xmas2010

With Love Chartreuse Christmas Card

Make a statement with custom Christmas cards at Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

50 Free Holiday Cards for Bloggers - and affordable ones for non-bloggers too!

It's getting to be that time of year again. Time to prepare for Thanksgiving and the amazing shopping day after, time to stock your closet with wonderful gifts for your family and time to get those holiday cards ready. It's been several years since we had a formal portrait done with cards. Way too pricey and way too unpredictable results. Instead we take our own photos in a relaxed family session, pick the creme de la creme for our Christmas photo and and order a set of cards from Shutterfly.

Shutterfly, has hundreds of beautiful Christmas photo cards for us to choose from.

The Christmas cards offered by Shutterfly are remarkably affordable.

Shutterfly has so many options that I am ALWAYS able to choose something that is just perfect in theme.

My personal favorite this year is Make the Mantel - one of their pricier options at $1.34 per card when you buy a minimum of 46 but it is a fold-over card option. The design is festive, simple and classy. Their flat photo cards are gorgeous too and start out at a mere .30 per card.

You can also find very reasonably priced holiday address labels to use for mailing these beautiful cards!

What are your favorites

Thrifty Thursday!

I'm one happy camper on this Thursday thanks to Target's annual toy clearance (or as some folks put it, Christmas in July). My closest store has its toys already very picked over- people started buying them at a measly 30% off and there's not much left over. So I headed over to the Southpoint location in Durham and made some great finds. They were running behind on the markdowns. Myself and another savvy shopper had inquired on when they would be marking stuff down to 75%. The associate told us tomorrow and to come back in the afternoon...and then kindly offered to markdown the items in our carts. It was a pleasant and unexpected act of kindness!

I found a Little People toy set for a little under $6 and some other great little presents for the kiddos. I think we'll give the Little People set to Stella for her upcoming birthday. I wound up spending about $40 or so for three big bags of toys...and I picked up 10 bags of Chex Mix for .40 each after some $1.10/1 tearpad q's I recently traded for.

I also stopped by Cheesecake Factory to pick up my $1.50 slice of cheesecake thanks to a Facebook promotion and got another unexpected surprise- the receipt included a phone number to call to take a short survey and get a $10 giftcard! Score!

Kroger brag & HT & Target News!

First to the HT news- they will be having triples or super doubles this coming week (7/28) so get those high value q's ready!

Kroger is having the second and last week of a Mega event this week and there are a lot of great deals to be had. Click here for SouthernSavers' match-ups. I fared very well yesterday night and bought all of the following for $1.71. Not too shabby if I do say so myself...

20 VitaminWater Zero bottles (used .50/1 tearpad q's I won in an auction on hcw)
2 two liter bottles of Sunkist
3 cartons of Breyers Ice Cream (used .50/1 tearpad q's)
5 Kraft Easy Mac single serve containers

That's $48.07 worth of stuff for less than two bucks. How did I do that without using any q's for the Sunkist and the Easy Mac? Because I earned overage on the VitaminWater zero q's. They ring in at $1.25 (allowing the q's to fully double) but after the $5 deduction per 10 items and coupons, it's as if I made a quarter on each bottle.

There's a Kraft catalina deal going on right now that makes the Mega Event an even better deal- read all about here.

Target has its annual July toy clearance going on right now. I'm going to check it out today but last I checked last week my nearby store had items at 50% off. I hold out for the 75% and 90% clearance items to stockpile as birthday and Christmas gifts.

$2 Tank Tops at Old Navy - this Sat 6/12

Check with your local store to verify they are participating in this great deal! Despite my somewhat matronly arms, I love me some tank tops in the hot Carolina summer so you can bet your bottom dollar I'll be there bright and early to get some tank tops. These run out quickly so get there when your store opens!

Dinner on the Cheap

Here's another quick, easy & inexpensive meal we had last night- one of my hubby's favorites...

Baked Chicken with a spinach & blueberry salad, sweet peas and wild rice. Here's the breakdown on cost:

Pack of 3 split chicken breasts: $2.02 (on sale for 88 cents/lb at Harris Teeter this week)
Uncle Ben's Wild Rice: FREE thanks to mega sale paired with q at Kroger during a past mega deal
Fresh Spinach: FREE thanks to a free Kroger q won in an auction on www.hcw.com
Fresh Blueberries: about a $1 (used about a 1/3 of a container purchased for $2.50 on sale)
Sweet Peas: about 40 cents after sale price and q at Harris Teeter a week or so (Birds Eye frozen Steamers)

This made for a dinner for 4 for $3.42.

The chicken is super easy to make. Heat oven to 425 degrees. Spray a pan with cooking spray, place the chicken breasts in the pan, season with salt, pepper (we use white pepper), onion powder, garlic powder, lemon pepper seasoning and parsley flakes. We then spray these with a low fat butter spray, but you can also put slices of real butter on top if you're not counting calories.

Pop the chicken in the oven and let cook for 45 - 50 minutes. Comes out very juicy and tasty!

On Hiatus

As you can probably tell, I've been on a bit of a hiatus when it comes to posting deals and match-ups. I'll get back to it when I can but life is pretty busy right now.

I missed out on the majority of HT's Super Doubles week this week, but did manage to snag some great deals on the tail end- including free Hershey's Extra Dark chocolate bars (a sweet and healthy treat, in moderation of course).

Hope everyone is having a great start to their summer!