Articles for Coupons & Savings

So I needed to get a gunky label off a bottle yesterday for a little project I am doing and I needed goof off.

I don’t like to keep a lot of chemicals in the house so I didn’t have any on hand and I decided to research all natural alternatives to goof off.

I thought I’d post what worked for me in case any of you run into the same issue.  If you are not familiar with Goof Off, it is a product that removes sticky residue and stains.  It can work magic on things like price tags, tape or for those of us with little ones that put stickers on everything (including the car window).   There are tons of uses for this product however the chemicals are pretty strong and well.. it is just one more thing to have on the shelf.

So if there is an alternative option to get the same results with something I already have on hand, well I am all for it!

The three natural alternatives that I found include:

• Mayonnaise
• Baby Oil
• Equal parts coconut oil and baking soda

I decided to try all three on the bottle to see which would work the best.

I let these sit on the bottle for about an hour and came back.  I used a paper towel to wipe off the bottle and I can say the baby oil took the label off very well.

The mayo also worked really well.  The coconut oil was the least successful and I had to do a lot of scraping to get the label off.

I actually ran the bottle through the dishwasher and there is still quite a bit of residue left where I used the coconut oil combination so I will go back over that patch with baby oil  to take it off.

I found that the mayo and the baby oil worked equally well.  I thought the Baby Oil was a little more pleasant to work with and you can get travel size versions of Johnson’s for about $1.00 at many stores.

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This is a great deal if you have a Keurig machine and still available!  You can get (2) Ekobrew refillable filters plus a bag of Community Coffee for $17.00.

The ekobrew filters are just little filters that pop right into a Keurig machine. You can fill the filters with ground coffee which is much less expensive than buying k-cups.

Usually these are about $10 each on sale- so right now you can get 2 for $17 plus the free coffee.

If you click the subscribe and save on the right side the shipping is also free.

Once your order arrives, just cancel subscribe and save by going into your account and clicking cancel. You can keep it by doing nothing if you would like to receive more shipments.

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I finished the Easter baskets for my girls and thought I’d post a few last minute ideas for you.

You can see the best Easter candy prices this week here.

If you need inspiration in general, there is a long list of Easter Basket Ideas here.

::Target:

• Marley and Me Puppy years DVD $3.99
• Tooth Fairy 2 DVD $3.99
• Dora’s Easter Adventure DVD $3.99 (note: my store was sold out)
• Dora’s Enchanted Adventures DVD $2.52 after rebate
• Little Angels DVD $3.99
• Preschool Board games $2.00- Free after coupons
• Lipsmackers Lip Glosses $.97 after coupon
• Cabbage Patch Cuties $7.99- Use $2 Target coupon = $5.99
• Cars 2 Diecast vehicles $.99
• Playskool Heroes Vehicles $9.99- Use $3/1 Playsaver coupon= $6.99 (if you have the Target coupon from last week- even better!)
• Furreal Snuggimals $7.99- use $2/1 Furreal coupon= $5.99 (if you have the Target coupon from last week, even better!)
• Nexcare Kid’s Bandaids $1.87- use $.75 Target coupon and Use $.55/1 from 4/1 SS= $.57

::Walgreens:

• Glitter Putty Eggs $.33 with in ad coupon
• Pencils 7 for $1.00 with in ad coupon
• Mini Sticker books $.33 with in ad coupon
• Disney Bubbles $.99
• Crayola Art Supplies $2.99
• 15ct Sidewalk Chalk $1.00

The party supply area can also be a great area for little items like dress-up jewelry, bubbles, bouncey balls and more!

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I had never heard of this idea before but I decided to have some fun with my girls yesterday and start a new Easter tradition.

The idea is that you “plant” jelly beans in the garden/grass and check back awhile later and see what has bloomed.  A few hours or a day later you can stick little lollipops into the ground and say they bloomed from the magic jelly beans!  If the idea of dealing with the outdoors is not appealing to you, my friend Jen has an idea to put magic jelly beans on a cake.  The concept is the same.

So the idea is to talk to your kiddos about magic jelly beans.  Every family might have a different approach to this- rather than simply giving the kid’s candy it can be nice to try and incorporate a learning opportunity.

For our family, being kind and respectful to one another is a major topic these days.  All week, I kept mentioning to them that if they were kind to each other and respectful to Mommy and Daddy the Easter bunny would drop off some magic beans.

I told them we can plant the magic beans in the grass and if we are very, very good girls a magic surprise would grow!

Here are the steps that I did for this little activity.

