New Year's Eve Deals

A few good deals that end very soon!! (I'm talking like tonight...)

Oriental Trading has an awesome clearance sale on their Christmas crafts, decorations, etc. It's all like 70% off of their already CHEAP prices. I got some great crafts for Jake's Christmas party next year!! (I know, I know - I'm planning that far ahead)

Personalization Mall has a sale on ornaments (which you personalize - so you can simply change the year to 2010 for gifts for next year). Got Jake a First Christmas ornament, and a few gifts for next Christmas. Ends today though!

Finally, thanks to Freebies4Mom for the awesome lead - the first 10,000 people to sign up for www.mypunchbowl.com before the end of the year get upgraded to a Premium membership. I just did it - about 5 minutes ago and was upgraded ($29.95 value). It's pretty cool - party planning, e-vites, etc.

Happy New Year everyone!! We are heading over to Tampa today - for a fun New Year's celebration with my Mom and Brother!! :)

Christmas Update

So our first Christmas was a great success!! We went to Tallahassee to visit my Dad, Deb, and the kids. Jake did well on his car ride, sleeping the whole way (although it didn't make bed time very easy). It was a lot of fun. Jacob enjoyed playing with his aunts and uncles - and he LOVED the constant attention!! He loved looking at the Christmas tree too - which makes me feel bad that we didn't put one up (just too hectic this year...) Christmas Eve we spent with the family and Nana and Papa - which is always a lot of fun... and we eat stone crab claws for hours!! YUMMY!! Christmas morning was a bit overwhelming for Jacob. He enjoyed opening about 3 presents and then he had enough. He got fussy everytime someone put a wrapped present in front of him, but unwrap it for him and he loved looking/playing with the toys! All in all, it was a great holiday!

I had a lot of success with my day after Christmas shopping!! Kohls had 70% off most of their holiday items and Walmart had the usual 50% off. Target was a bit disappointing this year with only 30% off of their gift sets but the wrapping paper, etc was still 50% off. I got lots of presents for next year and a ton of wrapping paper, ribbon, etc. I also got Jacob the most adorable stocking (since we didn't get him one this year... I know, I should be ashamed!). Best of all, I got some placemats with matching napkins etc for only $4.50 for a set of four!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas! Looking forward to a great New Year!!

On the way to Tallahassee to visit the family. Southern Living and Coastal Living on sale for $5 at amazon.com. Not sure for how long, but great deal!

Merry Christmas from the Lane Family!! Thanks for reading my blog!! Busy week ahead of us with Christmas right around the corner. We've (I should say I've) been a big scrooge this year. We don't have a Christmas tree up, mimimal lights on the house, etc. But it's just been so crazy around here. Usually I make Christmas cookies, but haven't even had time this year. Just finished the last of the Christmas shopping today!! HOORAY! Finishing up the wrapping and then hopefully I can enjoy the rest of the holiday!! My favorite shopping day of the year is coming up soon though!! I always go out on the day after Christmas and buy everything half off!! I get everything from bath gift sets - which I use for presents throughout the year, to decorations and holiday candy/food sets (which I enjoy now...). It's crazy though, last year, I couldn't get a cart at Walmart. I'm so excited, I'll make sure to let you all know how my trip goes!! If you like to stock up though - the day after Christmas is the time to do it!!

Nice Deal For Christmas

Amazon.com is having a great sale - only available through Saturday - for O, The Oprah Magazine. Only $5 for a year subscription!! That's only $0.42/issue and an 89% discount!! Great Christmas present 0r subscription for yourself! Thanks to one of my favorite bloggers Freebies 4 Mom for posting!!

On another note, Jake is feeling MUCH better. For those of you who didn't know, he came down with RSV last week... super scary. He was so congested and just plain miserable. We had to give him treatments with the nebulizer and suction out his nose - which as you can imagine, he just loved! But he's back to normal now - just a little wheezy. Now he's teething, which seems to be quite uncomfortable as well! But he started cereal last Friday and he really enjoys it!!

Off to do some online Christmas shopping... until next time :)

A Child's Resilience

It's absolutely amazing how quickly a baby can recover. The last few days I've been dealing with a sick little munchkin! On Friday, the Dr. said Jacob had RSV and gave us a perscription for a nebulizer. Poor little guy was all wheezy but his demeanor was absolutely delightful... that is until yesterday. All day he was completely miserable. He didn't want to do anything but whine... And last night was awful. He woke up at 1 am screaming at the top of his lungs. Even when we held him he would just suddenly start screaming. Talk about freaky!! Luckily, after an albuterol treatment and some time in his swing, he calmed back down. And guess what, he was completely back to normal today! So wierd. Check out the picture Jimmy sent me of him this afternoon. I love my little guy so much!!

