heres a code for 50 free photo cards woohoo

You can order 50 free 4x8 or 5x7 photo cards including free shipping using the coupon code freebies4mom-1109 at SeeHere by Fujifilm. There is no catch, this truly is a freebie and I'm able to bring it exclusively to my Freebies 4 Mom readers thanks to SeeHere. I ordered my 50 free 5x7 photo cards and my order total of $39.50 was slashed to $0.00 with that coupon code. This coupon code expires on November 30 so you have plenty of time to design your free photo cards. Amanda Haigh

Seven Games for Under $4!!!

Just in case you didn't already hear about this deal, I thought I'd mention it here. Toys R Us has seven classic Hasbro kids games on sale for $3.99 this week. If you spend $25 or more on Hasbro games you get a $10 TRU gift card. PLUS there is a rebate for $2 back on all the games on sale! So if you get one of each game you will pay $27.93 out of pocket, get a $10 gift card, and a rebate of $14 making the end price $3.93 for SEVEN games!

Even if you have some of the games already stock up for future birthday gifts or this could be a great way to donate some toys on a budget!!

If you want more details see this week's TRU ad in the paper or head over to Common Sense with Money.

Festival Deals and Recipe

This week is Festival's annual 50% off McCormick spices and extract sale. While I usually just get the cheap 50 cent spices elsewhere, I usually take advantage of this sale to stock up on maple and clear vanilla extract. If you want nice white frosting for cookies and cakes (GBAMOMs!) use clear vanilla! I use maple extract to make my own "maple" syrup.

Nestle baking chips are on sale 2 for $3 and there are tons of coupons available as well. You should be able to get these for about $1 each. No limit, so stock up!

There are coupons for $.88 eggs, $.98 butter, and $.98 flour too. Limit 1. Unfortunately.

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Just in case you are interested here is my "Maple" Syrup Recipe. I found this recipe in a kids cookbook when I was a kid! Unless we splurge and get the real stuff, we have never bought syrup! This recipe has saved me a ton of money over the years!

Easy Maple Syrup

1 cup boiling water
2 cups granulated sugar (or 1 c. white and 1 c. brown)
1 t. maple syrup extract

Optional: 1-2 T. butter (or butter extract)
1 tsp. vanilla


Bring water to a boil. Add sugar. Boil for a few minutes. The longer you boil the thicker it will be. Remove from heat and stir in maple extra. Serve warm. Store in fridge in a container that is microwaveable to make it easier to reheat.

[Shelly's super fast method: Boil one cup of water in the microwave. Stir in sugar (I always use white). Add maple extract and mix well.]

Shopko Express Doubles

Shopko Express is doubling coupons up to and INCLUDING $2 through November 13th. (No internet printables.) There should be at least a few things that are free or nearly free. If you run across any great deals share them here!

November Home Depot Kids Workshop

The Home Depot Kids Workshop for November is the 7th. So head over to make a tile trivet. No registration necessary, just show up between 9am and noon.

Zenni Optical

GUEST POST by JERRY (Shelly's husband):

I've worn glasses for over thirty years.  Wow, I feel old!  At this point eyeglasses are an essential part of who I am.  I realize that sounds silly, but when you have had such an obvious accessory for so long it just comes to be part of your identity.  People have asked me about getting contact lenses, but I wonder if this would change me in some very real way. 

So as a pretty much lifelong eyeglass wearer, I am always on the lookout for a deal on glasses.  Well, it appears the online commerce revolution has finally come to the corrective eyewear industry in the form of Zenni Optical.  Zenni is an online only retailer of prescription glasses and general eyewear.  They have complete single vision lenses including frames starting at the incredibly low price of $6.95.

I was a little nervous about such low prices.  Would the quality be acceptable?  Would the frames fall apart in shipment?  I recently received my first pair of glasses from Zenni and for the most part it has been a positive experience.

My total cost for new glasses was $25.90 including shipping.

