75% off Halloween

I don't celebrate Halloween, but that doesn't mean I won't shop bargains once Halloween is over.  :)

I was at the store today and saw a man with a cart full of candy, so I went poking around.  I first saw bags of mini Clark bars (one of Mom's favorite candies -- I actually paid $1.59 for a full sized Clark bar on Sunday night.)  Bags of the mini ones were 60 cents a bag.  Jackpot.  A little further on, I saw a lot more clearanced candies, and I thought of the "Christmas store" that my church does where everything is free.  I figured some candy in non-Halloween wrappings would be a welcomed donation for people to get to add to stockings, so I got a number of bags of candy.  The candy ranged in price from 24 cents for a bag of caramel apple candy corn (which I wanted to try) to $2 for a huge bag of Wonka candies.  Everything was 75% off.

I found mini-boxes of Russell Stovers candy for 32 cents.  Someone had unwrapped one of the "spider" wrappings from it, and underneath the outer Halloween wrapping was a normal mini-box of Russell Stover candy that would usually sell for about $1.29.  I got a few of these thinking they would make nice basket stuffers at Christmas.

And then I looked to a bottom shelf.  My gold mine!  I absolutely love General Mills' Count Chocula.  There was a huge display of it, and it, too, was 75% off.  Not only that but there were some cereal bars with bats on them for Halloween also at 75% off.

In all I spent a whopping $59!  (Originally $236!)  That's a lot just for candy and cereal.  But the cereal has a best if used by date in September of 2011 and I know we will use it up.

Also, on two bags of candy I found peelie coupons that if you bought three bags of candy you got $1 off!  I looked for more of those coupons but couldn't find any more.  The coupons didn't expire until Nov 15, so that fun to spot!

In all I bought:

28 boxes of cereal  (26 Count Chocula, 1 Boo Berry, 1 Franken Berry)
3 boxes of cereal bars (wanted more but couldn't reach them)
32 bags of candy
4 mini-boxes of Russell Stovers Candy
3 Chocolate Peeps

I went to a few other stores for regular shopping, and everywhere but this one grocery store had their Halloween stuff at 25% to 50% off depending on what it was.  I almost never stop at this store, but decided to today!

Looks like we won't be buying any cereal for a year or so!