Embracing a Healthy Family: free christmas
Showing posts with label free christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free christmas. Show all posts

My Plans for a Frugal Christmas & Holiday Ideas with TwitterMoms & Staples

I started out half the year thinking about how to be more frugal with Christmas given we have five kids and three sets of parents. I was losing track of the ways I was going to make this an inexpensive yet nice Christmas so I went to Staples, picked up a cheap handy journal to keep my lists of money making opportunities ranging from surveys, buyer advantage programs, bank debit programs and other opportunities.  TwitterMoms and Staples has put together a challenge for moms to share how they are saving money.

When I think of Staples, I always rememeber my step son taking the "That was easy" button and blasting it in my ear last year for Christmas.  Staples is another great place to pick up some of those high tech gifts or even office supplies or furnishings.  An avid printer might appreciate a big supply of cartridges.  A hopeless direction finder would love a new GPS (my sister for example)!  Not only can you get your presents but you can order wonderful personalized cards, calendars and one of my favorites, gift card holders.






Deals for Busy Moms This Holiday Season
Check out This Week's Deals!

About this TwitterMoms Blogging Program


Looking for more creative ways to save money?  Zazzle, if you are creative, is a great venue for making items with no costs out of your pocket. I started in the political arena and ventured into other areas such as business cards, children's products and invitations. Not quite a year later, I've made over $2,000 which has been handy for customized photo gifts and cash. This will definitely take care of a few gifts.

My latest real time frugal Christmas deals/buys.

Customized Wine Labels:



Use these to customize and accompany the wine to explain the vintage, type and other wine maker notes:








Mypoints.com is a quick way to make points to turn into gift cards and more. If you buy a lot on the internet, definitely use this site as the points add up fast! They also offer other incentives to earn points ranging from surveys to games to referrals. The points accumulated will amount to one gift off the book for Christmas in a Macy's gift card! 



My bank offers debit card rewards so whenever we click that debit button, we add on more points. Utilize those cards especially if it's via a free account! These points will knock off two more gifts in the form of two gift cards from The Gap for those hard to buy for teens:


I'm trying the survey route as many bloggers note are worthwhile along with Swagbucks but I haven't quite got the hang of that one so I'll keep moving along as a snail's pace.

Take advantage of cosmetic type freebies if you use products such as Clinique or Lancome. They have nice free items that can add up to a nice gift basket:



My employer also provides thank you for a good job points to spend with a company in exchange for gifts.  It's been a good year and here is what I'm purchasing as gifts:




I know that one isn't necessarily fair as not everyone gets a perk such as that from their employer but it's to show an opportunity that I could spend on myself but am choosing to use towards making the holiday more frugal.

My Coke Rewards points can add up quickly if you an avid Coke fan as we are.  Thanks to TwitterMoms, I took part in an earlier opportunity where I received an additional 500 points which quickly bumped up our Coke addiction points.  Not sure what I'll purchase yet but it's looking like a $50 gift card.

This year, I will also bake to save a little from purchasing some of the higher priced YET very good baked items.  I posted previously about some really simple but elegant looking from AllYou.com.

CreativeGiftWrapping.Com has very elegant and sophisticated packaging to add the final touch to your gifts.



Have you ever noticed how many bloggers have giveaways? If you have the time, enter! There are some really nice giveaways and given the volume, you are bound to win something eventually!

My Frugal Christmas Success "Purchases" To Date: $668.53 Total/$16.99 Out of Pocket

This is my follow up to "my frugal Christmas" to keep track for myself what I bought for Christmas this year either free or next to nothing.  Granted I'm using some ways that not everyone has access to such as bank reward card points and employee reward points but it all adds up as you look to whatever you can do to make Christmas cheaper

  • I cannot remember who posted it, but another blogger posted an Amazon special where you buy two games, you get a $40 voucher for another.  With my $40 voucher, I bought my six year old MySims Agents for $6.99!  I used my $40 voucher and had free shipping! 





  • My employer offers appreciation tokes in the value of exchange bucks.  With my work bonus of appreciation points, I ordered this which at Amazon (it's not where I ordered it from), it was $249.97:





  • I participated in a TwitterMom campaign with VTech and by submitting my contest entry, received a discount on the VTech Bugsby Reading System.  If my memory is correct, I was able to purchase it for $10.





  • This is my latest purchase but using my bank's reward points.  I was able to buy two for $0!  I have to buy two of almost everything to keep the peace!  As two budding artists, this will be loved!






  • Thanks to Freebies4Mom, I was able to get 50 personally designed beautiful Christmas cards from Fuji for FREE to include shipping!  That's a great deal so thanks to Freebies4Mom for the code and alert (freebies4mom-1109) at SeeHerebyFuji.  That was a $39.50 savings before shipping!  This expires November 30!


  • Free photo book from Kodak priced at $9.99.


  • I used MyPoints to trade in points for a $50 Game Stop Gift Card.


  • I used the rest of MyPoints to trade in points for a $50 Macy's Gift Card.
  • Today, I used my bank reward points to purchase this frame that was valued at $80.00.

I just bought a Tommy Bahama shirt from Rue La La's Thanksgiving sale for a total of $39~ including shipping and taxes.  The shirt is normally priced at $120.







Total Purchases: $788.53 (without tax/shipping factored)
Total Out of Pocket: $55.99 (without tax/shipping factored)

I'll have to inventory my Kohl's purchases of the gifts and non-gifts to "weed" out my Kohl's dollars I earned to make those fair.

Stay tuned for more of my purchases. Always remember to look for the deals and specials that are available to you.
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