Some Cool Freebies (And Near Freebies!)

I thought I’d share with you guys some sweet deals, as well as easy ways to earn money and gift cards.

Nancy over at Raging Bear Ranch recommended Swagbucks. Basically, you log in and use their search engine (which uses Google & Ask.com) and you win Swagbucks which are redeemable for gift cards. This is the coolest of my “free” recommendations because you are simply being rewarded for something you do anyway! If you want to be referred, simply click on this link and I think I get some credit or something I’ve been using it for a couple of days, and I already have 8 Swagbucks!

I also use Mypoints and InboxDollars. Both programs reward you for reading e-mails and then clicking on the links. The difference is that My Points pays in gift cards, whereas Inbox Dollars pays in cold, hard cash. Again, I can refer you to these programs if you’d like. You can simply click on this link for InboxDollars, but for My Points, I have to refer you via e-mail. Inbox Dollars will give you $5 just for signing up.

Also, you can sign-up to be a Consumer Tester for McCormick. Up to 4 times per year, you will receive an email inviting you to participate in a Consumer Test. If you participate in the test, you will receive monetary compensation! I’m not sure I can do it because most seasoning mixes contain soy or corn, but I could always test them out on others

You can also enter daily to win $5000 in William-Sonoma kitchen merchandise.

I’m looking into this free program, Cozi, which helps to organize your life with reminders and things. I heard about it from the Super Coupon Girl.

And last but not least, you can get 14 hamburgers, a cutlery set and a cutting board from Omaha Steaks for only $1.98, including shipping! Go over to the other Super Coupon Girl’s site to see how it works! (This deal is no longer available as Geico and/or Omaha Steaks changed the terms.)

Sleeping In & Yard Sales

My poor husband had to work until the wee hours of the morning to avoid having to work during the weekend, so when Bear woke up at 6 AM, we let Roy sleep in. We went out & ran a couple errands, including a stop at Roy’s favorite donut place for some fresh, hand-cut donuts. Once Roy got up, we went out driving, looking for yard sales. We generally just drive by & see if there’s anything interesting. The first one or two looked like duds, but we stopped at one soon after that and scored! The woman having the yard sale had 25 cent tapes (yes, we still have a tape player & only a tape player in our car), 25 cent 3-ring binders, as well as a cute, little “Yak Pak” for $1, in the hopes that my Asus would fit in it.

It does! Here it is, entering in to its new home.

Here it is, all tucked away!

Rock on! I told her about the Asus, and she said it sounds perfect for her partner. Cool

Then we headed over to a multi-family yard sale that we saw a sign for. It must have been around 1:30 at this point, and there was a big box marked “Free” in front of one of the houses. We got 3 wooden children’s puzzles, 2 kid’s videos, the whole Anne of Green Gables series, a little lamb porcelain thing that Roy liked, and a 2-tape set for learning conversational Arabic, which is one of 2 languages I’d like to learn (the other being Spanish).

This is not helping the cause of decluttering much. Well, the binders will help because my recipes get strewn across the kitchen by a certain Bear But for the most part, we only picked up things we needed or could use. We can only listen to Ian White in the car so many times! It’s Bear’s favorite, but now he seems to be taking a liking to Chuck Mangione. When I told him that his great grandpa played with Chuck, I think that won him over

Following Your Passion

Roy & I stayed home from church today because Bear has a fever and isn’t feeling well. And since we’ve been up since about 5 AM, I’ve been catching up on reading some library books that I have out. And since the Bear is snoozing on my lap, I thought I’d type a post on my new Asus

2 books really have me thinking: “The Simple Living Guide” and to a lesser degree “Your Money or Your Life”. Janet Luhrs, author of “The Simple Living Guide”, discussing simplifying your life to the point where you can easily live within your means and still save money so that one day, you become financially independent. We are on track to be set to retire in 15-20 years if we continue to pay down our debt at our current rate and continue to earn about the same amount of money with annual raises.

This may surprise some of you, but I’ve always desired to live a simple life. Some of you probably just laughed out loud as you read that because you’ve been to our house and have seen all the stuff we’ve accumulated over the years. Yes, our hoarding tendencies still need to be worked on, for sure But ideally, I’d love to live in a small town where you go to the village store and the clerk knows you by name (yes, I have watched too much “Little House on the Prairie”). We’d live in a modest house, and I could have a large garden on lots of land with a stream nearby for Roy. Yes, I would miss the conveniences of city life (like being able to walk to the grocery store and not use any gas to get there!), but I think the pros would outweight the cons. And with all the technology we have available to us today, Roy & I could both work from home.

The question is what work would I do? Luhrs talks a lot about finding work you are passionate about. I’m passionate about a lot of things – ministry, music, healthy eating which does not mean “low-fat”, fyi), green smoothies, dogs, babies, recovery – the list could go on & on She talked specifically about how great it was to be able to work from home when her kids were small. Her job? Writing! As I read that, I was reminded of how, in recent years, I’ve really had a strong desire to write a book. I’ve never thought of myself as much of a writer before, but I recently had 3 articles published over at Boundless.org, and those were relatively well-received. There are a few different book ideas that I’ve tossed around, but there’s one specific idea that I feel strongly God put on my heart over 3 years ago. As I sat thinking about this, I actually had several ideas pop into my head, so I hopped over to my Asus & jotted them down.

So get ready, Eva! (She’ one of my best friends and has edited pretty much everything I’ve written since we met a few years ago.) It may take me 2 or 3 times as long to write a book, typing with one finger and a baby in my lap, but it’ll get done eventually!

Shameless plus – I have been reading some great books lately! Check out my Library Thing list below for some recommendations