Things I Love Thursdays - Blog Giveaways!

So I saw this on Diaper Diaries blog and thought it looked like fun so here is my first Things I Love post!  (And hopefully one day soon I will be the one doing the giveaways!)

Because I like to feel like an accomplished multi-tasker I am going to kill 2 birds with one stone with this post!  (By posting the different giveaways at the bottom I can earn extra entries for myself!)

Blog giveaways are a new favorite/addiction of mine!  I got hooked when I first started looking at cloth diaper blogs and now I am trying to enter all sorts of giveaways!  In reality, not that many people enter a lot of these giveaways so your chances are pretty high to win something.  I actually just won this Itsy Bitsy I-spy bag just the other day from Take It From Me!  So exciting! 

Just after I posted this I got an email that said I had just won a Cutey Baby Diaper from The Cloth Diaper Report!  WooHoo! 

You can get often get multiple entries into the giveaways for doing some super easy things!  Usually they will want you to follow their blog and with the help of Google Reader I am able to follow LOTS of blogs and keep up with all of the new giveaways.  It is super common to ask you to "like" them on facebook or follow them on Twitter.  (That's why you might have seen me "liking" a lot of stuff lately!)  Then my favorite is the daily "tweet"!  If you tweet about their giveaway you can usually get an extra entry for every day (or twice a day sometimes!)  Oh, and the mandatory first entry is most often for you check out the website for host of the giveaway which has really exposed me to some fabulous new products!

So to sum up...Blog Giveaways are near the top of my "Things I Love!" list!

Now that I have peaked your interest here are some great ones going on right now!  Go and enter (or don't and keep my chances of winning higher!)  ;-)  But really, if I don't win I would want it to be one of you!

Take It From Me:
Captured Imagination Giveaway
Wishy Watchy Giveaway
Daisy Bags Giveaway
Kelly's Original Giveaway
Eleven Shoes Giveaway
KinderGlo Giveaway

Exploits of a Military Mama's Month of Fluff:
BumEssentials Giveaway
(She's got a whole slew of other cloth diaper giveaways coming up too!)

Monkey Tales:
Tiny Tush Diaper Giveaway
       Tiny Tush Website
Gro-Baby Diaper Giveaway
        Thanks Mama Website (sponsoring Gro-Baby giveaway)
Crocheted Stuffed Jellyfish Giveaway 
         Concertina3 Website (sponsoring Jellyfish giveaway)
Snap Ez Diaper Giveaway
          Snap Ez Website
UPrinting Custom Postcards Giveaway
          UPrinting website

Cloth Diaper Talk:
Diaper Sprayer Giveaway (don't enter this one though cause I really want to win!)  ;)

Fitteds and Pockets and Snappis, Oh My!:
Cloth Napkins Giveaway
Baltic Amber Jewelry
Soda Stream Giveaway
Reusable Mop Pads and Produce Bags Giveaway
Thirsties Fab Wipes and Booty Luster Giveaway

Cars, Trucks and Teething Rings:
ERGObaby Giveaway

WOW what a list!  I know most of it is diapers and baby/mommy stuff but you can see there is other stuff too!  And what can I say, I'm a mommy with a baby that wears diapers so those are the blogs I follow!

Good Luck to you all!

Weekly Update #2

This week has been a flurry of activity in our household.

The hubby has been keeping busy volunteering at our church's week of pro-Isreal events.  The highlight of his week came when he was blessed with the chance to eat dinner with some Israeli soldiers that were here for a special service to honor them.  Today will be full for him as well since it is the annual "Night to Honor Israel" at our church and he is volunteering for the whole night (starting at 3pm).

My work schedule was pretty funky this week as well because of the transition that I am making to work on yogurt (still same division at General Mills but my focus will now be on our yogurt products).  Thankfully I was still able to get a quick dinner out with a great mommy friend sans babies!  (That truly helps keep me balanced!)

On to Little L...the star of this blog!  She is doing fabulous as usual and continually blessing us!  She is really starting to get into giving kisses (even puckers up and makes a "mwah" sound!) and still loves to "give love" to everything from mommy and daddy to stuffed animals to the cat to pictures in books.  She "gives love" by resting her head on the object of affection and then patting it with her chub little hands!  So sweet!

Right now one of her favorite books is "Time for School Mouse" from the "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" line.  And this is her favorite page:

My favorite is that every time we get to this page she puts her hands up in the air like Mouse!  It's her new thing!  Whenever we ask her where something is...up go the hands!  

Here she is "giving love" to her bunny!

Hope you all have a week full of beautiful spring days!

