Free Potty Training Kit from Pampers

We're not there yet, but all too soon we will be potty training... and I have several friends with girls the same age as mine that will be also, so I wanted to pass this along. Check out Ladybug's Coupon Corner here for the deal and how to get it... it really is a good one!

BzzAgent

So, I posted on Facebook that I joined my first BzzAgent campaign and got tons of questions. That means the purpose was acheived... I created Buzz! BzzAgent is a way of advertising by word of mouth through blogs, facebook, twitter, myspace, reviews, etc. You review websites, etc., and sometimes get invited to join ad campaigns to try new products and tell others about them. My first campaign just happens to be a Cover Girl campaign for a new lip gloss and eyeshadow... so, stay tuned for what I think about it! Sounds like fun and I can't wait:)

To check it out yourself visit bzzagent here.

While your here anyway, scroll down the the bottom of the blog and click sign up on the swagbucks widget and start earning all kinds of stuff... just for doing searches that you do anyway! I've already earned gotten $15 in Amazon gift cards!

Coupon guilt

I have been so excited by all the deals I've been getting lately. I'm still new to getting free or almost free food and I am really excited to see what this can do for my family budget, our ability to manage our finances in a Godly manner, and our ability to give. However, I have experienced a truly unexpected emotion that I could only think to name "coupon guilt." It never crossed my mind that this would be an issue. Seriously, who ever thought of feeling guilty for using coupons?
It started with a deal that I saw on a few blogs about printing a coupon for $5 off of some vitamins that were on sale for $5, and you got $5 worth of store incentives back...so essentially you MAKE $5 on the deal. Sounded great, and I immediately printed the coupons. However, you had to enter codes on the company's website to get the coupon to print. You could print it 4 times, so I stood to make $20. Initially I was ok except that I do not use this particular vitamin. I knew I could donate them, however, so that made me feel good. Then it sunk in that you are supposed to get the codes off of products that you purchase, and the coupon was meant as a reward for loyal customers. They really weren't put out for just anyone. This part I could not get off of my mind. In the end, I did not do the deal. I figured if it has stuck with me, and I could not stop thinking about it, that was the best solution for me. That is just how I personally dealt with my own issues. Please do not read this to mean that I think that anyone who did do this deal did anything wrong in ANY WAY! Not at all... this is just all new to me, and I am working out the "kinks" so to speak, for myself. I have gotten over most of the guilt in the reminder that MOST coupons are manufacturer coupons, and the stores are getting reimbursed for the value of them. So, this means that even though I got two free boxes of pasta at Kroger this week (on sale for $1 with a $1 off coupon), Kroger still gets their $1. So, no reason for guilt on that issue!
I am sure there are MANY more issues that are going to arise through the course of my money saving adventures... so I want to hear from you. From the more experienced couponers, what is the general consesus from the couponing community on some of the more common issues? From the newbies like me, what are some questions or issues you have come across? Maybe we can find the solutions together:)

Ever had one of those mornings?

Your running late. You have almost finished ironing your husband's shirt when you realize there is a stain on the front and he can't wear it. You should have seen that earlier. Now you either have to iron another or feel guilty because he has to iron and he'll be late. You left your coffee too close to the edge of the desk and your helpful 1-year old decided to bring it too you, in the process spilling it on her head and breaking the cup. (Praising God here she wasn't burned or cut!) No way there is time to wash her hair, and she's already dressed... you change her clothes and rinse and blow dry her hair as well as possible. Shirt still needs to be ironed. Group pics at school today, gotta pick something out for the 5-year old to wear. Okay, now get him out of bed and get him to put it on himself so you can get dressed (minutes are clicking away all this time....) No, he wants to wear a "cool" shirt. What is "cool" to a 5-year old boy? Apparently it is a long sleeved shirt over a short sleeved black shirt with an orange skeleton from Halloween, in the middle of April, with shorts. Oh my. Not acceptable. A tearful, snot filled fit ensues... hubby feels he needs to step in (thank goodness) but now you feel guilty that he felt the need and had to be bothered. Sigh.... and you have YET to begin getting dressed. The 1-year old wants to be held, no problem, your a pro at one handed make-up, but you notice she still smells like coffee...

Have you ever had one of those mornings? Same song different verse maybe? How should we as Christians deal with these issues? Mommy guilt? Everyday mishaps? Let's pray and discover together what God's word says about this. It may take awhile, I work full time, but stay tuned! In the meantime, leave me a comment. How do avoid these situations, or how do you handle them when they come up?

You don't need laundry detergent?

