Welcome to the Holiday Hop!  Just in time for holiday shopping, Randomosity, Makobi Scribe & Simply Stacie have teamed up with fellow bloggers to bring you $250 CASH to go wild with! Shop til you drop! The more entries you do, the better your chances are of winning this sweet prize!!  Enter via the RaffleCopter at the end of this post.

In the meantime, as you do your holiday shopping, keep the following tips in mind to save on your holiday gifts.

1. Whenever one is available, use a cash-back program in conjunction with your purchases.  I like:

• ShopAtHome.com, for online shopping
• Endorse, for offline shopping (If you use Endorse, please “follow” my endorsements!)

2. Earn a little bit of cash, or points to exchange for gift cards, through:

• Blue Calypso
• MyPoints  (You can also earn MyPoints for certain activities through BzzAgent.)
• SwagBucks

3. Keep an eye on deal-of-the-day sites like Groupon, Mamapedia/Mamasource, Totsy, Heartsy, BuyWithMe, DealPulp, Tippr, SaveMore, etc.  (I prefer the first four, personally – Groupon, Mamasource, Totsy, and Heartsy – but I’ve used most of them at some point.)

The links above are pretty much all affiliate links.  However, I really do personally use and recommend all of these services (with the disclaimer noted above regarding the deal-of-the-day sites).