Target run

I usually go to Target once a week, sometimes twice a week. I do not like to go to Target with my kids because they like the Toys department too much and I don't like to get side-tracked. But I had the kids with me today, so I had to make adjustments as to what to do when we go inside Target.

Today, I had several goals in mind:
1. Get price adjustment to Circo boys socks. 10 pairs for $6.49 last week and this week, it's on sale for $5;
2. Buy some $0.20 stationary supplies that are advertised in the Target flyer;
3. Buy the Thermos Funtainer for $12.

When I got to the store, none of the $0.20 stationary items were out. They were either sold out or the store just didn't display them prominently. There were many children's shoes being clearanced at 75% off. Since the kids were with me, we had to go to the Toys Department. I found some Transformers at 75% off. These were cameras that transform into robots [Transformers Real Gear Robots Spy Shot 6]. I saw these last Friday at 30% off. They still had the cell phone and video game ones on display then, but today, only the Spy Shot 6 ones are left, priced at $2.04 each. I bought all 3. One for my son and two are for school raffles.

Not a bad Target run.

Nintendo DS Games

I finally found some time to do serious shopping today. My goal was to look for some inexpensive Nintendo DS games. I went to Target first to look at their toys markdowns. Currently, they are still at 30% off. Hardly worth the effort to buy anything unless you have to buy for a birthday child the next day and you know that toy is the one the birthday child wants. Once in a while, I would see markdown or clearanced Nintendo DS games at Target's clearanced racks, but not today. Instead, I found a very cute birthday candle/candle holder (I think it sings) birthday gift card and I put some money on it. Target's gift cards are so unique. My son likes to collect them.

My next stop is Toys R Us. I printed out a couple of $5 off $25 coupons off the internet. As these coupons are good for video games, I went straight to the games section of the store. Before I went to the store, I checked www.toysrus.com first to see which Nintendo DS games are on clearance. There were 3 games sold at $9.98:

1. Geometry Wars: Galaxies for Nintendo DS by Sierra
2. El Tigre for Nintendo DS by THQ
3. Arctic Tale for Nintendo DS

I went to Toys R Us armed with this information and began searching for these 3 games. I managed to find El Tigre quickly and it was marked regular price of $29.99 and there were many games left. I got 3 and went to the cashier for a price check. It was shocking to the lady cashier and myself to see $7.98 come up as its price.

I continued my search for the other 2 games, but came up with nothing. Then I decided to scan other games. I actually found a Power Play Pool game (marked $19.99) for $7.98 as well. I didn't have time to scan every single game on the rack, so I decided to buy 2 El Tigre and 2 Power Play Pool games. With the $5 coupon deduction, the 4 games came down to $6.73 each. I have no idea how fun these games are, but at $6.73 each, they are good gifts as far as Nintendo DS games go.

Best buy of the week!

It's that time of the year again--shopping for school supplies. I have been browsing the office supplies stores' on-line flyers, looking for bargains.

I missed Staple's one-cent sale last week. This week's deal of the week belongs to Office Depot. The Office Depot has 4 items listed in its weekly flyer priced at 1 cent each. Most items had a limit of 5, except the paper folders which had a limit of 20. Here are what I got for 16 cents total (including tax):

1. 5 bags of Office Depot Value™ Red Eraser Caps 12-count;
2. 5 Office Depot® Brand Semicircular 6" Protractors;
3. 5 Office Depot® Brand Acrylic Rulers (in gray and pink only)

I didn't get the paper folders because I didn't have time to pick them out.

Can't wait until the next 1-cent sale!

Best deal of 2008!

I can safely say that this was my best shopping find for 2008!!! A pair of "cnu" rubber clogs for $1 at Claire's. I have been looking to buy a new pair for my daughter who had outgrown her size 12/13 "cnu" rubber clogs. I haven't been able to bring myself to pay $29.99 for a pair of Crocs for my kids yet, but I do like these plastic shoes, so I stick with the imitations.

I had discovered the "cnu" brand of rubber clogs (you can see the logo at the back of the heel) at Winner's, a Canadian TJ Maxx, last year in Vancouver. At the time, I bought them for $9.99/pair and I thought I got a great deal. My kids wore these on our Alaskan cruise and then everywhere they went afterwards, except to school and on raining days.

