Follow Me Friday!

In an effort to increase my followers, I am participating in a (new) Follow Me Friday!

Just like you have "followed" me on this blog, checkout these other blogs, or links to blogs and see if you would like to "follow" them.

Learn new things, find new resources and relate to more people! After you have "followed" a blog, post in their comment section that you found them through Follow Me Friday! Simple, fun and a cool way to share the blog love!

Swagbucks Reminder!

A quick reminder for those interested in Swagbucks if you want to earn 80 bucks FREE, you need to sign up quickly! (See my post about Swagbucks here to learn more). To earn the extras by FRIDAY at 1pm CT, go here and create a new account. (They ask for name, email, birthday, zip and you create a password).

THEN, enter HELPJAPAN under the sign up code to earn 50 additional Swagbucks. Then, start using Swagbucks as your search engine and start winning!

You can earn Paypal Cash, Amazon credit, and TONS of other things. If you want my opinion on what is worth your time, review this blog from earlier this week. I love all the things you can do to earn Swagbucks, but I don't have time for them all. I JUST SEARCH!

New Deals to share: Recycle Bank and Coffee

Ok, lots of typing going on, but not too many deals in the last posts. First, I would like to ENCOURAGE YOU to "follow" my blog (see the left side to FOLLOW me). I'm really excited to SHARE a FREEBIE with my followers. When I get to 25 followers, I will mail a $10 Cold Stone Creamery gift card your way! I would love to reach 50 followers before May 1. If I reach 50 by May, I will do another gift card giveaway!

First and foremost, the QUICK freebie. Just LIKE Joe Ragan's coffee on Facebook and they will take your mailing info and you can pick Light or Dark Roast! Friends, there are FEW things in life that can take the place of my love of coffee. Any size, any amount that is FREE--I'm there. If you don't like coffee, think about donating it to the Affton Food Pantry (if you are a local near me!), give it to a friend with a "thinking of you card," save it for a coffee-themed birthday gift or Christmas present or...spread the coffee love somehow! It doesn't take too much time, and I have had a lot of luck with the Facebook Freebies.

Now, on to the Recyclebank fun. First, I will preface this post with the fact that this website DOES take time to play games, answer questions and earn points. However, I am hearing AMAZING things about the website. Users earn for referring (my referral link is included in this post. If you don't want to go through me, no worries. Find another friend or referral). Pair the awesome coupons you can earn through this site with sales, store coupons (learn more about store coupons below), and clearance items to get FREE high value stuff from Aveeno, Coca-Cola and Friskies.

The run down of Recyclebank: visit the site and register through this link

• Enter the Green Your Home Challenge (earn points by browsing the rooms)
• Take Aveeno challenges on their Facebook page here
• Redeem your points for great high-value coupons (if you don't like the products/brands, think about redeeming high-value coupons and trading for other types you like. I trade coupons on A Full Cup or Baby Cheap Skate trading group.)
  

I plan to use some of my points for some Coca-Cola , Back To Nature Cookies, NAKED Juice, and Cascade coupons. They have "earth month" specials with lowered points for better coupons.

How I Save Money--Part Duex!

Part 2 here on How I Save Money--and a few lessons learned.

HUGE lesson I am living everyday: FILL up with GOD FIRST, then the other things.

Food was a big struggle for me. I would feel weird or nauseous when I didn't get to eat on schedule. Then, this turned into wanting to eat MORE so I wouldn't feel weird. That resulted in years of overeating and extra pounds. The year before Eph was born, I lost over 40lbs and felt amazing. I had lots of tools, time and energy for healthy eating and cooking. After E was born, I struggled with WHO to take care of first. Nearly 100% of the time, it was him. Now, I'm working myself back into the equation. I'm also reading a great book Made to Crave by Lysa TerKeurst. She share stories and gives great scriptures to show how God intended food to be in our lives.

Before Eph was born, I had a ton of time to COUPON too. I filled my life with FIVE trips per day to Walgreens (this was before STL had a CVS close to me). I did deals on vitamins I would never use, deodorant, baby wipes, candles and tons of other household items that I hardly used. I filled all my time with organizing, printing and reading about other people's huge deals. While I did learn a lot during this period of time, I also didn't grow much closer to God. I mean, I would take lots of time out to get organized for shopping trip everyday, but I wouldn't spend 10 minutes a day in God's word.

Luckily, I have an amazing husband who can so easily analyze a situation and share it with me. He pointed out that: #1 my time is worth MORE than the very small free sample I just filled out a long application or survey for #2 My time spent driving, searching, parking and looking for good deals is better spent on cleaning our home (he was gentle! don't worry) and #3 Many of the items I was getting wouldn't help our family --oh and #4 I'm spending WAY too much money every week!

