Introducing my first-ever podcast, which is about the money-saving capabilities of Etsy. Click on the link below to listen: (Word of advice, have your Jersey Shore inspired fist pumps ready for a techno explosion!)
Be sure to check out Corinna’s photos HERE.
Posted in General, Online deals
Tagged artists, crafts, Etsy, marketplace, Photography, vintage, wedding
I know I’ve posted about discount magazine subscriptions before, specifically from Amazon. But this is a different ballgame. I mentioned Real Simple magazine in a previous post and how I recently signed up for two free issues. Well since the mag is a part of the Time Warner family, I guess they thought it fitting to try to entice with remarkably discounted subscriptions to their other publications.
Image via Wikipedia
At these prices, I’m interested. Many are discounted to less than a $1 per issue:
The above list is of the more popular titles. There is also an additional discounted list including magazines like Food & Wine, Health, Golf Magazine, This Old House, SI Kids, etc.
This offer is for NEW subscribers only, sorry. In order to get the good rates, you are going to have to pay up front using a debit/credit card. You can choose to send them elsewhere as gifts and you can choose to automatically renew at the current remarkable rate.
And you don’t have to sign up for anything before you can access the deals. All you have to do is go to this Web page: http://www.realsimple.com/FAF
You have until Dec. 17 to order . Yes, these really are great deals. For publications like Money and People, you’re getting 50% off of what you would pay if you subscribed directly from their Web site. It’s safe to say that you will save at least $5 by using this site. Just to be sure, always check the actual magazine Web site to see if they just happen to be offering a better deal.
Posted in General, Online deals
Tagged discount subscriptions, Food & Wine, Magazine, Magazines and E-zines, People magazine, Real Simple, TimeWarner
Hidden behind Target in Johnson City is Ryan’s delicious buffet. (205 East Mountcastle Drive.) It doesn’t benefit me money wise to eat at a buffet because I would rather eat several tiny meals than one big one, but that’s just me. When I’m faced with a buffet, my eyes always grow bigger than my belly and I never make it through all my food. So wasteful!! Nevertheless, I’ve got to give a shout to fellow journo-classmate Brittany for filling me in on this money-saving tidbit:
Ryan’s does 4.99 mega bar breakfast / 5.29 mega bar lunch Mon – Fri. That’s a huge deal since it’s usually 10 bucks at night.
Not only can you get a HUGE and cheap lunch, but Ryan’s also has an “e-club.” Go HERE to sign up. Then, they’ll send you a coupon for a buy one get one free dinner buffet. I don’t know if I will be able to use mine since it expires after Friday. So, don’t sign up until you’re in the mood for Ryan’s because the coupon does not a have a long lifespan.
HOURS:
M-Thur: 10:45 AM – 9:00 PM
Fri: 10:45 AM – 10:00 PM
Sat: 8:00 AM – 10:00 PM
Sun: 8:00 AM – 9:00 PM
If that didn’t make you hungry enough, I will leave with you a description of Ryan’s buffet, taken from their Web site:
Help yourself to our Classic Homestyle Entrees bar featuring comfort foods like southern fried chicken, carved ham, creamy mac n’ cheese, mashed potatoes and more. How about some southers fried fish and baked salmon from our Seafood Extravaganza bar? Maybe a steak or some country pork ribs from our Fresh Grill? And naturally, you’ll want to check out the fresh array at our Salad Bar, too. But whatever you do, save room for our Endless Dessert Bar. Cobbler, cake, cookies, pie, ice cream — hey, you can even start here if you want!
Posted in Food, Online deals
Tagged Buffet, eclub, Food, free buffet, homestyle food, lunch specials, Ryan's, Salad Bar
Image via Wikipedia
No, unfortunately there is not a store in Johnson City named after Mr. K from the beloved Beatle‘s jam “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite.” Although that is an awesome concept. Mr. K’s Used Books, Music and More is located on 4 Mark Twain Court, which is just off North Roan Street behind Sonic. It’s a two-level mega store of CHEAP books, CDs, DVDs, etc. I could spend hours in there! Plus, there’s new stuff each time you go because people are constantly trading in their used goodies.
Yes, you can get rid of your used media goodies and books somewhere besides a yardsale!
