alternative ways to get your vegan coupons AKA news!!!

hey folks.  sorry for not posting an explanation of why this blog has laid dormant for 3 years.  it was more of a hassle trying to make this project a blog, so i had started posting all updates over on facebook, (because it was instantaneous, and i was always logged in to FB anyway.  also, the instant feedback was nice.)

but if you don’t have a facebook account, you can still subscribe to the posts in a multitude of ways.  i made a feedburner account, so if you subscribe through there, you’ll always get the posts, no matter where this project is hosted.  eventually, i will create vegancoupons.net, but my live-in computer geek is extremely busy on his own projects (not to mention, i have a lot of other projects in my own queue that i would like him to work on.) but i promise it will eventually be created. it’ll just be a while longer.  in the meantime, facebook will have to do. (even though it’s imperfect. apologies in advance that it parses apostrophes and ampersands strangely in the feedburner posts)  alternatively, if you have a twitter account, yep, you guessed it.

i might as well also mention that there’s a spinoff “sister” project dedicated to those 50% off daily deal things on twitter called vegan deals.  (unfortunately, due to twitter’s incompatibility with feedburner, i couldn’t set up a digest/newsletter thing directly from twitter’s source, so if you want an e-mail digest of the daily deals, stream spigot’s daily digest is pulled at midnight GMT (appx 8:00PM EST) so it’s not ideal, but it’s the best option so-far.  here is the feedburner link for that in case you want to get e-mails. (and if i find a way that works better, i’ll update the feedburner account, and just like the vegancoupons feedburner, you’ll get the updated source without doing anything yourself.)  timing is key for this, as sometimes daily deals last for only 1 day. so you’ll have to act quick if you want it. if you know of an alternative solution that would be able to send the digest around 2:00 EST, please let me know.  other than switching away from twitter, that is.  it’s just the easiest method for me.  eventually when vegancoupons.net has been built, i might manually type up each day’s daily deals in one post every day, but we’ll see about that.)

so, in conclusion, this wordpress blog will remain as a “news about vegan coupons” type of thing, and possibly host an occasional giveaway, because running giveaways on facebook is frustrating. but we’ll see about that.

also, i see in the incoming search section some of you are coming by this page while looking for perry, the vegan couponer who was featured on TLC’s extreme couponing. not me!  her page is http://thevegancouponer.blogspot.com/

i am definitely not an extreme couponer. haha!  i am carrie, AKA supercarrot, and i am more of a lazy couponer. i am mostly organized, sometimes, but i rarely save more than 25% off my bill, and often forget to use my catalinas. nice to meet you. :-)

Twitter Giveaway

We now have a twitter account. (@vegancoupons)  If you are on twitter, feel free to follow us.

In celebration of the new account, we are having a giveaway.  retweet this status for your chance to win.

RT @vegancoupons giveaway!!! retweet this for a chance to win a pack of 10+ coupons. (ends sat. aug 1st, more details in tweet below)

details: organic valley ($1/2, exp 8/31), tings/booty/smart puffs ($1/2, exp 9/30), nature’s path$1/1, exp 8/31), seventh generation($1/1, exp 8/31), country choice organic($1/1, exp 8/31), and many more.

(p.s. ends midnight eastern on saturday.)

New Coupons-Newman’s, Booty, Boca, Whole Fruit

Red Plum 5/31/09:

• 50¢ on 1 Newman’s Own lemonade exp 7/26/09
• 50¢ on 1 Newman’s Own pasta sauce, salsa, marinade, lemonade, popcorn or cereal exp 7/26/09
• 75¢ on 1 Newman’s own salad dressing exp 7/26/09

Red Plum 6/7/09:

• $1 off any Whole fruit bar exp 8/31/09

Smart Source 6/7/09:

• $1 off any 2 Pirate’s Booty, Smart Puffs or Tings exp 9/30/09
• $1 on 2 packages of Boca meatless product exp 8/2/09

Giveaway – Lightlife Coupons

Comment here telling us what your favorite Lightlife item is, (and maybe your favorite way to prepare and serve it) and next Sunday (the 14th) I will pick 5 people at random to receive a pack of 2 of each coupon ($1 off of any product and $1.50 off of 2 dogs)

numbers generated by random.org:

14: tracie
17: jenna z
16: megan (sistersvegan)
8: Christy
7: kris

congrats, guys!  :-)  contacting you now for your addresses.

Lightlife Coupon from sunday paper

I’ve just been given 11 coupon inserts from the NY Times from the past 2-3 months, and I found a diamond in the rough.

(It must not have been in NJ’s Courier Post, because I know I purchased the 5/19 paper.)

$1 off any lightlife item and $1.50 off any 2 lightlife dogs (this includes the sausages, but those unfortunately are not vegan)  Both coupons expire on 8/31, so you have plenty of time to use them.

I searched on the coupon purchasing sites, and neither of them had it, so I turned to eBay.  Sure enough, there are tons of them.

The best of which is 20 of each for 1.95 (you can always give some of the dogs/sausages coupons to non-vegans who would be able to eat the sausages, cause I don’t know about you, but 40 packages of tofu pups and smart dogs is a bit much.)  But 1.95 for just the 20 $1 off coupons is a great deal.

p.s.  there’s also a Lindt coupon ($1/2 exp. 8/31)  and a Smart Balance coupon ($1/2 exp 6/30) and GE compact fluorescent lighting ($1/1 exp 6/30) and Barbara’s Bakery ($1/1 exp 6/30) and Terra Chips ($1/1 exp 8/3)

It makes sense to buy multiples from one seller, because they often give you a shipping discount.

