Cheap Thrill for July 31, 2013: Free bag of Hill's Ideal Cat or Dog Food....

The Dog food I got was the Ideal variety - not this one!!!

Jennifer T. visited the house Monday, and asked me how the heck I got so much free stuff? I told her to check out this blog or take my coupon class. In the meantime, I thought I would post a link to my latest free item, Science Diet Ideal Pet food for dog's or cats.

This is a rebate item, so you have to go out an purchase it. You fill out the rebate and they reimburse you. You can print the rebate form using this link:


http://www.hillspet.com/products/products-special-offers.html

I paid $12.99 for my bag at Petsmart.

As many of you know, I cannot just do a rebate offer!!  I have to make a little pocket change too.. so I waited until Hill's was on sale at Petsmart and they had a $2.00 off coupon in their circular.  I clipped the $2.00 off coupon so that I paid only $10.99 for my bag of dog food. When I went to the cashier she also had a $2.00 off coupon stashed so I dropped what I paid down to $8.99...Yahoo.

The final step in all of this is to send in the rebate form- when I do this I will circle the price I was charged on my rebate form $12.99, this is the amount my check will be for. I will net $4.00 from this deal on Hill's plus I will have a free bag of Dog food.

Petsmart also issued me a $5.00 register coupon when I made the purchase. It was good on anything made by Hills .. so my kitty is now eating free Hills Kitty food for the next few days..


I love a good rebate ..................................

Cheap Thrill- Free pastry at Panera Bread...

For those of you out here on the East Coast, Panera
Bread offers a " My Panera" program. Sign up at  http://mypanera.panerabread.com/?ref=pbhomeleft and they will let you come in and get a free pastry. Once you are signed up they will also send you a coupon for a free pastry on your birthday. Pretty cool way to get a treat and save a bit of money too....

Monday breakfast for Courtney and I!!!!!

My Favorite way to flavor Butter Cream Icing...

As many of you know I love to experiment and make up recipes. Here is one that was inspired by Kim A. my fellow wilton instructor, she uses flavored coffee creamers to add a punch to her icing. Here with a simple substition I use Toroni or Da Vinci flavored syrups to change the taste of my icing. The icing tastes wonderful and there are hundreds of flavors to choose from out there. Please remember that if you use a syrup that is colored, your icing will be the color of the syrup!

Flavored Butter Cream Icing Recipe

 

6 Tablespoons butter

4 ½ to 4 ¾ cups pure cane powdered (confectioners) sugar

1 Tbsp Meringue powder

2 Tbsp. milk

2 Tbsp. Toroni syrup (your choice of flavors)

1 ½ tsp vanilla

 

In a small bowl beat butter until light and fluffy, gradually add about half the powdered sugar and meringue powder mixing well. Add the milk and vanilla and mix. Then add remaining powdered sugar. If consistency is too thick add more milk & mix, if it is too thin add more powdered sugar and mix until you have the right consistency. This is equal in yield to 1 batch of the Wilton class butter cream icing.

Cheap Thrill - Three free containers of cat litter... and I earned a few bucks too.....

This morning I decided that I would look around for some pet supply deals that would defray our expenses this year. My goal was to spend no more than thirty minutes and score enough cat litter for our one little kitty to last until the end of 2013. I easily found three rebate deals that fit the bill, I got 3 big containers of kitty litter for just the tax:

World's Best Cat Litter
www.worldsbestcatlitter.com

Feline Pine
http://www.felinepine.com


Dr. Elsey's
http://www.preciouscat.com/


All you do to get these rebates is go buy the products, print the rebate form from the website and follow the directions for what to mail or email in. ( Remember if you buy all three in one shopping trip to have the cashier ring three separate transactions- that way you have an original receipt to send to each company.)

Of course, being the coupon lady I had to take this a step further.  I found coupons for each item online and redeemed the coupons when I made the purchase. This means that I will actually make money on each transaction and get free kitty litter.  Here is how this works:

I printed out a $2.oo off coupon for Feline Pine. Went to Petsmart and bought the litter for $15.99 and used the coupon for $2.00 off. So I paid a net of $13.99 plus tax for my kitty litter.

I will then send off the rebate form. When you fill in a rebate form - you specify what the price of the item was before coupons. In this case I would tell them I paid $15.99 ( this is the price on my receipt). The rebate is good for any purchase of Feline Pine up to $14.99. This means the check I will  get in 6 weeks or so will be for $14.99 netting me a $1.00 more than I actually paid.

Using coupons on rebates does not sound like it would be worth the time it takes to do it especially since I did pay tax on the items as well. But today I picked up three rebate items and I netted $6.00 due to the coupons I used. Plus Petsmart gave me $5.oo of  rewards to use on another item. So I covered the taxes on the products and made a few bucks as well... the perfect coupon storm.


In six weeks I will be paid for all the litter I bought and I can proceed on to the next product!!!!!

New Place for you to post your cake photos, talk with other students, and ask questions...

I give up. I am unable to keep up with posting all the wonderful photos I have of your beautiful cakes and baking projects. So  I have started a new  Face Book Group just for all of you:

If you want to post photos, simply follow this link :


https://www.facebook.com/groups/Tarascakeclub/

*** You will need to have a free Face Book Membership to participate.

If you have questions that you would like addressed through the group email me at:
Tarascakeclub@groups.facebook.com


Here is a photo from years ago when I took the class. This was my second lesson in Wilton Course 1! It is amazing how far you can go with Wilton classes.

 It's a white cake with Da Vinci Raspberry butter cream icing... stay tuned to this blog for the icing recipe.....

Cheap Thrill for July 20, 2013- Coupons for Organics.....

Everyone always tells me it is hardest to coupon for high quality organic foods. I found a website that offers coupons for a number of these foods:

http://www.commonkindness.com/coupons

Of course, the easiest way I have found to save on vegetables and meat is to follow the coupons at my favorite super market, save as much as I can on other products and apply the savings to the purchase of high quality meats and veggies.

My Favorite Chocolate Cake Recipe

Hello Everyone-

My longtime favorite Chocolate cake is the " Hershey's Feathery Fudge Cake" it came in a recipe book they published in the early 1980's. I found a copy of the original book and have posted it to this link:

https://drive.google.com/?tab=wo&authuser=0#all

This will open up my google drive. Simply check the recipe you would like to look at and click twice. This will bring up the recipe or booklet, then you can open it and go to the page you want.

This way you can look up just the cake or a bunch of other Hershey's recipes as well.

Enjoy-

Tara