Free Pair of Pearl Earrings ($25-$30 ARV)

Sign up to enter the following sweepstakes for Helzberg Diamonds:

http://www.helzberg.com/category/about+us/sweepstakes/expressions+of+love.do

Soon, after you might receive a postcard in the mail or an email offering you a free pair of pearl earrings if you bring the card into the store. This is confirmed, I received mine a week or so ago, although it seems holiday related, so I am not sure how long they will be sending these out.

If you try it, let me know how it turns out for you!

I must share this

I know some of you are bored by my couponing and deals and freebies. You guys stop reading here.

The rest of you, check it out:

Today after we got home from our trip to Springfield, MO where we spent Thanksgiving with our friends the Servens, Dan picked up the mail and newspapers for our landlords. In it, he saw a few great adds for some deals and suggested we go (we were out of toilet paper too). Of course, I am not going to just walk in to Walgreens without having done some coupon-matching research first. So I checked out a favorite coupon blog of mine, here to check out the Walgreens deal matchup for this week. With her help, along with my collected coupons and the advertisement itself, I made a plan and off we went. We got:

Oceanspray 100% Juice Cranberry Juice x4
Aquafresh Cavity Protection Toothpaste
Infusium 23 Shampoo
Neutrogena Lipgloss x2
Angel Soft Toilet Paper, pack of 9
Walgreens Brand Tylenol, 50 gelcaps

Okay, before all sales, coupons and rainchecks, the cost would be:

~ $53

We paid:

$3.21

Verified Freebie and Nice Coupon

Text "ALWAYS" to 467467 for a free sample of Always Infinity. When I received mine, it also had a manufacturer's coupon for a FREE full-sized package from the store.

Want a $40 credit at 1-800-Flowers.com?

The original post on slickdeals.net

1-800Flowers.com is offering a 40 Fresh Rewards points (up to 400 points maximum) for each reminder you add to your Fresh Rewards account. 400 Fresh Rewards points may be redeemed for $40 Fresh Savings pass for use at their store.

1. Click here
2. Click on the "Get paid to get organized" banner
3. If you do not have an account, create one, otherwise log in
4. Add 10 gift reminders, one at a time
5. Your rewards will be deposited into your account within 48 hours

We Love Cranberry Juice

Walgreens deal!



Walgreens has the Ocean Spray 100% Cranberry and Cranberry Pomegranate Juice on sale for $1.99 this week. Use the $1/1 coupon in the November Coupon Booklet and you'll get the Cranberry Juice for $0.99 each. Dan and I go through this stuff like water, so I am going every day to get more (limit 2 per purchase). The November coupon book is usually available at the front of the store near the weekly print ads and newspapers. There is also a $5/$25 coupon available here if you want to stock up on some other stuff. We bought 4 packages of butter using the coupon in the print ad to make them $2 each as well.

Thanks to Money Saving Mom for this deal.

In The Heights

Please Click to help me win tickets to In The Heights! http://www.beintheheights.com/bleard

Groupon

Hey friends, I just signed up for Groupon, they have huge discounts on the coolest stuff in your city - a new deal every day!

Click here to sign up













From the website-

How It Works

Each day, Groupon features an unbeatable deal on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in your city. By promising businesses a minimum number of customers, we get discounts you won't find anywhere else. We call it "collective buying power!"

If you like today's deal and want to buy it, just click "BUY" before the offer ends at midnight. If the minimum number of people sign up, you'll get a printable gift certificate in your inbox the next morning that you can use whenever you want. If not enough people join, no one gets it (and you won't be charged), so invite your friends to make sure you get the deal!

City Style Charmeuse Sleeveless Ruffle Tunic

Attention frugalistas! I think this top is adorable, and I'm thinking about ordering it with some of my birthday cash... Only $11.98 at NY&Co!

Here is the link

Bluefly 30 Bags in 30 Days

Free Snuggie

I'm not sure if this is going to work or not, but I signed up to give it a try...

http://suzzly.com/snuggiepromo.html

Wish I could get a free LONGHORN snuggie. And one for Dan. To keep him warm.

The Joys of REI and a Texas Win

Well, all is right with the world. Texas wins again. Undefeated. Contented Sigh.

