Friday

Greer: FREE small coffee all day
Cherrydale: 5-7pm – Wear
your pajamas and get a FREE Cinnamon Cluster! Kid’s can decorate a
pillowcase and do some fun activities with the PJ Cow (space is
limited, so call to reserve your spot, 233-9700). We’ll even have a
special breakfast menu avaialable!

Saturday

Greer: 5-8pm FREE kids meal with adult combo

Thanks for you patience with lack of posts! I have many, many posts and series I’ve been wanting to post on and some I’ve even already written, but for now I need to say no. I’ll be taking a break from Saving in Greenville through the end of August. At that point, I’ll come back and re-evaluate keeping up this site.

In case you’ve been curious…

• We did turn on our air conditioner in June. Electric bill doubled, but still not too bad, as it was quite low before. Once we turned it on, I was amazed at how much energy I still had in the afternoons, when I had been quite hot and miserable before.

• We bought our first pack of diapers! For $3.99, but we made it 17 months without having to pay for any. Right now we’re using BumGenius cloth diapers during the day and disposable at night and for traveling. (She’s also working hard to potty train herself, but we’ll wait one more month to work a little harder since we’ll be going through some major transitions in the next month.) We’ve used BumGenius occasionally since our daughter was a few months old (started out with only 2), but since I doubt I’ll be able to get lots of free diapers for our next daughter, I plan to actually invest in purchasing several more. I may also attempt to go do this. If you are wondering about “modern” cloth diapers, I highily recommend this brand!
• We are still loosely operating on our $750 annual grocery budget; however, my records were on a computer that “died,” and I need to take time to go through the receipts again and calculate everything. For now, I’ve just been keeping our weekly average to around $15/week or less and saving receipts.

There are a lot of great deals going on right now, and I’ll just link to a few:

• Free picture package (a rare thing for PP) from The Picture People (through July 25); also read about how to get portraits from The Picture People for less here, courtesy of my friend Kim.
• 80% off at Restaurant.com with the code NAPKIN (through July 28)
• Triple Coupons at Ingles (not the greatest coupon policy, but might still be some good deals)
• I use these cloth Swiffer wipes and use and rewash them. (We also use cloth napkins (from Old Time Pottery) in place of paper, and rags in place of paper towels, most of the time.)
• Swagbucks now offers Paypal as a prize option: 70 swagbucks gets $5 via Paypal. If you haven’t signed up yet, you can sign up here and earn 5 points just for joining by entering the code NEWBIE (through July 24). (Some other new prizes are cerificates to Bumkins (baby product/cloth diapers (!!)), restaurant.com certificates, iPods, and more…)

Deals in Greenville:

• Take a Wal*Mart receipts to Checkers at the Wade Hampton Taylors location, and get a free checkerburger (not sure how long this deal lasts).
• My friends Ashley and Natalie are hosting a “Here We Grow Again” children’s consignment sale July 29-August 1. I will unfortunately be helping and bidding farewell to my husband that weekend, but check out the details here.
• Yard sales are still going on! I have really found some great deals this year: $20 for a only $250 double jogging stroller, 50 cents for a $100 baby backpack carrier, $3 for a wooden kids desk/tool workbench, $3 for a $70 painting, and the list goes on, just in case you need inspiration. For the best info on Greenville area yard sales, I recommend checking Craigslist, especially Friday evening for an updated list of yard sale advertising. I also recommend visiting community/subdivision yard sales when possible, as they tend to have better prices and selection and many sales going on within walking distance. (Community sales have slowed down, but there should be a few more near the start of schools before the “season” totally ends.)
• Free haircuts in Spartanburg.
• Free ultrasounds for expectant mommies. (ongoing)

I may hop back on a few times to share a really good deal, so you may want to subscribe to this blog in order get updates rather than spending time checking back on the site. Feel free to use the forum to share deals, particularly those in Greenville. And, if you don’t already subscribe to/check Money Saving Mom and Southern Savers, I highly recommend doing so, the first for deals everywhere, and the latter for deals down “South,” particularly for Publix deals. Oh how I love shopping getting groceries for free at Publix (P.S. All the current ads/deals on right the sidebar are still going, and deals I’ve personally done and benefited from.)

If you have a site/blog about deals in Greenville, feel free to comment on this post or leave a note in the forum so local readers can keep up on deals.

The SOS Thrift Store, located at 2310 E North St, Greenville, SC, is having a “Stuff a bag of clothing for $5″ sale this Friday and Saturday (June 26, 27).

I have visited the SOS store this summer, and was able to find several very nice, name brand clothing items for myself. In my opinion, I found the children’s clothing to be rather “less nice,” but it may vary from time to time. (I’m afraid I’m convinced yard sales are the absolute best way to stock up on kids clothes!) Even if you miss out on this sale, I recommend checking them out. The prices are slightly lower than Goodwill. Their normals hours are Tuesday – Saturday 9 – 5 (so don’t go on a Monday! ).

If you enjoy fine dining and want to do it relatively inexpensively, you’ll definitely want to check out the Table 301 “Stimulus Package.” You may remember this being offered back in January, but it was too late for most people to take advantage of this. Well, it’s back! This time the coupon is good through June 30.

The Table 301 stimulus is a $25 off certificate (that you don’t have to pay for!) to any of the Table 301 restaurants in Greenville: The Lazy Goat, Soby’s, or Devereuxs. There is no minimum spending requirement, but you must use it for dine-in for two or more guests. You can choose your first restaurant, and when you pay and use the certificate you will receive another certificate to a different restaurant.
Since January, my husband and I have been participating in this. We started out at the Lazy Goat, and only had to pay a tip (on the price before using the $25 off) by ordering a combined total of $25. It is the least expensive of the 3 restaurants. Our favorite experience was when we visited Soby’s to celebrate our anniversary and combined the $25 certificate with our $50 truck test-drive Visa! We typically eat out once or twice a month (unless there’s free food!), and have really enjoyed visiting these three restaurants. Both the food and service is amazing, and I love the artistic culinary inspiration! Go here to get the certificate.

Special thanks to my sister for passing this along via her friend, Matt, of Dapper Ink (who you might want to check out if you ever need t-shirts printed or designed).

Thanks to Jessica of Bargain Banana for mentioning the grand opening of Keva Juice, opening today,

Saturday, June 20. From 2p.m. to 4p.m., they’re giving away FREE smoothies!

If you can’t make in that two-hour range, you can stop by for a 93 cent smoothie ($1.00 total with tax), and make sure to sign up for the Keva Club, because you get a free smoothie just for signing up plus another on your birthday!

They are located at 4 Market Point Road off of Woodruff Road (near Whole Foods).