I picked out a stylish (at least Shelly thinks so) pair of half-rim frames very similar to my old pair of glasses that were $8.00.  Zenni does consider certain prescriptions to be extra strength.  The order page on their website will tell you if your prescription is considered extra strength.  These prescriptions have an additional $9.00 charge.  While this more than doubles the $8.00 glasses, $17.00 is still quite an improvement over typical retail prices.  I have one of those prescriptions that is usually greeted by a "wow" when someone at an eyeglass store puts in my order, so my glasses were subject to the $9.00 charge. The total cost for my glasses was $17.00 and shipping and handling was $4.95.

The other $3.95 came from the purchase of some clip-on sunglass lenses that I added to my order.  Unfortunately, Zenni hasn't yet applied their revolution in eyewear to the area of clip-on lenses.  These clip-ons are stereotypical of what you would think of when you hear the word.  They are larger than my frames, so they stick out on either side.  They also have two black clips where they attach to my glasses.  I think these will have to be put away until I start driving a Cadillac, collecting Social Security, and eating supper at 4:00.  Oh well, you can't win 'em all.

So for my $25.90 I got a complete pair of glasses, the clip-ons, a Zenni optical lens cloth, and a space-age looking plastic case.

The frames available at Zenni seemed to be similar to what you would find at most retail eyeglass sellers.  The ordering process requires you to fill out the detailed information from your prescription, so when you see your eye doctor, be sure to get a copy to take home.  There are two pieces of information that you will also need that you don't normally find on your prescription.  The first is the distance between your pupils.  You can measure this at home by following the directions at Zenni's website, or you can ask your eye doctor for this information as this is something they measure during a routine eye exam.  The second item is the size of your frames.  The frames on Zenni are listed by their dimension in millimeters.  I wasn't sure what size frames I needed, so I measured my current frames and could see that they matched many of the frames available on Zenni.

Purchasing glasses online means that you have to adjust them yourself at home.  I used a guide we found online to help with the adjustment and so far I have to say they fit pretty well.

While the quality of the frames will be determined by how well they hold up over time, the quality of the lenses doesn't seem to be an issue.  My prescription had a change this time and I could see things more clearly from the moment I put the new glasses on.

So with the exception of the $3.95 I wasted on the ridiculous clip-on sunglasses I am very happy with my Zenni Optical experience so far.  I will keep you up to date if anything changes or if I have any problems in the future.  If you have any questions, let me know.  If you wear glasses and you like saving money give Zenni Optical a try.

Free Digital Christmas Magazine

I posted this on my personal blog but it's too good to miss....


I posted this on Facebook a week or so ago when I first heard about it, but since I just got my "copy" and started looking through it I just had to share again! This digital magazine is put out by a homeschooling magazine but it is full of wonderful Christmas activities, recipes, and crafts that anyone can use. The recipes alone make it worth downloading!! You can preview it online or download it here.

The End of Kraft Food and Family Magazine

Just got my last issue of Kraft's Food and Family today. Why is it my last you ask? Because it came with a renewal notice! They want to charge me $5.99 (preferred rate) to subject myself to their advertising! Ridiculous!! I enjoyed flipping through the magazine when it came in the mail. I even tried several of the recipes (substituting more cost effective products, of course!). There were occasional coupons in there as well, but PAY for it? You have to be kidding me! No thanks Kraft.

I was going to send Kraft a little email letting them know of my disappointment but their website was down when I tried. Probably tons of other frustrated customers trying to give them a piece of their mind! :)

Family Dollar Overage

Did you know Family Dollar takes manufacturer's coupons? A few weeks ago, just after we got those $3 off Snuggle coupons, I read on one of the money saving blogs that Family Dollar had it regularly priced for $3. So yesterday while I was out shopping I stopped to get two free Snuggles. It just so happened that Snuggle was on sale this week for $2.50. Having never using manufacturer's coupons there I wasn't sure if they would give overage or not. So I grabbed a package of napkins just in case. Sure enough, my total was $1.36 for $8 worth of stuff. So the extra $1 overage went to pay for half of my napkins!

