Amazing Friends!

I will be the first to admit I have some pretty amazing and talented friends. I'm so lucky to get to be the recipient of many of their great work. These are some burp clothes that my friend Eva from church fixed up all pretty for me.

So during the Target baby clearance (which I stalked religiously) I found a pack of 12 white cloth diapers marked down 75% (about $4), then a few days later I found a 6 pack of colored diapers also marked 75% off (around $2). Then I made a trade with Eva- she would sew me some and I would give her some. I just got them today and I LOVE them! She did such a great job and I'm going to be styling when my baby spits up. Thank you so much Eva, I hope you got some well deserved rest today too.

Oh WOW!

From babycenter.com

27 Weeks

How your baby's growing:

"This week, your baby weighs almost 2 pounds (like a head of cauliflower) and is about 14 1/2 inches long with her legs extended. She's sleeping and waking at regular intervals, opening and closing her eyes, and perhaps even sucking her fingers. With more brain tissue developing, your baby's brain is very active now. While her lungs are still immature, they would be capable of functioning — with a lot of medical help — if she were to be born now. Chalk up any tiny rhythmic movements you may be feeling to a case of baby hiccups, which may be common from now on. Each episode usually lasts only a few moments, and they don't bother her, so just relax and enjoy the tickle."

Overwhelmed. I cannot believe how my miracle is growing. I'm going to cry. I'm still so overwhelmed and grateful to to Lord for trusting me with 2 of his precious souls. This week I also found out my dear friend Jana is expecting a baby and progressing very well in her pregancy- she also suffered from secondary infertility like me. What a joyous day to celebrate!

My shopping today!

Rite Aid: (3 tranasctions)
3 Contour Monitors (get back $10)
4 Listerines (get back $10) -although today I bought the wrong ones, will exchange for the right ones
3 Johnson's Baby products
1 pack Nursing pads
2 Reese's PB cups

OOP: around $3 on a Gift Card

Walgreens: (2 transactions)
1 Fusion Razor ($6 RR back)
1 Venus Razor ($6 RR back)
4 boxes Fruit Loops ($3 RR back)
5 boxes tissues
3 resuable bags
2 Valentines Pencils

paid $22 in expired RR's (a friend sent me these because she couldn't use them) and about $2.25 cash, got back $15 in RR (which I sent back to her)

Target Gift card Giveaway.

Not that I want anyway else to sign up- you know more chances for me- but my friend Melissa is giving $15 gift card to Target on her blog. Melissa always has great deals to post. She does CVS deal for beginners, menu planning, she's a great example of Dave Ramsey and she posts every other deal out there. She also gave me a shout out for the great deal I found on High School Musical 3- which I'm dying to give to Abby already, is it Easter?

Off topic- or on. I haven't read all about Dave Ramsey. But he seems to be a great solution to living debt free. Although we have student loans up the WAZOO (hello Case Tuition your killing us) I try to stay away from credit cards- or buying impulsively. I've been focusing on keeping a reasonable budget (except baby, I've been buying frugally whatever I want). So while we have no income- therefore we cannot live within our means. We can live within reasonable student loans means and plan on Dave Ramseying it when we are done with school!

Seriously- why aren't we swagging?

I know- you just heard it from me, but I am so excited about this and it truly is FREE MONEY for doing stuff we already do- search the internet!

I just cashed out my swagbucks again for another $10 in GC and have another $5 to redeem (it will only let me redeem 2 per day) That is a total of $25 in free money in the last MONTH to spend at Amazon.com- where I always find amazing steals anyway.

SIGN UP HERE

High School Musical 3

If anyone wants a good deal on this movie this week (up until Feb 21) email or call me. There is a coupon and a rebate and a good price at Target- it ends up being about 10.98 for a movie and a doll, or 5.99 for the movie. Let me know!

26 Weeks!

WOW! What can I say? I'm honestly still in shock that I'm pregnant. And now I'm nearly in the 3rd trimester. It's such a blessing and I'm so lucky. I know my sisters are dying to see these so here you are! (technically 26 weeks 1 day)

Happy Valentines Day!