**Updated** Savvy Shopper Post!

So by popular demand here is my first Savvy Shopper post!  (and by popular demand I mean one person asked and now that my blog looks so good I am pumped about posting more stuff!)

I had a pretty good week at Rainbow with double coupons...especially once I found out that I got to double 10 coupons instead of 5!  My total out of pocket was $20.97 and the shelf price for all the stuff I got was $70.55 which means I saved over 70%!  I even got Dawn dish detergent, 6 bottles of Vitamin Water, and 2 packages of lunch meat for free, as well as 2 Trop50 juices for $0.50 each and fruit cups for $0.19!

Then tonight I decided to run over to Target to use a couple of coupons I have and was able to pick up a cute little spring purse for free!  It was on clearance for $5 and I had a $5 off Merona purse coupon from the Target website.  $5- $5 = FREE  :D  (That's my favorite kind of math!)

Here's a pic of my *free* purse!  (Sorry it's not the best pic but I just have a point and shoot and not a lot of practice!)  I'll have to remember to take pics of my great grocery deals in the future!

I posted this all before I went to Cub for the week and since I got such a great deal there too I thought I would update and share!  Cub is running a deal this week where if you bought 10 specific ConAgra products you would get $10 back to use on your next shopping trip.  So I dug through my coupons and found a bunch from a coupon book ConAgra had sent me awhile back that made this a pretty sweet deal!

So here is what I got:

• 1 box of Orville Redenbacher's Smart Pop 100 cal popcorn $1.78
• 8 Healthy Choice Entrees $1.99 each
• 1 Healthy Choice Cafe Steam $2.69

Then I used these coupons:

• $1/1 box of Orville Redenbacher's Smart Pop
• $1/2 Healthy Choice All Natural Entrees
• $1/2 Healthy Choice Select Entrees
• 2 $1/2 any Healthy Choice frozen meals
• $1/1 Healthy Choice Cafe Steamer

So my total cost was $14.39 and I got a coupon for $10 off my next trip to Cub!  That makes it a total of $4.39 for 9 frozen meals and a box of popcorn!  Not too shabby!  Especially since I love to have frozen meals around for busy (or lazy!) nights!

One other great deal we got this week were 2 pairs of flip flops for the hubby from Aeropostale for less than $6 by using this great $10 off $10 purchase coupon!  It is only good until the 25th so check it out soon!  You could use it to get a bunch of different things for super cheap!

I also wanted to update this post to give credit where credit is due!  

I absolutely plan 85-90% of my shopping using Pocket Your Dollars website!  She focuses a lot on local deals (Minneapolis area) but also has a ton of national things as well so I definitely recommend checking her out!

Another site I love is dealnews.com!  I follow it in google reader so it really helps me stay up to the minute on the fab deals that can be found on the web!  (That is where I first found the Aeropostale deal!)

Hope those are some helpful hints!  Happy Savvy Shopping!

Our First Weekly Post

Ok, so it has been FOREVER since I last posted (minus the one post I did just to be able to enter a blog giveaway!).  Lately I have been visiting a lot of blogs and it really made me rethink my blog and has motivated me to do something with it.  So I searched for (free) templates to make it look prettier and decided on a format.  I will be posting (or trying to post) something weekly.  I figured that is way more doable than daily and not as much time between posts as monthly.

I will pretty much just be doing updates each week about the happenings in our lives (especially Little L's since she is the one most people want to hear about!)  And there will be a few pictures as well!

I will also probably do some random posts here and there about blog giveaways.  I am completely hooked on them right now and have already won a few things!  If you aren't interested just skip them but if you are I will just post them once in awhile with links to what I have been signing up for.  (Posting them on my blog gets me extra entries and like I said...I am hooked on those giveaways!)

I hope this finds everyone well!  (Well, at least you Laura since you are probably one of the only people that will read this!)

Here it goes!

Oh, and one picture of Little L to get us started.....

I know this is my profile pic right now but it is just too stinkin cute not to share!

And in case you are actually wondering how the hubby and I are looking these days, here is a pic from Easter....

Ok, Laura! This is for you since you are the only person following my blog! (Probably since I don't do anything with it and I haven't really told anyone about it!) I just discovered theclothdiaperwhisperer blog and it is pretty great! Right now they are doing a great giveaway to celebrate their ninth birthday. If you don't already follow their blog you should check it out and enter to win while you are there! I figure if I don't win I would want it to be you! Here is the link: www.theclothdiaperwhisperer.com/2010/04/networking-nine-giveaway-in-celebration.html