I posted the other day about Staples free 20pk of Duracell but thought it deserved another look.

I’ve worked out a way for you to get your free (after rebate) batteries.  Don’t forget that your rebate will be in the form of a Staples Rewards Check that can be used only at your Staples store.  But to be honest we all need paper and ink to print coupons.

Anyways here’s my super easy scenario.  First go here and sign up for ShopatHome and search for Staples through them.  This will give you a 3% rebate (it’s not much but every little bit helps) order your Duracell Batteries make sure that it says special buy on the screen and pay $25.98 plus tax.  Select ship to store and pick them up at your local Staples at your convenience.  The 3% will help cover the tax and remember you can do this twice a week through Christmas. 

Oh and when you go to pick up your batteries make sure you take your rewards card and any extra used ink cartridges you may have laying around since they are worth $3 each.

If you don’t have a Staples Rewards Card already sign up for one here.

Here's a list of some Free Christmas Song downloads that I've come across, I hope these help you get into the holiday spirit.

God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen

Hark, the Herald Angels Sing [feat. Aygun Beyler and Mahsa Vahdat]

O'Carolan's/Welcome Christmas

Why Can't It Be Christmastime All Year

Christmas With A Monkey

It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

Good King Wenceslas

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing (Remastered 1997)

Deck the Halls

O Come, All Ye Faithful (Digitally Mastered May 1990)

Panis Angelicus

Silent Night, Holy Night

Pat A Pan

Christmas Tree

I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day

Silent Night

That'll Be Christmas

What Child Is This?

Why Can't It Be Christmastime All Year

Make sure you click the preview button beforehand as there are some songs that may not be for everyone.

If you didn't find enough there to get you in the Christmas mood check out these 2 sites for some more music.

Christmas Music #1
Christmas Music #2

Since I had no energy yesterday for Freebie Friday it’s a day late but since there are lots of freebies out there I have to share.

Always Infinity Sample

Pampers Extra Protection Sample

Prilosec OTC Sample

Huggies Little Movers Sample

Garnier Nutritioniste Sample

Aveeno Nourish Sample

Dove HairCare Sample

Dove Conditioner Sample

Head & Shoulders Sample

Tropical Breeze Fragrance Sample

Burt's Bees Acne Solutions Sample

All American Stetson Fragrance Sample

L'Oreal EverPure Sample

National Law Enforcement Ornament (the ornament is free but they do accept donations)

Golden Tea Samples

Free Christmas USB Flash Drive

I hope you enjoy all the great freebies today.  I’ll be posting some free Christmas music downloads in a little bit so get your MP3 players ready and check back later.

At Michael’s on Dec. 5 from 10am to 1pm they will be holding a Santa’s Workshop Event with 3 Free Make and Take’s for the kids.  This would be a great time to have your kids make something for a loved one.  The make and takes are a Christmas Card, a Stocking, and a Trinket Box.  You can view all the info here. 

And while you are out leave a little earlier and stop at Home Depot so your kids can make a wagon.  The building clinics are from 9am-Noon and my son just loves them.  You can get that info here.

Our plan of attack is to leave earlyish and get to Home Depot just before 9am and then head straight over to Michaels.  Maybe I’ll even be able to find some coupons and make a good day of it.

If you’ve got your black friday ads spread out around you then take another look at the Staples ad (which was left out of my paper picture me hmphing here) LOL

Anyways on the bottom of the first page you’ll see a spot that says free batteries.  You can purchase 2 20pk Duracell AA/AAA batteries a week until Christmas for $12.99 a pack and in January you will receive a Staples reward for the total amount.  Combine these batteries with other great rebate sales at Staples and a Staples coupon and you can have a really great deal.  Besides who doesn’t need an endless supply of batteries??

If you are like me and didn’t receive an ad you can check it out here just look at the bottom of the first page for the details.

So I am challenging my household from Thanksgiving to Christmas to eat primarily out of the pantry and the freezers. My freezer is packed with meat and the pantry is full of goodies too. It will be nice to clean out enough to have a fresher start with the New Year it will also be nice to be able to save a little more money for the month. Here are the rules that I’m holding myself too, feel free to join in the challenge and let me know how you are doing.