Dan and I watched together, it is currently our only family tradition. Actually, Dan got paid to watch the game. He had to babysit the church building for a wedding party that was getting there early, so we brought our TV and set it up in the pastor's office to watch the game together. I brought us leftover poppyseed chicken (thanks K. Spears) and 4 cheese macaroni (thanks Chacha Oliver) to eat and we skyped my mom and brother at half-time. Now Dan has gone in to do sound for the wedding, so I am watching the TTU/Nebraska game.

Yesterday Dan and I went to make a big purchase at REI. We have been saving up giftcards from Christmas and MyPoints to get me a quality sleeping bag so that we can go camping. We finally had enough to get something good, so we pulled two or three off the shelf and I climbed in them a few times each to compare space and thermarests, etc. We picked this one:



Big Agnes Lulu +15 Sleeping Bag - Women's Petite - REI Full Price $149.95



Therm-a-Rest Trail Lite Sleeping Pad - Women's Regular - $59.95

We get to the register. They ring us up. We get %20 off one item with the coupon we brought in from the mail catalog, which is $30 off the sleeping bag. We also used Dan's leftover Dividend from being an REI Coop member, which was $8.17. Then the good stuff starts. We started handing over giftcards to the checkout guy. Every time I handed him a new one, he would exclaim "No Way!" more and more loud and more and more like he should have joined Bill or Ted on an excellent adventure.

Sleeping Bag $149.95
-%20 discount
=$119.96

Thermarest $59.95

Subtotal $179.91
Tax $15.88

Total $195.79

-$8.17 divident
-$50 REI Giftcard
-$25 REI Giftcard
-$25 REI Giftcard
-$25 REI Giftcard
-$25 REI Giftcard

At this point there is about $35 left on our bill, so I decide to go ahead and make it even better and get out my $25 Mastercard Gift Card I won from texting in the code under my coke cap a month ago.

-$25 Coke Rewards Mastercard

Final Charge - $12.62

The checkout guy loved it and we couldn't stop grinning.

Design Your Own Free Luggage Tags

I want to share the love a little when it comes to freebies, so here is one you can do without going to the mall!

Design Your Own Luggage Tags

Dan tried home roasting coffee last night for the first time. The house smells really weird now. I am drinking some of the fruits. It is far from terrible, but since he has spoiled me with all his fair-trade-organic-pure-source-unburnt-gourmet-shipped-straight-from-the-mountains-of-columbia stuff, I do hope he gets better at it.

Ebay

So readers, how do you like swagbucks?

Today I posted my first ebay listing. Shameless - I am selling the contents of my second sweepstakes win of my life. Check it out:

Here

It was fun to receive all that in the mail, but also it is useless and I am always out to make a buck out of useless stuff. It provided some good content to try out ebay selling too, since I could care less whether or not it sells or if it gets lost in the mail, etc.

Today in between classes, Dan and I went to the mall to eat Chick-fil-a for lunch (and paid full price for the first time in ages, since I left all our coupons in Dallas-ack!). Before we left, I gathered all my freebie coupons for mall-related things and, yes, I definitely came back with a good haul.



2 Free panties from Victoria Secret (one from a coupon in the mail and one from signing up on their website to be a member of the PINK club). 3 free lipglosses from Sephora for my birthday (sign up for email list online). 2 free samples of the new BareMinerals Matte foundation (just ask in store). 1 bottle of some kind of protein water I found a coupon for online from GNC (this will be for Daniel).

Not in the picture is also a bra I purchased for ~$14 after the $10 off coupon at VS also. Not a bad day for freebies!

I must say thanks to MoneySavingMom for the heads up about the protein water coupon.

Swagbucks

See that ad to the right of my blog? Click on it and sign up. Swagbucks is awesome. You earn "bucks" for just using their search engine instead of google or yahoo. 45 Swagbucks is redeemable for a $5 amazon gift card! And you can do it over and over. I am about to redeem my fourth amazon GC. Please sign up with my referral link so I get a bonus!

There are lots of other things you can redeem swagbucks for, just look around at the prizes. You can also hunt for "swagcodes" that are occasionally given out via twitter and the swagbucks widget. Swagcodes = More swagbucks.

http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/bleard

Sweepstakes

Another Bzzkit

Here is my newest bzzkit.

