Saturday, January 3, 2015

Christmas Clearance

I bought a box of candy canes for 37 cents (yesterday). I bought a gingerbread house kit for $2.69 (Monday). Those two items are the total of my Christmas clearance purchases. I didn't buy any wrapping paper or decorations or other Christmas candies or toys. Working in a supermarket makes resisting such things very difficult but I think I did good this year. Sidenote: there would have been nothing wrong with purchasing any of the above in normal circumstances. Christmas clearance is a great way to buy any of those things except that I was behind on the bills for December and it would have been counterproductive to "save" money on a ton of reduced Christmas items.


We decorated the gingerbread house last night after our scrumptious chicken dinner (the chicken turned out super tasty!). He had so much fun with this. It was well worth the $2.69 that I paid for it.



6 comments:

  1. Fun! The only two things I bought were two kinds of specialty chips (one peppermint, one chocolate filled with peanut butter) for baking cookies. Each child got to choose one. I made the first batch of cookies today, and they will go into lunches for next week. I did have a bit of the dough, but I'm really resisting eating them. They smell amazing! I always bake half & put the other half of the dough in the freezer for another time, to reduce temptation. ;-)

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    1. I saw some chips like that and resisted those too. I bet your cookies are going to be awesome... fun treat for lunches for sure! Great idea putting half the dough in the freezer. I pretty much half any cookie recipe I bake. I tend to just not even make recipes that call for one egg because I can't half it :)

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  2. I bought a play dough ice cream set at Aldi marked down for $5.99 and almost bought a Minnie Mouse boat bath toy originally $24.99 marked down to $14.99. The Play dough toy will either be for Easter or wait until a birthday. Mr. R said I should go back and buy the Minnie Mouse boat bath toy to set aside for Little R's birthday. I wasn't sure if I should since her birthday isn't until Sept. There were only 2 left so they are probably gone now anyways.

    I almost stocked up on wrapping paper for only $.50 each at the grocery store but resisted. We have a few rolls left anyways and I can usually get pretty good deals on wrapping paper on black friday anyways.

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    1. Good find. I almost picked up wrapping paper too but I also resisted. I only used three rolls on all of the gifts we gave this year (I way prefer wrapping paper to gift bags). One of them I got on clearance last year and the other two I picked up at the dollar store so I figure I can do dollar store paper again next year (cheaper than the clearance stuff I saw at Meijer) or I can get some paper shortly before Christmas from Hobby lobby... it's usually already 80 percent off before Christmas and I love the wrapping paper there. Hence, "I don't need to buy clearance wrapping paper right now in January." Yep.

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  3. You are really working hard at making good choices! Your gingerbread house has truly brought joy to your son and - I hope - to you, Not bad for $2.69!

    And what will bring you even more joy is addressing the December bills before the situation deteriorates. And that joy is worth way more than $2.69.

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    1. I couldn't have said it better myself actually.
      I got all the December bills paid up yesterday and I'm ready to tackle January. I don't think I can get all the bills paid on time this month but with some extra frugal spending choices I should be able to get them all paid IN January and without any borrowing; credit cards, overdraft, ect;

      Too bad there's a forecasted arctic blast coming our way though. Last year was bitterly cold (I got to experience a bit what it's like to live in Alaska). The polar vortex was sitting right over us and it was harsh. I guess it's starting up again this year sometime this week. That I'll tell you puts a damper on heating bills :( Not looking forward to that but it's making our absolutely NOT white Christmas a whole to nicer. December was a very mild month for temps. Here comes winter!

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