Make an Easy $5 at Walgreens

Zantac is on sale this week for $8.99 and you get a $9 RR plus there is a $5 off printable coupon available! If for some reason you can't get the coupon to print there were $1 off coupons in the 10/18 SmartSource and the boxes at my Walgreens had a $2 off peelie right on them.

Food Storage Analyzer

MoneySavingMom mentioned the opportunity to earn a $10 gift card from Emergency Essentials for trying out and reviewing their food analyzer. I have been on their mailing list a long time and their website has lots of helpful information as well, so I couldn't resist the chance to earn a $10 gift card.

Even if you aren't crazy about stockpiling like I am, I think you will find the analyzer helpful. If you don't have larger buckets of wheat, oats, or flour then just go straight to the last two tabs of the analyzer where you can put in "grocery store/canned food" items or "add your own" items. I put in the food items I currently have and the handy analyzer told me I have enough food to feed the seven of us for 69 days!! I didn't even include the cake and brownie mixes so technically we could eat for even a bit longer than that! :)
This isn't just a checklist. This is based on nutrition and calories. If you have a goal to store a certain amount (ex: 3 months worth) you can use this list to help decide if you have enough and where the gaps in your storage are. I found it pretty comforting to know that if something happened we'd be able to eat at least a couple months from just what we have here at home.

*The picture of my "stockpile" above was taken awhile ago. We actually have more than that now!

Sam's Club

I've been meaning to post this for some time but never got around to it. When MoneySavingMom recently posted about her trip to Sam's Club it reminded me.

Click here to see a spreadsheet that I made up to help me compare Sam's Club prices to other stores. It isn't a very extensive list but a list of things I usually buy and thought might be a better deal there. I printed it out and filled in the "elsewhere" store with Aldi prices and for the most part they were pretty much even with one exception: vanilla extract is considerably cheaper at Sam's Club.

Personally, I could live without the Sam's Club membership. Is it worth the $40 membership fee to get cheap vanilla twice a year? No. For our family, I really don't think the savings justifies the yearly membership fee. At this point we hold onto it mainly for diapers but really even then the savings might not be worth it.

A bad "side effect" of shopping at Sam's is buying things that you don't really need, especially sweets and snacks. Another possible problem: if you buy large quantities and can't use it all before it "expires" you're basically just throwing money away. If you really need items in large quantities or just buy basics (flour, sugar, noodles, etc.) Sam's might work for you. However, if you just want basics, I suggest you check Aldi before you spend the money on a membership to Sam's Club.

You can do a google search about whether Sam's Club is a good deal or not. What I have found is most people compare Sam's Club prices to one grocery store's regular prices and then come to the conclusion they are saving money. They haven't usually shopped around, used coupons, or even waited for a sale.

One such person said they "saved" $6.48 buying Pepsi at Sam's over their grocery store. (They said it was $.24 per can at Sam's and $.42 per can at their grocery store.) Were they shopping out of a vending machine? Over FIVE dollars for a 12 pack of Pepsi!?! Festival had Pepsi on sale (with in-store coupon) last week for $1.98 a 12 pack. That's $.17 per can and beats the Sam's Club price buy $.07 a can. And that's just one example. I absolutely guarantee that anyone buying toothpaste at Sam's Club is paying WAY to much. It's free at CVS and Walgreens.

Some people say they don't have time to shop around for sales or use coupons and that may or may not be true. You can't really put a price on someone's time, especially for someone else. I think it all boils down to whether you're willing to spend more time or more money for the items your family needs. Personally, I'd rather take a little bit of time to shop at an extra store or two a week and save our hard earned dollars.

How about you? Do you have a Sam's Club membership? Is it worth the yearly fee?