A Free Ride - Possible?

My parents so graciously gave us a free week at the beach in Florida during September. A timeshare that they don't plan to use, right on the beach. What a blessing. Since our "extra" income has been somewhat limited, or eaten up by emergent needs lately, we don't have a lot to spend on the luxuries such as vacation. That sparked an idea. We already earned free tickets to Disney World through their Give-A-Day-Get-A-Day awhile back. The girls and I were talking and wondering if we could pull off going on vacation.......FOR FREE. So far we had a free place to stay for a week right on the beach, free one day tickets to Walt Disney World (a two hour drive from our beach place by the way). All we need is food and gas money and maybe some cha-ching for our pockets.

Well, recently a good friend explained how to coupon shop to me and I have been on a shopping trip or two. But, fell out of the habit rather quickly. We decided to get back in the habit and to bank all of our our "free" items from the "BuyOne, GetOne" deals out there. A few days ago I made the first trip to begin our food bank and here is the first stash to go into our vacation box. Not bad. Even have a spaghetti dinner and chips and salsa! Not a bad start. I get a lot of help from Southern Savers and IheartPublix. Our goal is to not use any household money, buts to eat off of all our free stuff for the week and use any gift cards (Pat and I both have birthdays in August) for dairy and meat. Any "cash" we receive for birthdays will go for gas for the trip.
I have decided to use eBay to sell items we no longer need or want to raise the spending cash for Disney. I am going to have the girls do a heart to heart in their rooms and decide if they would like to part with any toys, books, etc.... Combined I am hoping to raise enough for a cheap hotel after a day at Disney and some spending money for the park.

My friend Patty over at ReasonsforChocolate recently did a post on her children's "Go Bags". I normally do "Go Bags" for my children, but need to be able to fill them "free" or almost free for this vacation. I had a few dollars from selling a homeschool book. I headed out to where my friend Patty found her treasures - Target. I was in luck. The summer items with the black dot were on clearance and half off (in the cheapo bins to begin with). I got some cute items which I can't list because C-Sunshine reads this blog. (I will sneak in a post closer to the trip)......