Frugal Finds, 7/27

Last week I took advantage of Stockpiling Moms' suggestion to check K-mart for steep clearance toy discounts. I found 4 toys, two for my son and two for my oldest daughter. The one that I liked the best was this Discovery Kids Glow Star Globe.

My son likes geography; his kindergarten graduation project was on flags of the world. I know he will love this toy when I give it to him at Christmas.

I paid $14.99 for it on clearance; it is selling on Amazon for $46. That's the kind of bargain I like. (And it will help keep me out of the stores during all of the holiday shopping craziness in December.)

Did you have any frugal finds this week? If so, link up and share!

Great Toy Sales at Kmart

I read on Stockpiling Moms last night that K-mart is offering 50% off their clearance toys. I went this morning and found a few Christmas and birthday items for my older two. (More on that coming next Tuesday for my Frugal Finds post.) For more details, check out Stockpiling Moms full post here.

Wishing You a Very Merry Christmas

I would like to take a moment to wish you a very merry Christmas. I will be spending the next few days taking a mini blogging break and spending time with my family. I'll be back in a few days. I thank you all for visiting here regualarly and wish you a happy holiday.

Peanut Butter Fudge

One of my favorite holiday goodies is homemade fudge. I love it! In fact, when I was about 7 years old, I lost one of my baby front teeth when biting into a piece.

However, those of you who read this blog regularly may recall that I gave up all chocolate in July. I was eating WAY too much of it, and it was making my body feel strange. I don’t miss it too much, but I was looking for a replacement for the homemade fudge I love.

I found this recipe for Peanut Butter Fudge II, and I knew I had to try it. And oh, is it good. It is like biting into peanut butter silk. It is soooo good that I gave the rest of the pan away to my son’s school so I wouldn’t gain ten pounds eating it all by myself.

If you have a weakness for fudge or peanut butter, try this. You’ll love it. As will anyone else who eats it.

I shared this post at The Grocery Cart Challenge, Life as Mom and Tempt My Tummy Tuesdays.

Plans for a Frugal Christmas

With our third baby on the way, it is more important to us than ever that I soon be able to quit my job and be a stay-at-home mom, so we are trying to save as much money as we can.

We plan to implement a number of strategies this year to have a frugal Christmas.

--I won a $25 Kohl’s gift card from the Huggies Enjoy the Rides program, so we plan to use that.

--I also have points built up from a number of different websites—Swagbucks and Pampers rewards, to name a few. If we have to, we can also redeem those.

--My mom loves restaurant gift cards, and I found out that I can redeem points from my credit card to get these for free.

--I already have all my son's presents. I bought him a combination of in good shape toys at garage sales and a few new toys after last year's Christmas season. In addition, I bought him some Gymboree clothes on clearance last winter for this winter.

--I have taken advantage of several good or free photo book deals by following Money Saving Mom's blog.

It is possible to have a nice (and frugal) Christmas. These are just a few strategies we are implementing to have a relaxing, enjoyable season without the high price tag.

The Ghosts of Christmas Past

Early in our marriage, soon after our one year anniversary, my husband and I traveled to my mom’s for Christmas.

At the time, we were on a very tight budget; I was making very little my first year working full-time, my husband was a graduate student, and I had student loan payments and credit card bills from just finishing grad school. We had carefully planned our Christmas and planned to give my mom and brother a combination of store bought items we had found on sale and items we had made by hand, such as a homemade flannel nightgown for my mom.

Ever since I was little, my mom liked to have all the presents even. If her budget was $125 for my brother and $125 for me, it didn’t matter to her that she spent the same amount, she also wanted the number of presents to be the same. So if I got one big, expensive gift, she gave me several smaller gifts so they would equal the same amount of gifts my brother got.

When we came home, the tree was laden with gifts, and she delighted in showing us just how many presents she had for my husband and me. While she was excited, we were dismayed. She had clearly bought MANY more presents for us than we had for her. December 23rd found us out in a cold, snowy night shopping for more presents for her, even though we did not have the money in the budget. We bought her multiple sets of brand new towels and bed linens.

On Christmas morning, my husband and I each got a large, expensive gift. As we opened the other packages, we discovered that SHE had stuck to her budget financially. But because she had wanted the number of presents for everyone to be even, she had bought up tee shirts from work that were left over from academic conferences past. We each got about 5 presents that were these tee shirts; they cost her $1 each.

When I realized what she had done, I was heart sick about the money we had spent unnecessarily when we bought additional presents, not to keep up with the Jones’, but to keep up with my mother!! She had a great Christmas and truly needed and enjoyed the towels, but a large portion of the day was ruined for me as I thought about the debt we had incurred.

In January when we got our credit card bill, my heart dropped. We did not have money to pay it off. We worked like crazy to raise extra money to pay off those unnecessary gifts; it took us until April to finally pay them off.

It was an important lesson to learn early in our marriage. Now we have a budget and stick to it, confident in our gift choices, even if the number of packages under the tree is not exactly the same for each person.