Sunday papers vs veganism

The inserts in the sunday papers are generally not very vegan.  (Occasionally there’s a good find, but generally it’s a waste of paper and time.)  That said, you can look at schedules and previews to judge whether or not you should bother getting the paper.  For example, around earth day, the papers had an extra insert from smart source that had a theme of “green” (It honestly wasn’t very green.  maybe only 1/2 of the coupons could be considered green, and then there were other random not necessarily environmental coupons thrown in there.)

The forums at A Full Cup have a section where you can see the schedule of how many inserts will be in each sunday paper. (obviously it’s pointless to get the paper if there will be no inserts) In addition, many vegans avoid buying Proctor & Gamble products on principle, so that cuts out an entire insert from our options.  Luckily they don’t provide inserts every week.

Also convenient for us is to look at the coupon preview sites to see if it’d be worth it to buy the paper at all.  Sunday papers aren’t cheap (particularly those from large metropolitan areas) and if you can only use a few coupons from each paper, what’s the point, right?  These enthusiasts/sellers make lists of the coupons that are going to be in their area papers.   I haven’t found any coupon preview sites for the west coast, unfortunately.

Coupon Preview Sites:

• TaylortownPreview.com (i think this is in the south somewhere.  They also sell coupons at that site)
• SouthernSavers.com
• AFullCup.com

An alternative to buying the paper:

So, you know how we generally can’t use most of the coupons that are in the inserts anyway, right?  Well, why not just buy them from other people who are more avid coupon clippers than we’ll ever be?  That way we can just buy what we need. Seems like the more environmental choice, since all the coupons have the potential to be used. (and I’m sure these sites don’t have to buy thousands of sunday papers.  Maybe they get the leftovers.)

• TheCouponClippers.com – 10-20% of the value of the coupon, .50 admin fee + shipping (50 coupons usually will be heavy enough for .61 postage.) many coupons have a minimum order, so that’s kind-of annoying.  But if you plan on buying that many anyway, it’s worth it.  Larger variety than Cents Off.
• CentsOff.com – $7.50 1-time membership fee, and then $8 per order of 50 coupons (works out to be .16 per coupon not including the membership fee.
• AFullCup.com – They have a trading system set up instead of purchasing, which might be good if you sill plan on buying the paper

very useful online coupon review

PDFs

Welcome to the vegan coupon blog.  I realised there is no resource out there compiling specifically vegan coupons (but plenty of organic ones), and I figured if I’m looking all over the internets, I might as well keep a list of the ones I find, and publish that list for other vegans to utilize.

I decided to start off with  PDFs because there is no printing limit on them, and you don’t need to install special software that might add spyware on your computer.  (more on that later though)

Because I know you, as well as I, want to save paper and ink, (if not for the money, for the earth.) I feel compelled to suggest that you download these PDFs to your computer and compile them to a single sheet of paper instead of printing directly.  (i could never figure out how to do greyscale in my browser’s PDF printer. i tried “print colors as black” and it printed the images as huge black blobs.)  so if you have InDesign or Quark, this’ll go really quick.  the coupons that were meant to be printed in a booklet can fit 9 to a page (3 columns of 3 with no need to print the opposite side of the sheet since you’d be throwing it away anyway.  waste not want not.)  unfortunately i don’t think i’m allowed to upload my PDF compilations.  I would totally do it if I knew it wouldn’t get me in trouble with the law.

If you have neither of the above programs, I don’t know what you could use to compile PDFs with (if you have tips, please leave a comment so the other folks can check it out.  If you want to try some out yourself, go to download.com and search for freeware that lets you edit the graphics in the PDFs, not just adding and removing pages.)

However, I do feel the need to point out that some stores don’t accept printed PDFs, so check before you get to the checkout counter, and before you print a load of them off.  Just print a few, and if they accept them then you can print more.

First up, Delicious Living magazine. P.S.  DND=Do Not Double

• RW Knudsen (75¢/1 DND  exp. 12/31) • Steaz Organic Drinks ($1/1 DND no exp) • Santa Cruz Organic Juice(75¢/1 DND  exp. 12/31) • Back to Nature ($1/1 exp 12/31) • Popcorn, Indiana (50¢/1 DND exp 6/30) • Lundberg Rice Chip (75¢/1 no exp)• Health Valley Organic ($1/2 DND exp 12/31) • Imagine Natural Creations ($1/1 DND exp 8/31) • Lundberg Gourmet Products (55¢/1 no exp)

i don’t know whether these are vegan or not:
• Zenergize Drink Vitamins ($1/1 no exp)

Wholly Guacamole ($1/1 exp 6/1.  this prints out huge if you’re printing directly, so definitely compile it to a single page.)

Nakano Rice Vinegar ($1/1 DND exp 6/1)

Village Harvest Rice (50¢ /1 exp 12/31)

Natural Dentist #1 #2 (both $2/1 DND Exp 5/31)

SmartMouth toothpaste or mouthwash (not positive if it’s vegan or not, but it’s a PDF.  I’ll remove it later if they’re not vegan.  $2/1 exp  21/31)

ScotchBrite Nail Saver Sponge ($1/3 exp 6/30)

Nylabone ($2/1 exp 12/31)  sable’s mom contacted them about which ones are vegan and which ones are not.

Happy Family Organic Meals ($1/1 exp 6/30)  Store Locator

Rite Aid ($5 off of $25  exp 5/31)  (combine this with the natural dentist coupons. :-)

Wildwood products (various coupons.  soymilk, hummus, sproutofu and burgers.  expire 3/23/10)

Hello world!

if you’re an avid couponer, and want to contribute to the blog, go ahead and send an e-mail to supercarrot at gmail.com