There is a very informative article on Yahoo News this morning about laundry detergent, how you don't need it, or certainly do not need near as much! There is also a neat recipe for homemade detergent included. Since I have discussed this with my husband before, I can assure you, due to my desire to be a submissive wife, the Stewart household will not be foregoing detergent all together, nor will we be making our own. We will fall into the category mentioned at the end of the artcle. Check it out here.

Also, Money Saving Mom has a great post on how she saves money on laundry detergent here.

God Bless,
Faith

Free Ink Cartridge Refills

Thanks to reader Nikki for this tip! On Earth Day you can get your printer cartridge refilled at Walgreens for $1!

5 sponges and 2 bags of TGI Fridays chips for $1

This is what I'm talking about. This is the fun stuff:) Today I went to Kroger and got 5 Scotchbrite sponges and 2 big bags (not snack size) of TGI Fridays Potato Skins chips for $1 (plus tax). How? Well, I had printed out 5 $1 off any Scotchbrite product coupons (wish I'd printed more, see why below) and I had 2 $1.50 off TGI Fridays snacks coupons. The single sponges were priced at $1 so I got all five free, and the chips where $1.99 each, so I got them for $.49 each. Awesome, right?

The Scotchbrite coupon has been changed to $1/2, so you won't get them free, but our Walmart has them for $.84 each, so you can stock up for a little of nothing. I linked to the coupon through Deal Seeking Mom (look around her sight, it's great!) here: http://dealseekingmom.com/free-scotch-brite-sponges-with-coupon/. It is a PDF coupon so you can print as many as you like! The TGI Fridays coupon is on coupons.com. I get a TON of coupons from this site and I HIGHLY recommend checking it out as part of your weekly grocery list routine:)

So what about you, have you found any great deals lately?

And the Winner Is....

Nikki Reilly

I'll e-mail you with the details Nikki! Congrats on your $5 Amazon gift card:)

Daily Devotion

I've added a new button to the blog:) Check out the Proverbs 31 Ministries Daily Devotional button to the right. I have received this devotion in my inbox for years. Head on over, check it out, and look around when your done reading. Don't forget to check out the blogs these ladies write. I frequent several of them. They are awesome!

Have a blesses week,
Faith

Why do I clip coupons

Why do I clip coupons? In a broad since, the more we save, the more we can give. However, there is more to it than that. It is just one small step in striving to be a "Proverbs 31" woman. Coupons allow me to stock up, so we are not caught unprepared, they allow me to me a little more responsible with the resources we've been given, and sometimes they allow me to provide my family with fun stuff that might not otherwise be in our budget:) Just this week I was able to treat Jackson and Aaron to Blue Bunny Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches for FREE! Could I have gotten them anyway, probably, but I doubt I would have... and they tasted so much sweeter to my grown-up man knowing I wasn't irresponsible with our money when I got them:)

Are treats irresponsible? No. I just feel that I should do everything I can to make the most of what we've been given, and this is one way I do it. Plus, it's fun!

God bless,
Faith

Some great Walgreens deals this week!

There are some really great deals at Walgreens starting tomorrow, including $.24 toothpaste (Colgate Total to be exact), and $5.99 Huggies diapers or $4.99 Pull-ups! See the complete list with coupons here at shortoncents.blogspot.com/2010/04/walgreens-418-deals.html, or just click on the Short on Cents button to the right of this blog. Remember, a ton of this coupons are printables... you don't have to get a paper! Just click on the link and print them out:) The Short on Cents blog does a GREAT JOB of linking back to the coupons if they are printables.

God bless,
Faith

Not for real ways to make money online

Okay, so can you really make extra money doing surveys? I don't know... I'm trying. I have found a REALLY helpful website that lets customers review online survey companies. I HIGHLY recommend it before you sign up to do ANY surveys. I wish I had known about it sooner... It is called Survey Police. Link is below...
http://www.surveypolice.com/directory

A for real way to earn money online

I have discovered a really neat website. Swagbucks.com is a nifty little search engine that allows you to earn points while searching for things you would be searching for anyway. I've been a part of these before, and nothing really came of it, but the different thing here is you can actually see results fairly fast... and you have the option of pretty much a "cash" trade in, not a sweepstakes. You can trade in all kinds of points for all kinds of things, including computers, but the draw for me was the $5 Amazon gift card for 450 swagbucks. It took me about a month to get this many, and there you go, $5 to buy pretty much anything... almost as good as cash. All I did is use swagbucks to do a search for any website I would normally type in the address bar( ie facebook, yahoo, blogger, whatever), and used it instead of Google for any searches I might do. Sometimes I get 3 in a day, sometimes 30...my plan is to save them for gifts, birthdays, etc. Here is the cool part. I'm having a giveaway. I am going to giveaway a $5 Amazon gift card to one lucky reader. There are several ways to enter.

