Free Pancakes

Tomorrow is free pancake day at IHop! Everyone who comes in gets a free shortstack of pancakes. IHop is collecting donations to Children's Miracle Network. For more info visit IHop

I am taking Madeline and Owen for a pancake lunch.

Yo Baby Giveaway

I got my coupons in the mail today. Thre free yo baby meals and a free six pack of yo baby yogurs plus a packet of coupons good for different stonyfield farms yogurt.

Don't forget to leave a comment here for a chance to win your free YoBaby stuff! I am closing the giveaway on August 13th.

You can win all the stuff pictured here





To enter all you need to do is leave a comment and some way for me to reach you if you are the winner.

YoBaby Giveaway!

I love YoBaby yogurts. So do my kids. They are not cheap, but when I learned that you can get coupons from Stonyfield Farms website I started to buy them more often. I like that they are organic (as I learn more and more about what they put in our food organic is more appealing when I can afford it) and my kids eat them up!

So when recently I was contacted by Katie Moffet over at Stonyfield farms I was super excited. They are coming out with a new YoBaby product, YoBaby Meals, and offered to send me some coupons to try the product myself, wel for me to have my kids try them and see how they like them. Would I like the coupons? Of course!

In addition they offered to sponsor a giveaway to all of my readers (all five or so of you!). Would you like to win some great YoBaby stuff?

The giveaway includes:

a reusable YoBaby Bag

an Eric Carl Growth Chart

a YoBaby travel bowl with lid and utensils

an organic YoBaby bib

a bundle of 5 Free YoBaby coupons

How awesome is that?

Go here to learn more about the new YoBaby Meals and here to print your own coupons for their other products.

To win this stuff leave me a comment telling me why you want to win! Please include a link to your blog (if you have one) or your email so that I can contact the winner.

I will close the contest on August 13th and the winner will be chosen using random.org. I will post the winner on this blog and notify the winner by email. The winner will have six days to contact me or another winner will be chosen.

Good Luck!

Free Chocolate

Reminder- every Friday through September Mars is giving away coupons for free candy bars. You can get up to four per household. you just need four email addresses.


Go to Chocolate Giveaway to get yours today!

FREE CHOCOLATE

Do you like free chocolate? Mars is giving away free chocolate bars every Friday all summer long.
The web address is http://www.freestufftimes.com/24/this-weeks-free-mars-candy-bar-coupon-9/

They only give away a certain number each day. However it is 7:47 pm EST and I just registered for three! You can register for up to four coupons per household, but only one coupon per email address. So you need four email addresses in yoru house to get all four coupons.

Run don't walk...

...to your nearest Big Y. They have a great deal this week if you are like me and love ice cream and Friendly's restuarants. If you buy two gallons of Friendly's ice cream (which are one sale buy 1 get 1 free) you then get a silver coin at the register. Take that silver coin to the customer service desk (along with any other silver coins you have) and get a free kids meal at Friendly's for each silver coin! The only downfall is that you can only use one coupon at each meal, so if you have more than one kid only one meal is free. But that is the only downfall.
The sale is through this Wednesday and the coupons are good through the end of August. I got three coupons. That means I spent $6 and got 2 half gallons of ice cream and three free kids meals!
Have a great day!

Grocery Cart Challenge Contest

I was reading a another blog tonight and I found out about this AWESOME challenge sponsored by All You. They are challenging people to spend only $25 per person in their family each week on their groceries for four weeks. The prizes are awesome. I talked to Jon and we decided what do we have to lose? We already stay under $100 a week (and it is AFTER his birthday party this weekend). The only downfall is that eating out counts towards your total and we are heading out of town during the final four days of the contest. Eating during vacation always hurts my budget, but maybe this is a good thing and will challenge me to find ways to eat while away on vacation without spending a bundle!
Part of what you are judged on is creativity. I don't think I am particularly creative when it comes to our menu, but then again I try not to serve the same meals over and over and over (although we do have a few staples). Maybe this will also challenge me to be more creative in my menu planning while staying in my budget.

If you are interested in joining the challenge go to All You Grocery Cart Challenge Sign Up

You can also register to recieve two trial issues of All You magazine free.

Wish me luck!

Love the Library

I really really love my library. We are lucky enough to live in an area where there are many libraries. And our library has EVERYTHING. Today we borrowed three movies, one cd (for the rugrats), three books for me and five books for the rugrats. The only way it costs me anything is if I forget to return things on time. And this does happen on occasion. I just think of it as a donation for all the things I get for free.
But seriously, I love that I can borrow these books and if I hate them, nothing is lost. I am attemtping to start thematic units with big rugrat. Our first venture will be gardening. In order to do this in the way I want to, I need access to many story books. I don't want to buy them all, so we went over to borrow a few today. I also stumbled upon the homeschooling section. While I don't plan on homeschooling in the long run I do plan on keeping big rugrat out of school for at least another year (she will be three this weekend). BUT I don't want her to fall behind, or enter at age four lacking skills that other kids have. So I am reading about homeschooling.
In my previous lifetime (before rugrats) I taught first grade. But I do not have much experience with preschool so it is a learning game. I had originally planned on the Montessori approach, but the more I read about it the more I find that it doesn't fit with my personal teaching philosophy. As much as I like many of the methods and activities, I will not be going full Montessori.
Back to the free- we will be going to the library for story time (once a week) and we also will be going there weekly to choose new books. One library nearby also has themed backpacks, so if I can find the garden theme for the next two weeks I cut MY workload down with the planning end. I can borrow puppets for pretend play, cd's for dancing and movies for when mama just needs some downtime.
We also can borrow passes to our nearbye museums, but I know I have mentioned that before.

Not much else going on around here. We have been battling earache after earache, it is birthday month right now (4 birthdays within the extended family) and big rugrat's party this weekend. I am not good with budgeting for birthday parties, at least I have learned this. Big rugrat's birthday is not as cheap as I would like, but not as expensive as it could be. We are using a local children's museum that I volunteer at so there is no room fee. We are ordering subs from a local grocery store, I am baking the cake (I do this for pleasure as well as for budget reasons) and I am going to a local store to make a simple craft for the kids to do. All in all it could be more expensive, but I feel like I could be more frugal. Ah well, one of these days I will get it.