#Bargainoftheweek: Save Up to £30 on Father's Day Gifts at Truprint

Father's Day is quickly approaching ( it's the 21st of June this year in case you'd forgotten!) and it's time to start thinking about the perfect gift for the Dad or Daddies in your life.

As a married mother of two, Father's Day is no longer just about buying presents for my own Dad, I now need to find the perfect gifts for the father of my children and my Father-in-Law too! That's not even including present's to Grandads from the their grandchildren although we often have a crafty day and make these!

With so many gifts to buy I need to ensure I get the most out of the money I spend. I was delighted to hear about Truprint's exclusive Father's Day offer where you can Save £30 when you spend £50 on their site*.

That sounds great doesn't it? With this offer you will be getting your personalised photo gifts for less than half price! What I wanted to find out though was what you could actually get for £50 (or just £20 when you use the discount code?) Could I really get presents for all the Dads in our family for just £20? (plus postage)

The lovely folks at Truprint challenged me to find out exactly that!

What I got for £50 at Truprint.co.uk

• A beautiful Father's Day card with photos on the front, a message inside and even an image on the back £2.75 - My 4 and 7 year olds sat with me to help me design it and the process was so simple to do

• A personalised 10"x8" photo jigsaw puzzle with 120 pieces £9.99 - ideal for a Grandad that loves his puzzles

• A set of six photo coasters with images from our holiday £14.99 - a great gift as a set or ideal to split up and gift together with a mug

• A 7x5" Wooden Photo Panel with stand £11.99 - perfect for Daddy's desk at work

• An A5 spiral bound lined notebook with image and 'Daddy's Notes' printed on the front £6.99 - this will help Daddy with all his planning for the scout group he runs and make him smile every time he sees the picture on front 

In conclusion I was thrilled with the selection of gifts available from Truprint, the website was really easy to use and creating the gifts was a pleasure. I thought the quality of all of the items we ordered was fantastic and can't wait to see the look on the recipients faces when they open them on Father's Day!

The array of items I managed to get for £50 was impressive and excellent value for money even before the discount is applied!

*Save up to £30 off your Father's Day Gifts

Simply click here to start creating and enter discount code LOVEMYDAD at checkout to save! 

Terms of offer

• Code LOVEMYDAD gives £10 discount on order £20-£49.99 and £30 discount on orders £50 or more
• Minimum spend does not include P&P charges
• Offer is valid until midnight 15th June 2015.
• Offer is valid for single use during the promotional period and to customers residing in the UK on Truprint.co.uk only.
• P&P charges will apply
• Offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer or on pre-paid prints.
• Please allow an additional 1-2 delivery days during this promotional period.
• Last order date is Monday June 15th

Disclaimer: I was given £50 credit to spend at Truprint in exchange for writing this post, all opinions are my own.

Top Tips for Money Saving Mummies

My Mummy's Pennies is four years old today! That's four whole years that I've been tapping away at the laptop sharing money saving tips, reviews, competitions, offers, photography and snapshots of our family fun together. Over that time I've gone from being a new mum on maternity leave to being the main bread winner of the family and now a working mum with a bit more of a work / life balance. 

The back bone of this blog is always going to be about getting more from your hard earned pennies even if the posts are a lot more varied these days. My Mummy's Pennies has grown from being just a blog to becoming a social media community. Often really good deals and offers can be short lived so I find it easiest to share them over on twitter and on the facebook page and money saving group.

When you become a parent, immediately your finances become stretched. You are likely to have a reduction in your income while you‘re on maternity leave and may decide to go back to work part time or stay at home with your children. In addition to this you have an extra little person to feed, cloth and entertain.

For many people this can be the first time in their life that they have had to start to pinch the pennies (apart from those years living off noodles on toast at university, maybe!) It can be a shock to the system, but if you shop smart you will find that you can still live a luxurious lifestyle without breaking the bank (Well as luxurious as you can get while covered in breast milk and pureed carrots with a handbag full of nappies and LEGO…)

Here I wanted to share my top five tips for penny pinching Mummies…

Buy Pre-loved

There was a time when there was a stigma attached to buying second hand but these days where vintage and upcycled goods are in fashion and Kirsty Allsopp champions thriftiness in her hit show ‘Fill your house for Free’ it couldn’t be more on trend! The Equipment you need for babies and children really mounts up and you can save hundreds of pounds by checking out local selling sites on facebook, ebay, gumtree or even freecycle! If you can pick up from the seller you often get and even better deal!

Charity shops and Car Boot sales are and ideal place for find toys books and children’s clothes too. Remember there are some things that should bought new for safety reasons such as cot mattresses and child car seats but for everything else shop around! One of my favourite pre loved bargains was my son’s Mama’s and Papa’s pram, it was a hi spec pushchair from one of the most popular nursery stores in the UK and had only been used for a few months so was in immaculate condition. I was able to pick it up locally and only paid £30. A huge saving on what I would have paid on the High Street!

