Island Pad Purchase and Deals This Week

Art Courtesy The Graphics Fairy

This week has been filled with arranging utility hookups, insurance, transferring money to lawyers, signing legal documents, and prepping for key hand-over date on March 30th of our little pad on Vancouver Island. Comox suffered hurricane force winds last week and sustained lots of damage - here is hoping none of the small trees in the yard suffered any damage.

We fly out on the 28th which will give us two days to buy some bedding and furniture. Needless to say, there has not been much time for blogging.

Deals this week:
Blow up Coleman Airbed Queen size which will act as our temporary bedding until furniture is shipped and then it will become spare bed for family regular $120 on sale $70(Canadian Tire). This deal involved having my mother who lives on the island pick up the sale for me - lucky for us she got one of the last ones. Savings $50

20 lbs potatoes for $5.99 - same price as a 10 lb bag
Yes, we eat a lot of potatoes. Some have already been roasted to go with BBQ meat.
10 lbs onions for $2.99 - the last batch from the same store lasted three months and was still fresh down to the last onion.

I also picked up several thrift store goodies which I will share in a different post on the weekend. It does seem the Salvation Army here has nearly doubled their prices. Last weekend I walked in to drop off some clothing for donation and found nothing - can you believe NOTHING to purchase! I even had a conversation with another lady who was complaining about the retail prices ($10 for a non-collectible glass salad bowl). Unfortunately only charity will suffer from their doubling of prices. May is garage sale season and I cannot wait!

Another Great Shoe Find - Thrift Store Steal of a Deal

Found at Goodwill
Ralph Lauren "Megan" brand teal grey faux croc shoes - Brazilian leather
$5.99

Hubby was shocked...he is now placing orders (I informed him it does not work that way but he was unconvinced).

I am finding such great items thinking about trying out the reselling market when we move and I am not employed full-time.

For now these will grace my closet.

Some of this Weeks Deals

This week a few deals and freebies:

Save on Foods:
2 Free Javex Bleach 99 cents each - $1 coupon x 2 = .08 cents including tax for both

Shoppers Drug Mart:
Dove Body Wash $1.27 each - $1 coupon x 2 = .67 cents including tax for both
Advil Nightime $4.99 each - $4 coupon x 2 = 2.48 including tax for both plus 3500 SDM points

Walmart
Irish Spring Bar Soap (6 bars) .97 - $1 coupon x 2 = .04 cents including tax for both

I am limiting all bargains to what I think we can use by Spring. There is no use getting items if we have to pay to ship them. Canadian Thanksgiving is just around the corner and the stores started putting young Turkey on for .99 cents per pound this weekend. I purchased one and will have to find out how many bodies I am feeding before buying another.

This week I thought I had another virus (darn windows based products) but fortunately my antivirus managed to remove the trojan just as I was speaking to the McAfee people. For $89 USD they will get the virus off your computer without deleting all your programs and saved files. If they can't fix it they refund your money. In this case just after I paid and the technician took over my computer we had a screen flash showing the virus had been removed therefore my money was refunded.

I really hate people who spend time thinking up ways to corrupt others computers. Hubby just got an ipad for work, which is extremely user friendly. Did you know apple products rarely get viruses? There really is no buying programs to protect them, the makers of apple have made it so that hackers and viruses are unable to penetrate them. When my HP laptop croaks I will definitely get an apple product as I am tired of spending $90 per year for antivirus programs and another $90 when the viruses get around them to fix my computer.

A surefire sign of winter on its way - the Canadian geese are gathering on the ponds in our back yard in preparation for their long flights South for the winter.

The first frost also brought unusual mist at 6 am.

Deals of the Week

Free Purex (at Walmart) this week
Cost $2 - $2 coupon = .10 cents tax only = 20 loads of laundry
Unfortunately this coupon is hard to come by as came with a sample of Purex so I only had one.

Free Kashi (at Walmart) this week
Cost $2 - $2 Coupon = 0 cost (no tax as food item)
Again, I only had one coupon

Cheap Tylenol Night 10 pack
Walmart $4.77 - $4 coupon = $1.01 including tax
Not a product I use, am going to try it out first. I still have 3 of these coupons if it turns into a product I like.

