Father's Day Deals At Ebates

 

There are some great deals for Father's Day through ebates!

Land's End - 30% off all Men's plus 6% cash back

Omaha Steaks - up to 62% off plus 12 free steaks AND 7% cash back

Eddie Bauer - 20% off men's apparel (Code: DAD20) plus 6% cash back

Macy's - 20% off, free shipping AND 5% cash back

There are lots of other stores and deals available at ebates. 

Shop For Father's Day With Ebates!

Father’s Day will be here before you know it! This would be a great weekend to do some online shopping for the men in your life. And, if you shop online through ebates, you can get cash back! I love shopping at my favorite stores through ebates. It doesn’t cost me anything extra, and once in a while I get a check in the mail.

Check out some of the latest cash back offers from the stores below, then click on the ebates graphic here and sign up! Find your store on the ebates page and then shop as usual. There are tons of stores beyond the ones listed here! When you make a purchase, you’ll soon see a little bit of money has accumulated in your ebates account.



Home Depot –       5% Cash back
Brookstone –         7% Cash back
JC Penney -           6% Cash back
Lands End –          6% Cash back
Omaha Steaks –    7% Cash back
Eddie Bauer –        6% Cash back
Golf Outlet USA –  6% Cash back
Shoebuy –             10% Cash back
Borders –               6% Cash back
Snapfish –              8% Cash back

Kids Bowl Free All Summer!

I just got an email with coupons from our local Brunswick Bowling entitling my daughter to FREE bowling all summer - one free game every day! If you have a Brunswick Bowling or AMF bowling near you, sign up online for a free pass for your child. In fact, many other bowling centers are offering a Kids Bowl Free pass for the summer. Check this website for participating lanes, and check with your local bowling lanes to find out if they are participating.

$10 Coupon for Christmas Tree Shops

The Christmas Tree Shop is new in my town, and despite its name, it turns out to carry much more than Christmas items. It strikes me as a larger version of a dollar store with more interesting inventory. I've found some good deals there over the past few weeks, including kids birthday presents, planters, dog treats, candles, and some great little jars for keeping my home-grown dried herbs. You never know what you'll find there. I checked out their website out of curiosity and discovered that you can get a coupon for for $10 off if you spend $50 by signing up for their email list. If you have one of these stores nearby, it's worth it! Sign up here.

Saving Money By Growing Peppers

Red bell pepper...eventually!

The hubby and I enjoy peppers, but we don't enjoy their price tag. So, this year, we're growing our own! We've got so many, I've been threatening to answer the phone, "Lowe Pepper Farm, how may I direct our call?" Since we'll essentially end up with organic peppers, we're saving lots of money over what organic would cost at the grocery store. Besides the financial benefits, there are educational ones. Growing things teaches my munchkin that food just doesn't appear magically at the grocery store. If all of that isn't convincing enough, it's fun, too!

We have bell peppers in a variety of colors, jalepenos, and some hot banana peppers. Either they're really easy to grow, or we've been lucky so far. No pests or problems.

We'll have jalepenos soon!

Wanna grow some peppers, too? If you don't have garden space, you can plant them in containers. They'll happily grow on a sunny patio. Peppers prefer full sun, but mine seem to be tolerating partial shade pretty well. If you don't have good soil, get a bag of garden soil to mix in when you plant. I planted baby plants, but peppers are also easy to grow from seed. At this late point in the season, though, you're better off starting with plants. I fertilized with a slow-release pellet style fertilizer when I planted them. I've read that you shouldn't fertilize after they begin to blossom, so keep that in mind. Once the peppers appear and begin to get heavier, you may need to use a wire cage or stake them to help provide some support. If your peppers don't look good, visit this page for suggestions on what to do for just about every imaginable pepper problem.

Coupon Organization

My piano students have had their recital, so summer has begun for me even though the munchkin still has another week of school. This means I have time to reorganize my coupons! I've learned how to save significant money by using coupons when staple items are on sale and then buying multiples to stockpile until we need them. Hopefully, my new system of coupon organization will help me keep it going!

My old system was an accordion file, but in order to see the coupons, I had to pull everything from one category out and flip through each coupon. This system is much better. I'm saving more coupons but clipping fewer of them, and the ones I do clip, I can see at a glance. Now that the munchkin is old enough to help, I can put her to work clipping and culling the expired ones.

So here's the system. I bought a zippered binder, and I put a dedicated pair of scissors and a Sharpie in the front pocket so I don't have to search for them. When I get the inserts in the Sunday paper, I write the date on the front and slip it into a sheet protector. Many sites like Coupon Mom match up these coupons with store sales each week, and they reference the coupon by the date of the insert. By organizing them this way, I just pull out the insert I need and find the coupon rather than clipping them all.

I organize other coupons in baseball card pocket sheets. It took me a while to find these in the store! I thought they'd be with the other sheet protectors, but they weren't. At Target, I found them near the registers with the collectible Pokeman and other similar cards. I have dividers that create categories for coupons that are specific to certain stores as well as all of my grocery categories. Now I can go quickly to the section I need and see all of the discounts and the expiration dates at a glance.

Is it worth all of this effort? Absolutely! I saved $50 last week on groceries using store sales and coupons. It took me about an hour to plan my trip, but I'm out of practice. I'll get faster at it! Anyway, $50 / hour is nothing to sneeze at.