Using Shutterfly for some frugal holiday shopping

October 27, 2008 · Posted in Frugal Spending, Saving Money

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We’re definitely taking it easy on the holiday gifts this year. Our goal is to celebrate Christmas for a total of $250 out-of-pocket (tree, dinner, postage for gifts, everything) - we did buy some train stuff for the kid earlier this year, but we’re not going to count that.

I’ve been scoping out holiday deals, and made my first big purchase tonight. I mentioned in a previous post that I signed up for a pretty good Shutterfly offer, and I coupled this with some additional codes that I found on Slickdeals.net and a $50 gift card that I got for free through ShopDiscover (that 5% back we got for gas was a huge help!).

Basically, for $20 out-of-pocket (It will actually be $18, since we’ll get $2.00 back for shopping through the ShopDiscover link) we got 75 holiday cards, 50 prints, and 4 calendars. The holiday cards are a big deal for us - we send along personal notes and pictures, and it’s a great way to keep in touch with more distant relatives and friends. The prints are for the kid’s photo album, and the calendars will take care of holiday shopping for me (this is my one gift to myself!), grama, great-grama, and grampa. Our families really like the calendars, and love to show them off!

I’m also really happy to be getting our cards early this year. I would like to have the kid “decorate” the envelopes with stickers and scribbles, so this gives us some time to play with.

So to keep tabs, $250-$20 = $230 left. Do you think I can do it?