shaking the mystery box.

sometimes, i apply for so many freebies and shit online, that i completely forget what i’ve applied for. in the last few weeks, i’ve had not one but THREE  mystery boxes show up on my porch with a WTF, and then subsequent OMG upon opening them. i’ve gotten some really kick ass stuff in the last month… and now i’m gonna tell you about it:

long weekend pickthrough- FULL REBOOT edition.

you know when you have a crappy old computer, and if you keep it on without restarting it for a while, it starts to run slower and slower and slower and fills you with increasingly more and more and more rage? well, that’s where i was last week. trying to remain functional without shutting off and getting less and less effective with every passing day. like that shitty gateway laptop your grandma gave you for college graduation.

this week, i decided it was finally time to reboot. i unapologetically shut my laptop on tuesday evening, and didn’t open it up again until today. i slept. i ate. i read! i even went to yoga like a fully functional human being. it was awesome. it’s not that i didn’t do anything while i was out, i just didn’t put any pressure on myself to do anything about it other than to maintain a state of general alive-ness.  here’s what you missed:

worth the trip- coupon coma.

remember back in the day, when i used to post something coupon related almost every day? oh, and when my cabinets were puffed out with extra band aids and shampoo, and i had an overflowing box of donate items for the preble street resource center? man, those days were nice.

but then it happens- COUPON FATIGUE.

after a year or more of wringing every possible deal out of every possible store in town, a girl gets tired, or distracted, and let’s those weekend coupon fliers pile up, and even… EXPIRE.

i recently cleaned out my folders to realized that i had indeed lost almost 2 full months of coupon time. blacked out unconscious, i must have been paying full price for everything- TRAGIC. expensively tragic (the worst kind of tragic).

now at this point, the serious coupon clipping mantle has clearly been handed off to maine’s very own extreme couponer, i love to gossip, which is quite liberating (also, she’s a lot better at it). no longer do i feel the pressure to try to keep up with the rest of the coupon bitties, and have time to do other crazy shit like  throw clothing swaps and complain about “easy feet”. but this weekend as i leafed through my sunday circulars, i realized that i actually missed it.

i remember feeling so high (remember that money making vaseline lotion at shaw’s?) when i could grab something for free. like i was pulling off a tiny bank robbery or something.

i also remember having 5 unopened dove deodorants in my supply drawer. now i’m sadly chasing a single stick around my apartment… and sometimes i CAN’T FIND IT.

so this week, i decided that i’m actually gonna start trying to get back into the coupon game.  i have an empty paper box ready for preble street donations, and i feel mentally ready to be able to find my antiperspirant again.

well, it’s going to have to be a gentle re-entry, because there’s kind of shit for deals this week. and actually, i was zooming through the comments on this week’s iheartcvs.com deal rundown, and people seem grouchy that there hasn’t been anything awesome for a while. has the deal climate changed when i was away? are there still bargains to be had out there in the wild? here is what i’m stalking this week (better to start slow i suppose), let me know if i missed anything:

so i’m considering coupon fraud…

and  i KNOW that its wrong, but the deal is really good, and i’m feeling the strong pull of temptation.

you need to talk me out of it.

or possibly talk me into it.

so, this week the $7 extrabucks on physician’s formula (are they going out of business or something?) deal is back at CVS, and better than ever. you do only get one per household, but if you borrow your boyfriend’s CVS card, you could probably grab 2 without suspicious (not that i know anyone who does that ever).

but that’s not where the real bad feelings settle in.

last week, physician’s formula was on sale for 40% off at CVS (seriously, something is going on with them) and my friend forwarded me this link to a $5.00 coupon! now, this would have been awesome if the coupon wasn’t already out of prints. but then i clicked on the image of the coupon in the post… and there it was- completely clar and printable, just BEGGING me to print 5. so i did.

i haven’t actually used any of them yet (i managed resist the 40% off temptations last week), but the $7 extrabuck deal might be too much to resist.

when there were still prints left on the website, it did pop out in PDF format- just begging to be printed out multiple times. theoretically, i could have printed a whole bunch and just been hoarding them this whole time, right?

