Dollar Deals & More for Operation Christmas Child Shoebox Stockpile Saturday ~ 3/19/2016

I forget to share recently these Operation Christmas Child shoebox finds at a Mighty Dollar I got a chance to stop at, if you have one nearby I'd encourage you to check it out, it's like Dollar Tree in that everything is $1, but being a smaller chain they seem to get more seconds/overstocks/last season's items, so rather than all cheaply made things, there's often higher quality things as well!

The backpack looked like a good quality, and here's how it'd fit in a GoBox, doesn't take up too much space!

Got some good deals on toothpaste at CVS this week, and to "roll" the extra buck best I got the pad of paper, too.  Still have $4 ECB to use toward Easter clearance.  If you want to learn more about deal shopping at CVS, check out my other blog: SimplyCVS.com.

Spent from shoebox packing budget: $6.40

Spent from gift cards earned or won online: $1.42

Added to stockpile:

• 2 pull animal toys
• 1 solitaire frog game
• 1 hand crank flashlight
• 1 Hello Kitty notebook
• 1 backpack
• 1 colored scratch pad
• 4 tubes toothpaste [UPDATE 2017:  toothpaste is no longer allowed]

I took a few more photos of the cute wooden pull toys as someone mentioned the possibility of making them, and I thought more photos might help if someone wanted to try to figure out how to make them.  Best I can tell it consists of 7 pieces:  1-animal shape with two holes drilled to put the wheels' axle through and string attached; 2-short pieces of dowel rods to work as axles; and 4-round pieces of wood to work as wheels, with partial holes drilled to insert axles into:

Side view

 Bottom view

 Up close of wheel showing how dowel rod axle is glued into wooden wheel-the two wheels turn together as one solid piece.

You may want to check out our post on how we Find Extra Money for Packing Operation Christmas Child Shoeboxes.  There may be some ideas you don't know about.