Our Nearly Free and Discount Christmas!

With the addition of a new baby this year, we had more presents to buy and a little less money to spend on them. Luckily, I was able to find great deals and take advantage of some shopper programs to get free and heavily discounted items to fill our stockings...

Santa Claus brought Eva a Schoenhut piano and some Curious George toys this year. They're the kind of things that you see at high end baby stores, but I got all of them for free through Totsy during a special free shipping promotion. Totsy is a shopping program that does 48 hour sales on different items for moms and kids. I love the site because it's introduced me to some great brands I never would have heard of and they often also sales on quality kid stuff, bringing the prices down into our family range. They also send out coupon codes for frequent shoppers and you can earn credits by inviting your friends to Totsy. Here's how my deal worked:

• Schoenhut piano: normally $84.99, on sale for $45 at Totsy
• Curious George wooden car: normally $12, on sale for $5 at Totsy
• Curious George jack-in-the-box: normally $25, on sale for $9.99 at Totsy
• $60 worth of Totsy credit (earned from 4 friends joining the site)
• Free shipping coupon sent out to Totsy shoppers
• Total: free!

*Note - Totsy is having a big toy blowout to get rid of some of their stock and I believe they'll have some of these pianos. Eva loves hers, so I really recommend them! I think the sale starts sometime tonight, so check the site out tonight if you're interested.

Santa brought a few things for mom and dad this year as well! We got Bridesmaids and Dance Central 2 from Amazon during their holiday sales and I paid for them using credits I'd earned from ExpoTV. ExpoTV offers credits when you upload videos of you reviewing products. It sounds a little complicated, but it works like this: they want a review of shampoo, so you grab your smartphone, take a 2 minute video of you talking about the shampoo, upload it without any editing or titles or anything like that, and they give you credits when the videos are approved.

I took about an hour to film and upload five product reviews on things like shampoo, detergent, and our holiday decorations and I earned 4000 points, which turned into an Amazon gift certificate (used by Santa). Here's a breakdown of my deals:

• Bridesmaids: normally $14.99, on sale for $4.99
• Dance Central 2: $49.99, on sale for $24.99
• 3600 ExpoTV points cashed in for $30 in Amazon credit
• Free 2-day shipping through Amazon Mom (free and anyone can join)
• Total: free!

This toy is a little age-inappropriate for our 9 month old, who wanted to scatter the pieces around and be done with it, but Kyle and I were excited to give her a toy that we loved when we were little. Plus, it was free! I cashed in my Pampers Gift to Grow points and they shipped this guy out to me for free. Pampers Gift to Grow is a program in which you're supposed to get codes for points from packages of diapers and then use those points for random items.

The thing about it is that they also share random codes with bloggers and if you keep up with it, you can actually get a ton of points without ever buying diapers. We only bought a few packs of Pampers diapers, but I was able to get enough points last year to turn it into a free Potato Head. Again, you have to keep collecting codes in order for the points to add up, but it's a very easy program to use. Here are some points to get you started:

• Get 100 points for signing up here
• FAC1211PPXHKHND (10 pts)

Santa got this Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle calendar for Kyle for only $2 from Zazzle, thanks to their Zazzle Black program. The program is designed to save you money on shipping by having you pay a low membership fee for the year that covers 2-day free shipping on everything. They have a free trial, however, that you can sign up for and when I signed up they gave me $10 in credit to use however I wanted (which was then shipped for free, obviously). Boom: $12 custom calendar for $2.

These Topzy Tumblers ended up in Eva's stocking thanks to a $5 off any Fisher Price Toy coupon I found in the newspaper. A set of 3 tumblers were only $4.99 at Target, so they ended up being free! Fisher Price releases coupons every now and then, so watch your newspaper...

The grown-up stocking stuffers were also courtesy of a newspaper coupon. World Market had a $10 off a $30 purchase coupon in the newspaper and I combined that with their sale on imported foods to get us a bunch of yummy, random goodness. I love World Market, because they always have the weirdest stuff!

For my present to Kyle, I couldn't think of any one thing that he'd really love, so I ended up getting him a box of gift certificates, including 4 restaurant gift certificates, $50 for a local water park, $30 for miniature golf/arcade/skating, two tickets to the symphony, two tickets to the opera, and a pair of passes to the local aquarium. That means that we have at least two date nights and around eight family outings to look forward to this year! Total cost to me: somewhere around $60.

Most of the gift certificates were purchased on Groupon, Living Social, SaveMore, and Google Offers. I was able to get the aquarium passes for free through a Facebook promotion they were doing and the opera/symphony tickets were purchased at a discount rate through a local arts program. With Valentine's Day coming up, I would definitely keep an eye out for local deals in your area! Just after Christmas, we picked up a deal on Living Social for two nights at a hotel down in Southern Utah for just $100, which means we have a road trip to look forward to and the opportunity to check out a hotel that would normally be out of our price range. Love!