Happy Halloween 2012

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. Even though I'm old now and don't seem to have the connections for fun dress up parties, its still fun to see the costumes others come up with. We aren't doing anything special this halloween, just giving out candy to the two kids that will stop by, maybe. DH is excited to put together his new composter and make me some dirt for my new flowers. We got lots of coupons from the Home Depot Zombie Mulch game on facebook and it is so fun to shop there for free! You can earn $5 off your $5.01 purchase, $10 off $10.01 purchase and $15 off $15.01 purchase by playing the game. If you haven't played it, give yourself about an hour to earn $30 in coupons. Claim your points by going to the 'STATS' page and requesting to have it emailed to you.

 

Hope you have a great Halloween!

The Coupon Game - Part 2

Usually on Friday I like to post my Publix Trip from the first day of the sale but I'm not really impressed with the ad this week, so I'm waiting to get the few things I need on Saturday when the new YAB flyer starts. There is a little moneymaker on the Friskies Party Mix using the $1.50/2 MQ in this weekends 12/4 SS combined with the printable Pet PQ.

 

Anyway, I'll update you on the coupon game with store #685. It turns out the District Manager is on vacation until next week, so the Store Manager called me yesterday after getting my customer service inquiry about the CWS. He apologized for the rude manager behavior of the night before. He skirted around the coupon and he said he would still not take it because it was not the manufacturers "intent" that it be used on trial size packages. We discussed further and I told him this issue was not resolved and I would have to contact customer service again.

 

So I called customer service again (800-242-1227 put it in your phones now) and explained that the store manager was still stating he would decline acceptance of that particular coupon. The CSR confirmed again that stores should be accepting that coupon as the vendor had agreed to honor them and reimburse Publix. She offered to call the store manager to ensure he would take the coupon, and then she was to call me back. A short while later she called me back and reported that the store manager had now agreed to take the coupon. Gee, that's what I wanted in the first place.

 

I'm still not sure he has shared this agreement with his staff, so I expect to have resistance again when I shop this afternoon. I'm sure the product will still be there because nobody can use the coupon for it. Anyway, the store manager called me again today to follow up to ensure the CSR had shared that they "came to an understanding" that the coupon was valid and should be accepted. I told him I would be in today and looked forward to a pleasant transaction.

 

Anyone want to take bets on how this turns out?

 

 

A Frugal Game On The Go

Sometimes when you're out and about with children around, there's a lull in the action and the children get antsy and rambunctious. It happened recently at a birthday party we attended for our neighbors 5 yr old grand child. The kid was going crazy waiting for everyone to finish eating before he could have his cake and open presents. He would repeat to anyone, "we're opening presents when we're done eating, Are you done yet"? It wasn't really that annoying, in fact I thought it was cute. I felt sorry for the kid because it was basically an adults Memorial Day weekend BBQ, and he was the only kid there. At his grandparents house there were only minimal toys, and the one fun thing he liked was the Wii, but he wasn't allowed to play alone.

 

Anyway, I was done eating and we played a game to keep him occupied while everyone else finished eating. It's a simple concept and actually has some educational value, and it didn't require any props or anything other than our minds. It's just the alphabet game. We played the Animal Alphabet game, where I asked him to name an animal that started with A. He said ANT. Well, an ant is not an animal but we went with it. Anything that was alive and not a person, counted as an animal. Next he said BEAR, then for C he said snake. But we know that snake is S, so this was an opportunity to help him with sounding out C words and we went with CAT. Then DOG. He was having a tough time thinking of an E word, so a couple hints and he figured out ELEPHANT. F was FROG. G was GIRAFFE.

 

All the time during the game I asked him to tell me what the next letter was in the alphabet, so he had to start at the beginning and recite it to figure out what was next. This was a good exercise for the kid and he enjoyed showing off that he knew it. The toughest one to come up with something was the letter N, and we finally thought of NURSE SHARK after soliciting input from the others. I suppose we could have said NORTH AMERICAN SLOTH or something like that too. He totally lost interest around letter P, but after checking every ones progress with eating, he came back and we picked up there and finished. We went back to the beginning and named all the animals that he had picked and by then it was time for cake and presents.

 

So, if you ever need to occupy a young child, the Alphabet game is a great frugal game to play on the fly.