Got little ones? Want to start saving for their college education? Then you’ll be interested to know about this $10000 Sweepstakes from GradSave, after all it’s never too early to start saving for college:
Be sure to read more about eligibility rules and prizes here. Odds of winning depends on how many entries received.
“I was compensated to share this information. All thoughts and opinions are my own.”
Lately, I’ve been getting lots of unwanted calls on my house and cell phone. So, I headed over to the National DO NOT CALL Registry and signed up my phone numbers. You will need to enter a valid email address, they will send you an email for EACH phone number you register and you MUST click each link to activate the registry for each number. So, my fingers are cross this works. It’s so annoying to receive unwanted calls!
Editor’s note: It’s also worth having an unlisted/private number as well. It is a nominal fee each month for the additional privacy and the phone company does not include you in any phone listings on or off line. Since moving to our new home a year ago we have enjoyed a relatively quiet phone line since having an “private” number.
We also exercise caution when giving out our number, especially our cell phones. It’s not easy because you still have companies who will sell, rent or give out your number.
I have stated it before but it’s worth stating again, I love books by Suzanne Woods Fisher. She recently came out with a children’s book for ages 8-12 (recommended) but my 13 year old read it. I have it started and will finish it this week. It’s titled, Life with Lily, and is about a little Amish girl and her family.
What I like about it so far is that it kind of reminds me of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s series, Little House on the Prairie, but it’s about an Amish girl. It’s all about family life on the farm….imagine us liking a book like that? 😉
Life with Lily Review by My Daughter
Lily is a really sweet girl.
I loved the grandmother’s lesson on choosing the right friends and the influences they have on you.
I loved her friendship with Trisha. I liked the fact they were kind to Mr. Young even if he wasn’t kind to them. He was a grumpy man.
I thought Lily’s descriptions were very cute, especially the one about her new brother.
I felt very sorry for Levis’ character (he was her cousin) and what the new teacher did to him. I thought the way the parents dealt with it was very smart.
I didn’t really learn anything new because much of what was in the book is what my parents are teaching me or have already told me.
Sounds like Peanut enjoyed Life with Lily by Suzanne Woods Fisher, so it gets a two thumbs up from us!
Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.
Put that blender back in the closet! Whole Fruit Smoothies are here! Whole Fruit Smoothies is a frozen treat that require a microwave and a spoon. However, in my daughter’s case she liked a straw too. Whole Fruit Smoothies come in 3 flavors – Mixed Berry, Strawberry Banana and Pineapple Mango. Plus, only 100 calories per serving. Each package contains 4 – 4 ounce cups of one flavor. I’ve seen them in my grocery store in the frozen foods section by the frozen fruits in bags.
Take one of these 4 ounces cups, pop it in the microwave for 20 second. The following pictures are of the Pineapple Mango.
When you remove the Whole Fruit Smoothie cup from the microwave, the center will still be frozen. Of course, you can eat it right from the cup.
I did stir my daughter’s briefly to get the bigger chunks melted a little. BUT, it does continue to stay cold as a smoothie should.
Then Enjoy!
My Whole Fruit Smoothies Review
Whole Fruit Smoothies are a BIG hit in my house, with our favorite being mixed berry. Here is the nutritional information of the mixed berry:
My daughter gets very excited to have a smoothie she loves her new “ice cream smoothie” as she calls it. Two thumbs up from us!
You can find out more information about Whole Fruit Smoothies here.
Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.
Music is such a huge part in our lives. It cheers us when we are down, it relaxes us when we are tense and it allows us to create new memories with family. Talk radio also use to be such a huge part of family lives. Remember the Waltons gathering in their livingroom around the radio? Before television that’s what families did for home entertainment.
Looking for a free radio source you can listen to online? I discovered TuneIn Radio. It is free local, international and Internet radio.
Head to TuneIn, where you can listen to radio stations for FREE on your computer! No money, No accounts needed. Of course, you can sign up for an account to save your favorite stations. They have local radio to your area, music, talk and sports! This is one of my new favorite sites! They also have apps to download as well.
Check it out at TuneIn.
This week’s Wordless Wednesday post is a sneak peek of the 2012 KIA Optima Hybrid car. It arrived late yesterday afternoon. The Driver STI specialist drove here and a colleague drove another car so he could have a way home. I thought it was awesome that they actually delivered the car right to my house! They will pick it up in a week’s time. What a great service!
The specialist walked me through a brief demonstration of how the car worked and showed me how to use certain features. The KIA Optima Hybrid car is sleek and still smells so new! We haven’t had a new car to drive in a l-o-n-g time, unless you count driving my mother-in-law’s car whose car really isn’t new anymore since it’s a 2006. I’ve also never driven a KIA, so this is a whole ‘nother new experience, besides driving a hybrid car for the first time.
I think it’s so cool that the KIA Optima Hybrid car starts with the press of a button! That will take some getting use to. I am really looking forward to driving it to Paula’s tomorrow to head to Kim’s and then on to Brandcation Blog Cabin in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
My husband and I took it for a quick spin down our country road. It drives really smooth!