Keep a coupon folder

Do you read magazines? Newspapers? Or even just get leaflets through your door? If you look a little closer you will find that most of these publications will contain coupons and money off vouchers. I’ve got myself in to a habit of cutting them out and keeping them all in a cardboard folder even if it’s not something that I would usually buy. It may be good to try something new or someone else may be able to use them. Also add to this any vouchers that you are given at the supermarket till such as price match or money off your next purchase. I take a few minutes each week to sort through and get rid of any expired vouchers.

It’s not just paper coupons! For all the vouchers available online why not set up a coupon folder in your email account, pop in all the money off and voucher coder emails you receive. You never know when you may need to make a quick purchase for a last minute birthday gift or replace a broken appliance and you’ll have them all to hand!

Collect Loyalty Points

Loyalty points are great aren’t they? You do your usual shopping, buying food for your family and fuel for your car and the points mount up ready to knock pennies off your next lot of shopping! Make sure you sign up for loyalty cards for everywhere you shop, Nectar, Clubcard and Boots are some of the best and connect them up to your debit card or credit card if you can to earn even more!

A lot of loyalty point schemes offer ‘double ups’ at certain times of year or even 3 or 4 times their value when you use them to buy cinema tickets or exchange for restaurant vouchers or even breaks away!

I save up all my Clubcard points and exchange for cinema tickets and meal vouchers every 6 months or so. This way my husband and I get a date night out for just the cost of drinks!

Time your Shopping

This isn’t always practical when you have small children but the timing of when you go shopping can be a major factor in what you pay. If you still prefer to do your grocery shopping in person rather than online, find out when your local supermarket starts to reduce fresh produce (usually in the evenings) I’ve been able to halve the cost of my weekly shops by ensuring that I get my fresh vegetable from the supermarket on a Sunday afternoon just before they close I also find around 8pm is a great time to check out the reduced to clear fridges. I regularly get vegetables for as little as 9p and have had a whole fresh chicken for just 30p before!

Get Paid for Spending Money

We all like spending money, right? (I'd prefer if it was someone else's but still...) This last tip is a great way of getting more from what you spend. When ever you buy anything online, make sure you go through a cashback site! When you click through links or banners on websites you will often be allowing these sites to earn a percentage of what you spend. Using a cashback site means that YOU get this percentage instead! Two of the best known sites are Topcashback and Quidco. I am a member of both of these as I find that one often has cashback on websites that the other doesn't.

What is your best Mummy money saving tip?

This post contains referral links

Get model co make up worth £16 for just £1!!

The July issue of Glamour magazine is just £1 and the free gift is one of five make up items from model co worth £15 or £16 each!

You can choose from mascara, 2 shades of lipgloss, eyeliner and lip liner. If you buy 5 copies you could save an incredible £73!

Go grab a beauty bargain quick before they sell out!

A new way of cutting the cost of fuel...

One of the biggest rising costs of family life at the moment is running a car. With the price of petrol averaging around £1.38-a-litre and diesel around £1.42 (according to Experian Catalist as of 24th August) any possible way that we can reduce that cost has got to be a good thing!
You will have seen the supermarket promotions offering you so much off fuel when you spend a certain amount for a limited amount of time but now  Morrisons have come up with a revolutionary new  fuel saver scheme where you need never pay full price for fuel again!

Similar to established schemes in the States, Morrison’s has joined up with 34 of the nation’s favourite high street brands - such as Next, Boots and Homebase - to bring Fuel Saver to the UK.

It's really simple! You buy gift cards with your weekly shop at the checkout in Morrisons for purchases you are going to make on the High Street and receive a voucher which gives you money off fuel. The more you buy the more you save!

So if you were planning to buy some clothes in Next, a birthday present from Toys R Us or have a romantic meal out at Cafe Rouge, you can buy your gift cards when you do your shopping and save on the rising costs of fuel!

For every £10 gift card you purchase you will get a voucher for 1p off a litre of fuel when you next fill up. You can use as many vouchers as you wish in one go so the savings will mount up..

I think this is an excellent idea and can see my family making use of it quite a bit, especially on the build up to Christmas! I always buy some presents for friends and family in the Boots 3 for 2 promotions, often spending over £100. So If I were to plan ahead and purchase a £100 gift voucher with my next grocery shop in Morrisons, then as well and reaping the benefits of the in store offers in Boots I would also get 10p per litre of petrol, saving our family over £4 next time we need to fill the car up.

And it gets better, retailers of more costly goods, such as Curry’s and PC World are signed up to the scheme too, so if I was to replace our fridge freezer (which is much needed!) I would be spending anything from £300 to £500, by buying gift vouchers for this I could save up to 50p a litre next time we filled up the car.

And it's not just for those 'one off occasions such as Christmas shopping or buying a large appliance.  I could see myself buying vouchers for Tony & Guy to have some Mummy Time getting my hair done, for Homebase for my garden and DIY needs and Cineworld or Zizzi for a sneaky evening out...    Just a shame I can't buy babysitting gift cards too!


So why not take a look at this handy fuel calculator to see how much you could save?  

Which retailers do you regularly shop with? How much do you think you would save by using this scheme?



Sponsored Post