Frugal Friday - 26th March 2010

by Chiara Cavaglieri on 26 March 2010  |  2 comments
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Highlights this week include 15% off Coast voucher code, 25% off House of Fraser, 70% off Oasis, 70% off Office and 50% off Laura Ashley. Top picks for every budget for Easter eggs, 25% off Wii games, One Day by David Nicholls for £3.78, BOGOFs on Disney DVDs, £75 off the entire James Bond DVD collection, half-price True Blood Season 2, cheap Easter days out, freebie of the week, Qwerty keyboard mobile for £20 a month, plus competition of the week!

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There are plenty of sales to get your teeth into this week, with lots of retailers slashing costs in the spring sales. We’ve pulled together the very best discounts and offers, plus some Easter treats, top freebies and cheap days out for the family.

Fashion & homeware                

• Barratts: Save £10 off court shoes and up to 70% off selected lines in the clearance sale. Free delivery is available on orders over £50 with discount code MOV5B.
• BHS: Mid season sales with up to 50% off menswear, womenswear and children’s wear
• Burton: Final reductions of up to 70% off selected lines online and in store.
• Coast: Don’t miss the mid season sale with selected items better than half price.
• Debenhams: Half price sale on homeware, womenswear and up to £10 off shoes & boots.
• Dorothy Perkins: Further reductions added, great shoe selection for under £20 and belts for just £3.
• Faith: Up to 50% off selected items. 
• French Connection: Up to 75% off selected sale items.
• Hobbs: Clearance sale continues with items reduced by as much as 70% off.
• House of Fraser: Last chance to save up to 25% on brands at the two-day event.
• Laura Ashley: Save over 50% in the Spring Spectacular only until Sun 28 March. There are some fab furniture and homeware deals too including £50 off all rugs over £100.
• Marks and Spencer: Check out the offers section for various deals including BOGOF on luxury shirts and up to 30% off selected furniture.
• Miss Selfridge: Early season sale has started, plus get 25% off Diva jewellery and £10 off knitwear
• New Look: Sale continues with up to 50% off selected lines and half-price shoes & boots.
• Oasis: Still plenty left with up to 70% off plus get free P&P with the code EASTER2010 at the checkout before 30 March.
• Office: Spring Cleaning clearance sale continues with up to 70% off selected shoes and up to £40 off boots.
• River Island: Sale starts in-stores on 30 March but the exclusive online sale is on now.
• TOPMAN: Half-price sale with t-shirts from £3 and jumpers from £8.
• TOPSHOP: Last few items in the sale remain with accessories from just £1 and fashion from £10.
• Urban Outfitters: Still time to grab a bargain with huge reductions of up to 80% off men’s and women’s fashions.
• Wallis: Up to half price off selected lines.
• Warehouse: More lines added to the mid season 50% sale.
• Woolworths: Save up to 50% in the Spring sale.

If you don’t find anything in the mid-season sale at Coast, you can still save 15% on full-priced items by downloading a special voucher here. Print it off and use it in-store, or enter the voucher code coasthtbm15 at the checkout.

There are also a few beauty voucher codes flying around:

• New Elemis customers can save 15% on their first order at Timetospa.co.uk, and get 20mls of skin buff thrown in for free with the code AFF0310 (expires 31 March)
• For more beauty freebies, luxury brand L’Occitane is offering a free mini hand cream collection (four x 15ml) worth £14 when you spend £25 or more. Grab this with the code LOVEHC, also valid until 31 March.

And, if you buy any two Elemis men’s products at Feel Unique and get a free Elemis Men's High Performance Shave Set worth £25 (contains facial wash, skin scrub, soothing gel and moisturiser.

Eggcellent Easter eggs (sorry)

This week I decided to pull my sleeves up and get stuck into a very serious and entirely professional Easter egg review to find the best budget, luxury and kids eggs on the market…

For the kids…

There’s not much point spending lots of money on eggs for kids (they only scoff them down in seconds) so head to your nearest Poundland where Cadbury Eggheads and these cartoon Easter Eggs are 4 for £3. 

I also spotted the ‘Me to You’ chocolate bear egg, complete with very sweet blue nose, in Tesco (also available in Morrisons). It’s a snip at £3.99 and although the bear is small, it does come with an extra four hollow Belgian choc eggs and is just about the cutest egg I’ve seen so far!

Budget picks…

My pick of the bunch for budget eggs is the Flame Egg available at Aldi for just £2.99 – the packaging is really impressive for such a cheap egg and it comes with a selection of milk and white chocs inside.

I have to say for eggs under a fiver, I’m also a fan of Thorntons 165g eggs (milk, white or dark) which are only £3.50 and included in the 3for2 promotion. Plus, you can get them iced with your loved ones name. 

You can also save 10% on Easter chocolate at The Hut with the voucher code EASTER10.

Luxury picks…

For £15, The Dark Scrambled Egg from Hotel Chocolat  looks stylish and has minimum 70% cocoa solids so this is ideal for real chocolate lovers. Hotel Chocolat is also offering a free gift worth £11 when you spend at least £35.

For something extra fancy, splurge on the Thorntons Paris Continental Egg – it’s the most sophisticated offering I’ve come across (and it’s huge!) but it’s not cheap at £19.99 so save this for someone special and use the voucher code  EV10 at the checkout to save 15% off your total order.