I forgot a few...

I forgot a few baby clubs in my last post. See below for a few more:

• Pampers- they'll send you a free diaper and put you on the mailing list for great coupons.


• Luvs - they occassionally send coupons and samples.


• Huggies - sign up and get a free sample and make sure to sign up for the Huggies network for more coupons in the mail.

In other news, I tried feeding Jacob formula from a spoon - just to see how he would do. He did so well he was slurping the milk off the spoon!! So cute! Check out one of his pics from the maternity photographer - what a babe!

As the long weekend comes to an end...

Getting ready for a new work week! Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday - we sure did! Now I'm getting everything ready for next week - preparing bottles for pumping, laying out Jakes clothes for the week, making lunches, etc.

Tomorrow is cyber-monday! Make sure to check out your favorite online stores for any deals. I know Sears, Target, JC Penny's are having big sales. As is Amazon - make sure to check out their CyberMonday specials. They've been having great deals all week long - yesterday I got 3 DVDs for Jimmy at 70% off. You can also sign up for a one month trial of Amazon Prime and receive free two day shipping on anything you spend (no minimum purchase). I just signed up yesterday and it is AWESOME!! Just make sure to "Manage Your Prime Membership" and turn off the automatic upgrade. Thanks to Thrifty Florida Mama for the heads up!!

As promised, here are some of the baby clubs that I'm signed up for. I've actually signed up for several others (Winn-Dixie and Sav-a-lot) but these are the only ones I've actually received anything from. Sign up and save!

• Enfamil Family Beginnings - They send samples, formula checks, coupons, and more!
• Similac Strong Moms - They send a sample of their Advance and their Soy formula, formula checks, and lots of cute tips and milestone info as the months progress!
• Publix Baby Club - They send a bunch of great coupons (that can be stacked with manufacterer's coupons), an informational book, and quarterly newsletters with coupons. But sign up early - it takes months to get your first mailing.
• Beechnut - Sign up for their e-newsletter for coupons in your email. Plus, I just signed up for the parent pack (sign up by going to contact us). I haven't received it yet, but it should have some great coupons!
• Earth's Best - Get coupons in their monthly newsletter, and you can print several of their coupons.
• Gerber/Nestle - They send an array of awesome coupons! They send based on the stage of your baby - right now they've been sending coupons for bottles, pacifiers, and nursing pads, then they move up to baby food, etc. I haven't gotten any in a while, but they really are great coupons!

Well off to another week!

Babies, Babies, Babies...

This post is in honor of Baby Mia who was born yesterday (Thanksgiving) at 10p.m. She is 8 lbs, 15 oz, 22 inches, a full head of hair and as beautiful as it gets! Congrats to Elizabeth & Manny!! It seems everyone is having babies right now - I can think of 10 friends that are expecting!! So here are a few things that I wished I would've known about before I had baby Jake. :)

1. Stocking up on diapers - Most people who know me saw the insane amount of diapers that I stocked up on. I would wait till diapers were on sale and then use coupons. I paid on average $7-$8 per jumbo pack - and I had a TON of them. I bought in every size and brand (in case of allergies, etc), but only got one or two of the newborns in case I had a big baby. Here's a GREAT resource if you want to buy diapers ahead - http://www.babycheapskate.com/ (do a search for the article "using growth charts to predict diaper needs")

2. Baby Clothes - I had them all sorted in the closet from newborn, 0-3 mos, 3-6 mos, etc. What I didn't realize is that some brands are smaller than others. So when I moved Jake up to the 3-6 mos clothes several of them were WAY too small. Now I hold the clothes up to each other and sort them in order of actual size rather than what their labels claim.

3. Sign up for the baby programs EARLY! I'll try to post a list of the various baby programs you can sign up for by end of the weekend, just a few to mention www.gerber.com/register, https://similac.com/signup-similac, and www.publix.com/babyclub. Sign up as early as you can for these clubs. For some it takes a while to get the coupons. The Publix Baby Club coupons didn't get to me until Jake was already 3 mos old - and I signed up when I was like 7 mos preggo! The others, like Similac and Gerber/Nestle will send you coupons while you are pregnant too - that you can use when you see great deals (some times you can get the ready made formula for next-to-nothing when you use those coupons) then you can have a few kinds on hand to try out on baby when he/she's born.



Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!! Ours was great! We had my cousins, mom & bro visiting as well as Stephen and Jimmy's mom & her husband. It was lots of fun! Jimmy deep fried the turkey - and caught it on fire - but it turned out delic anyways!!

