New Recipie for Easy Danishes! YUM!!

Today while making dinner I found that I had a bunch of those tubes of croissants in the fridge and did not want them with dinner but did not want to let them continue to sit. I got the idea to make home made danishes! I simply took and put some cream cheese and jelly in them and rolled them up! Baked them for 12 minutes and voila! :) Delicious!

Surveys for Cash!

I have found some pretty fun sites to take surveys on that pay you for your time! Some of them are a little hard to qualify, but this one there are no qualifying questions and its super quick and easy! :)

http://paidviewpoint.com/?r=27iw9r

Paid Viewpoint is an AWESOME site!

Couponing again!

Now that I am doing couponing more regularly, I have started really looking into all the ways I can save and started paying more attention to each store's coupon policies! I have found several stores where you can stack 1 manufacturer coupon with 1 store coupon for even greater savings, leading to even more freebies! :) 

Coupons, Coupons, and more Coupons!

A few posts back I talked about extreme couponing, and I just wanted to drop in and let you all know just how well that is going! I have worked everything out so that I not only get tons of great deals on groceries and other stuff, but I also use eBay to make my money back that I spent to purchase my coupons in the first place!!! :) I sell off the coupons that I know I will never use because it is for something I will not buy, like Pampers Diapers or Cat Food. With selling these I make back everything that I spent in the first place! :) 

Surveys

I have recently started doing surveys online, and they are actually pretty easy to get rewards from! You fill out a profile, take surveys, and get rewarded points. Once you have enough points, depending on the program this varies, you can exchange them for cash or other rewards. :) Some programs are easier to hit your pay out level than others, but the harder it is to reach the better the rewards! It's a pretty neat program! Some of the sites are surveyspot.com globaltestmarket.com sendearnings.com 

Mystery Shopping

I have recently discovered how to become a Mystery Shopper, and it is pretty awesome! You register with DSG and they will call you whenever they have something open in your area! You only make 10 - 20 dollars per job but if you can do it often enough it could be a nice little supplement! And they reimburse you for any purchases! :) It is pretty great!

Amazing New Dishwasher Product!!!

I came across a coupon a few weeks ago for a new dish washing product, specifically for dishwashers, that is absolutely WONDERFUL! It is great for hard water and all sorts of dirty dishes! It is called Lemi-Shine, and it just goes into the soap spot and you put your normal detergent in the pre-wash spot. The dishes coming out f our washer have never been cleaner!!! It also has the added bonus of cleaning your dish washer too! It is great, and when using this product cheaper detergents are perfect as pre wash so it's totally affordable! We love it! They also just came out with a rinse, and more concentrated washer cleaner!

Addicted to eBay!

Since I have started buying all of my cloth diapers on eBay, I have found that I am addicted to it! I have started selling all of the coupons that I know I will not use, as well as my son's clothes that he out grows and anything else we decide we need to sell off, and that pays for the diapers and more coupons! It really is a great system! In the last year I have spent quite a bit of time on eBay and found some AMAZING deals on there!! The only down side is that sometimes you have to deal with people or sellers that are a bit of a pain. So if you decide to use eBay be sure to review your sellers!

Jeremy's New Work Phone!

Jeremy got his new work phone last week, the Samsung Galaxy S II, and would like to tell you about it!


My work phone up until last week was a Blackberry. It has been very frustrating in the past with multiple pocket dials a day that both my Dad and Brother can attest to. Unless you specifically press the lock key, the buttons are free to dial who they please as they travel around in my pocket. Also the freezing up and having to do a battery pull at least once a week along with the pain in the neck trackpad I had to deal with caused a lot of other frustration as well. 


Now my new Samsung Galaxy S II, in the week I have had it has been amazing compared the Blackberry. It automatically locks the screen so no more accidental pocket dialing! Plus I LOVE the touch screen! I couple of months ago I got an iPad from a drawing through work. In that time I have gotten so used to using the touchscreen that when I would use my Blackberry, I would find myself trying to touch the screen, but it for some reason did not work. LOL Well now I finally have a touch screen phone and I cant seem to put it down unless I'm at work. So even if it could pocket dial like the Blackberry could, it wouldn't have the chance! :)  The only thing that I have to complain about the new phone is that when we switched over, we not only switched phones, but we also switched carriers. Instead of being with Verizon, we are now using AT&T. So far the coverage seems to be sufficient, almost as good as Verizon. The customer service is another issue though. Out of all the times I have called into Verizon, I have never been on hold and even when I call in about my work and any issues I may have with it, they have always been willing to help me get things resolved. My very 1st time calling into AT&T I was on hold for over 10 minutes before I finally got through. And when I called in to ask a few simple questions, they could answer very basic stuff, but for the most part, they told me to work through my company to get the answers I was looking for. They seemed very unwilling help me with anything unless they had to. But I'm hoping that with this new phone, I won't have to call in as often as I did with the Blackberry. It was not the best of phones to have. I definitely would not have chosen to use the Blackberry if it had not been given to me as a work phone. 


