Kool Aid Cleaning

If you purchased even one copy of last months All You magazine you probably have more Kool Aid than you know what to do with.

Stop by Mommies with Cents to read a green cleaning tip on how to use up some of those packets for a cleaner dishwasher.

Over $200 in free coupons

My coupons are getting out of control again so in honor or Labor Day I'm hosting another giveaway!

I have over $200 in coupons including cleaning products, food, meat, coffee, baby items.

In this envelope there will also be the $5 coupon off any Luvs and some from this weeks P&G packet.

To enter all you need to do is leave a comment in this post with your email address or blog link by Thursday, September 4th by 3pm est. I'll draw a winner that evening.

This will be my last coupon giveaway for a while so make sure to get in on the action!

Shredded Paper = Free packing materials

Need free shipping material? You probably already have some laying around.

We've taken another step to reducing our clutter, reusing, and upcycling as much as we can. Matt and I received a paper shredder for one of our wedding gifts. Quite possibly the gift we use the most. We were shredding our documents and then just putting the paper out with our recycling, but I wanted to do more. I'm really committed to reusing, not only to help the planet but to save on having to purchase new.

From now on all our paper shredding will be used for packing materials. My Mom has begun visiting craft shows and selling some of her items on her Etsy shop so I will be giving her all our shreds to use. Not only will this reuse our paper but she won't have to buy packing peanuts or other shipping materials that will just be thrown away, creating more waste.

You can check out her shop HERE or at the etsy link above.

No More Credit Card debt!

In my July spending post I mentioned we paid off our credit cards! I’m very happy to officially report our credit cards are 100% paid off. From this point on anything charged to our card will be paid for within hours. I say that because we still plan to charge a lot to our cards. For example when we go grocery shopping I charge the total and go right home to pay it off. It’s a great feature of our account, being able to transfer the money immediately. I’ve thought about opening a card with some kind of reward plan but I love our quick transfers and the low interest rate was great when we were carrying a balance. Many rewards cards have much higher rates (even though we don’t plan on carrying a balance ever again I still don’t want a high rate card). We’re taking it slow so we’ll see what happens with this in the future.

As I’ve mentioned we’ve also decided that even though our cards are paid off we aren’t going to change our lifestyle. We’re happy the way things are, in fact we plan to do more to save money and help the planet as we can. With our credit card money freed up we plan to use that amount for savings and a few other accounts we’ve neglected while focusing on debt. I plan to put some in a dentist/doctor fund, a new car fund (well used, but new to us car), and increase our gift/Christmas fund as well. The rest of the money will go into our retirement/dream fund and an emergency fund with 9 months expenses. I’m also happy to announce that we plan to start tithing with our new budget. We were also planning to increase our grocery fund but since I’ve started couponing we don’t need to, in fact we could probably decrease it, but I like the cushion.

I cannot express enough how wonderful it feels to be 100% credit card debt FREE!

We owe lots of thanks to the following bloggers for motivation and showing us it was possible. We couldn't have paid off our almost fourteen thousand dollars in Credit card debt within seven month without their guidance.

Blogging away debt
Millionaire Mommy Next Door
Get Rich Slowly

Birdland - Eric Adams

Birdland, by Eric Adams wasn’t the typical book you’d expect to find on my shelf. At least it wasn’t what I expected when I bought it, that’s for sure.

Birdland is about a young woman; Katie, who after a death bed confession, learns she has a long lost brother. The book follows her subsequent search and rescue mission through the town of Bodega Bay, home of the Hitchcock thriller, The Birds.

Its not that Birdland is bad by any means I just feel like it’s missing something. I’m not sure what exactly, the characters are just lacking. I definitely wasn’t drawn into to the book like I expected.
Therefore, I’ll be listing this on my useful rating standard. You may enjoy this book if you're a true Hitch fan, but I didn't find it to be a thriller so don't open it for only the scares.

Crafts??

If all goes well I plan to bring a new element to my blog by highlighting some of my current craft projects. And by all goes well I mean if I can actually finish a couple over the long weekend.

Tonight I did a little shopping and picked up all the supplies I need to finish all those partially crafted crafts. Although this weekend will also be devoted to seeing a movie, soccer game, and our one year anniversary I hope to be in full craft swing by 9am Thursday morning.

I’ve been motivated to do this for two reasons. One, to get rid of all these projects and materials cluttering up our house and two, my Mom called me last Thursday informing me that she had entered a craft fair on Sunday. She also mentioned we’d be going back at the end of September so I figure I better have something to contribute.

I do have one picture of my Mom's very first craft show!

Our table with all my Mom’s creations.
Birdhouses, painted glasses, her award winning photography, and my favorite the pumpkins. If only I would have inherited even the smallest amount of her artistic ability.



I did end up bringing a couple things to contribute but I really hope to provide more next month. I’m getting into the re-crafting movement; its where you make something from another material.

For example here are a couple projects I hope to work on this weekend.

Wallets from cereal boxes
Pinecone Bird feeders
Rag rugs

Now you guys know where to send all your unwanted shirts/towels, cereal boxes, magazines and crayons. Right to my front door. :)

Ban Sweeps & Instant Win

The Ban - How I chill instant win and sweepstakes is giving away 136 great prizes (below) until November 15th. You can play the instant win once a day.


Sweepstakes Prize
1 - Grand Prize: $2,000 travel voucher to use on a vacation of your choice.


Instant Win Prizes
6 - First Place: Nintendo DS system
30 - Second Place: iPod Shuffle
100 - Third Place: $5 Starbucks Gift Card

One instant win prize per person.


I love Ban, its my favorite deodorant. If only they were giving away product for an instant win.