Candy, Candy, Candy I Can't Let You Go

I bought groceries today, but I also sold some gold, so it was a net gain. There weren't many super deals that got me to the stores, but there was cheap candy to be had at both Publix and CVS. THIS time I'm going to actually save it for Halloween, not like the doomed M&M "fun size" bags of last week. They WERE a fun size. To be sure this batch lasts the week, I've hidden it somewhere in my stockpile in the garage. Now I'm going to try to forget where. But I keep reminding myself! Dang, I really need one of those lockboxes that Al Gore was always talking about. Cassie reminded me that there was Nestle candy on sale at CVS (the coupon is in her post), and Publix had their M&M's bogo, plus there's a $1/2 printable coupon floating around. Fiddledeedee is the place for that one and for all Publix lore.

A couple of other fun things at Publix: by the Sara Lee bread, there is a tear-off coupon for $3 off a pumpkin when you buy a pack of SL hotdog buns and a Hilshire farms sausage (the polish sausage thingies are 2 for $5). Publix's large pumpkins are $5.99 this week, so for $7.50, you can get buns, big sausage, and big pumpkin. Not free, but if you're in the market for some polska kielbasa anyway (I was), the $3 pumpkin is hard to turn down. The pumpkins are really accumulating on our porch.

Also, the Ritz crackers are bogo, which is good enough for me. Plus there are tear-offs for $1 off when you buy the Ritz and a chunk of Kraft cheese. The bigger chunks are marked down to $4.50. That stuff freezes, if you're into it. I also had the bogo Wholly Guacamole printable that expires 10/31, so I got two of those. I had a $1 off coup from the paper, so those were $1 each. As I type this, an entire guacamole is vanishing into my family's bellies, while we wait for the chili to simmer. Those were the highlights. So, spent $45.79, saved $28.68, but I feel good about the cheese and sausage I got for that.

This afternoon my neighbor called me and said that her tennis friend was having a gold party a couple streets over. Have you heard of this? I had only just been told of this phenomenon the other night. Basically it's like a Tupperware party, only instead of buying stuff, you bring your scrap gold to a dude who comes to sort it, weigh it, and offer you cash for it. The gold dudes pay the hostess 10% of what they pay out. Now, I am sure that you can go to a jeweler in your town and get a better price, and I've heard of some scammy gold parties where they weigh all the jewelry together and pay you the lowest carat rate, or they tell you you have 14k when you have 18k, or some such. So you should keep your eyes open. But the likelihood that I was going to gather up my scrap gold and go find a jeweler willing to buy it at a better rate was zero. And there is something to be said for the convenience of going to the next street to do this. One of the gold dudes told me that they are booked up for night parties every single night between now and the first of the year, so they're doing these afternoon parties in neighborhoods like ours, where a lot of women are home during the day.

So Normal Neighbor came over and watched Hank for a few minutes, and I went to the right house, and two dudes carefully untangled everything I had and looked it over. They had all the little tools, magnets, rubbing stone, magnifying glasses, etc. They sorted it by type of gold, then weighed each type. They paid me $110 cash for a few broken, tangled chains I got out of the bottom of Laura's jewelry box, and some little dented, ball earrings from the 80's. I didn't sell anything I actually wear, so it seemed like a little windfall. Plus there was food there. Maybe something to do if it comes your way.

Here's Hank, reminding me of a pumpkin with his orange shirt and pumpkin head. Yesterday he asked me to close the door and let him sit on the porch by himself.

Gotta go, my chili's ready. And be sure to check at Fiddledeedee's to see what the shopping experts are up to!