Recently I asked readers to share some holiday shopping tips. There were over 40 responses and some great ideas. Here is a summary of the holiday shopping tips from Mom Saves Money readers:
1. Start shopping for next Christmas December 26. You can get decorations, wrapping paper and holiday items at huge discounts and store them for the next year.
2. Shop year round for Christmas gifts. This helps reduce stress during the holiday season and doesn't hurt the pocketbook as much. If you find a good deal that would make a great gift, buy it and save it for the holidays.
3. Make a budget and shopping list and stick to it. Write down the names of people you buy gifts for, the gifts purchased and how much you spent. A list like this is especially helpful if you buy gifts months ahead of time. It's easy to forget you already bought something if it's been in storage for nine months. I also recommend keeping receipts in one place for reference or returns.
4. Shop Amazon.com. Great sales. No crowds. No lines. Free shipping on orders on $25 or more.
5. Remember what the holidays are really about and don't be afraid to cut back spending. Many adults have opted to not give gifts to each other and just focus on the children. Another option with large families is to draw names, so each person only gives a gift to one other family member.
6. Cash in rewards points for gift cards or prizes for gifts. Swagbucks is an easy way to earn free gift cards.
7. Shop when stores are less busy. Several readers mentioned shopping when the store first opens and one said Saturday night is less crowded.
8. Leave young kids at home when you shop. If you must take them or have older children, have them help pick out gifts for family members.
9. Buy gift bags on the cheap. Dollar stores have great gift bags and are much cheaper than department store prices. My personal favorite is to buy a reusable bag to use as a gift bag. They are usually around $1 and double as an additional gift. I also use the Sunday comics for wrapping paper.
These are such excellent tips and I want to thank my readers for sharing their holiday shopping ideas. Any more holiday shopping tips?
$5 Magazine Subscriptions from Amazon. Choose a 1-year subscription to Cosmopolitan, Real Simple, People Style Watch, Sports Illustrated Kids, Smart Money, Popular Science, Southern Living, House Beautiful, Food & Wine or Travel and Leisure for only $5 each (an 87-92% savings).
There are so many titles to choose from that you can order a magazine for everyone on your Christmas list. Shipping is always free on magazine subscriptions. Hurry, because this offer ends December 1, 2009. Click here to order.
Book synopsis: "Your colleague's husband's sister can make you fat, even if you don't know her. A happy neighbor has more impact on your happiness than a happy spouse. These startling revelations of how much we truly influence one another are revealed in the studies of Drs. Christakis and Fowler, which have repeatedly made front-page news nationwide.
In CONNECTED, the authors explain why emotions are contagious, how health behaviors spread, why the rich get richer, even how we find and choose our partners. Intriguing and entertaining, CONNECTED overturns the notion of the individual and provides a revolutionary paradigm-that social networks influence our ideas, emotions, health, relationships, behavior, politics, and much more. It will change the way we think about every aspect of our lives."
My Review: Connected was a fascinating book about the effects of our social networks. According to the book, your future spouse is most likely to be your friend's friend and your friends' friends' friends can make you fat - or thin. There was also extensive scientific analysis and discussion about emotional contagion, disease transmission, the influence of political connections, human nature and online relationships.
My only complaint is that a few sections of the book were very technical and dry and read more like a textbook. However, Connected was still an interesting and informative read. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in how social networks shape and influence our lives.
The Giveaway: I have 5 copies of Connected to give away thanks to Hachette Book Group. You can earn up to 6 entries for this giveaway. Please leave a separate comment for each entry and a way to contact you.
First Entry 1. Leave a comment. Please leave an email or way to contact you if you win.
Bonus Entries 2. Subscribe to my free newsletter here and leave me another comment. Current subscribers or followers just leave a comment saying you subscribe/follow to get an extra entry.
3. Follow me on twitter AND tweet about this giveaway and leave a comment. Include @momsavesmoney in the tweet.
4. Grab my button and leave another comment with your site's url.
5. Blog about the giveaway and leave another comment with the link to the post.
6. Email three or more friends about the giveaway, cc the email to me at Nicole@momsavesmoney.net and leave another comment here.