At Mr. K’s you can trade used books, CDs, DVDs, Books-on-tape, and Video games. You are given FUNNY MONEY in exchange for your merchandise. We do give cash in exchange for some items including CDs, DVDs, Video Games and some books. Some books are trade only and include most pocketbooks.”
After trading all the stuff in that you don’t have room for, you can turn around and get more stuff for LOW prices. Ahh, music to my ears! haha! To be honest, I’ve never traded anything in, but I’ve seen lots of people do it.
Although it takes some time to find the good stuff, for me it’s worth it. Especially since Mr. K’s also sends out a 20% off coupon each month via email. In order to get on the coupon list, you have to sign up in the store. There’s an email list on the counter. Just jot your email address down, legibly, and they’ll start sending your monthly coupon.
Hours:
MON-SAT 9am-9pm
SUNDAY 12pm-6pm
In case you haven’t a clue what the Mr. K’s reference meant, I’ll clue you in:
Posted in Books, Online deals
Tagged books, cheap books, coupons, Johnson City Tennessee, Mr. K's, Shopping, used books, used Cds, used DVDs
Thankfully, we have some choices when it comes to cable providers. Although I think they’re all evil, I couldn’t live without it, so I do my business with Charter for the time being. To be honest, I’m mad that I didn’t know about their rewards program called “Live It with Charter” until I had already been a customer for several months. The deal is, they give you points for each $1 you spend per month on Charter services. Then, you can take those points and use them toward new items. You can put up points to bid on items like HDTVs. There’s also the possibility to use points to enter yourself in a sweepstakes or you can cash your points in during “redemption days” which opens on a certain numbe
r of days and usually has a theme. (The whole program kind of reminds of those Pepsi points from back in the day) The current redemption days is titled “Home for the Holidays.” I have enough points for a mug..
That brings me to another point. Unless you are maxed out on Charter services, don’t expect to accrue lots of points right away. I’m finally up to 7,259, but that’s no where near what the season three dvd costs that I would LOVE to get for free during Mad Men redemption days!
It’s one of those times when patience will be a virtue, I hope. If you’re spending gross amounts of mulah with Charter already, why not go ahead and sign up. They’ll give you anywhere from 10 to 15 points for every $1 spent each month and they keep up with it automatically. It doesn’t matter if you already have a sign in with Charter to pay your bill, this is separate.
Go HERE to sign up for the Live it with Charter Rewards Program. (What a mouthful) Oh, and if you get enough points to get something cool, let me know!
Posted in Electronics, General, Online deals
Tagged cable, Charter, Free Stuff, High-definition television, internet, live it with charter, rewards program, televsion
Johnson City’s hot spot for all foods healthy, Earth Fare, has a GREAT offer. Before I tell you what that is exactly, I can’t take the credit for myself. Classmates Brittany and Anna filled me in on this little secret: FREE PANTRY MAKEOVER!
What does that mean exactly? Earth Fare (located near ETSU main campus on State of Franklin Road, formerly a Rite Aid Pharmacy) will give you free healthy foods in exchange for your high fructose corn syrup, preservative, very unhealthy stuff. Well, first you must sign up for Earth Fare’s newsletter by going to the homepage HERE. (I know this stuff clogs up the inbox, but it’s worth it!) The sign up is at the bottom of their very flashy Web site.
Find this sign up at the bottom of Earth Fare's homepage
Then they will send you an email that looks like this:
After signing up for Earth Fare's newsletter, you will get an email like this. Click on the sign to get your pantry makeover!
Click on the sign to get started. You’ll have to give them a little more than your email address to get the free food. Fill out the “My heart journey” page and it will take you to a printable coupon listing the stipulations for this yummy makeover. You have to bring them the following items:
“It doesn’t matter if your trade-in is completely full or has two tablespoons left it in, BOOT IT! *This is a one-time offer.”
So, what are you waiting for?! Get to Earth Fare’s Web site, sign up, print the coupon and raid your cabinets! I also heard that Earth Fare is a great place to grab lunch, potentially a future blog post?
This post is dedicated to photos. Purchasing prints from Walgreens is easy and cheap. You don’t have to go through the boring and drawn-out process of bringing your memory card to the store, uploading, picking print sizes/quantity. Instead, you can do all of that from your computer, which is where you keep all your photos anyway. Once you create an account on Walgreen’s Web site, you can begin uploading your photos straight from your hard drive or memory card. You can create albums to keep photos organized.