This one doesn't come with a full-size version for me, but plenty of nicer sized bottles to give away. Can't wait to try it!

Interested in spreading some bzz of your own? Head over to BzzAgent and sign up.

On my agenda for today is laundry, making egg salad, exercising, and getting some seminary reading done.

Late Cali pics and more Freebs

1. Here are my latest freebie finds and contest wins:




Just received my Aveeno Nourish bzzkit which included everything in the photo above: notice my FULL SIZE shampoo and conditioner for me to use?? Awesome! I also hand out the samples and coupons and spread "bzz" about the product ("bzz" is my honest opinion about it). So far I really like both products. It is supposed to repair damage to your hair using wheat complex after only 3 uses. My third use will be tomorrow, so we'll see!

Also recently I have gotten some other great freebies: $25 preloaded mastercard from MyCokeRewards Instant Txt and Win Game, Free advanced screening tickets to Zombieland (saw it last night - very funny!), 2 free $10 giftcards to the Galleria Mall (Dan and I treated ourselves to Cheesecake factory), and a free after rebate bottle of the a new palmolive dish soap. Also I'm finishing up a month long beta test of a shopping website and will receive a total of $70 at amazon.com for participating. Last but not least, The Black Eye Tour added one last show - in Saint Louis! So we will get our free tickets to see Derek Webb and Sandra Mac on October 27 at blueberry hill. I will have to leave my night class a little early to attend, but hoping Tasha will not mind.

2. Here are some late california trip pics:

Eating the first night in San Francisco at Mel's Diner


We found you out Crule: Miley Stewart:Clint Rule as Hannah Montana:George Lucas. Moving to Rochester for an "internship" mhmmmm....


Dan and I before going to see "Wicked." Wicked was originally staged in San Fran before it went to broadway. It was a great cast - excellent Elpheba. Dan loved it too. Notice my green scarf, green purse and red shoes I wore for the occassion. AND notice my awesome headpiece I won from Charissa at mudpiemagnolia.blogspot.com!

Pasta

Last night Dan and I made fresh, homemade pasta at a hospitality class our church had. I already know what I want for Christmas:



We didn't use the kitchenaid pasta attachment, we used the manual ones you attach to your counter. But Karen, who taught the class, told us the kitchenaid ones are awesome. So if anyone is still planning on getting us a late anniversary gift, this would be a great idea! :)

I do plan to get some more california pictures up soon. Today Dan and I are painting a cabinet we scavenged from dumpster week at the church. Also on the agenda is bathing Lucy. Yay for days off!

California Dreamin

Dan and I and the other Smith-relations have been living the dream this week in cool, beautiful Pacific Grove, California. To give you a little context: Pacific Grove = Carmel by the Sea = Monterey Peninsula and Cannery Row = Pebble Beach Golf.

The weather is steadily in the upper 50s and 60s. We got in late Sunday night and had some take-out Chinese food. Monday was orientation - we slept in, ate some yummy Mediterranean lunch in Carmel (I had Duck ravioli with feta) and walked around a little bit followed by a delicious lasagna dinner cooked by Sarah and Ellen. Tuesday was spent at the Monterey Bay Aquarium followed by asian grilled chicken Dan and I made for supper. Today we are getting ready to head out to Big Sur to do some hiking and see some awesome coastal views.

My cord is hiding, so I no telephoto pics for the blog yet. Here are some from Dan and Dotty's camera though.



Eating breakfast at the airport


G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S, flying first class


Upon arrival, taking pics of the sea lions on the coast


Dan getting some Love


Sarah, Ellen, and the sea lions (The sea lions are on the left)


Ellen and Regan trying to resist their sweet tooth in Carmel


Awkward Braniel

My New Hobby: Coupons, Promotions, and Free Stuff

I am bursting with awesomeness over some recent savvy shopping I have recently accomplishments. Here I share them with you. (If you decide to get in on any of these sweet offers, please refer me so I can get rewards for recruiting you!)