These "cnu" rubber clogs lasted a whole year. I've been looking to replace them until I came across the same "cnu" brand at Claire's. Claire's is an accessories store frequented by tweens and young girls. http://claires.com/index.asp.

This Claire's had 2 rack full of $10 for 10 items sale. On one of the racks were these "cnu" rubber clogs. I had to double check with the sales clerk to verify that these "cnu" clogs were indeed $1 per pair. Needless to say, I bought a pair for every child in my family (and extended families). Now, my son wears an army-green pair and my daughter wears a purple version of the pink clogs shown above.

Claire's sells these croc-imitations for $8.50 regular price and they do get marked down to $4.25 eventually. The $1/pair price was a special markdown.

Except for the Croc insignia at the strap juncture, the cnu rubber clogs look identical to the basic Crocs.

Crocs and other similar plastic sandals are made from a material called polyethylene (PE) resin. At this point, it probably makes more sense (and more profitable) to buy shares of stocks of companies that makes PE resin than to buy Crocs.

Best buy of the day!

I did my customary second day shopping at Target--the day after Target clears out all its Halloween merchandise at 90% off. I couldn't get to Target before 10:30 am yesterday so I asked a couple of friends to go there early and pick up some Halloween stuff for me. But unless one shows up promptly at 8am, most of the goodies would have been picked over by other Target "Queens". But that happened yesterday. I will talked about what happened today.

My son loved the Shrek costume I bought him yesterday at Target for $1.99. He wore it until dinner time. I was then kicking myself for not buying the Evil Knight costume because he would have enjoyed the mask, even if the costume was missing the sword and the shin guards. So I went back to Target today and tried to find that costume. The Halloween stuff at the Del Amo Target is pretty much picked over. The only thing left were bags of candy corns. I did find that Evil Knight costume, but it's now missing pants. So I took it to one of the cashiers and asked if she can give me a better price. She looked at it and said, how about $1.99 instead of $2.99 (regular price $29.99). I said OK immediately. The missing pants are black, so my son can basically wear any black pants and it would work. So I left Target a very happy woman.

I thought of hitting another Target in Manhattan Beach, but my car was low on gas, so I drove across the street and went to Toys R Us instead. I needed to get a copy of their Big Book of Toys. KOST 103.5 is doing a promotion where the winner of their call-in promotion can win all the toys on one page of the Big Book of Toys. Mark and Kim were talking about a specific page where there were over $1000 worth of toys. I had to see what was on that page. Not that I would have any chance of winning a radio call-in promotion, but I was curious.

Anyways, I went into Toys R Us intended to look at the board games they were advertising, but I couldn't find any of the rebate forms. So I started browsing the store. The first thing I saw was their Halloween rack. It said 70% off. I didn't see any costumes that appealed to me. But there were 15 Power Ranger Overdrive Treat Bags just hanging there. It was marked $0.10 each (regular price $0.79). I grabbed all of it since my son's birthday party is coming up. Whatever we don't use for the party, I can use it as a gift bag.

I went through the store and didn't see anything appealing except some great backpacks for $10 each. Not a bad deal, but I don't need any backpacks. At $2.50 each, I would have bought a lot.

So I ended my shopping at Toys R Us with $1.50 worth of treat bags. Then at the checkout, the lady said, "they are giving you more discount!" Surprised! My total came to $0.49 with tax. I think these treat bags were $0.03 each. So these treat bags were my best buy of the day.

What to cook for dinner?

With my kids' busy schedules, it seemed necessary that I find something easy to make and/or ready-to-serve, as well as good tasting. So I searched Costco, Sam's Club, Trader Joe's for more non-traditional grocery fares. What I found are food items that are too spicy to serve to kids at a moment's notice.

My kids likes food that are less "traditional" kids meals. They don't like Mac and Cheese and chicken nuggets, so I try to find food items that they would find appealing as well as tasty for adults too.

I was excited to find at Costco a box of Chicken Portobello (32 oz/2 lbs) with 4 servings of Boneless skinless chicken breasts with hand-stuffed mushrooms and smoked gouda cheese. It was easy to bake from frozen and all I have to do is the side dishes (noodles or rice) and some vegetables.