You can get one entry by following this blog, then leaving a comment and telling me you are now following the blog.

Another entry can be had by going to swagbucks and joining up (you can use the widget at the bottom of this blog.)

And you can get yet ANOTHER entry by spreading the word about this blog on Facebook or Twitter....

So there you have it, 3 entries you can get. Just be sure to leave me a comment for each one telling me you did it. I'll pick a winner Monday, the 19th, using probably Random. com. Who can't use a free $5?

Angie over at Short on Cents has a great giveaway going on from giftchick.etsy.com. Check out the giveaway here:http://shortoncents.blogspot.com/2010/04/acrylic-platter-etsy-giveaway-ends-424.html. I visited Gift Chick on Etsy and it is AWESOME. There are some very cute gift ideas for VERY reasonable prices. I found some GREAT Mother's Day and Birthday items, and even started planning some for Christmas! Go enter the giveaway and check out Gift Chick... you'll be glad you did:) Leave a comment and tell what you think.

Who am I?

Okay, so those of you who know me, and those who do not, are probably wondering "Who is she to be writing about this?" I feel the SAME way! I do have a degree in accounting, and I am "cheap" for lack of a better word, and still for years money has seemed to slip through our fingers. We save when we can, we pay our bills, we give to the Church, but I have just always felt I wasn't doing it quite right, not quite enough. The Proverbs 31 Woman was always prepared, no one was ever cold or hungry, or out of deodorant or shampoo, lol! ( I bet there were always clean towels in the cubbard too, and she didn't even have a washing machine!) My point is, I am learning too, and I want to use this as a platform to share what I have learned, what I am learning as I learn it, and for you guys to share your experiences and lessons learned as well.

To kick off the sharing part, I would like to ask you to share a "life lesson" about money in the comments section below. It can be practical, or spiritual, or anything in between.

I'll start. Coupons are GREAT, but only if you use them for things you would buy anyway! If you buy things you wouldn't normally buy, you don't need, or you won't use, just because you have a coupon, you've missed the point! My personal exception to this rule is two fold...1) If I don't use it, but I know someone else who will and I can get it for a very good price and bless someone else, I'll go for it, or 2) if I can MAKE money off of it, I'll buy it. And example of that is the shampoo I recently bought at Walgreens. It was an intense moisture shampoo which I absolutely cannot use without looking like a walking oil slick, but it was on sale for $4 and I had a $2 off coupon. The kicker was that when you bought it, the register printed a $4 register reward, which can be used just like cash toward your next Walgreens purchase. So I MADE $2 to use toward Easter goodies. What did I do with the shampoo? I took it to work and asked around. It didn't take long to find someone who would use it:)

Now, let me hear from you.

God Bless,
Faith

Great tip to save on printer ink

Yahoo ran a news story today on how you can save money on printer ink just by changing your font. Now, since it is my belief that one of our roles as wives, mothers, or just humans in general is to be wise stewards of what the Lord has given us (which is why I started this blog in the first place:) I thought this was post worthy. Short on Cents discusses it here: http://mylitterofsix.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-to-save-on-ink.html

Check it out:)

A couple of neat deals

Deal Seeking Mom lists this weeks Walgreens deals, including FREE ink pens and $.25 Starbucks! Yay! Click below or her button on the side. Speaking of buttons, click through those here when you have a chance. These are all blogs I use for info and inspiration, and they are all TOTALLY fun! I'll be adding more soon:)

http://dealseekingmom.com/tag/walgreens-deals/

What it's all about

Okay, so yes, this is different from the "flip flop" blog. I decided I sometimes wanted to talk about stuff other than the kiddos and the new flip flops I made, lol! I plan for this to be a place to do just that. The title tells more about what I want to talk about than what you may think. I pulled it from Proverbs 31 verse 10 which says "A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies." I don't know about you, but I definitely want to be that, a wife of noble character, a woman of noble character, a human of noble character (not to mention a MOMMY of noble character). But what does that mean? How do we do that? This is going to be a place to ponder such things, to pray about such things, to research and share about such things. I may post a devotional, or a may post a great coupon deal I found! (The Proverbs 31 woman was wise with money, so that has to be PART of being a wife of noble character:) So, won't you join me on this journey? Chime in on the comments, let me know what you think, and please pray! I want this be a place of practical help and encouragement for women in their everyday lives!