to shop at one of those, I'd have to drive 50 miles. But soon, they'll be within 20 minutes of my house.

My dog came home for a visit tonight. He's been steadily living at his adopted family's house for about the past month. His other family lives a few streets away and every so often he comes "home". After living here for 10 years he decided he wanted to live elsewhere and found a new family on his own. He has been going back and forth for well over 2 years now.

Yippee, tomorrow is Saturday!!!

$1 worth of junk

In a post from last week I mentioned buying $1 worth of toys at V V. Well, above is a picture of what I got. Some of the things included a 80's vintage knockoff Strawberry Shortcake type doll, a bunch of vehicles, some Little Tikes toys, a Rescue Hero guy, some Simon games and other toys.

Also in a previous post I mentioned the crappy spelling at my local Food Lion. Well I called their headquarters to ask about it and they were very surprised about the spelling on the sign and would look into it. Well, its been a few weeks and the sign is still there, so I took a pic of it. Shopping carts are provided 4 .....UGHHH!



Not planning on doing any shopping today. I should get busy and start some ebay auctions. Looking forward to watching the Big Brother finale tonight. I'm hoping for Maggie to win - never liked Ivette. Of course I wish that Kaysar or Janelle would win, but that's not going to happen.

I didn't do any store shopping today, but did manage to some free flowering bulbs from brecks.com. I'm on their mailing list and so is my mom (who has ordered from them in the past). Well in early August I got their latest catalog in the mail which had a special coupon on front: spend $25 and get $25 worth of stuff free. Well when I visited my mom in early August in New York, I saw HER catalog which had a much better coupon "$25 Gift Coupon - no strings attached". She had it ready to go in the trash since she said she wasn't going to order anything. I pointed out the coupon to her and she still told me she didn't want to order anything and told me to take it. So today I ordered some pink lily bulbs and with shipping it came to less than $25 so it was totally free. I ordered online and instead of it being shipped to her, it's going to be shipped to me.

Some of my buys this week

On Wednesday I think I had a "personal best". I hit 4 thrift shops in one day. If you saw where I live (out in the boonies), you would realize for me it's not an easy feat. Went to Smile (forgot what I bought, but I know I bought something of course). Then went to SPOT (a Humane Society thrift) and paid .75 for a talking SpongeBob Squarepants (already have one, but something went bad on the speaker). Then to Catholic Charities (where I bought nothing). Then to a thrift called HELP - which was having a .25 any pair of shoes sale. I bought my son a pair of watershoes and a new pair of men's Chuck Taylor high tops. Also bought a vintage Lands' End windbreaker ($1) for a newbie boater. The right arm is marked Starboard and the left, of course, Port. So with tax, I spent $1.57

With the price of gas, I also coordinated other errands that day, so it wasn't like I was just driving around trying to go to as many thrifts as possible.

Had a routine dentist appointment yesterday, which is located near V V. So even though it wasn't a .30 sale day at V V, I went anyways. Turns out they were having a "fill a bag of small toys for $1 sale". So I bought a big bag of toys, most is stuff I can resell at my own yardsale. I'll try to show a picture of it early next week. When I left the dentist I had to schedule my next appointment for a cleaning, so I made it for a Tuesday (rather than a Thursday), since Tuesdays are .30 days at V V.

Today my husband was off work and he wanted to go to the mall (an hour's drive away for us). We are going to a wedding next month and he needed either a new suit or new sportscoat/jacket. Since he's a big guy, he can't shop for that kind of clothing at a typical department store. So we ended up at Men's Wearhouse (man, they really want to rope you in and buy the whole "look". I think spending $29.99 for a tie that won't get much use is ridiculous!) So anyways, the bill came to +$250 for just a jacket and a shirt.

But even I bought something at the mall!!! Yes, even I shop at malls occasionally. What did I buy? Maybe a new outfit or handbag??? Heck no. At Dick's Sporting Goods I spent $15 on 80 pounds of shelled corn to feed our backyard squirrels. Apparently hunters use shelled corn as bait to attract deer - which I think is very sneaky and should be considered "cheating". I personally am not a fan of hunting.

Last Saturday my son (5 years old) went yardsaling with me - I normally don't take him since I can cover more ground without him. He only found one thing that he wanted - a very masculine studly stallion horse (.10). Ok, Ok, I know it looks like a girly My Little Pony knockoff, but I assure you it's meant for a boy.

I also bought the above funky vintage polyester "Tony Alamo of Nashville" western shirt (.50). The back has more embroidery and rhinestones. It's handwashable so I'll wash it and then put it up on ebay. At a church yardsale I bought a vintage Mattel Wizzer set ($1) - identical to what I had as a kid. Well actually I still have my childhood toy, so now I have two. They'll be on ebay eventually.

Yesterday I had some shopping to do (yesterday was the last day of my free pass to BJ's Warehouse, so I wanted to pick up a few things there before the pass expired). We used to be a member of BJ's Warehouse - one opened up locally about 2 years ago, and they had a special promotion for memberships when it first opened. But since there's just the 3 of us in our family, it's really not worth the annual membership fee so we let it expired. Maybe we'll join again in the future if we need to make a big purchase there.

So anyways, since I was close to V V, I went there too (and it was .30 day - clothing is just .30 each). I bought 8 pieces of clothing ($2.40 total). A couple of tops for me, a pair of Dockers khakis for my son, some shirts for my son and a couple of baby items (for ebay), including a smocked Feltman Bros. baby outfit.

Today I am staying home and won't be buying anything.

Went to Smile and bought a few things: $1 decorative windsock for outside (you will never find a %*!?%$ windchime at my home, but I think the windsock is cool and of course it's quiet and not obnoxiously noisy like windchimes are). I absolutely hate windchimes. And for $2 I bought (for ebay) a pair of military maternity camouflage pants.