To get the deals, you need to sign up for the newsletter, which can be found at the bottom right corner of the homepage. 
They’ll send you something about once or twice a week, including photo and store specials. Their most recent coupon code is INSPIRE. When entered at checkout, it gives you 50 4X6 prints for $5. Not only can you order multiple prints and sizes quickly and easily, but you can design collages, order posters, mousepads, calendars, magnets, etc. all with your favorite photos on them! Right now you can get 20% off photo gifts by entering the code FALL at checkout.
A photo puzzle is just one of the photo gifts Walgreens offers, often for discounted prices.
When you finish picking out your photo selection, you choose which Walgreens store you would like to pick up your photos and you can even give them a preference of when you would like them to be available. You can pay online or in store. Walgreens will email you when the prints are ready to be picked up, so no need to guess.
So, now that you’ve passed Walgreens’ photo buying 101, let’s talk about stock photos. Recently, I have been doing some design work and I’ve needed photos to bring my less-than-average artistic creations to life. Yeah, Google images is great, but the resolution isn’t always the best (you can toggle the resolution by clicking on “advanced image search.”) There are two sites I’ve been using lately. One is Morgue File. 
I found a great photo of a swing that I used for a photo illustration, but the site’s search engine is not the best. Yeah, you’ll get photos associated with the key word you typed in, but you’ll get a lot of other junk too. And because anyone can upload photos to the site, you won’t always get the best of the best. But all in all, it’s photos that you HAVE the permission to download and use at will, without worrying about copyright issues.
The last free stock photo site I will bring up is stock.exchng (stock exchange). Although you have to sign up, membership is FREE! ETSU’s student newspaper, the East Tennessean, uses stock.exchng, so it’s legit!
I can't do a post about photos without showing off some of my own work. This is from November 2009 and it's not a real leaf, but a decoration with a REAL spider!
Given the fact that I’m in a magazine writing class this semester and I took magazine editing and production last semester, I am very much into mags at the moment. After registering for a subscription to Oprah‘s magazine, O, I got an email for two free issues of Real Simple. I got my first issue today and I’m LOVING “The Insider’s guide to everyday deals.” Since most you are not going to run out and subscribe to Real Simple, I thought I would share some of the most noteworthy bargains.
1. If you’ve been keeping up with C3, then you know that I am an Amazon lover. Besides textbook deals, they also have great offers on music, including FREE MP3’s. Just go HERE, and scroll through the left side of the page and click on Free Songs & Special Deals. That’s where I found a slew of free songs. You can sample before purchasing. I chose Spoon’s “Got Nuffin.” The download was short and sweet, I just had to install the Amazon MP3 Downloader and the song was automatically added to my iTunes. Don’t forget, you have to register with Amazon before you can benefit from the free music. Happy downloading!
2. Eat Drink Deals is a site that rounds up coupons from many chain restaurants and passes them on to YOU. Although some of them are places that can’t be found in the Tricities area, there may be eateries from your hometown or where you might be visiting shortly. Some of the most noteworthy include the buy 10 wings, get 10 free ALL DAY tomorrow (Oct. 10) at Hooter’s. KFC is giving an additional four free pieces of chicken with any 10-piece or larger. There’s also a great Red Lobster coupon for $4 off two adult dinner entrees.
3. Free games at Miniclip. Tired of Farmville on Facebook? (I doubt it) Miniclip offers all sorts of time-wasing games FOR FREE. (I’m jealous of people who have time to play these games!)
Image via Wikipedia
4. Free Apps at freeappaday.com. Each day, a new freebie is released for iPod, iPad and Android. I’m pretty sure most of them are games, but it’ free!