1. I’ll only be shopping for the things I can get for free or nearly free. The one exception will be for Christmas dinner since I will have to buy a few things for that.
2. We will do our best to get creative with the items in the pantry and freezer. There is alot of food in there and it needs to be used up.
3. I will have to buy milk, fruits, and veggies but I’ll be checking for the best deals on those things so that I continue to save.
4. We are not going to eat out, over the past couple months we have eaten out a lot. We have had a lot of family in town and sometimes it’s just easier to eat on the go then it is to go home and make something.

Of course I will still be doing my Christmas shopping but I won’t have to spend as much at the grocery store. I’m hoping that Dave is on board with this challenge, I’ll be updating as we go through the month to let you know how we are doing.

Are you looking for a deal on the perfect item for your little ones or your spouse??  I’m offering up my deal seeking services for the holidays this year, so please if you are looking for something either email me at BelleMitchell702@gmail.com or leave a comment here and I’ll see what I can do. 

I know alot of you are looking for stuff and if you contact me soon we might be able to find you a deal for Black Friday or sometime before the holidays.  Don’t be shy let me know put my hours of searching for personal deals to use for you, you know I probably come across your wishlist items when I’m looking for my son’s wishlist.

Have you checked out all the great pre-Black Friday deals going on at Amazon??? They are meeting or beating the prices in the leaked ads on tons of great stuff and do you know the best part?? You don't have to wait in line and get run over trying to get your goodies, plus if you have any amazon gift cards from Swagbucks that makes for free stuff. Don't forget you can sign up for a free 1 month trial of Amazon Prime and get free shipping just remember to cancel in about 3 weeks.

Amazon Deals

While you are over there check out the other great magazine deals amazon has. They have $3-$10 off several different magazines.

So I keep meaning to post about the fantastic photo card deal and it expires today so go quickly if you haven’t already and order these great cards.

Go to SeeHere and you can order 50 5x7 folding cards and use this code freebies4mom-1109

and you can order 50 4x8 photo cards and use code newbaby.   Best of all there is no shipping charges for any of this.

Do you a want a Kindle?? Can't see shelling out all the money right now? Click the link to download a kindle for free on your PC Kindle

They have lots of books that you can also download for free!! You can check them out here: Books

This is a great way to try out the features of Kindle and see if you want to spend the money on more books or the portable Kindle.

We had a blast at the Farmer’s Market Holiday Bazaar tonight!!  I set up a table and had all my bags on display.  I handed out catalogs, got a couple orders and had lots of people enter the drawing. 

I’m not doing this blog for profit so please don’t think that, but I’d like to offer up the chance for anyone that would like to order to do so and be entered into the drawing for a $15 gift certificate from me.  Go here to visit my Thirty One Gifts site and if you are interested in ordering please click the My Events and then the Holiday Bazaar and you will be entered into the drawing.  I’m closing the show on Friday evening so you have till then.  Thank you for checking out my stuff and if you think you know someone that would enjoy the products please feel free to share the site, I would love to help any of you earn some free stuff through Thirty One.

On a savings note do you know that this is the 3rd week in a row that I haven’t received a CVS ad?!?!  It is soooo hard to plan out deals without the ad in front of me, I am a visual hands on kind of person and hate no ads.  I could just go to the store and pick up my ad but if I’m going in to the store I want to shop too.

Hopefully later this week I’ll have a post or two about some really cheap homemade gifts, but right now I am enjoying some time with my grandparents who are visiting.  I was reminded just over a year ago when my other grandma passed that life is short so I will be devoting my free time to spending time with them and letting them enjoy my son their great grandson.  I hope you are all having a great month and a great start to your holiday season.

This year there is more need and less supply for Toys for Tots and other charities.  There are a few companies that are giving if you do something simple and best of all free.  These companies make lots of money and I’m happy to see some of their profits going for good causes.  If you hear of any other please post here and share these with your friends and family.

Macy’s is donating $1 to the Make a Wish foundation for each letter to Santa they receive in store up to 1 million dollars!!  Be sure to drop off a letter next time you are in the mall.