Then went to Ace Hardware - they had a bunch of stuff on sale that you could get free once you mailed in the rebate. So I got all the "free" stuff and it came to about $20 (a person could go broke saving money). Now I just got to mail in the rebate - which I know I will do since I am good about that.

Then went to McDonald's for lunch (used a coupon) and I tried one of their new premium chicken sandwiches. Ugh, never again. I think I could sue them and win for their misuse of the word "premium".

Well I found my camera so I thought I would take a pic of my new $8 umbrella, that actually matches the patio furniture. The new umbrella will replace my old Budlight umbrella which is rusty, dirty and of course didn't match.

Today was a day I stayed home and did not go to Smile. My husband drove to Virginia with a few coworkers to play golf at a particular course. At least they are all chipping in for gas. I could have driven his truck to Smile, but I just decided to stay home for a change. A woman came by and bought our old waterbed so I am glad to get rid of that.

I spent a good portion of the day organizing and counting the Campbells Soup Labels and Boxtops that I have (a little over 600). If I don't get any more, I am hoping it will be good enough to win the contest that I mentioned in the previous post.

Went to Smile and didn't find much - that was expected since they kinda got cleaned out due to their half priced sales last week. I did find a talking Dora the Explorer action figure ($1) for my son. If someone bought it for their daughter, it would be considered a doll, but since I bought it for my son, it's an "action figure" - haha. About 2 months ago he discovered watching Dora and loves it. We tivo'ed "Go Diego Go", so it will be interesting to see if he likes that too. I also bought a nice patio umbrella for $8. I misplaced my camera, so no pics today.

Also today I stopped by my son Jacob's old school. I wanted to check on the status of their annual Back To School Boxtops for Education/Campbells Soup Labels contest. Last year my son was the winner of the school's contest since he submitted the most: over 2,000 boxtops & labels. (As the winner he received a school logo t-shirt, some free goodies from the cafeteria, a visit from Principal to his class, etc). I posted a request on my website click here and lots of people from around the country donated them to me. Well this year, he's at a different school but I still want to do something special with all the labels & boxtops I received. So I checked with Jacob's former teacher and I plan on donating the labels & boxtops in the name of another special needs child (one of my son's former classmates, the child is blind and has some other disabilities). I think it would be great to have the winner of the school's contest again be a child in the "Special Needs Pre-K" class.

So....if you happen to have a stash of Boxtops for Education and/or Campbells Soup Labels and don't know what to do with them, I would love them!! The contest ends Sept. 20 - my info is on the link above.

It's Saturday so no big surprise, I went yardsaling. When I got home, my husband handed me Sunday's Parade section which has an article on "Are you a packrat" and goes into hoarding etc. One of their tips said you had to stop the flow of junk into your house, cancel all subscriptions etc. (We get all the sale ads along with the Parade section a day before most people do).

The way I am headed, they will probably feature me in their next article about pack rats. I just signed up for another newspaper subscription. That makes 4 that I get. Aye yi yi. Well let me explain (I can rationalize almost anything), I subscribe to the local rag (only comes out twice a week, it's good to know what's going on locally, it's not like we have our own local tv station), I have a free subscription to the New York Observer (which is only once a week, I just read their "Love Beat" engagements. I signed up somewhere online for a free subscription and it keeps coming), The Washington Post (daily) and now I'll start the Washington Times. I couldn't resist, a Mon-Sat delivery was only $20 a year. Super cheap compared to the $178 a year I pay for the Washington Post. So I'll save money by letting the Post subscripion expire and just buy it on Sundays (for the coupons and all the sale ads).

At least (not yet anyways), I don't hoard the papers, once I read them (which is daily), they get recycled.

Anyhow about today's yardsales - I didn't buy much. I think my best buy was at a yardsale held by a woman who sells Mary Kay. She had a bunch of samples and had a deal "fill a grocery bag for $2". I could have gotten a ton more, but didn't want to be greedy or take things I wouldn't use.

I missed out on buying some cheap Longaberger baskets by a matter of minutes. I saw antique dealer woman had gotten at the sale moments before me and they seller had stuff super cheap. I didn't even want to know what she sold them for since it probably would depress me.

The Navy's Blue Angels are in town today and tomorrow. Our neighborhood association is having a free picnic at their waterfront clubhouse this afternoon. So we'll get an excellent view and not have to deal with the crowds and traffic at the navy base.

New Boards are up!

I just finished up creating the new message boards. They should be awesome since unlike the last board, this will be ad-free!

Just got back from Smile, they will be closed on Saturday due to Labor Day weekend. So normally when they are closed for a holiday, they generally have a half priced sale sometime during the week. Well when I got there today, I saw the big "Everything half priced today and tomorrow" sign. Today I spent $3.50 and got:

$1 Casual Corner dressy navy blue pants for me
$1 new replacement mop head for my "As Seen on TV" mop
.50 bottle of bath gel (scented Angel Cake)
.25 new Conair folding brush with mirror. I can tell by looking at it that it is new, no hairs or other crud on it.
.75 4 books (two kids books were .25 for both, and two adult books were .25 each).

I bought a paperback of The Secrets of the Baby Whisperer and a vintage wild game cookbook. A few of the recipes: Big Horn Sheep Patties, Fried Rabbit, Roast Opossum with Dressing, Fricassee of Young Raccoon, Squirrel Stew with Dumplings, Pigeon Pot Pie, Short Ribs of Moose. In the back of the book there is a section "What To Do After the Kill". Pretty yucky. The book is from 1967.

I've been working on getting new message boards. Actually I got a new ad-free one so I just need to customize it similar to the previous boards.