Finding My Magic?

It was 3 years ago that I first wrote this post about Mom-Magic, and how I didn't have it.

Now that I am a mom, I think I might be finding it. And I was right back then, I think I'm developing the sale magic!

I've mentioned before that we picked up quite a few things as Borders went out of business at pretty good clearance prices. That was great. And I always hit up the semi-annual sale at my favorite consignment shop, but that's not magic so much as scheduled six months in advance. Then I mentioned yesterday that I stumbled into a huge clearance sale at J. C. Penney. Literally, I was walking through the kids department just to glance around on my way out of the store into the mall when an employee called out to me saying, "We're marking things down right now, lots of stuff for less than $2!" As it happened, I was on the way to Gymboree to look at their clearance rack because Mom and I had found some steals at the Vicksburg Gymboree outlet store on Sunday. But even those prices weren't as good as I got at Penney's yesterday.

Today I ran by Toys R Us in search of one specific thing. A Melissa and Doug latch board that I've had on Kaycie's Amazon Wish List for a while but was waiting on a special occasion to buy because M&D specialty puzzles can get a little pricey. Today I had a $5 off coupon, so I figured it'd be a good vacation fun box toy. I like to throw in a few new things she's never seen before to keep her occupied in a new house and in the van. Anyway, I went to buy the puzzle and discovered that they were having a buy two get one free sale on all M&D products. Have I mentioned how much I love Melissa and Doug? We have a ton of their puzzles and wooden toys and art supplies and they are consistent favorites. And awesomely educational as a bonus.  Anyway, I went ahead and picked up 3 items, the vacation latch board that I had gone to buy anyway, some magnet alphabet letters for her birthday, and a set of lacing beads that will be for Christmas! All were on my list to be bought at some point, AND I got to use my $5 off coupon! I need to update her wish list. I've bought several things off of it now!

Moving on, Kaycie and I walked over to our neighborhood Dollar General (aka DG) to pick up a box of band aids this afternoon. That was all we were going to get, one box of $1 band aids. Uh huh. They were having a sidewalk clearance sale! Kaycie gravitated to the rack to I went over to see if any of their summer outside water toys might be good for the vacation fun box. Everything was half off AND buy one get one free. I let her pick out a couple of $1 items, which ended up being 25 cents each. We went inside and I found a table of more clearance, where we nabbed a couple of PBS character coloring books (Curious George and Cat in the Hat) and a couple of other clearance items. All in all I got my box of band aids, a pair of shoes for Kaycie, 2 coloring activity books and 4 vacation fun toys for $6. That's less than $1 per item. I did walk away from the half off giant set of sand bucket toys. It was $6 and more than we needed. It would have doubled my tab and thrown my average.

So maybe I can find a sale or two after all. Maybe. It could just be residual magic from being with my mom on Sunday.