Snow Shopping

This week in Erie we tied the all-time record for the lowest temperature in history with 18 degrees below zero.  Other areas near us were even colder.  This morning it warmed up to a balmy positive 19 degrees but the snow started up again.

Still, even though I checked our one and only Target store a few days ago and found nothing much of interest, I was prompted to haul myself out to brush off the car and drive out on the hunt for bargains for our Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes.

I'm so glad I did.

I found 206 of those cute Hello Kitty totes pictured above for .30 each (the Target Spot $1.00 items with a red dot were 70% off.)  Some of them were even Christmas designs but they are cute and highly useful nonetheless.

I found 90 of these Transformers totes for the boys in the same area.

These cute felt totes and buckets weren't with the other 70% off merchandise but they looked sort of "Valentiney" so I scanned them and found out they were .30 also.  More cuteness.

Back in the seasonal aisle (and it was only one aisle) the Valentine items were marked 70% off but when I scanned them (not the food, just the plain merchandise) they came up at 90% off.  I grabbed all the boxes of Valentines that had pencils in them--16 pencils for .30 is a good deal.

And I found 21 of these cute stuffies for .49 each.  The ones that had a small bag of candy attached were still ringing up at only 50% off so I had to leave them there.

As long as I was out I hit Bed, Bath & Beyond, Ollie's, Michaels, Ross, Old Navy and A.C. Moore with no luck.

But I found some good items at Children's Place.  Their winter hats, gloves, and socks were .99 each. I didn't buy any socks because they just don't fill the space in the box well enough but I scooped up these cute hats.

I had a promo code for 20% off (YO1703 -- I think the code is good until 2/23/15) and I used my Children's Place credit card to get an extra 5% off.  So they ended up being .75 each.  Besides, I couldn't resist them when I thought of how adorable they'd look on those little heads.

Finally, I checked out their sale shoes.

These shoes that had a retail price of $27.95 were on sale for just $3.99 a pair.  Again, I used that code and my credit card to bring the price down to $3.08 per pair.

The sun's still not shining but that shoe box shopping adrenaline rush carried me through when I returned home as I shoveled snow and even slogged through a run.

As a winter activity, shopping beats skiing any day.