And finally, here is an introduction to the cheapskate pet, our furry creature Chewy.

Hamster Cage purchased used $20
(I first bought a $5 hamster cage but he got a little big around the middle so we upsized the cage)
Average cost per week for fuzz and bedding $3
Average cost per week for food .50

He is more than happy to eat up veggie and fruit leftovers.

One thing I didn't buy this week but that was on shockingly low as a loss leader at Walmart was .25 for 200 sheets of Hilroy lined binder paper. I have never seen the price so low. Obviously a ploy to attract parents shopping for back to school. It seems to have worked as Walmart was packed with frazzled parents holding school lists.

If we would not have been planning an inter-Provincial move this year I likely would have stocked up.

Deals of the Week

Total Cost 27 cents!
3 x Campbells Mushroom soup @ .59 minus .50 coupons each
Triscuit Free Product Coupon
Asana Free Product Coupon

Family Deals & Freebies, and Finally a Tomato!

Well, this week I ended up with a great deal on laundry detergent. I found a Purex sale for $3.99 and had a $3 off coupon (only one) so got one bottle for .99 cents. Later the same day my 17 year old stepson called advising the new job he had just started at a local drug store was offering $1 laundry detergent to staff members only due to an overstock. Details were sketchy but as he knows what a bargain hunter I am he thought of me first. Score! When he arrived carrying a case of 6 bottles of Gain for $6 I was so happy! At best I was hoping for no name brand. I sure hope he keeps me in mind for future deals. This amount of detergent should hold us over until our Spring move.

This year I only bought two garden plants - one tomato and one pepper. Grand total $5

This week my first tomato ripened on the vine. Hubby and I shared it with dinner and it was scrumpious. There are at least 3 more tomatoes hatching (ok so I am not a gardener) and one small pepper on the vine. There must be some kind of internal clock that as soon as you turn middle aged you have a need to garden (kind of like the having kids clock but much cheaper).

I also have at least one pea sprouting although there may be a fight over who gets to eat it: the gardener (me), hubby (who loves peas) or Chewy the hamster (our fresh pea loving fuzz ball).

Freebies this week include travel size Sensodyne and Dove conditioner.

And finally, a nice sunset shot view off the back balcony of our house.

Did I mention I have already exceeded our grocery budget this month? Darn yummy barbequed meat and cherries.

Groovy deals this week

This week has been bitterly cold in Alberta averaging minus 25-30 degrees Celsius all week, therefore my shopping has been limited to 1 store per 5 minute after work dash.

How do I find the deals? I comb the fliers on Thursday evenings and make a list of all the deals specific to stores. I only actually buy the deals that are most needed. My stockpile never usually exceeds 6 of any one item and watch carefully about good by/sell by dates.

This weeks best bargains:
Walmart
Secret deodorant (my usual brand) on sale this week for
$2.57 x 6 - $14 (2 x $7 WUB3 coupons)=
Total after taxes (GST) $2.19 for six!!
















Rexall Drugstore
Fa Yogurt honey bodywash (Regular 5.99) on sale $1.16 x 5
Febreze noticable refills (Regular 4.99) on sale 2.96 x 2 - $2 WUB2 coupon
Rexall brand barbeque chips (Regular .99) on sale .50
Rexall branch 250 count tablet vitamin C chews (regular $15.99) on sale 1.66
Rexall muscle & back relief 40 count (Regular 16.99) on sale 9.99

Total after taxes and coupons $23.07

Not much in the way of food deals this week - mostly non-food items but my freezer and pantry are full so no worries, I will continue to only buy at the absolute lowest cost.

Good news this week, one of my favorite U.S.A. stores is coming to Canada to take over my least favorite Canadian retailer - Zellers! I actually made a commitment to myself this year that I would not spend one dollar in Zellers (due to poor customer service, no recognition of the scanning code of practice, and dirty stores), even if the item was free - that is how much I hate Zellers. On the other hand, I was waiting for Target to start cross border online shipping, but this is even better! We will have to wait until 2012 but all the Zellers stores will be closed, remodeled and reopened under the Target brand (think upscale Walmart if you are not familiar with shopping there). Yay!