This holiday season American Express challenged me to share a few of my money-saving tips as I purchased Christmas gifts for five of my loved ones. They armed me with $250 and 40,000 American Express points and asked me to both shop and save, all while documenting what I purchased. I, of course, was happy to oblige.

Generally I just shop as I see things, but as the month turned to December I realized I had purchased all of one gift and needed to get on it, so this challenge provided the perfect incentive to get going. I thought about what to write about and what gifts I wanted to purchase before deciding to utilize the same exact money-saving tactics I write about on this site to save money while shopping for my family:

1. Coupons
2. Sample Sale Sites
3. Daily Deal Sites
4. Cash Back Shopping

Below you’ll find what I purchased for my family using the $250 American Express Gift Card, and how I made the most of that money using the money-saving tactics above.

Gifts for Fiance:

While my fiance doesn’t play video games all that often, there are some games he gets REALLY into and Call of Duty is one of those games. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was on his list this year and I thought I’d give into his one true video game love. To get this deal I did a little bit of price shopping, and I also used this opportunity to try out The Gift Chain from American Express that I wrote about last week. I found this game for $51 at Walmart, which is about $9 cheaper than I found it elsewhere, excluding Amazon which has it for the same price. Walmart is also one of the retailers included in The Gift Chain, so I purchased it through that program, and my free gift from The Gift Chain was a free membership to ShopRunner. With ShopRunner I will get free 2-day shipping from many online retailers, so that’ll come in handy in the future, even if it wasn’t helpful on this specific order.

Total Spent: $51

My fiance asked for a couple of belts, and so I found this Kenneth Cole Leather Reversible Belt at Modnique. Originally $48, Modnique had it for $29, but thanks to some account credits I got this gift for free! Refer your friends to your favorite sample sale sites and you’ll be on your way to a free shopping adventure, too!

Total Spent: $0

Gift for Mom:

My mom is pretty tech-savvy and generally a fan of new gadgets and whatnot. She also loves streaming Netflix to her laptop. Thus, I decided to get her a Roku 2 HD, so she can stream all sorts of media straight to her TV and give up watching things on the mini screen. I noticed this weekend that they were offering 20% off this specific version, so instead of paying $59.99, I paid just $48.

Total Spent: $48

Gift for Dad:

All year I have been hearing just one thing from my dad. He wants just one gift, and one gift only: an Amazon Kindle. This was the easiest gift I purchased because my dad was upfront with what he wanted and the Kindle still sells for the same price everywhere, so I didn’t have much digging to do. I did get free shipping on my order thanks to my Amazon Prime Membership.

Total Spent: $79.99

Gift for Sister:

I wrote about the Swirl 70% off sale yesterday and decided to pick up a dress for my sister. She’s a college student and loves getting designer clothing that she doesn’t have to pay for. She’s also a bit of a funky dresser, so I thought this dress would be perfect for because it has a lot going on from the multi-colors, to the unusual hem length, and the fab hem pattern. I hope this is something she’ll love. Originally $125, Swirl was selling this Kas dress for $49. Thanks to the 70% discount I paid just $14.70.

Total Spent: $14.70

I love that I’m posting this crazy unicorn hat right after the designer dress, but while my kid sister is definitely growing up, she’s still a kid and I know she’s going to love this Unicorn winter hat I picked up at Modnique a couple months back.

Total Spent: $19

Last week I posted about how daily deal site SaveMore was offering $25 Barnes & Noble gift cards for $15, and I picked one up for my sister. There’s a Barnes & Noble on her college campus, so I’m sure she’ll be able to put this to good use. {This deal is still available for another few hours!}

Total Spent: $15

Future Mother-in-Law:

My future mother-in-law absolutely LOVES the soap from Bath & Body Works. I can’t stress it enough – she LOVES this soap. I like buying it for her as a Christmas gift because there are such awesome deals available. Right now Bath & Body Works is offering 6 soaps for $20, so I loaded up on her favorite scent, Coconut Lime Verbena. The 6 for $20 deal brought the price of the soap down to $3.33 each, but I found coupon code “20WINTER11″ that took an additional 20% off my order and brought the total down to $15.98 before shipping. PLUS, I placed my order through Ebates and  earned an additional 3% cash back, which equals just 48 cents but is better than nothing.

Total: $15.50 after cash back from Ebates

I was in Boston this past weekend for a conference and couldn’t resist a stop at one of my favorite small businesses, Blackstones of Beacon Hill. I’d had a successful shopping trip there a few years back, and this trip proved to be the same. My future mother-in-law loves birds and snowmen, so I knew this robin + {decapitated} snowman figurine would be a hit with her.

Total: $10

Total spent on all gifts: $253.19

That’s 14 total items purchased for $253.19, which isn’t bad at all considering I had 3 pretty high-ticket items in the mix (the video game, Roku, and Kindle). I’m pretty proud of the fact that I only paid the full retail price on two of the items. There’s not much I could do about the price of the Kindle, and the price of the robin + snowman figurine certainly didn’t break the bank.

Next week I’ll share with you how I stretched my budget even further by supplementing my cash with 40,000 American Express Membership Rewards Points!

Now it’s your turn…

Win a $250 American Express Gift Card!

American Express has given me one $250 American Express Gift Card to give away to one of you very lucky readers!

How to Enter: 

1. Mandatory: Leave a comment sharing a tip for making the most of your holiday shopping budget.

2. Extra entry: Leave a SEPARATE comment sharing the best bargain you’ve snagged this holiday season.

3. Extra entry: Tweet about this giveaway. Leave a SEPARATE comment each time you Tweet. (Up to 2x per day.)

4. Extra entry: Post about this giveaway on Facebook. Leave a SEPARATE comment each time you post. (Up to 1x per day.)

This giveaway will remain open through December 13, 2011. One winner will be randomly selected to win a $250 American Express Gift Card.

Good Luck!

Disclosure: American Express provided me with a $250 gift card and 40,000 Membership Rewards Points, but all opinions expressed above are my own.