I don’t want to give everything away since I’ll be giving a full report after I get back from Brandcation. Just wanted to tease you a little bit and well….brag a bit too. (blush!) So far my first impression of the KIA Optima Hybrid car is very positive….a 12-hour drive will give me a better idea of it’s overall performance on a road trip. Plus I’ll have two fellow bloggers input too.
While we were loaned the KIA Optima Hybrid car with the agreement to feature of it on our blogs after Brandcation, this post is done of my own volition.
Do you know anyone battling breast cancer? October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast dancer in a lifetime and 289,000 new cases are expected to be diagnosed in US women in 2012. Incredible and sobering. I just went to a seminar on hormones this past weekend and according to the speaker (who has seen NO breast cancer patients in his practice) low progesterone may be the cause of breast cancer in some women. So keep that in mind as suggestion to loved ones and friends, and if they do want to look into it and get their progesterone tested it should be at 10 or above, even if the test says 5 is normal because labs averages are skewed in a major way. Labs throw out the first and last 100 and make the middle numbers their average. Just something I learned at the seminar.
I wanted to help share the news of Funky Buddy and Breast Cancer Awareness Month by sharing a couple of other resources with you.
Funky Buddy
Funky Buddy is simply a buddy program created by Dr. Kristi Funk of Pink Lotus Breast Center in Los Angeles. It’s purpose is to pair newly diagnosed patients with patients she had already treated.
Best Friend’s Guide to Breast Cancer Book
Food is Medicine: The Best Friend’s Guide to Breast Cancer has an appendix of 30 tried-and-true family recipes! I am featuring one of those recipes below that I am really looking forward to trying – have to get zucchini and blueberries first!
Lemony Blueberry Zucchini Loaf (Source: The Best Friend’s Guide to Breast Cancer)
Zucchini is a good source of vitamins A, K, and B6, as well as vitamin C, which has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Another bonus: it’s rich in the minerals potassium, manganese, and magnesium, which help with immune function. This loaf packs an even greater nutritional punch thanks to the blueberries, well-known as one of nature’s most potent cancer fighters. To top it off, the hint of lemon tingles the tongue and gives a boost to the blandness of the zucchini.
The loaf is hearty enough for breakfast and handy for snacking, too. Because it’s not too sweet, your friend or loved one will find that it’s mild enough if she’s queasy, and the ground ginger will soothe her churning stomach as well. I’ve found that it’s easy to get down when most food isn’t appealing. Of course, it’s a tasty treat when she has her appetite, too!
You’ll need:
1 cup of blueberries
2 cups of peeled, shredded zucchini
3 eggs
¾ cup of vegetable oil
1 and ½ cups of sugar
2 teaspoons of lemon extract
2 and ½ cups of flour
1 teaspoon of salt
½ teaspoon of nutmeg
¼ teaspoon of ginger
1 teaspoon of baking soda
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1 cup of chopped walnuts (optional)
Crisco1) Heat oven to 350°. Grease only the bottom of two glass loaf pans with Crisco.
2) In one bowl, beat the eggs, then add vegetable oil, sugar, and lemon extract until well blended.
3) In another bowl, sift the flour, salt, nutmeg, ginger, baking soda, and baking powder.
4) Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until well-incorporated, then fold in the zucchini, then blueberries and walnuts. Pour into the two loaf pans.
Bake for about 50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
A portion of proceeds (20%) from sales of the book is going to support Pink Lotus Petals.
I know it isn’t Thrifty Thursday, but I bet we all could talk shopping, discounts, deals and coupons for a l-o-n-g time!
Here are 5 ways to use coupons and get a discount:
1. Use coupons on sales items.
I really enjoy shopping, but I like it even more when I can shop and save money. It’s even better if I can use coupons and get a discount on sale items! I remember when a couple of new stores opened up they offered Grand Opening sales, plus store coupons and then I had manufacturers coupons on top of that….and if I remember correctly I received $100 worth of groceries for $25. That’s a sweet memory. I know couponers do this on a regular basis.
2. Use coupons and you store’s discount or preferred card.
Walgreens and CVS are popular stores people use to save money like my little story above, but I have never been able to do it. Then again, I don’t shop at CVS because there are no stores close to us and we only buy certain products at Walgreens. I think it’s rare to find coupons of products we actually want to buy – No pharmaceuticals, no chemicals and organic as we are really trying to eat healthier and live a healthier lifestyle.
I have only come across a couple coupon sites geared specifically towards organic products, but know that niche is slowly growing. It’s been a while since I did a Google search for organic coupon sites…time to do it again as I have a growing collection of organic, natural product coupons that I want to use up on our next grocery shopping trip.
Since we buy in bulk whether at Costco (which does take some coupons) and at a natural foods co-op, we cannot usually use coupons because we are getting bulk pricing. Nevertheless we can shop the monthly sales which helps us save more money.
3. Shop on days when a store is offering to double manufacture’s coupons. I am not sure how many stores are still doing this so check with your store first.