i still have several days to decide what to do, but i’m finding myself very torn. are fraudulent coupon assholes like me the reason that physician’s formula appears to be struggling?  is it worth a little minor  infraction for the sake of the makeup project (my freebie cosmetics hoard has become a complete OBSESSION)?

weekend pickthrough- mail call showdown edition.

this has been a good couple of weeks for free stuff in the mail. between the soy milk and the cleaning stuff, i also applied for some samples online, which showed up this week. i realized after i wrote that post last week about product testing sites, i had completely left out free sample sites! you may not get full sized products, but i am a sucker for tiny scale models of real products, and they almost always come with a pretty decent value coupon.

this week, i got two sample deliveries- one from target, and one from proctor & gamble (evil i know, but FREE STUFF!). when i originally saw the post for the target beauty bag on my favorite freebie website, i thought it might be a phishing scam. so much awesome stuff for free! my bag arrived a mere one week later.

though not packed with the same goods pictured (where’s my full sized sally hansen nail enamel?), still had some pretty hot shit inside (full sized neutrogena lip balm!). also, it came packaged in the most adorable tiny makeup bag known to man, and had $25 worth of target beauty coupons. and you know what that means… STACKING!! i was blown away.

then, i got my p&g brandsaver… and there was blowing alright, just not the good kind. one tiny sample and two tiny coupons? i hear these stories about people getting all sorts of crazy awesome shit from p&g, but i have never gotten anything good. this was better than the time they sent me a single metamucil packet in a huge box, but not much.

sadly, the target beauty bag is already sold out, but i would recommend finding yourself a freebie listing service so that you have a chance of getting in on the action next time around. i also follow deal seeking pros like hip2save on twitter, who usually have first knowledge of the good shit.

but since you’re probably still really jealous about not getting the beauty bag, here are some links to ease your pain:

holy spring cleaning jackpot batman: an ode to free stuff.

despite the fact that my attempts at going dairy free are not going quite  as planned (and certainly not providing the result that i think the silk company was looking for), i am still grateful to the fine folks at bzzagent for hooking me up with the free soymilk. i love free stuff, and i am always completely shocked when companies are willing to throw it at me just because i MIGHT be willing to discuss their product online.

remember that time that time i got that full sized bottle of pantene in the mail from vocalpoint? i sent that shit to preble street, and nobody even noticed. why just last week they offered me a free pint of some sort of flavored creamer (which will hopefully go a bit better than my last unsavory creamer incident).

but back to bzzagent. after many months of not getting offered crap from them (free redbox rental- big whoop), i got the soy milk offer AND an SC johnson cleaning product offer all in one week. my silk package arrived in an envelope, just coupons and a handful of propaganda that i didn’t read (sorry silk!) (sort of). so i figured that my spring cleaning kit would also show up in booklet form.

instead, i got this:

cranky pants: an ethical conundrum.

surprise! i’m a fucking wreck this week.  the balls to the wall schedule, the stress (MUST LEARN TO TAP DANCE!), the poor diet (toast and hersehy kisses again?), the lack of sleep… i suck hard right now, and there’s no denying it. i’ve even been cranky with my poor dog (who has been attempting to eat his own poop lately,but still doesn’t deserve the ‘tude)!

unfortunately, my intense level of crank got spit out into the universe this week in kind of a crazy way.  i sent an EXTREMELY BITCHY email to a company that at the time I felt had seriously wronged me. and then i regretted it. and then i didn’t regret it… and then i asked you to tell me whether or not i should regret it (i think i feel a poll coming on).

totally buzzed.

it’s no secret that i love me some free stuff. now i’ve proclaimed my love for vocalpoint many a time… as i have long considered it the king of the product testing/free shit sites with their seductive full size samples and fistfuls of high value coupons. except that lately, vocalpoint has left me a little cold. i mean how many boxes of kashi cereal can one girl really eat? oh, and the bounce dryer bar was just about the stupidest invention EVER. but i suppose even like 100 lame lowes coupons are better than a completely barren landscape.  i had tried kraft first taste and pssst! but got a big fat delivery of BUNK. even myblogspark has forsaken me!