Games

Play.com has started its spring sale with up to 80% off. There are some great deals on games including the Monsters vs Aliens video game for the Nintendo Wii at just £7.99 and Lego Indiana Jones 2 for the Xbox 360 at the best-buy price of £17.99 (down from £39.99).

ShopTo.Net has the best price for Dante’s Inferno at £26.85 but new release God of War 3 is cheapest at Amazon for £37.47. If you’re looking for the new Alice in Wonderland game (Nintendo DS), head to Zavvi where it costs just £17.86.

Finally, look out for special offers at Sainsburys including half-price board games and 25% off Wii Nintendo games and console and check out the new titles that have been added to ASDA’s spring clearance on games, saving you up to 70%. Red Steel 2 has a tenner off at £29.91 and Peppa Pig is under a tenner – both for Ninetendo Wii.

Books & films

Books-wise, I’ve just got myself One Day by David Nicholls (author of the fantastic Starter for Ten) – get it for the top price of £3.78 at Bookdepository.co.uk. I’ve also just finished I am the Messenger by Book Thief author Marcus Zuzak. Again, Bookdepository.co.uk comes out on top here at just £5.05.

Ian McEwan’s new book Solar is £9.49 at Amazon  – or 1p less at Bookdepository.co.uk – and you can pre-order The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest for only £3.86.

Also, save up to 50% on other new releases at Bookdepository.co.uk and if you’re planning a spot of redecorating this Easter, check out their special offers on DIY books here.

The big retailers are offering BOGOF on Disney DVDs and these normally cost an arm and a leg so it’s worth grabbing any special deals when they come around. Have a look at the Disney movies at Woolies and check Amazon to compare prices.

Or, if your Disney Classics collection is complete, keep the little ones entertained with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs – best price of £6.45 at Amazon and Zavvi – or Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – just £5 at Amazon.

Right now you can save up to 80% at Play.com and get lots of DVDs for less than a fiver. Horror fans can scare themselves silly with The Orphan for £3.99, or for something a bit lighter, comedy Yes Man costs just £2.99.

And, if you’re looking for a marathon DVD session, here are the latest box set bargains:

Gadgets & gizmos

Looking for some new kitchen gadgets? This 5 piece Tu set is half-price at Sainsburys, now just £2.37. Or if you need a new knife sharpener head for Amazon where the AnySharp Global World's Best Knife Sharpener is £7.50 – I can’t verify the truth behind the name but I’ve got one at home and it’s fantastic!

John Lewis is selling little iPod speaker sets for a mere £7.95, or for something more powerful this Bush  iPod speaker dock  from Argos is £59.99.

Cheap days out

If you’re planning a trip to York over Easter,  grab a free shopping ‘passport’ from www.shopandthecity.org to get a load of discounts at various stores, including 15% off at L.K Bennett of London and 25% off a luxury hand and nail pampering session at Nail Bar One.

Save yourself a packet on travel up there too with National Express tickets which are going for just £1. There are now 80,000 of these fares available to over 150 locations. They’ll get snapped up quickly so book a trip here and print off your e-ticket. Or, if you’re headed south you can save 50% on Southern Railway off-peak tickets when you book online here. This offer ends Sun 11 April.

If you’re looking for things to do with the kids, Hollywood Bowl’s 1p bowling offer is back for the Easter holidays too – but only for games between 9-9.30am, from Friday 2 to Sunday 18 April.

Also, time is running out to get free entrance to Marwell Wildlife Park in Hampshire. This is for kids only (up to 16) and valid with every full paying adult (£13 per ticket) for the month of March only. Print off this voucher to claim the freebie.

Freebie of the week

Get free tech help with Virgin. You get half an hour's phone support for free from the Virgin Digital Help website – you only have until 31 March to apply and get a special code but you can use it any time within six months.

Mobile phone deal of the week

Our pick of the bunch this week is the Nokia N97 on an 18 month contract with 3 Mobile at just £20 per month. Ideal for heavy texters you get 200 mins and unlimited texts every month as well as a full touchscreen and QWERTY keyboard to play around with. Grab the deal here.

Competition of the week

Film fans take note! This week you can win a £200 cinema gift card this week to use at your pick of the three biggest cinema chains; Vue, CinemaWorld or Odeon. Enter the competition here.

Also, you may recall that last week, lovemoney.com ran a competition via Twitter to find your best money-saving tips. The competition has now closed and so here is the winning tweet: "Instead of saving spare cash in ordinary bank account, open an ISA. Get all the interest tax free!" - from Libra10001.

Congratulations Libra10001- the prize of a lovemoney.com goodie bag will be winging its way to you shortly!

Finally, following our recent article on travel rip-offs, we are running a new competition to find your best travel money saving tip! To enter, and be in with a chance to win one of 10 lovemoney.com travelcard holders, send your tip to @Frugal_Friday via twitter. Our top pick of the winning entries will be featured on Frugal Friday next week! Read the terms & conditions of the competion here.

Eating out

If you don’t fancy cooking for yourself this weekend, you can check out all the latest restaurant bargains in lovemoney.com’s Frugal Food blog. Read more

Eating in

If you'd prefer to stay in and cook up a delicious meal without blowing the budget, check out the  original Frugal Recipes blog for some inspiration! Read more

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