This contest will end on Monday December 14, 2009 at 10:00 pm, central time. I will use random.org to select five lucky winners and contact the winners. (If any winner does not respond in 48 hours, I will pick another.) U.S. and Canada entries only. No P.O. Boxes. Good luck and thanks for entering!
Here are the freebies and good deals I found in this week's Walgreen's advertisement. FREEBIES Glade 4 oz candles @ 2/$5 - $1 register reward - $2 coupon from 11/15 Parade magazine (use 2) - $3/2 coupon from 11/22 or December All You magazine = FREE - $1/2 (depending on coupons used)
Oral B Floss, 55 yd @ 2/$5 - $3 register reward when you buy 2 - $1 coupon from 11/29 (use 2) = FREE
Oral B Zooth character toothbrush @ 4/$10 - $5 register reward when you buy 4 - $1 coupon from 11/1 (use 4 - expires 11/30) - $1 coupon from Walgreens coloring book (scans 4 times) = FREE plus overage
C0mplete Multi-purpose solution, 12 oz @ $7.99 - $7.99 register reward - $1 coupon from 10/25 = FREE plus overage
Three lucky winners will each receive 200 clipped coupons!
There is a huge variety of coupons, great for any new or experienced coupon user. You can earn 6 entries to this giveaway. Make sure toleave a separate comment for each entry.
First Entry 1. Leave a comment sharing how much you save using coupons. Please leave an email or way to contact you if you win.
Bonus Entries 2. Subscribe to my free newsletter here and leave me another comment. Current subscribers or followers just leave a comment saying you subscribe/follow to get an extra entry.
3. Follow me on twitter and tweet about this giveaway and leave a comment. Please include @momsavesmoney in the tweet.
4. Grab my button and leave another comment with your site's url.
5. Blog about the giveaway and leave another comment with the link to the post
6. Email three or more friends about the giveaway, cc the email to me at Nicole@momsavesmoney.net and leave another comment here.
This contest will end on Wednesday December 2, 2009 at 10:00 pm, central time. I will use random.org to select the winners and contact them. (If winners do not respond in 48 hours, I will pick another.) U.S. entries only. Good luck and thanks for entering!
I am a very practical gift giver and like to buy people presents they will actually use. I found Little Miss Matched where the necessities are fun! The idea is it's okay to be mismatched. When you order socks you get three fun colored socks to mix and match. My daughter will be so excited when she finds these funky socks and pajamas under the tree this year. Little Miss Matched is having an awesome sale for Black Friday and Cyber Monday!
Get $3 in FREE mp3 downloads of your choice from Amazon through November 30, 2009. Click here and enter code MP34FREE t be credited $3 for mp3 purchases.
Use the $3 credit towards a $5 MP3 Album Downloads and pay only $2 for an entire album! This Black Friday deal available now includes 500 albums by artists such as Black Eyed Peas, David Cook, Charlie Brown Christmas, Tim McGraw, Tina Turner and many more.
Also, check out Over 125 FREE albums. Just download and enjoy! I couldn't help myself and downloaded 'I love the 80's Vol 1'. If you're giving someone an iPod or mp3 player for Christmas, you can preload it with their favorite artist or songs.
JuiceBoxJungle (check out my sidebar) reminded me today that all Thanksgivings are not created equal, or happy. The worst Thanksgiving I ever spent was ... in Navy bootcamp. It was a fun filled day of push ups, a long run, training and military food. The one good thing is that I didn't have to cook.
Take the Juice Box Jungle Thanksgiving poll: (green box located on right sidebar)
Is Thanksgiving better at: *Your Home (But you have to COOK!)or *Someone else's
The results were surprising to me. I would have expected the opposite. I wish you all a happy and wonderful Thanksgiving (hopefully much better than my bootcamp experience a decade ago)! Feel free to share your worst Thanksgiving story or your answer to the Juice Box Jungle poll.
Here are two new coupons for Bath & Body Works. You can only use one per transaction.