Also, just an update on my Black Friday shopping experience. It ended about as quickly as it began! I couldn't go to any of the really good sales (Walmart/Target/etc) because Jimmy had to be at work from 5 am - noon, which is when most of them occurred. So instead I decided to try out the ToysRUs/BabiesRUs experience - as they had a few items I was interested in. I was SOOO naive in the whole ordeal. They opened at midnight, so at 12:15 I pull into the parking lot. The entire shopping center was packed with cars. So I'm looking around - no TJ Maxx is closed, no HH Gregg is closed, all the other stores looked closed. But then I realize there is a HUGE line outside of Ross. So I think to myself, "WOW Ross must have some great deals tomorrow..." NO actually the line for ToysRUS was just that long. It went about 10 stores down... They were at max capacity and would only let in as many people as had just left. So after about 30 minutes, I decided that no deal was worth that wait... Next time, if there is a deal I REALLY want, I'll be prepared (chair, coffee, etc). On a side note though, I went back at 4 pm today and still got all the deals I wanted (even the ones that ended at 1 pm rang up as the discounted prices). So I still feel like it was a success - and a definite eye opener!!

Fool Me Once Shame on You...

Today I picked up Jacob's Christmas pictures from Sears and - while they are super cute - it just reminds me that "they got me." It's not often that I get ripped off, but about two weeks ago, I sure did... I used one of those portrait coupons (36 pics for $4.99) at Sears, but didn't read the fine print. If I wanted any other sheets - other than the package - they would be $20 each! And of course, two of the pictures were to die for. I asked if I could order them later online and, of course, was told they'd still be $20 plus an additional $10 reorder fee and S&H. So I sucked it up and paid the extra $20 for one sheet.

Lesson: When I got home, out of curiousity I went to see if I could order online. And sure enough, they were the standard $9.99 per sheet - PLUS only S&H. And I could order any of the session prints. AND when I picked up my pics today, they had printed extra of the two images that I ordered to try to upsell me. Except they were 2 sheets for $10! And one of the sheets was an enhanced version (which costs more). So for a total of $30, I got three of the other pose - so in the end it worked out! Still bitter though. (BTW, when I went to JC Penny, they didn't try to trick me... )

Also, yesterday I downloaded Paint.net - it's similar to Photoshop (I'm sure with fewer bells & whistles) but FREE! And it works really great and you can't beat the price. To think, I was going to buy Photoshop Elements!

Jake's Meltdown

So last night we were so excited to go to Halifax Uncorked - a food & wine festival. There were 12 different restaurants from around Daytona offering samplings. BUT we made it in the door for all of 20 seconds before Jake had a complete meltdown. It was just too much - too many people, too loud, not to mention the Jazz music playing in the background. He was screaming in a high pitch voice that I've only really heard when he got his shots. We tried to calm him down but he wanted no part of it. So, we turned around and went back home. But even when we got back home, he continued screaming for about 2 hours before finally calming back down. I felt so bad! I had no idea it would be so traumatizing for him.

We are going to try to go back today - but don't worry Jake - you'll be going to a babysitter!

Black Friday

While I'm not usually a big Black Friday shopper, I am going to give it a shot this year. I don't know how accurate it is but http://bfads.net/ has all the ads ahead of time. Some good stuff! I tend to steer clear of the big ticket items - as I'm not willing to fight for them.I'm super excited about the Michaels, Walmart and ToysRUs ads in particular!! Just not sure just how early I'm going to get up...

Oh and Tradewinds Island Resorts is also doing a special for $25 room nights starting at 6 am if you follow them on twitter. I have NO idea how long they'll be offering it or what restrictions - but you better believe I'm going to try to get my hands on a CHEAP vaca! Follow them @TWResorts!

My Name is Thrifty

In college, my best friends and I (the "fab 5") gave each other nicknames. It's no real surprise that mine was "Thrifty." Back then, it was because I was known for saving a handful of popcorn to eat the next day or saving one slice of tomato.

But it actually goes back MUCH further. Bargain-shopping runs in my blood. Its a running joke among family and friends that my mother needs to start Coupon-aholics anonymous. She had a garbage bag full of non-expiration date coupons alone! She's taught me how to save money and take advantage of great deals.

And if there is one thing I love it is getting a great bargain. There is no better feeling than knowing you bought something as cheap as possible - especially now when I have a baby and my husband lost his well-paying job. But not only do I like getting bargains - I like sharing them! So that's what I plan to do with my blog - share some of the deals and bargains that I find (and throw in a few fun stories about my life).