Oven Bake: from frozen: Preheat oven to 375F. Remove stuffed chicken breast from plastic package and place on baking sheet. Bake uncovered for 45-50 minutes.

But this dish turned out to be a failure because it was spicy in an unpleasant way, even for adults. No where on the package said it was spicy. It did mention that it was "Enhanced with up to 15% of a seasoned solution." My kids struggled with eating it by picking at the chicken breast part, but it was not tasty.

At $10.29 a box, it's not a good deal if the kids won't eat it. I would give it a thumbs down. We are better off with the $4.99 pre-roasted roast chicken from Costco.

While at Sam's Club the other day, I found Bacon Wrapped Chicken (Rotisserie Breast Appetizers) $9.08 for 35-38 handmade pieces (1.5 lbs total weight). It's grill ready (5-7 minutes per side), but I baked them in the oven. Using conventional oven, I baked them at 425F for 30 minutes. These are delicious bites, but again, the chicken bites are spicy. So my kids didn't like them. These bacon wrapped chicken appetizers are great with Trader Joe's fettuccine alfredo. These $3.29 (1 lb) fettuccine alfredo is ready in 7 minutes. It's very tasty and quick to make. The bag says it serves 3, but I would say it's enough for 2 adults. I usually add 4-6 oz more of cooked fettuccine to this batch because the bag contains lots of sauce. By adding extra pasta, I was able to serve 4.

The combination of the fettuccine alfredo and the bacon wrapped chicken makes it a great adult meal. The adults enjoyed the meal with a bottle of Pinot Noir. Unfortunately, I would have to rule it out as a possible dinner option at my household because my kids won't eat spicy food.

Getting Ready for School: Buying Lunch Supplies

Thanks to Shannon at http://bentolunch.blogspot.com/, I went to the Dollar Tree and scooped up some Hello Kitty Lunch boxes (bento boxes) for $1 each. I did check to see if these lunch boxes were made in China. They were made in Indonesia, so I felt OK buying them. I would think twice about buying lunch boxes made in China because of the recent product recalls. The Dollar Tree I went to didn't have any more pink lunch boxes, they only have the blue and green ones left. So I bought 2 each. I found these lunch boxes in the Back-to-School section at the Dollar Tree near the front of the store. I figure if my son doesn't like Hello Kitty, I can always find some Power Ranger or Spiderman stickers to put over the Hello Kitty.

There is another Dollar Store I can go to in the next few days. If I'm lucky, I'll find some pink Hello Kitty lunch boxes.

These lunch boxes are 2-tier lunch boxes, the bottom lid sometimes sticks to the top tier box when I tried to separate the 2 tiers, but I don't plan to put any liquidy food items in any of these boxes. The 2-tiers fit nicely on the top compartment of the lunch bags that I bought at the Disney Store last year for $2.50 each. My son has a Power Ranger one, a Dash one (from the Incredibles) and a Pirates of Caribbean one. He is pretty much set, in terms of lunch bags, for the next 5 years.

My next stop was Sam's Club. I usually go with 2 other friends so we can split the bulk snacks that we buy into 3 portions. But both friends were on vacation and I needed to buy some snacks so the kids will have something to take to school on Tuesday. There weren't any bargains at Sam's Club. Just reasonably priced items. If I had time, I would go through my coupons and shop accordingly.

NOT MUCH OF A BARGAIN--

Funyons (50 ct) $10.18 [note: I know Costco doesn't have these.]
Kellogg On the Go variety packs (32 ct) $9.68
Sanitizer wipes (100 ct) $9.88
Quaker rice cake snacks (20 ct) $6.76
Sesame Street (Apple & Eve) Juice Boxes (40ct/4.23oz) $7.83

All the Halloween stuff are out at all the stores I went to today--Dollar Tree, Target, and Sam's Club. I saw lots of toy gifts (for Christmas) and Halloween candies galore at Sam's Club. I actually went to Kmart to find some Ant Killing Gel, but they didn't have it in stock. So I was in and out of there within 5 minutes. I don't like to shop at Kmart--things are badly organized and merchandises are not streamlined. It's not a comfortable shopping experience. I would put up with it if their prices are competitive with other stores, but that's not the case.