4. In-store coupons and manufacturer’s coupons usually can be used together, whether the in-store coupon is on an individual product or off your total order.
So how do you use coupons to save money? Please share as we all want to know!
This is a paid post. Thoughts and opinions are my own.
Shopping for land has been a long and frustrating process for us – because it’s hard to find affordable land where we desire to live. For years we have looked for land and houses in several states. We have looked for land by itself and land that includes a house. Kind of important to have a place to live too as my husband isn’t into camping. There have been several properties we would have loved to have owned but only a few we inquired about.
We have mainly looked for land online, occasionally we’ve used a newspaper, but not very often. We used to years ago, but we’ve become heavy internet users so it’s our go-to place for everything these days, even real estate. The cost of taking a trip to see land in another state, the cost of a move and homeschooling laws (they vary from state to state) and my mother-in-law have always kept us in Illinois. That’s a huge reason we became open to simply renting land so we could stay in Illinois – Land in Illinois is very expensive.
There are a couple regular sites we visit for real estate and land, but we recently learned of a new one for land called LandCentral.com. The site itself is easy to navigate and the information for each listing is an easy to read. They even have an e-newsletter that sends out alerts when property becomes available in your area. The only downfall I see right now is there are no listings for Illinois. Looks like they are working on it though.
LandCentral Sweepstakes
There’s a big giveaway for LAND going on through LandCentral.com sweepstakes. The winner will receive their choice of one of five properties in the US. The giveaway runs from October 1-31.
For years we have wanted to go to Arizona to visit the Grand Canyon, but have yet to. We have looked at a few properties there as I’d love to live some place warm or hot in the case of Arizona! California or Florida would be nice too, except for the earthquakes and hurricanes. Those kind of scare us, but I give people credit who do live with those two things on a daily or seasonal basis. (Joy, Toni, Colleen you all come to mind right now!)
Click this link or the button above or below to enter to win some land of your own. It’s a Rafflecopter form you can fill in as much or as little as you want. The winner of the LandCentral sweepstakes will have their choice of land in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Colorado, California or Florida.
Happy entering!
I wrote this post for the opportunity to be chosen to write on a monthly basis for LandCentral.com
I don’t know if you knew this or not because I didn’t until last week, but September is self improvement month. I want to talk a little about my own goals in that department as well as self improvement and Cool Sculpting. While today is the last day of the month I can honestly say that I did work on my own self-improvement when I participated in Mamavation’s 2-Week Challenge.
However, for the the last two weeks since the challenge ended I have not been doing well at all in the exercise department. If you remember I had really wanted to keep up with my daily exercise. I have failed. My eating habits have gone a little downhill too.
I need to come up with a plan of action, like having a set time to exercise each day and sticking to it or else I don’t think I’ll ever get back in the habit of regular, daily exercise. It use to be so easy and now it’s such a struggle.
I really think exercising right when I get up is going to be the key or else it just won’t get done because I’ll start work and won’t stop until late at night. I tried exercising right before bed and it was brutal because I was doing it when I was exhausted and not when I was full of energy first thing in the morning.
That’s my goal, get up, exercise right away, at least 5x/week because it’s the only way I’ll reach my weight loss goals. Along with the exercise, I want to reach the goal of 10K steps every day too (measured with my pedometer).
Self Improvement Month and CoolSculpting
What is CoolSculpting?
It is a new FDA approved, non-invasive procedure for fat reduction. It involves no knives, no suction hoses, no needles and not even lasers are used. CoolSculpting is a procedure that freezes your fat cells without harming your skin. After your treatment, you get on with your busy day. According to their Facebook page, people see an average of 20% reduction in fat after one visit. If it’s necessary, you and your doctor may decide on more treatments at which time more fact reduction is to be expected. No pills or supplements are required as long as you maintain your weight with normal diet and exercise, your long-term results should remain stable. Hello, you again.
Sounds pretty cool, eh? I don’t know about you but it sounds a lot more appealing than undergoing the knife.
Have you ever considered weight reduction surgery of any kind? I never have…until I started watching the past season of Extreme Weight Loss. That’s when I realized how it almost seemed necessary for people who lose a lot of weight to do something with their excess skin.
In honor of Self-Improvement Month, CoolSculpting is hosting a Self-Improvement Instant-Win Challenge inviting you to make one small pledge on how you will improve your health and fitness routine this month (and future months since the challenge goes through the first week of October). If you do make a pledge to improve something, you will be given the opportunity to win one of 10 instant win $50 Amazon e-cards or the grand prize of a $500 American Express Gift Card. Who couldn’t use an extra $50 or $500 right now?
Enter the pledge on CoolSculpting’s Facebook sweepstakes page.
You might also like to connect with them at their website: http://www.coolsculpting.com, Facebook and Twitter @CoolSculpting. To find a CoolSculpting provider visit: http://www.coolsculpting.com/find-a-center
This is a sponsored post for CoolSculpting by ZELTIQ.
