Happy Birthday!

 

Today is Ben's third birthday.  We had a nice party over the weekend, had a great time hanging out yesterday, got his picture on the TV today to celebrate, and he bounced down the hall to his classroom this morning with his bag of mini muffins to share with his classmates.  Special dinner plans this evening to finish off the celebration.  Ah to be three again....

To celebrate, I wanted to find a nice giveaway to my readers to celebrate one of the best days of my life.  Turns out, I was able to combine a birthday celebration with one of Ben's favorite places to eat.

Free Food, Yum!

So I haven't already given up on this new blog resurgence.  Yesterday we hosted Ben's 3rd birthday party, which we had to scramble and rearrange when Anna's great-aunt passed last Sunday.  So it's been a crazy week, but everything went off great yesterday with the party and everyone had a blast.

I wanted to make sure to remind everyone that today is one of my favorite giveaway days of the year.  FREE RITA'S DAY.  To celebrate the first day of spring, all Rita's are giving away a free regular sized ice in your favorite flavors, while supplies last.  We felt that 'while supplies last' pinch a few years ago when we showed up in the evening and they had only 3-4 flavors left in stock.  So I would advice not waiting until close to 9pm to get your ice.

Also, tomorrow is FREE* Pancake Day at Perkins.  I had to add the * because while the short stack is free, Perkins is asking their customers to donate to the Give Kids the World charity in exchange for their free breakfast.  So unless you're completely heartless and able to ignore the request to donate to help cheer up some sick kids, it's not really FREE.  But still seems like an excellent cause and a good deal on some breakfast.

Top Couponing Mistakes

One of my favorite blogs, Moms Need to Know, has posted an article covering some of the big mistakes that people make when starting out getting deals and using coupons in a big way.

I have just a few points to add to her excellent work.

Wegmans Coupon: $1 off $5 Meat purchase

Wegmans has posted a coupon for $1.00 off of ANY $5.00 meat purchase, that expires 4/2/11.  Wegmans also has their boneless chicken breasts on price freeze for $1.99/lb and has their 80% lean ground beef on price freeze for $1.99/lb.  These are our max prices to pay for those items (do people really pay $3-4/lb for this stuff??), but a coupon like this helps even more.  Or use it on lunch meat.  Plenty of good uses for this if you need meat soon at Wegmans.

Free 1-2-3 Collections Binder from the Food Network.

 

Sign up for a FREE binder from the Food Network.  This is great as we were just going through our recipes and had tons of pages just floating around and talked about needing to organize them.

Sale: Graco Nautilus 3-in-1 Car Seat 25% off at Amazon

Amazon has the Graco Nautilus 3-1 car seat on sale.  This is Ben's car seat, we have one in each car.  We've had them both in everyday use for 2 years, and other than a few stains, you would never know they're two years old.  I actually just had to count back the time because I didn't believe we've been using them for that long without issue or need to replacement.  The seat is a little on the pricey side, but the fact that it will convert to the next two stages of car seats as boosters made it seem like a good investment originally, and the fact that it has held up makes me feel good about that original choice.

If you're in the market for a front facing car seat, I would recommend checking this one out.

QUICK DEAL: Happy Birthday to Chick-Fil-A founder S. Truett Cathy

As many of you may already know, we *LOVE* our local Chick-Fil-A in Lower Nazareth (near the new Target, whom we also love).  The people are always happy, the place is always clean, and the food is always great (even by CFA's standards!).  Oh, and they love their customers and are constantly doing fun specials to encourage more visits and thank customers for their support and business.  It is wonderful and the specials they run (many with no additional purchase necessary) have been a welcome sight to this underemployed blogger's eyes as nice treats and rewards to achieving some goals.

So CFA Lower Nazareth announced on their Facebook page (go and like them if you haven't yet!) two new promotions.  One is just TODAY ONLY and one is for the entire month of March.

Bottom Dollar Food 3/11-3/17

So I discovered Bottom Dollar Food a few weeks ago.  We had received a flier in the mail with 4 coupons for $10 off a $20 purchase, and after looking over their flier I was able to find several good deals, and when you add that coupon they becomesally great deals.  I want to stress that NOT EVERYTHING is a great price, some are actually pretty lousy shelf prices, so you need to know what a good price is before you shop.  But some of the good prices are REALLY good.

A couple other things to keep in mind.  You need to sign up for the card, which you can do at checkout.  They accept coupons, including internet printed ones, but they do not double them.  They do no give away bags, so you either need to bring your own bags/totes, be prepared to pack them into boxes they have up front for free, or buy plastic bags at 5/$0.25.

80% off Restaurant.com

Visit Restaurant.com and enter the code SAVE to get 80% off the already discounted price on their "gift certificates".  Code looks to expire on March 14, 2011.

I am why we can't have nice things

When Ben was just a baby at our old daycare, the teachers commented one day one the shirt he was wearing.  It was one of those funny shirts that they make for babies, like "Spit Happens", "Automatic Sprinkler", "Party in my Playpen", etc..  Thing is, they said they could usually tell which parent dressed him in the morning based on his outfit.  Anna tends to lean towards plain shirts or baby polos, where I tend to go right for the funny.  I can't help it.  Even when browsing at the store, I'm constantly picking up shirts and showing them to her for a laugh (although I usually get an eyeroll) like a group of 12 year-old boys in a t-shirt shop on the Boardwalk. So when I spotted spotted this today, I had to share with you in hopes it brings you the same smile and knowing nod that it brought me.