Every year Abby has passed out Valentines Cards we have made them together- or well maybe I mostly made them. This year we continued the tradition. The easy part- my cricut! I'm still a brand new beginner and haven't explored all I can do I was able to make 54 hearts without cutting. And the best part- they were so cheap. The 2 pink papers were from Uncle Hal at Christmas free and I found the brown paper in a pack at JoAnn's clearanced to $2 with 15 sheets. I used 3 so net cost .40 for the Valentines- but I'm sure I could offset the cost with the Chocolate Target paid me to buy after Christmas- they were .73 a bag and I had a coupon for $2.50/2- so yes, Target paid me .52 for this bag of chocolate- total net to make these: -.12 and I still have CHOCOLATE!

Happy Valentines Day!!!

CVS and Wags

OKAY- here is a quick shopping trip today. I had a $25 Gift Check I had to spend all at once. So my total at Walgreens was $35 and some change, I paid $25 with my Gift Check, and $10 on my rebate card. Then I have $10 in RR (coupons to use on next purchase) and about $10 more coming back onto my rebate card. Didn't go as well as I thought, but my coupon motto is "you win some you lose some"

Then at CVS they have a promotion buy $20 in P&G products get $15 off Madagascar 2 DVD. So I bought diapers (had $1 Q off), Downy (had $1 Q off) and Crest weekly paste (had free Q), but they were out of the DVD. So she wrote me a raincheck to get in when it comes in for $4.99- cool. Also the Ritz were $1 a box and I had coupons for $2/2- so free crackers! I used $15 in ECB's and no return. But really I got a pack of diapers, a bottle of downy, toothpaste and when the movie comes in for $20- pretty good deal for me!

Cute Bows!

I made some bows over at my friend Brooke's house today! I think they turned out really cute and I'm excited to make some more. I tried to match the bows to some outfits and then I hoping to make some general ones too! Each of these will clip onto a headband and when she has enough hair I can clip them right into her hair!

This is a favorite from baby Abby days- I think I even found it at Kmart for $3, it was so cute on Abby.

I found these pants at Gymboree for cheap. I need a cute shirt to go with it, but I love the pattern!

And another great Gymboree find- I'll match it with a long white sleeve tee and some tights, it's a bit bigger and it'll be a winter dress.

And Abby loved the bows- in the car she put them all in her hair and pulled the funniest face. I wish I had a pic of that. But she was being really funny again here. She's excited to make some bows for her animals- because you know she won't really wear anything in her hair!

Swagbucks!

Do you ever use Google?

Do you ever shop online?

If you can answer yes to either of these I have some great options to help maximize your time/money! First of all I've mention ebates.com before. They are a site that when you click through them to do your online shopping you get a percentage back. I signed up just before the Christmas Holiday and did some shopping of GREAT deals and I'm due to get about $26 back. It's stuff I would have been buying anyway, so this is just bonus money back! Here's my link. Oh and when you sign up and use the site we'll both get a $5 bonus! (Thanks Jocie- I forgot to tell you earlier)




But my new favorite site is swagbucks.com! It's a search engine that rewards you with swagbucks for searching. You won't win every time, but you could earn 2-5 per day just by doing some easy searches. I signed up a few weeks ago and just cashed in my 'bucks' for $10 in Amazon Gift cards. The best part is when you have people use your referral you both earn points for your first 100. So when you get lots of friends to join- you get lots of bonus points. The Amazon GC costs 45 points each, so when I cashed out I was down to 8- and through my searches today and my friends- I'm already back to 15. It's really easy.

They also post bonus points on Facebook, Twitter and will email them once in awhile. You have to be quick to get those they are time sensitive! Anyway it's getting paid to search the internet, which most of us do anyway! Here's my referral!

If you have any questions about wither of them you can post it or email me- this is my email for all my coupon shopping and other stuff abbysmomma@hotmail.com