Posted in Food, Music, Online deals
Tagged Amazon, free apps, free games, freebies, Games, iPod, iTunes, KFC, Miniclip, Real Simple, Spoon
I’m not a good cook, but I try when time allows me. If I’m in the mood to attempt something homemade, I usually shuffle through the CHEAP and amazingly easy recipes I get daily/weekly via email from Campbell’s Soup, Betty Crocker and Bisquick. (a Betty Crocker product)
Not all of the recipes are healthy, but most of the time, healthy alternative ingredients are listed at the bottom. The ease/price of ingredients and nutritional info usually determines what dish I will attempt to make edible! haha! Additionally, if I find a good sale on veggies, hamburger meat or chicken, I usually try to search for recipes with those key words. I put all the recipes in an email folder titled the obvious, “recipes,” then I can search for specific ingredients within the folder.
Image via Wikipedia
As far as the information in the recipes, I wish there were more how-to photos, but that’s coming from a hardcore picture-learning perfectionists who can’t imagine just “throwing things” in a bowl. Some of the more popular recipes do have handy how-to videos. The descriptions and ingredient lists are thorough and I like being able to read reviews submitted by other online users who have made the dish too. The best advice comes from those who use alternative ingredients that makes it just a bit better.
One of my favorites is the ranch chicken from Betty Crocker. Although the recipe says to cook the chicken in a skillet, I prefer to bake it. The ranch dressing moistens the slow-baked chicken. It’s super-easy to make with only chicken breasts, ranch dressing and bread crumbs required. View the recipe by clicking HERE.
Campbell's beef taco bake
I have been receiving Campbell Soup’s emails for about a week, but I’ve been impressed. I’ve been on a salsa kick lately, so I’m anxious to try the beef taco bake. YUM! Check the recipe out HERE.
Keep in mind that both Betty Crocker and Campbell’s are going to try their best to push their products on you, but what you buy is YOUR choice and a lot of times, off brand is just as good. Dinners aren’t the only recipe subject, of course Betty Crocker is going to offer some wonderful dessert recipes. Many of them are season or holiday-themed. I haven’t attempted any just yet, but I’m always looking. I get discouraged by the calorie count, though.
Now that I’ve got your mouth watering, why not go sign up for some free recipes! You should definitely give your email to Betty Crocker by going HERE. You’ll be able to sign up for info from”Dinner Made Easy,” Betty Crocker and Bisquick all at one time! Campbell Soup’s sign up is HERE. Look on the right side of the page, about midway down.
I know I didn’t talk a lot about Bisquick because their recipes are give and take. There are a few that sound appetizing while others sound just plain gross. Of course each recipe incorporates Bisquick so if you’re not a fan, don’t sign up. Otherwise, they send some good dessert ideas and Bisquick is pretty cheap
As an extra bonus, here’s an interesting video featuring a day of cheap food for college students. Really, it could go for anyone. Especially those of us still cooking for ONE!
Posted in Food, Online deals
Tagged Betty Crocker, Bisquick, Campbell's Soup, Chicken, Cooking, Free, Fruits and Vegetables, Meat, Recipe
If you’ve been following the Canny Clipper religiously, which I’m sure you have, then you’re at the point where it’s time to start an email folder titled “COUPONS” to keep up with all the amazing deals you’re getting via the Internet. Today you may want to submit your email address to yet another eating establishment: Marco’s Pizza.
Located near the main campus of ETSU, Marco’s is in a shopping center directly across from Kroger, just off State of Franklin Road. I haven’t eaten it too much, considering Johnson City has become some sort of pizza-obsessed city and there are LOTS of choices (see poll below), but I couldn’t pass up some FREE CHEEZYBREAD today. (With the purchase of a pizza at regular price)
All you’ve got to do to get the coupon is sign up for their email newsletter, which you can find HERE.
A view of the Marco's Pizza homepage. Click on the circled area to sign up for croupons and receive a free cheezybread via email.
The cheezybread is valued at $4.99 and comes with two sauces: marinara and ranch. That plus a medium pizza topped with hamburger cost me $10.62. After sharing my good fortune with my buddy Erica, I lugged a pizza box around campus so that I could have the cold leftovers for dinner before/during my night class.
Like I said before, I’m a bit jaded when it comes to pizza because there is so much available to me at any moment. But, I want to know what YOU like best. It doesn’t have to be the cheapest, although that usually determines where I will eat.
Answer the poll, if you DARE!!
Posted in Food, Online deals
Tagged cheezybread, E-mail address, East Tennessee State University, Free, Johnson City Tennessee, Marco's Pizza, Pizza
Canny Clipper’s Pandora stations
C3 