Become a fan of Pantene on Facebook and they will donate .10 to the Beautiful Lengths campaign

Become a fan of Toys R Us on Facebook and they will donate $1 to Toys for Tots

So if you went out and picked up a couple turkeys at Walmart for .40/lb you may be wondering what to do with them now. If you didn’t go out you should go and ask when they will be getting more of the cheap turkeys in.  I bought 4 (2 different days) and I may want to go back for 2 more.

I thought I’d share with you some easy ways to cook and get the most out of your turkeys.  Yesterday I tackled turkey round 1 so I’ll share my tips with you.

I’ve had 2 of the birds in my fridge for a few days and they were finally thawed out so I took and cleaned them out and stuck them in the oven.  This is a must buy a box of reynolds cooking bags in turkey size I don’t care if they aren’t on sale you need them they make a great easy turkey.  Cooking 2 of them together took no longer than 1 and it only heated my house up once.  We had turkey meat and gravy for dinner last night and it was yummy!!!

I waited until the birds were nice and cool and got my hands dirty.  This is the part were if you are like me you just have got to suck it up and deal with the yuck.  I got almost every ounce of meat off the birds and bagged it in about 3 cup portions.  This is enough for most of the recipes I make and I put 8 of those bags in the freezer.

Today I took 3 of the bags of meat that I put in the fridge and made Hot Chicken Salad.  I cooked up a triple batch of rice and chopped the onions and celery x3 and mixed it all up.  Then I put 2 portions in the freezer and cooked up one for dinner tonight.

Tonight I am taking the carcasses and boiling them for a while.  I’ll be adding some of the leftover celery and onion and some carrots and 2 more bags of meat from the fridge and I’ll freeze that in single servings for lunches or dinners.  I plan on adding the noodles when the soup is thawed so that they don’t get mushy.

I’m guessing that those 2 turkeys will provide my family of 3 with almost 17 meals all for $12 for the meat.  I used things out of my pantry and spent maybe another $6 so each meal would work out to just over $1 for three of us.  You can’t do much better than that with decent portions of meat in everything.

Please feel free to share your ideas for Turkey, I might need more recipes if I decide to get more birds to go with the 2 waiting for their holiday premier with all the fixings.

If you are like me and said no way in heck am I getting up before the crack of dawn to fight for 10 Xbox’s at Walmart you still have a chance at getting one on Amazon for $199 with $100 credit.

Go here at 12 pst or 3pm est but go quick I bet they don't have too many up for grabs. I hope you enjoy your new game.

Well I finally dragged myself out to Target today to get in on the Wii deal.  I ended up with 3 $49.99 games and 3 $19.99 games, 12 jars of Skippy Peanut butter, 10 Glade glass candle holdres, 10 glade refills, 4 rice krispy treats from the bakery and 1 pack of transformer pencils.

Total spent was $131 but I had a $21 credit from a return and a few missed coupons so really it was only $110 and I got $20 in gift cards for the Glade.  My store had the toy coupon books out but don’t count on your store having them.  You can print out the $10/2 wii games coupon here and while you are there you can also get the $1 off bakery item for some cheap or free goodies in the bakery and the $1 skippy peanut butter coupon.  Skippy is on sale for $1.87 with the $1 tq and my .75 mq it made for some really cheap peanut butter.  That tq expires tomorrow though so hurry even without the mq .87 for peanut butter is a good deal.

I also stopped at Walmart on my way home and picked up 2 more turkeys.  On Sunday I will be cooking them together and making soup and freezing the rest of the meat for future dinners.  Even when you consider the bone weight I can’t beat that price for chicken so we’ll have lots of meal size portions put away so we can spend less in the next couple of months.

So how is your Christmas shopping going?  Please feel free to chime in and let me know.  I love hearing how everyone is doing.  I’m hoping to get back to my homemade gifts and will be sharing them with you as they get created.

If you have a Super Walmart check out the meat department.  I usually don’t buy my meat there but I couldn’t pass up this deal.  They have turkeys 10-16lb on sale for 40 cents a pound.  That’s right I said 40 cents.  My store has a limit of 2 per person but you can’t beat that price around here.