Note I seriously did all this in like 10 minutes, so if you have more time available you can probably do a much better job than I did.

STEP 1: I asked my 4 year old to check for UPS packages when we got home and she opened the door to find a little plastic Easter egg.  I told them the Easter Bunny must have dropped it off.  Inside I had 5 jelly beans- you can certainly do more or less.

I explained to the girls that we needed to go out to the front yard and “plant” the jelly beans.

STEP 2:  So we just sprinkled the beans in the front yard.  I kept track of how many beans I used so that I could be sure to pick them all up once they bloomed.

This was very exciting for everyone, including the dog who came out to supervise.

STEP 3: During dinner, I slipped outside and tied ribbon to a skewer and stabbed some poor little Peeps to make marshmallow flowers.  I decided to use Peeps just because the kids love them and they are so bright and colorful.  My grocery store only had the chick ones but the bunny Peeps would be a lot cuter.  I believe people typically use lollipops but well… I didn’t want to buy a whole bag of lollipops .

Since we had 5 jelly beans I made 5 Peeps flowers.  If you do more the impact would be a lot prettier but with only 2 kiddos I thought 5 was more than plenty.

STEP 4: Come out to check the garden!

So after dinner, I told the girls they better go check the garden and see if anything bloomed.  They found the little Peeps flowers and they were both really excited.

My 2 year old was a little baffled by the entire thing but my 4 year old has watched Puss in Boots several times and so she was very interested in the entire process.

So overall this was really fun and like I said, it literally just took a few minutes to do.

Does anyone else plant magic beans?  We’d love to hear how you customize this activity for your family!

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Here is a free printable list of what is on sale at the grocery stores this month as well as the fresh produce in season right now.

As we all know, what is in season is usually going to taste the best and is usually going to be on sale. So by focusing on what is in season and basing your meals around that, you can easily save quite a bit at the grocery store.

There are also the other grocery items that we should see on sale right now as well as a little peek ahead at what May will bring.

You can download your free copy of the April Fresh seasonal produce and grocery sales cycle guide here.

You can find any coupons you might need to pair with the sales from the coupon database.

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I mentioned this a few weeks ago and I am finally getting it posted.  This has worked wonders for us and it has been a few weeks now and the system is still working great.

I was reading in a magazine about repurposing things and found a tip to use shoeboxes to organize and separate socks in drawers.

So something clicked for me and I headed straight off to Walmart to buy a cartload of sterilite plastic shoeboxes priced at $.96 each.

I marched home and started with my own dresser- I have a whole mess of tank tops that I wear daily.  A bunch of camisoles for layering, tank tops for the gym, dry fit running tops etc..

Before it was a little maddening to try and sift through the mess of tanks in the drawer trying to find the right one.  I just folded each one in squares and fit about 6-8 of them per shoebox.  I divided them by category- camisoles, basic tanks and gym tanks.  Each dresser drawer fits 4 shoeboxes perfectly.

Now this particular dresser drawer was overflowing before- a total mess.  I found I had so much space, I was even able to fit one bin for t-shirts and as you can see there is still room for a few more shirts.

So then I moved on to my little girls.  They both have a lot of clothes and again trying to find specifically what I wanted was such a pain.  We seem to have the same things over and over stuffed on top and that was basically what the kids would wear… which frustrates me because the drawers are overflowing yet they wear the same thing over and over!

Another thing we struggle with is learning to care for our clothing.  My 4 year old in particular thinks that if she ruins something… well the UPS man just brings a replacement. (WRONG) So I organized all the girl’s clothing the same way.

We have bins for t-shirts, tank tops, skirts, jeans, athletic pants etc.. etc…  You can see the pj drawer above- the 2 bins on the left have bottoms and the two bins on the right hold the tops.

The bins fit in the top drawers of the dresser too.  I didn’t want to show my girls’ underwear- but you can see the socks in one bin and in the back are swimming suits, sunglasses, swim shorts and water shoes.

They have bins for tights and Babylegs too.

My 2 year old tends to get grabby and I have to refold items here and there but my 4 year old has been really good.  I can find the items I want so much faster and the girls are learning that they need to take care of their things and not just wad up clothing and cram it into the dresser.

I did take the time to make little labels for each box but that was really to serve as a guide for my husband when he puts the clothing away.   I just put little labels on the back of the bins- above are pants, skirts and shorts.

So this did take a little time to set up but overall it has made things much easier and faster in the morning!

You can see the way I sorted and stored little shoes here.

Anyone else have tips for organizing children’s clothing?

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