Coupons and Holiday Recipes

DO THOSE SURVEYS, GET THOSE STORE COUPONS BACK TO REUSE

Stores are starting to pull out all the stops now to try to get your business. These new marketing ploys can benefit you. Many stores now have requests on the bottom of their receipts that ask you to complete surveys for various incentives. Many will enter your name in a drawing for cash, free products, coupons, or gift cards. While the odds aren’t great that you will win a drawing, someone has to win, you can’t win if you don’t enter, and it’s a free entry. A store near us gives us a coupon for a free loaf of French bread when we complete their surveys. J. C. Penney’s will give you a 15% off coupon that can be used and reused until it expires (it’s usually good for a month). If you do get a coupon that is reusable, be sure to ask for the coupon back when you use it, many cashiers will automatically put it in their drawer. We’d been using the 15% off coupons for over a year before a cashier told us it could be reused. Many stores also have “clubs” that give you money off coupons once you have spent a certain amount in their stores. Sometimes they’ll even have special sales just for the people on their lists. It never hurts to subscribe to store ads either, as many of them will send special email or mail offers.

RECIPE: OUR FAVORITE ONLINE RECIPE SITES FOR HOLIDAY IDEAS

At this time of year we often receive emails from readers who are trying to find an old family recipe, or in some cases how to healthify (ok, I don’t think it’s a word, but it should be J) old family recipes. We’d like to direct you to our favorite online recipe sites with huge recipe databases and lots of easy search features.
http://www.allrecipes.com
http://www.kraftfoods.com
http://www.foodnetwork.com
http://www.pillsbury.com
I especially love Pillsbury’s Bake Off Contest section, because regular people like you and I came up with the recipes, and enough people loved them to get them to the Bake Off Finals. On these sites you can search for recipes you’ve lost, shortcut recipes, healthy recipes, look for easy recipes, or fancy ones, old fashioned classic recipes or brand new surprises for your guests. These websites are so loaded with great ideas, that it’ll make it hard to sign off. On some sites you can even adjust the printing so it’ll print recipe card sized. Enjoy. POST IT...in your recipe box, and shopping list. Both of these small articles were taken from the Make a Note by weekly email that I receive….

Note from Lucy: The last couple of weeks have been really busy for me. Between family, church, food orders and ham radio; I’ve been a busy bee. Late yesterday afternoon, I called in an order for herbs and spices. We have been doing this, once a year order, for over 15 years now and this year we topped $2,000.00. With 447 items coming in sometime next week, I shutter to think of me sorting through, inventorying and bagging all of this. Thankfully my friend Sonja may be able to help me with this, if she is not working the day it comes in. With the chocolate order behind us and the frozen berry order coming in tomorrow, I should be able to settle down some. Once we get the herbs and spices done, then all I have left are the nuts and seeds order. This is a very busy time of year for me. I am also trying to get the house ready for Thanksgiving and do some paper work for TF’s business.

Have a great week everyone……..