KC-Traderbear

...almost forgot another kind of nice, random find if you use this particular shampoo-- Pureology Shampoo was 1/2 price. They had 3 bottles of it marked to $13.48 down from $27. Kind of stinks having to pay that kind of money for shampoo, but ever since I've had to start highlighting my random grey hairs away, I need something more gentle than the regular stuff, so at 1/2 price, that was a nice find for me anyway!

Found a nice deal on pencil sharpeners today and if you (like me) struggle with electric pencil sharpeners that don't work, THIS is a really nice one. It's made by Wescott and I actually bought the BIG one (that plugs in) at Costco this summer. Target is clearancing out the baby ones (that require batteries). They look just like the big one only smaller. Anyway, kind of a silly thing to gush about, but some of the electric pencil sharpeners I've bought just don't sharpen well at all or they only sharpen one side and by the time you try to rotate it, the thing is ground down to nothing. My girls' teachers ask that all pencils be sharpened before the first day of school, which is understandable, so I love having a good sharpener. So, if you are looking for a nice one, these are a great deal.... clearanced down from $10.xx to $2.xx. The Wescott sissors are all 75% off too, as well as some other miscellaneous office supply stuff that didn't get marked down before-- at least they are around here anyway!

Well, I got it from this coupon site http://www.organicgrocerydeals.com/forums/view.php?pg=coupon_generator, which is a nice way to get multiples of coupons at one printing. However, the coupon expired on Saturday, so they have removed it from their site. I used some today and they went through just fine... sometimes you can eek out a few more days from Target coupons. I have some saved to a pdf if you want to contact me, I will be happy to e-mail them to you. I have no idea when the system will reject them and you have to be comfortable using an expired coupon. That is all I will say cause I don't think "they" like us talking about coupons on this particular forum...

They were really hit or miss depending on your Target store, and the coupon expired yesterday, but there was a coupon for $1 off single cartons of their milk, which some (not all) Targets had priced at $1.09. Many Targets didn't even sell the singles or some of them had them priced at $1.50, so the deal was YMMV for sure. But there were two Targets around me that had them (out of probably 9 stores close by) for $1.09, so it made for cheap lunch box drinks. I'm not into organic foods at all, but some have said that Horizon isn't the greatest brand, I guess. It's milk though and between lowfat milk and juice, my bet is on the lowfat milk as being a bit healthier in the lunch box.

I thought it tasted real good... at least the lowfat plain milk that I tried. We are used to skim and I was pretty hesitant about trying it. I have a favorite brand of milk that I rarely deviate from, but it tasted just like the stuff we drink by the gallon at home. I've been buying my kids the chocolate singles for lunches. Nine cents is cheaper than the 40 cents they pay for a carton at school...although a bit more per box than the cheap minute maids, but healthier I guess. It stayed really cold too. I was surprised.

Thanks, that is very interesting. I do not buy organic. I've just not been convinced that the non organic stuff is all THAT bad. That said, if something organic happens to be a great deal, than I'm all for it! LOL :) 9 cents for a carton of milk in my kids lunch is perhaps a nice healthy improvement to a juice box- (That's what I'm telling myself anyway). I guess I just today started wondering how the heck the stuff can last so long and still be "considered" (or marketed anyway) as so much better for you than 'regular milk'. I mean some Targets have these little Horizon milks for $1.50 each! I have a couple stores near me that have them at $1.09 though. Maybe a bit of a gimmick, eh? I'll take 'em for a few pennies though.