but a few months back, i saw a post on ilovetogossip regarding a service i had never heard about… bzzagent. basically it was the same old song and dance where they say they’ll send you free products, in exchange for tweeting that shit up, or writing about it on your blog.  but then, all they offered me for like months and month was a crappy free redbox rental. boo! but a couple of weeks ago… THEY FINALLY SENT ME SOMETHING THAT I WANTED!

last week my coupons & “press kit” for thomas’ bagel thins arrived in the mail. a $4/1 coupon, 5 $1/1 coupons, some educational materials, and of course, not 1 but 3 bagel shaped magnets. it’s no secret that i’m in a perpetual state of vaguely trying to lose weight. i also have a deep and unquenchable lust for bagels. thus, a free bag of 110 calorie diet bagels seemed like an awesome idea. and in many ways, it was. here are 5 things i learned about bagel thins from my recent quality time alone with them:

shit, i forgot the coupons.

for xmas, i gifted myself with a subscription to the sunday paper. it’s minimally cheaper than buying it at the store, and conveniently delivered to my front door before 7 am. thus, i can stay in my sweatpants and be lazy and not brave the cold cold walk down to the sketchy sketchy 7-11. or so i had hoped! first sunday, NO PAPER. i figured maybe it just took them a minute to get the party started. last sunday, NO PAPER AGAIN (later resolved with an agitated call to the circulation department- i hope)!  thanks to a 7 hour a chorus line rehearsal on sunday, i didn’t have the time or energy to go get one on my own. i hit the grocery store on tuesday, but sadly, there were none left. a couponless week! what’s a girl to do!?

when i first started my coupon clipping adventures over a year ago, a moment like this would have sent me into a panic spiral. to think of all the deals that i would miss, the freebies loaded into the carts of strangers that wouldn’t be available to me without those magic slips of paper… i don’t remember if i ever cried over such a situation, but i also don’t remember not crying. when i first started out, i would get a crazy high off my deal mongering and would hit multiple drugstores multiple times per week- often spending hours in the aisles trying to cobble the perfect deal (poor boyfriend left to languish in the car).

but then, i kind of got over it.

i don’t have any idea how extreme couponers keep the ball rolling… it’s so much pre-planning and work! after a while, my coupon energy ramped down and my desire to have every single deal faded away (my stockpiles grew too large… i ended up with items i couldn’t use or donate…i was fucking tired…). if i missed a newspaper, so what? if i forgot to bring my coupons to the grocery store, meh!

i still go through peaks and valleys of coupon focus/mania, but in terms of the emotional highs and lows that i used to hit, i have figured out a few things along the way that are guaranteed to always talk me off the ledge:

shaking the bell.

so a while ago when i first discovered ulta, i mentioned that i was working on a super secret makeup related project that i would eventually tell you about. well, that day has finally come.

a really really long time ago, i had scored a bunch of freebie cosmetics with extrabucks that i didn’t know what to do with, and i wrote a post about donating makeup (or trying to unsuccessfully). when i called my favorite local charity to see what their stance was on the topic, they mentioned that they didn’t have a huge call for cosmetics, but that the teen girls go nuts for it. anyway, as the xmas/generically inoffensive holiday season started to approach, i started to think a about how all the programs are like “TOYS FOR TOTS” and such. it seems that people don’t seem to get the same warm holiday fuzzies getting gifts for older kids as they do for the grade school set, and how much does that suck?  anyway, it occurred to me that i could be stockpiling my free makeup, and then assemble little kits to donate around xmas time.

well, as of today, i have a pretty good hoard, but i still have some sizable gaps. i spoke with preble street yesterday, and they have 50 girls that their teen center services, and they want the finished product by december 9th! THAT’S 2 WEEKS!! so here is the part where i ask for your help. i am aiming to put together 25 kits (apparently they have a little gift mini mall and let the kids pick out what they want). if any of you other crazy coupon ladies out there have a makeup stash that is just taking up space, or you don’t give a shit about coupons but you just want to help out… here is your chance! i am looking for donations of the following items: