Queen Mother Blog

CVS is carrying Mom's Best Naturals oatmeal (it is in the canister) for $1 in a special value section of the store, near the seasonal items. You can print two $0.75 off any Mom's Best product coupons here (use the back button to print the coupon twice) to get 2 canisters of oatmeal for only a quarter each!

I was able to do this at my local store and for some reason I was really excited about it. I score great deals all the time, but something about taking home a nice big container for a quarter made me pretty happy! :p

I found this deal on the Money Saving Mom blog. Click here to check out the other CVS deals she has posted for this week!

Ok, no blood, but sweat, sure. And tears, almost. Let me just tell you...I worked hard for these freebies! It is like a mini-soap opera. Last night I was talking to Marc about the CVS deals, and he was letting me know that he had to leave really early for a football game and that the roads were going to be really bad. I was stressing about the idea of taking Rayna out in the morning in icy conditions just to go to CVS...but I know the stuff would be gone if I didn't act fast. There is a 24 hour CVS not too far from me, and I thought, is it nuts to go and get the deals at midnight? We were awake, so Marc is like, yeah do it!!

Ahem. There are TONS of crazy deal-shoppin' ladies hitting up the 24 hour CVS at just before midnight. (There was even a lady who dragged her infants out in a stroller, which I thought was just crossing the line.) I managed to get most of the free stuff (see above), but all of the Arm & Hammer cleaners were gone, the heating pads were gone, etc. I felt ok about my amount of free stuff, though, and I came home.

Then comes this morning. Marc's game is postponed due to the weather and the roads are not that bad. So we go to church, have lunch with my parents afterwards, and then stop by their CVS. It was ransacked! They had nothing that I didn't already purchase. Finally on my way home, I stopped by my local CVS to give it one last hurrah. Also ransacked and they say we don't even carry that Arm & Hammer cleaner.

Along the way I also picked up the $15 in Coke, get $5 ecbs deal, buying 4 cases of Coke (using 4 $1 off coupons from MyCokeRewards) and a Smartwater. Those ecbs don't print. Also, I noticed from the night before, my Sally polish and eyeshadow ecbs didn't print. I'm explaining the scenario to the manager and he is super incredulous thinking I am a professional CVS sheister. I was hitting up a store at midnight, after all.

Sigh. So I did get my ecbs to print, finally, and I am pretty happy to have a year's supply of free listerine and to have restocked my soda. But is it terrible that I still am really wishing for the other free stuff? lol...I think it becomes an addiction. I also didn't realize that Right Guards were limit 5, and I only had picked up 2 when I had the chance. D'oh! What is different about this free bonanza that everyone in the tri-state area turned out? The word is really spreading about CVS!

Oh, but I still didn't pay more than $3 out of pocket for it all, including the sodas. So I'm still pretty happy! :)

Got all those extra bucks from Thanksgiving? Well it is time to use them for more totally free stuff at CVS! There is over $200 worth of free items available ONLY today and tomorrow!

Check out this post at Thrifty Mama for the details!

Also, one not mentioned, Crest Prohealth toothpaste and rinse are $2.99, printing $2 extrabucks, so the "final" price is $0.99 each (limit 2). There are $1 off Prohealth toothpaste and $1 off Prohealth rinse coupons from last Sunday's P&G Brandsaver insert, making these both free.

Now I hope the roads are ok to drive this morning, 'cause I'm going to CVS!

Yup! All of that was completely f-r-e-e. Yes I paid an actual $2 in real money, but I had walked in with $38.95 in ecbs, and I left with $43.89! Even the Whitman's sampler was "free" because it was on sale for $3.99, I had a $2 coupon from a really old insert (like from March or May or something! lol) and then the overage from my other products with coupons covered it! If you haven't gone to CVS yet, your store may still have some things available for free. Check the post here to get the scoop.

There are quite a few CVS stores in my area, and I chose to go to one a little further from my house, because it is usually better stocked and has friendlier employees. I also think the employees at my local store hide the free items or get them for themselves because they are immediately all gone. So anyway, I arrived at the good CVS 5 mins. before 8 and there were already 3 other people waiting to get in! I couldn't believe it. These were real, serious deal-getters like me. When they unlocked the doors we all went right for the razors, and it was funny, I said "Should we all just follow each other?" and everyone nervously chuckled like 'oh man I gotta get my stuff!' hehe. But it was all good. All of us got our stuff and it was like Christmas morning. We helped each other find things, we took turns working our transactions and the cashier loved it. Sigh. I wish this happened every time, but it sure made for a nice Thanksgiving morning of goodies. :)

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving & good luck to anyone who may be Black Friday shopping. I am not one for crowds so I will be right here at home. Cyber Monday might be the day for me.

Hooray! Thanksgiving is almost here, and things are finally getting back to normal here at my house. I would be very remiss if I didn't give you a link to the Super-Awesome CVS deals that will be available in your store *tomorrow*. Yes, I will be going to CVS bright & early on Thanksgiving Day to nag all of my free, and more than free, stuff!! Money Saving Mom has the scoop on all of the goodness, here.

And Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Last year around Christmastime was when I first got hooked on CVS. They had a phenomenon that was taking the world by storm: stackable coupons. Now, no one at CVS expressly said that they were stackable, but they didn't say they weren't either. There were internet printable coupons for $10 off a $50 purchase, all the way down to $2 off a $10 purchase. Combining all of these CVS $ off coupons, CVS store coupons, manufacturer coupons AND the Extra bucks program, made for some insanely killer deals that you just knew wouldn't last long.

Of course, that madness didn't last long, and now CVS doesn't put out anywhere near the amount of coupons that they used to. What they still do however, is have their awesome Extracare program. If you don't already have an Extracare card, you need to get yourself one asap! Not really because of their 2% back off all your purchases every quarter (which doesn't add up to too much for me), but because they give you your own "extracare coupons" at the end of transactions (which can be combined with manufacturer coupons to score you really good deals) and because you can earn Extracare bucks (ECBs) on certain products every week and month that come out to be totally free.

Now, the whole CVS program is not new to many of you, but I know a lot of my readers (especially my own dear family) do not take advantage of it the way they could! I will not go through a huge long tutorial here, especially since almost every other 'frugal mom' type website has her own tutorial. There are good ones here and here.

Once you get into CVS deals you can nab stuff like I did here:


This week there is a Complete contact solution deal where you spend $8.99 out of pocket and get $8.99 ecbs back = free! The limit per Extracare card was five! So, how could I turn down five free bottles of solution? That is like a year's supply for me (and they don't expire until late in 2010!) I also was PAID to get two of the Maybelline mineral makeups: they were on sale for $8.99 each, I had a $3 off coupon and a $2 off coupon, and each one gave a full $8.99 in ecbs, so I got $5 worth of ecbs, free! The free toothpaste is a monthly deal and the store I stopped today actually had some!! I missed out on the Duracell battery deal they had last week, so I stocked up today on the Energizer deal. I got two mega-packs of AA & AAA batteries for $22, used two $1 off coupons and got $10 in ecbs...my total for 32 batteries? $10. Oh, and the formula I just needed ;)

NOW, I have a ton of ecb's for next time, and apparently my next time will be Thanksgiving! The CVS Black Friday deals were "leaked" and there is a bunch of stuff FREE after ecbs (toothpaste, Aussie products, universal remotes, energy drinks, razors, etc.)! So get started if you haven't yet...'tis the season to get hooked!!