As I'm busy amassing the Horizon single milks for 9 cents each, I'm wondering about the expiration dates. Are there any organic food gurus out there to help me understand how in the world a carton of milk I buy today can have an expiration date of next summer? I've read something about ultra pasteurization...but don't quite get it. As I'm comparing it to the regular ol' Anderson Erickson milk I buy in the gallons, is the Horizon milk I'm buying as singles better/worse/the same? OR WHAT?! Anyone know? I realize this is a bit off topic, but I just figured there might be some moms out there who are much more knowledgeable about organic than me. Any help would be appreciated. Not sure it will make any difference since my refrigerator is FILLED with the singles that I've been getting with the Target coupon. (The count is ridiculous.) TIA

Saw something kind of odd today on a markdown sticker. The orange sticker on my solo plates had a 40 in the upper right corner. I always thought that the markdown schedule was 15- 30-50-75 (and occasionally an oddball 70 or 85% on electronics-- very rarely). I've never seen a 40 though and wondered for a minute if they are adjusting the way they do their markdowns. The plates were $2.77 marked to $1.58, which if you do the math is actually 43% off. Prolly just a mistake in the way that someone entered info into their handheld, but there were several packages there. Might be nice if stuff went from 15 to 40 instead of 30!

The thing I always hate about my kids and their digital camera is that they are a bit young to take really decent pictures (5-6), and when they spend time snapping pictures of everything under the sun (dolls, the fish tank, stuffed animals, the cereal box, etc...) they come to me and want me to PRINT their pictures or order them through a print service. It's fine for a few times, but after a while, it gets pricey (and time consuming) printing pictures of things that after 5 minutes of looking at the picture, they no longer care about. They have fun with their cameras though cuz they get to be like mommy taking pictures, but the novelty wears off fast when the ink stops flowing so freely! LOL. If you just consider that the camera is like any other toy and the newness wears off, it's really a good deal. Who cares if the quality isn't that great. Depending on how young the child is that is getting it, their picture taking skills probably aren't that great anyway! I try to just download the pics to my computer and they get to see their pictures up on the big screen, which is fun too.

Hit another Target on the way to pick up my daughter... Found a Schwinn Hitchhiker Bike Trailer... looks like a regular bike that hooks on to an adult's bike. Hopefully a good way to teach our middle daughter to ditch the training wheels. Has anyone used one of these? ###082-04-0039 Schwinn Hitchiker Bike Trailer regular $99.99 marked to $24.98.

All kinds of Radio Flyer wagons/umbrellas ride ons marked to 75% today at the one Target store I went to. I got an all terrain wagon (with the wood sides and real rubber--not plastic--tires). It is regular $109.99 marked down to $27.48. ####Radio Flyer Wagon 75% off $27.48 Not sure if I coded that correctly. I've never used the new system.

I'll add to that too... if you can get the return back to the store the same day you buy the lower priced item, it will only find the older (higher priced) one and you'll get your full refund. It takes a day to register the purchase, so you do have a bit of a window if you can get back to the store on the same day to do the return.

I heard that if you run across those boxes of 5 batteries, they really aren't supposed to be sold as a "set of 5". If you take one package out and scan it, it scans at 75% off.... they were the school supply batteries! I found 6 packs of them yesterday and they were a quarter each. They took my duracell coups too, so I had a bit of an overage.

They were boxing all the school supplies up at one of our Targets last night too. I don't think they let it sit more than a day at 75%... not sure when it actually went to 75, but I can't imagine it was longer than just a day or so ago. I went to one of our stores that is always so disorganized and behind on their markdowns and found quite a bit of stuff yesterday. Don't forget to check the regular office supply aisle! I hit the mother load on those Crayola "Mix 'ems"-- sort of like blendy pens. NONE of them had orange stickers on them-- all hanging in with the regular Crayola stuff. I bought 10 packs and still left several on the shelf. They were 98 cents. I also found a Dymo label maker. The BTS ones are easy to spot... have a yellow flag on the front promoting a free iron on label (I think). They are $5. Also found the triangular crayons, which I had been eyeing for my 2yo to use in church, so her crayons don't go rolling to the front every Sunday! I didn't familiarize myself too much with what specifically were "back to school" items this year, which makes hunting in those aisles a bit trickier. I have so many markers and pencils from years past, it is ridiculous so I passed on a lot of stuff. I just remembered seeing those mix 'em pens cause my 7yo and her friends LOVE blendy pens. Other than that, I agree that most places didn't have much. At most of the stores I went to, there wasn't much left... which is really more and more the norm around here at clearance time.

