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Yesterday marked the 3 month anniversary of the day the tornadoes ripped through Alabama. Today marks the day that couponers around the United States came together for my hometown. They sent box after box of things they got for cheap or free with their coupons. We ended up with a total of 696 boxes from every state in the United States! Absolutely incredible.

So if you sent a box we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for impacting hundreds of families with your donations. I tried to keep up with all the addresses but I couldn’t write them down as fast as the boxes were opened and the items distributed. The items were put to good use here and in other affected areas and helped many people who didn’t think anyone would want to help them.

It was very humbling to be able to organize this relief effort and thank you so much for being a part of it!

Kristin

Last week I was given an amazing opportunity to fly to the CVS headquarters in Rhode Island with a group of other bargain and fashion bloggers. CVS invited us to fly up (all expenses paid!) to view upcoming promotions, new products and to offer our opinions. It was my very first trip for my blog and it was a huge honor to be included.

Last Wednesday I flew from Birmingham to Charlotte and from Charlotte to Boston, MA. Unfortunately a gauge on the plane broke and we had a 3 hour delay in Charlotte. We finally arrived in Boston, MA (there were 3 other bloggers on my flight) where a car service picked us up and took us to the hotel which happened to be right across the street from a CVS. I got a kick out of that and had to take a picture of it.

We had a delicious dinner at a downtown Italian restaurant where we finally had the chance to meet the other bloggers. There were a total of 22 bloggers invited to the event (bargain and beauty bloggers) including my friend Michelle from Money Saving Madness. Only Michelle and I had never met so I was texting her during the meal asking her which one she was! She got a good chuckle out of it.

Wednesday morning was when all the fun festivities started. CVS picked us up at the hotel at 8 am and took us to their headquarters. I was almost as excited to pass the CVS sign as I am when I go under the welcome sign at Disney World.

We were first introduced to the President and CEO of CVS, Mr. Larry Merlo. It was interesting to hear the history of CVS and how far they have come over the past 35 years.

But the most exciting thing of the morning though was being able to take a tour of the store inside CVS headquarters. Yes, they have a real full size store inside their building. They use it for merchandising, training, testing and more. It was really neat to hear how they came up with the design and layout and even be able to offer our advice and opinion on it. I’m hoping some of the ideas I offered will show up in a future store. ;)

We also were presented the Extra Care Program 101. It was really interesting and I even learned a thing or two I did not know. We even had the opportunity for a Q and A with the head of the Extra Care Program. I had a ton of opinions to offer, and they wrote a lot of them down. Maybe we will start to see some of them implemented soon!

The thing that really stuck me the most was how much CVS cares about their customer. They really want their customer to save as much money as they can and they work really hard to make sure they give them opportunities to save on the things they buy the most. They actually track your purchases through your Extra Care Card and will give you coupons that match the items you buy the most.

After lunch we were introduced to the new Nuance Salma Hayek line that will be sold exclusively through CVS starting this August. These are actual products that Salma’s grandmother has made for her for years. They range in price from $2.99 to $19.99. I like that part.

We also had the opportunity to learn more about the CVS generic line of products, the Beauty 360 products and stores, and many more things that are escaping me at the moment. It was an incredible experience and I am so humbled that I was included to go and share my opinion with top executives who actually listened. (If you are wondering how I was invited, I replied to an email from a CVS PR rep and a few months later they invited me to attend.)

Oh and for those of you that were curious, CVS did not mean for the Pepsi deal to go viral. It was the first promotion of that kind and their intention was to reward select customers. They were very apologetic and felt bad for the way it happened.  We gave them a few opinions on how to prevent that from happening in the future.

(Photo Credit: Diamond Photography)

The first of the Donation Relief boxes from the awesome blog readers across the country started arriving today. We received over 30 boxes from 17 different states. My pastor called me as soon as the mail ran and was stunned at how many boxes had arrived.

There were so many that the mail man had to leave his hand truck with all the boxes stacked on it. We loaded them up and transported them to the Baptist church just up the street that is the hub for the donations. (My church is serving as the hub for the volunteers.)

There the boxes were opened and sorted into care packages that we are taking out in the communities that were severely affected by the storm. We are trying to reach the areas that isn’t getting as much attention as the rest of the state. There are so many people that have lost their homes or suffered severe damage that just need to know that other people care about them.

Here are a few pictures of the donation center….

(Thanks to The Dunns, The Larsens, The Wilsons, The Windholtz, The Wilders, The Torocheos, The Thayns, The Fairtys, The Traceys, The Barnharts, The Christian Gathering, The Frenchs, The Joneses, The Hilkers, The Becks, The Brownings, The Rylees, The Rosarios, The Johnsons, and all the readers who wished to remain anonymous!)

If you would liked to donate, please check out the Online Donation Drive information.

You’re in the top 3 of the Top 25 Money-Saving Tips list! We’re happy to have you in the Top 25 and we’re excited to share three of your top money-saving tips with 400,000 of our moms.

I wanted to send an extremely heartfelt thank you to every single one of my amazing and wonderful readers. Thank you for taking a moment to vote for my blog. I am extremely grateful and very humbled and honored that you not only voted for my blog, but that you read it in the first place. I pray that God blesses each and every one of you. :-)

Welcome readers of the Disney Drive Life! If you read the amazingly written article by Mark Jeffries about yours truly, I am honored that you stopped by. Here are a few things that might interest you:

• Getting Started Couponing to Disney – This series teaches you how to do what I do
• Disney World Training – I am one of those crazy people that don’t like to stand in lines and avoid them at all cost. This teaches you all my secrets, tips, etc
• My Disney Fund - Follow my progress as we save for our next trip (granted it hasn’t grown much due to personal issues, but I am about to kick it off again!)
• Plus you can interact with over 33,000 Couponing to Disney fans when you follow via email or RSS, Facebook or Twitter!

Thank you for stopping by!

Check out this incredibly well written article about yours truly.

Check out this interview and article I recently did with Ashley Grant.

Welcome viewers of Fox & Friends! I am so glad you stopped by the blog!

My name is Kristin Cooper and I am mother to 2 children, Emily and Jacob. We are also expecting baby #3 next year. School supply lists are getting longer and longer and our budgets aren’t getting any bigger. In July I posted Emily’s 1st grade school supply list to find out if it was average length or if it was excessive. It sparked a VERY interesting discussion and it turns out that everyone’s list is getting a lot longer.

But since I am a bargain hunter, I was able to get all the items on the list for about 60% less than retail price. I requested the back to school list in June and shopped for it throughout the summer. I got free paper towels at Target, free baby wipes at Rite Aid, and a 1c pack of copy paper at Staples (they are repeating that deal this week!). (Note these aren’t necessarily pictured in the paper. Emily had started school on Wednesday and I had already turned in her supplies. What you see pictured is extra items that I had in my stockpile.)

I encourage you to take a moment and look around the blog. I call the blog Couponing to Disney because we use all the extra money we save from using coupons, rebates, etc to pay for our yearly trip to Disney World. We saved $3200 for our May 2010 trip and not one dime came out of my husband’s paycheck. If you are interested in learning about all the features on the blog, you can read this article.

Thanks again for stopping by! If you have any questions at all, please leave a comment below or feel free to email me directly.

If you are looking for back to school deals, you can view the deals at the office supply stores here.

Note to my readers: This post will be a sticky at the top of the blog. Please scroll past it for new deal posts.