Christmas in February

This mark-down maven is still on the prowl for holiday clearance items.  A huge haul landed in my stockpile a few weeks ago.  All this swag set me back about fifteen bucks.  It's easy to be generous when you can find gifts like this for cheap!  Most of the lot was from Office Max but the stockings came from Big Lots.  On clearance at 90% off with an additional 20% off the final price, the large ones were ten cents per piece and the small one was seven.  Stockings like this are great to use in place of gift bags.  They are also much more re-usable since they won't tear.

It was a big surprise to see dog toys in Office Max.  They probably carry them now since so many workplaces make allowances for pets.  Aside from my own girl, we have many four legged friends.  One of the "tree" sticks will be a birthday present for her, the rest will go to doggy friends at Christmas.   Each toy was around a buck -- and the quality far superior to anything I could find at Dollar Tree.

Every year, TBG's business has a holiday event for customers.  They put out a nice buffet and wear ugly Christmas sweaters.  I am always looking for ways to do nice things for the boys since they are all such great fellows and contribute greatly to my guy's success.  A rather large chunk of our income comes from sales goals, so they really make a big difference to our quality of life -- that, plus I really like all of them.  They are a great team.  The beer/bottle sweaters will go to them all on ugly Christmas sweater day -- so they can dress their soda cans and water bottles up as tackily as they do themselves.  And I will say, they all out-do themselves each year with ugly sweaters.  The pens will go with the little sweaters.

My guess is I've probably seen the end of whatever holiday mark-downs are lingering on shelves.  That's OK, I will turn my attention to Valentine's over-stock.  There are always holiday mark-downs to be had, so it's worth keeping an eye out!