Combine all those factors and a new baby and my coupon days came to a HUGE HALT. Funny thing, I didn't need diapers, toilet paper, toothpaste, tooth brushes, candles, shampoo or conditioner or deodorant until AFTER Ephraim's first birthday! Plus, I was able to share all my good deals with the Affton Food Pantry and Rooftop friends and small groupies.

I also figured out really quickly that I wasn't any good at FOOD deals, sales or coupons. I spent too much time cutting and sorting for unhealthy foods that I would never buy. I also had to toss a lot of food to learn that I shouldn't buy 12 boxes of cereal and KEEP them all. (Especially because I don't like milk or cereal!)

I learned a lot about scams, waste of time websites and found a few things that I "keep" in my savings options for Stephanie folder.

One of my favorite things that I use everyday is SwagBucks. You earn 80 free SwagBucks just for signing up today. I will admit that the search engine isn't amazing, but I still search 5-15 times per day on the site to earn an average of 10 swag bucks per day. Then, for those bucks you can cash in for FREE Amazon or other gift cards. There are TONS of ways to earn more SwagBucks, but I don't play games, do surveys, hunt for them on random pages or anything else. I typically JUST SEARCH and I win lots of prizes. To date, I have redeemed 14, Five Dollar Amazon gift cards! (As I stated before, I am a saver. I still have a lot of SwagBucks to redeem for prizes, I just haven't yet!) That is over $70 FREE for just SEARCHING. I love it. If you think you are interested, I do earn referral SwagBucks if you sign up. Then, you can earn SwagBucks and also earn referral credits for sharing it!

Until the next post....(Wednesday or Thursday!?)

How I Save Money....and the lessons I've learned (Part 1)

(This is us...the reason I want to save money and be a good steward of the money God has given us....this was a year ago at Easter. At the end of this series, I'll put an updated photo)

I need to get blogging again. This topic and a fresh iPhoto full of sweet photos of my little man are motivation to blog a few times per week. I hope this blog finds you happy, healthy and filled with God's love. Here we go....

I want to share coupon-ing with EVERYONE I know, but some people are really turned off by saving, cutting, organizing and printing coupons. I have some pretty good ideas about saving money, but its awesome when I share it with someone else and their LIFE changes. God has blessed me with the gift of gab--so sharing this topic is not hard for me.

I will preface the post with a few items...
First and foremost, I am a Christian and my views and opinions are to praise and glorify God. He is amazing and done awesome things in my life, but I am a sinner saved by HIS grace. I hope my savings reflections help you spend more time with God and your family. I'm also just a busy woman, mom, professional trying to make sense of this life God has given me.

Second, I started with coupons about three years ago. I am NOT an expert, but have lived the life of a coupon-er who spent too much money. I hope to share the details of those experiences in a series of upcoming blogs.

Another note: I am a SAVER. I save silly things and TONS of them (like the first gum wrapper Jerret, my husband, gave me nearly 11 years ago silly). I am joining couponing/saving with still being helpful for my family (do I REALLY need to spend time getting "FREE" glucose meters at WAGs when I don't know anyone who is diabetic? My answer....no.) So, there is a line for me....saving and sinning (worrying/hording/keeping too much). That struggle of mine will be reflected in what deals to "do" and what deals to leave for others!

And, finally, my family. My family is the most important thing to me (after checking the mail to see what coupons I got! just kidding) and I love sharing my time with family, friends, neighbors and the needy. I don't "entertain" because there are too many rules (HOW clean my home is, how my kiddo acts, what I wear, the furnishings in my home, and how well the food is cooked). I err on the side of Christian HOSPITALITY: sometimes my home will be cleaned, sometimes it won't. Sometimes I will make a great dish....sometimes I won't. Usually, I'm wearing jeans and slippers, and our home is for us, not for others. BUT, with hospitality WILL come love, friendships, grace, mentoring, faith and BLESSINGS.

I pray you are blessed by this blog series. Until tomorrow...

James 1:2-4 ² Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,whenever you face trials of many kinds, ³ because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. ⁴ Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Disclosure Policy

Since I'm growing and sharing, I needed one of these:

This policy is valid from 07 April 2011

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This blog does contain content which might present a conflict of interest. This content may not always be identified.


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Factor Tree!

The Factor Tree is a great site that I just found by being a Bzz agent. I was given a FREE trial and allowed to create parent tools and kid worksheets for counting and learning math! I love how the site is organized well, has an option for a kids login, and offers a progress area. I think this tool is great because it meets parents and kids needs.

I hope you will checkout this site I found! For YOUR free trial, checkout my post on Facebook!

http://thefactortree.com/