I did some research.. and maybe answered a few of my questions!!

Wow! What a great bunch of ladies (& gents) out there that have helped me with my questions.. well I did do some research and this is what I've come up with.

As far as the bags go for the boys loot for Christmas I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with the Home Depot bags. ***I wish I had taken pics of everything I looked at**** I went to Steve and Barry's and they had nothing. I went to the dollar store, nothing,.. I went to Ikea and they had a few things. One promising idea was wastepaper baskets. Ikea had small bathroom/bedroom sized ones in white or red that were big enough to probably hold all their loot. I love the bucket idea as well but haven't come across any buckets that would fit that price range however, it's not even November yet so I have plenty of time. Ikea alos had GREAT bags. The big blue ones that are 59 cents. I have one and love it.. but it's almost too big.. the loot would be sloshing around dumping all over the place in those and I don't see one of my boys ever using them in the future. Ikea also had LARGE shopping type reusable bags all in girlie colors and girlie type theme. Bubbles, squiggles, flowers, etc.

So yes, Home Depot has LARGE orange (home depot) color bags that open really wide, stretch, and even have a lock closure. I still don't see any of my boys using them in the future, however, if they need to at least it says HOME DEPOT on the bag. They are 99 cents and luckily Tim has several unused gift cards so I wouldn't have to pay a dime OOP for the 10 I'll probably buy.

Just another point for all the mommas out there. Those Home Depot bags would make KILLER halloween bags for your kids loot! At 99 cents each you can't beat it.. and you could write your kids names on them in sharpie if you have multiple fighting over loot children.

Okay another question I had last week was about storage for your cat/dog dry food! Well my answer came in the form of the MAIL LADY on Saturday.. lol! I got a local Aldi flyer and right on the front cover was a picture of a set of canisters for $5.99.

So I'm a happy camper with this.. I need to run to Aldi anyway.. I'm running out of a few Aldi items I only get there like kidney beans and canned tomatoes. So I started a short Aldi list. All things I can get while running other errands.

My last question about the Scrubbing Bubbles, I went ahead and just bought the refill pack and applied for the ESR at Walgreens. Worst case scenario I'll call and tell them I read the description which says "6 pack" and see if they'll still honor it... it's $1.50 but what the hey.

I'm mad at myself because I've made a few major erros this week that cost me some valuable dollars. I didn't think my CVS transaction through and spent more ECBS than I would have liked. I should have opted for a CVS gift card so that I could use that $13 towards CVS because now I'm left with like $10 in ECB's and I'll have to rebuild. I know at the end of October I should be getting a $10 freebie ECB for doing a survey so I'll be back over my little $20 ECB stash I like to keep myself at.

CVS has this great deal on GUM toothbrushes. I threw out those coupons.. I actually remember looking at them like 4 times thinking "there are soooo many toothbrush/toothpaste deals I'm gonna throw these out, I won't need them" the sucky part is that the kids toothbrushes are part of the deal and I really need them for my gift baskets. I can still get them but I know I won't be getting as good of a deal as I could have gotten. *sigh*

I missed the $5/$25 Wags coupon my less than an hour.. not sure why I didn't log on to my computer right before I left on Thursday to shop.. but that move cost me $5 I would have loved to have saved.

I should have fought the sock issue at Wags last week... I really needed new socks and so does my hubbie for his new job. So with $6 I could have fulfilled both needs easily. (somehow I'm down to maybe 3 pairs of socks and my hubbie needs socks that come over his ankle for his new work boots).

Okay.. so I'm about 5 months into this and I still sit back and let deals fly by.. I walk through CVS and never check deals I've thought about all week.. I get in the car, drive home and remember the next day *darn it*. I realize later I had more coupons or better coupons for deals. For example this week I bought 3 Bertolli dinners at Wags.. I could have printed 2 $2 off coupons plus one of my $1.75 coupons and saved myself another $2.25 but I didn't.. so combined that one trip I could have saved another $7.25... such is life.. but it still bugs me! lol!