1. I am in Ellen’s wedding this coming January. She wants us to wear gold, closed toed or peep-toed shoes. She send us some beautiful choices from various places, but shucks they were all $60 or $70 bucks each. Every week I receive an email from Shop It To Me, a site that shops your favorite online retailers for sales in clothing/shoes in your specific sizes. I get sale items from JCrew, Ann Taylor Loft, Banana Republic, etc. sent right to my email. I hadn’t bought anything that I’d seen on there yet, but that exact week Ellen emailed us about the shoes, what was on sale at Old Navy but gold high heels at only $10! Score! I ordered them along with a few other cheap tops since I was already paying the flat rate shipping. Got the package today, tried them on and they fit great! My smaller right foot slips out just a bit, but I’ll put some kind of pad in there to fix it.

2. My sweet friend Charissa told me about MyPoints which everyone should do if you like free giftcards in the mail. The basics of it are that you get points for reading advertising emails they send to you – you really don’t even have to read them, just click through to the site and then delete them. Also you get points for clicking through their site before you go to an online merchant to make a purchase. For example, before I made my sweet Old Navy purchase, I went to the MyPoints site, searched for the Old Navy link, and clicked through to the website from the MyPoints link. The promo for Old Navy was something like 3 or 4 points per dollar spent. So not only did I get my cool gold heels (+ extras), I also got 91 points towards a gift card redemption. (Giftcard redemptions run ~3500 points = $25 gift card).

3. I do the office supply ordering at work. MyPoints has a great deal for Office Depot, which is what we already use to order our supplies online. I asked to be in charge of the ordering, so I could clickthru MyPoints before and rack up the points. So far it has been great – I have already gotten a free gift card out of it. We order so much paper, I usually get either 500, 1000 or even 2000 points per order!

4. Also, I have been scouting the web for promo codes for Office Depot after seeing an advertisement for a free gift with purchase. So far I have received (with $100 or $75 purchases) the following: A free picnic coffee tote bag with stainless steel coffee mugs and vacuum flask ($60 value), A free red tote bag which I used this past weekend on our trip to Jeff’s Graduation ($40 value). Coming in the mail is a free 2GB mp3/4 player, which looks like a shuffle knockoff in the picture ($70 value). And while placing all these orders, I am still racking up the MyPoints to get free giftcards.

Maybe some of you think this is nuts but I am flipping out with delight. I also started clipping coupons and scanning all the weekly Wal-Greens, Target, and local grocery adds for deals to match up with the coupons. When we move in June, I am going to ask if Bill and Sally will give us their coupon section of the Sunday paper every week, so I won’t even be paying the $1.50 for the paper. For some reason, CVS only has locations east of the river, which sucks because they have a cool coupon program I wish I could get in on.

Cream colored ponies

Yesterday I wrote this haiku for Dan about myself while at The Daily Bread:

My wife, the raptor
She eviscerates strudel
I get the entrails

(It was my secretary's day strudel, thank you very much!)

A week in the life

For some orientation, here is a map of St. Louis with our most frequented locations. As you can see, the closed highway (I-64) really sucks for us. It reopens in December, but by then we will have moved closer to the seminary to where we won't need it as badly.