Receive a FREE signature collection travel size item (up to $5 value) with any purchase. You can buy a pocket hand sanitizer for $1.50 and redeem this coupon. Valid through December 2, 2009.
Get one FREE item (up to $13) with any $10 purchase. Coupon expires December 24, 2009.
Black Friday Deal: Buy a 2009 VIP bag with 10 items for $15 with every $40 purchase
Receive a FREE personalized 20 page cover-photo book (a $39.95 value) from Photo Works. Use code BONNIE at checkout. There are only 25,000 available or until December 7, 2009, so start creating your free book now. These make great holiday gifts for those hard to buy for people.
Make sure to order item #3157086 to qualify for the discount. According to Freebies4mom, one of her readers redeemed this offer and even received free shipping. Click here to view all the details about this offer.
Need some inspiration for your holiday meal this week. Download this free Thanksgiving e-cookbook with 30 easy recipes FREE from Recipe Lion. The eCookbook includes colorful pictures and step-by-step instructions for favorites including Easy Oven Turkey (page 11), Holiday Mashed Potato Casserole (page 30), and Old Fashioned Sweet Potato Pie (page 53). Click Here
Crafty? Request a FREE Thanksgiving craft ebook with over 30 craft ideas from Fave Crafts Click Here.
Ten Tips for Making Great Photo Greeting Cards for the Holidays By Tom Grimm and Michele Grimm,
Authors of The Basic Book of Digital Photography: How to Shoot, Enhance, and Share Your Digital Pictures
If you want your family's photo greeting card to impress your friends this holiday season, here are 10 helpful suggestions from professional photographers Michele and Tom Grimm, authors of a brand new handbook, The Basic Book of Digital Photography.
1. Plan Ahead. Eye-catching photos take some thought, so envision the card you want to send before you take any pictures. Pick a setting with an uncluttered background. Decide what type of clothes to wear (causal or dress-up?) and what colors might be appropriate (red and green will enhance a Christmas theme). If you want to shoot outdoors, consider the weather and the time of day for the best light. Cloudy or overcast days are perfect for portraits without shadows; avoid bright sunlight that causes people to squint.
2. Get Your Camera Ready. Be sure to install new or freshly-charged batteries so the camera won't stop working in the middle of your shooting session. Also check that there is room on the memory card to hold plenty of new exposures. And remember to carefully clean the camera lens of dust and fingerprints; use a microfiber lens cloth. For pictures of the best technical quality, adjust the camera's "image quality" and "image resolution" to their highest settings. Finally, make certain the "date/time" setting is turned off so those numbers won't appear on the front of your family and ruin every picture.
3. Move in Close. Remember that friends mostly enjoy seeing the faces of your family and pets. Get close to them by moving the camera physically closer or adjusting the zoom lens to fill the viewfinder or LCD monitor with their faces. Aim the camera's autofocus target on the eyes; be careful it isn't pointed between the heads of people because the background will be in focus instead of the family's faces. Also, make sure there are no windows or mirrors in the background that are distracting or cause reflections, especially if you are shooting with flash.
4. Forget About Red-eye. If the sun is causing shadows on the faces of your family, or you are shooting indoors in dim light, we recommend using the camera's built-in flash or an external flash unit to provide "fill" light that illuminates your subjects more evenly. Avoid the "red-eye reduction" flash setting, if your camera offers it, because this makes a series of pre-flashes or a steady light that causes some people to blink or shut their eyes. "Red-eye," an annoying bright red spot occasionally seen in the pupils of the eyes, is easily eliminated later with your computer's image-editing software.
5. Use a Tripod, and a Friend. Put your camera on a tripod so it will remain in the same position after you compose the family picture. Recruit a friend to trip the shutter release instead of using a remote control or the self-timer to fire the camera yourself. Remind everyone to keep looking toward the camera and not glance away to see if the baby or dog is behaving; depend on your friend to snap the shutter when everybody looks their best.