You might keep a close eye on your store. I believe that most of the stuff they were marking today went straight from 30-75% off. Also, since yesterday was a holiday, markdown teams could easily be a day behind. Might be worth checking back in a day or two. Ya never know!

Scrapbooking was being marked to 75% at the 2 stores I went to this morning.

I think it must be on a store by store basis whether or not they allow it. I think most of the stores around here must discourage it because it's never been a real issue. I mean I've seen employees pick a few things, but I have yet to see employees hauling carts full of stuff. Personally, I think it looks bad. It's not just sour grapes, but IMO, customers should never have to compete with employees of a business to buy things...at least not if the employee is supposed to be working and is obviously in uniform. If they do shop, they need to pick what they want quickly and get it out of sight to the backroom-- not leave it lay in their markdown cart while they continue to work.

I was in one store yesterday when the guy was marking toys and I asked him kindly if he would sticker something he hadn't gotten too yet. Man, you would have thought I asked him to cut off his right arm. I was the only one in the aisle with him, so there was no threat of a sudden onslaught of customers bugging him, but he wouldn't do it. Then, every time anyone came into the aisle to look, he completely stopped tagging anything. Sometimes he would just walk to the end of the aisle and cross his arms and stand there looking like he wished his scanning gun was a laser weapon and he could kill us all! It was sort of fun to leave the aisle and then come back and watch him walk off in a huff. I did it several times before I got bored with it! :) One of our stores still hadn't marked at noon, so I shopped their aisles and hid a few things that the other stores sold out of... came back at 5 and picked everything up. I did the best at the stores that hadn't consolidated toys into an aisle, but rather everything was just scattered in amongst the regular aisles.

The other thing that works pretty well is to jot down a couple of the dpci numbers, along with the original price, on the orange ticket. When there are certain clearance things that I am especially interested in, I just call customer service and tell them that I'm looking for a specific item and give them the dpci. They can type it in and tell me what the price is pretty quickly. If I know what the item is full price, I can easily tell from the price they give me whether it has gone to 75% off or not. I would never trust a Target employee to tell me if an entire marked down area (ie, christmas/holiday merchandise, toys, etc.) has hit 75% off. This, along with sort of knowing the approximate date that an area will be marked down, has worked pretty well for me. HTH

I know some are watching car seats and as I was passing by an end cap yesterday, I saw Britax Marathons for 1/2 price. This was at the Mission store in Kansas City. I just didn't really give it too much thought since I have no need for that department now. But someone just posted about an interest in car seats from a different state, and I thought I might just mention that. If they aren't 1/2 price in your area this week, you might try next week! The markdown might be coming soon. And/or if you are in this area and like Britax, the Mission store had 2 seats for $99 (down from $200). HTH!

Okay, thanks! I don't go to Target as frequently anymore and I just wasn't sure when the 15% off signs went up. :)

Has anyone by chance been watching bulk items. When might they go to 30%... anyone have a guess? I don't remember when they went 15%... TIA!!

THANKS for posting this. I would have never known. I was just in Target today... first time in a week! My 10% rewards expired today. I scored 3 of those big bags of Huggies. They were only ticketed at 30% off, but scanned at 1/2 price. With my 10% rewards AND diaper coupons AND now the rebate, that makes those $19 diapers 5 bucks!

I found some crazy deals in electronics yesterday too. The hp officejet 4315 printer, scanner, fax machine, copy machine was 10.xx down from $81.xx (orange sticker said 85% off). I don't know if it is reliable or not, but heck at that price it really doesn't matter. I needed a fax machine anyway. I also picked up a Memorex cd micro system (remote/am/fm radio and detachable speakers) for $15.xx down from $60 (sticker said 70% off). Good gift for lots of nieces and nephews headed into the tween years. Both were in what appear to be unopened boxes. There were other good deals there too, but the boxes were obviously opened and repackaged, and I didn't feel like wondering if all the parts were there or if they worked or not.

The Shutterfly conversations make me giggle. Many of us had the same banter back in January/February when most (NOT ALL) stores salvaged them after 50%. Remember? Many of us were very, very sad...