Okay this picture is just to show you how ridiculous the winter was. Lucy may have liked it, but she was the only one. I hate cold and snow and cannot wait to live in a southern climate where I can again wear flip-flops year round as life was meant to be lived.
This also points out one daily activity of our life: Taking out the dog in the morning and after we get home every day. Dan usually takes her to the park across the street, but now that it is warm again, I will join with him for a leisurly walk after work.
Sunday: Here is where we have settled on attending church. The Covenant Presbyterian Church has been around for about 100 years or so. It originally met in a building in downtown St. Louis, but sometime in the last 50 years moved out to a suburb-ish kind of area in West County. We have been attending the new members sunday school class and will probably meet with the church elders to be interviewed for membership at the end of May. (This is also where we are employed part-time, see below).
This is actually the only picture I have of us at the seminary. I go to class 3 days a week, Dan goes 4. It is a pretty campus, though the buildings are a little mismatched. We have one class together, Apologetics and Outreach, which is taught by Jerram Barrs. We highly recommend his book, The Heart of Evangelism. He and his family started the L'Abri in England and ran it for many years until he came to teach at Covenant.
Here is my nameplate thing. So official.
My desk at work. I am the front desk person for the church office. Primarily, I answer the phone and direct calls; but I also put together mailings, maintain the church database, and put together the weekly prayer list.
Dan works at the church part-time as well, doing maintenance and grounds. Here he is sad because his ipod broke one day and he couldn't listen to it while he was working. Now he uses mine everyday to listen to sermons or npr podcasts or jammin oldies.
Monday: This is a bad photo of us in line at Chick-fil-a. We come here for lunch many mondays because if you take in a church bulletin you get either your sandwhich or nuggets free with purchase of drink and fries. Cheep and yummy!
Tuesday: Class in the morning, work in the afternoon, come home to study/veg.
Wednesday: Dan goes to class and studies, I work all day. In the evening we go to the home of Jon and Laurabeth Medlock, who work as the assistant pastor and school secretary, respectavly with us at the church. We watch LOST and they cook us a delicious meal after their kids have gone to bed. It's very fun.
Thursday: Same as Tuesday, except Dan doesn't work. Lots of time we will go to "Ministry Lunches" at the school after class. There is often free food and a presentation by a speaker on a particular ministry issue or opportunity going on in the Church or Missions or whatever.
Friday: I try not to work this day, but Dan does and goes to class. Then we hang out with friends or whatever.
Saturday: Sometimes we like to go to the Soulard Market, this huge awesome market near the river that is historic and cool. They sell lots of food (pictured here is the meat market) including veggies, fruits, meat, fish, and other specialty items. Its about the size of a football field overall and really cheap and fresh.
Some of the usual suspects if we have friends over to grill or drink or whatever. On the right are Garratt and Sara Lathan who graduated with us from Texas - Garratt was an RUF intern for four years. On the left are two other kids who were interns with me also, Robert and Charissa Stowers. They are supercool. Charissa is who told me about mypoints.com and how to be a chacha guide.

More photos.

We haven't blogged in awhile.

Here are some photos!








In Longview over Spring Break.

Missouri Botanical Gardens...

Katie and Joshua Burdette came to visit the seminary... they will be moving here this summer yay!

More of the gardens...

It's Morphin Time

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celebrity

Album

Some Things I've Been Thinking About

1. Babies. I love them so much. I can't wait to have one.

2. Ginger. I really enjoy the flavor/smell of ginger. I don't like the taste on its own with sushi though. There are several things that fall into the category of "I like the flavor and smell of this but not he pure taste." Coffee is another one.

3. Adventures. I'm trying to discover how I go about adventures. Dan and I realized that I enjoy navigational adventures (in the car, walking, geo-caching, etc.). I sort of like cooking adventures: I like to try new recipes but I don't like making up recipes out of nothing. I don't think I like explorational adventures. I don't really like to head out into the unknown and discover something new to the world. I like to discover things for myself that have already been discovered by someone else. Hmmm... Still thinking about all of this.

4. Cold. I hate the cold. I am forced to bundle up and put on layers, which I hate, and cannot wear skirts, which I love. I have come around to liking wool socks. I can't wear skirts. Our car doesn't always start in the morning. I don't like to walk Lucy in the cold. And I can't wear SKIRTS!

5. Crystal stemware. Dan and I are trying to decide how to spend the last bits of our wedding gift card money. We have enough to buy a full set of pretty, simple stemware from Dillards. I am inclined to think it is a good choice.

6. Decision making. How do you do this when you are married? Married decision making is still a mystery to us. We really only know how to operate as singles and have been struggling not to just constantly make decisions as two single people compromising instead of a married unit deciding together. It is very weird and hard and slow going. But we are trying. Any responsive thoughts to this would be appreciated.

7. Advice. How much is too much? I am mostly thinking about being on the receiving end. We have been trying to decide where to go to church. In addition to #6, we are also wading through an enormous amount of advice we have received from friends, family, pastors, coworkers, seminary people, etc. Everyone has a new perspective and I feel like every time I hear something different and that it sends us back to the drawing board on how to think about where to go to church. It might be time to close the door on any new advice for this topic.

Use Number 1 : Bread Maker

Merry Christmas (late)!



My (Brittany) parents gave this to us for Christmas. We (Brittany) used it today for the first time to make bread. I finally remembered to make a batch using all of the ingredients like salt. So it turned out the yummiest so far. This machine is... words cannot describe. It made the bread almost all by itself. I think it can maybe change the oil in my car too.