6. Keep On Shooting. Someone in the family group is certain to blink, yawn, scratch or look away just as a picture is taken, so shoot again and again. One of the joys of digital photography is that it costs nothing extra to make a dozen or so exposures rather than just one or two. A warning: Your subjects will quickly get restless, so don't spend time between shots checking images on the camera's LCD monitor to see how they turned out. Pick the best image later when you view all the shots at full size on your computer.
7. Create a Collage When Family Members are Absent. Can't get everyone in your family together for a holiday card photo? A solution is to get and assemble individual photos of each family member into a collage or montage that becomes a single image. Many image-editing software programs -- probably including the one that came with your camera -- have a feature for easily merging photos. First choose a template from various designs that hold different numbers and sizes of images, then arrange your family's photos as you like.
8. Dress Up Your Holiday Photos with Borders and Type. Your computer's image-editing software also enables you to add borders and to type captions that become part of the family's holiday photo. Pick a border with a design and colors appropriate for the season. You can select different typefaces, sizes and colors, and position the text wherever you wish in the picture. Also, local and online photo centers offer holiday-themed templates for greeting cards that are easy to fill in with your own photos and text.
9. Print Your Own Holiday Photo Cards. Remember to design your photo card so it can be printed on standard sizes of photo paper and will fit in standard-size envelopes. To save money, select a "Picture Package" in your image-editing software to make several prints on one piece of photo paper -- such as two 5 x 7-inch or four 4 x 5-inch prints on a single 8-½ x 11-inch sheet -- and cut them apart. Also consider HP Holiday Photo Card packs with 20 sheets of 5 x 7-inch glossy photo paper and matching envelopes for $9.99.
10. An Easier Option: Order Your Cards at a Photo Center. If your mailing list is large, it usually is more convenient and economical to have your holiday photo cards printed at a local or online photo center. Many allow you to upload the photo image file online to a selection of card templates that you can personalize with family names and greetings. The cards and envelopes can be picked up a few hours later, or will be mailed to you. Search online for "photo greeting cards" to find a wide choice of photo-finishing companies, including shutterfly.com, snapfish.com, and photoworks.com.
Author Bios Tom Grimm and Michele Grimm, authors of The Basic Book of Digital Photography: How to Shoot, Enhance, and Share Your Digital Pictures,are a husband-and-wife photojournalism team who have spent nearly four decades traveling the globe; the couple has visited every continent and more than 130 countries in search of the perfect photographic image. Their photographs and articles have been published worldwide in magazines and newspapers and on the Internet. The Grimms are authors and illustrators of thirteen adult and children's books.
For more information, please visit www.TomGrimm.com and Amazon
Every day this week, Amazon is offering Black Friday deals online. There are markdowns, discounts and special offers in every department, with savings up to 75%. The deals will be updated constantly so, check back frequently for the most savings. Remember, you always get free super saver shipping when you order $25 or more.
Target Giftactular sweepstakes is very winnable sweepstakes with 1,565 instant win prizes, all Target gift cards valued at $25 to $5,000 each. There are also 5 grand prizes: a $10,000 Target gift card that will be awarded at the end of the contest. This sweepstakes only runs five days from November 22 to November 26. When I played today I didn't win but, I received a coupon for a free medium soda valid this Friday and Saturday.
This sweepstakes has alot of prizes in a short time frame, which makes its a must play for this week. You can play once every day and can win one instant win prize per person. If you don't want to 'play' the instant win game, just click 'Slow Connection? Skip to Entry Form' at the bottom of the page. Skipping the game will not change the outcome. Good luck! I'm hoping to win a gift card this week!
Both these offers end Monday November 23, 2009 at midnight so hurry to take advantage of these great deals. I ordered our Christmas photo cards from See Here and they turned out perfect. There are lots of design options for creating your cards.
Recently I asked readers to share some holiday shopping tips. There were over 40 responses and some great ideas. Here is a summary of the holiday shopping tips from Mom Saves Money readers:
. Great sales. No crowds. No lines. Free shipping on orders on $25 or more.
by Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD and James H Fowler, PhD, Little, Brown and Company, published September 2009