So overall, I love the new phone and the only thing I would change is who we went through as our carrier, but we were able to keep the same numbers that we had with Verizon, so that was good. I love the Android operating system and I don't know if I said this before, but I LOVE THE TOUCH SCREEN!!! I love my new phone!

Impatient Drivers Suck!!!

I was out running errands today with my little boy in the car, and everywhere I went was accompanied by at least one, but usually more, impatient driver!! If you don't have enough sense to leave earlier to get to work on time, do NOT drive like an insane person and cut off at least 3 people just to try to get there on time! Seriously people! Is it so hard to hang back at least half a car length from the car that clearly has a car seat with a baby in it?! There are traffic laws for a reason you meatheads! It's enough to give a person some serious road rage issues! haha

Another Day In The Life Of The Mannings

Today has been rather uneventful. It has been quite the lazy Saturday for me, but it seems to have flown by! Briar is now 11 weeks old, and can almost sit up on his own. He continues to try to walk, even though he can barely stand with help!  He is growing like a weed and at just over 2 months old he will be soon moving on into his 6-9 month sized clothes! He is now just over 15 lbs and 25 inches! I have decided that with the rate he is growing and the price of clothes these days that yard sales are soon going to be a frequented activity for our family! HaHa!

Netflix!

In place of Satellite or Cable TV we stream Netflix right to our TV from our Wii! It is much cheaper than the regular Cable or Satellite, and has a TON of stuff for us to watch! We love being able to watch the shows that we want anytime without have to follow a schedule! We can queue up all the things we want to watch without having to search through channels! The only possible downside is that we can't keep up with all the new releases, but usually we have a few seasons to go before we get there anyhow. Absolutely awesome!!!

Couponing!

This last year I have started to dip my toes into the waters of couponing. For those of you who have not heard of this, there is a TV show called "Extreme Couponing" and in this show they feature real, everyday people, who save HUNDREDS of dollars by couponing! It is almost an art form! You combine coupons with sales and store policies to achieve great savings and your ultimate success is when you manage to find deals that make your items free! In this last year, with the exception of a few months when I was really sick from being pregnant, I have saved tons of money each month! You can buy coupons from people that gather them up, or you can collect them up yourself, and watch the savings start to roll in. I have several large storage tubs in our garage filled with nothing but things I got for free by couponing! My husband has not had to buy deodorant or body wash all this last year!! Bathroom and Beauty products are the most common freebies but we also have over $50 worth of pasta in food storage that was absolutely free! :) There are a few great websites that help you to get started with this, my favorites are www.grocerysmarts.com and www.capriservices.blogspot.com both are wonderfully helpful! I see this as a sort of game to see just how much I can bring down my total by using coupons! :)

Cloth Diapers Vs. Disposables

So my husband and I decided to go with cloth diapers to save money. I decided to research just how much we would save by doing this and it turns out the savings are in the thousands!!! We decided to go with the All In One snap diapers so they fit from birth to potty training. In my research I found that the only negative thing that people really had to say was that it add extra laundry and that you really have to keep up with it or they smell up the house, and so far I have to say I LOVE them!!! They do add a bit of laundry to the To Do List, but it is totally worth it! You don't encounter those awful messy explosion diapers, and if you have to go in the car for a while without stopping they do not leak all over if they mess more than once! It was a bit of a start up cost, but once you have the diapers all you pay for is detergent and water which, when you use coupons for the detergent, really is hardly any cost at all! I have decided to put a bit of extra work into cloth diapering by keeping the diapers as stain free as possible, but overall they are far easier than I expected, and I HIGHLY recommend them to anyone who is willing to try them! So far I have tried a few different brands, but no particular favorites as of yet. And I have found that going on Ebay saved on the initial cost to start cloth diapers significantly, although some of them come from China so there is a couple weeks for waiting, but you can save up to at least 1/2 the cost per diaper by doing it that way!