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I have updated to a new blog template. To continue to follow me please go here! I will continue to post at the new site. Thanks!!

Currently || Sometimes || Never

Currently…

…I'm trying to convince my husband to take the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University class with me. 

…My to-do lists are miles long.

…I'm super excited to go to my first blog conference in April, Go Blog Social. My friend Kala is going too!

…I want it to warm up for good and officially end winter. 

…I feel like I'm keeping lots of secrets.

…The start of garage sale season is coming soon and I can't wait. 

Sometimes…

…I wonder if I'm the only person on the road that knows how to drive.

…I take 2 hour long naps right before I go to bed.

…Cold weather makes me a really mean and awful person.

…I eat popcorn for dinner.

...I get concerned with the amount of tv I watch and social media I consume.

 

Never…

…do I ever want to become a vegetarian.

...will I ever turn down cotton candy.

...will I not scream if I see a mouse.

...have I had the desire to run a marathon.

(P.S. Keep checking back and maybe I'll tell you some of my secrets.)

Spring in Kansas

I feel like Spring has officially sprung here in good old Kansas. The temps are no longer in the frigid range and my flowers have begun to pop up and bloom.

I like to think that I have jumped head first into Spring cleaning of my house but let's be completely honest I haven't. A few things have managed to get removed from my closet and some wallpaper has been destroyed but other than that I have nothing but a list of to-dos to show for my efforts.

The most likely culprit of my lack of cleaning has been my garden. I managed to convince my dear husband to do the heavy lifting for me and till up the garden after I raked out as many dead weeds as possible.

Probably because I picked up all this fertilizer for "his" yard...

Surprisingly it didn't take too much to convince him to build me a couple raised beds for my strawberries either. I managed to get those painted and then we got them settled in the ground. We threw some regular soil into the bottom part of the beds and then I bought a couple bags of good top soil from Home Depot. Last night I finally got my strawberries transplanted just in time for the rain showers today.

Still have lots to plant.

Let's take a moment now to appreciate some of Spring's beauty…

The new table and chairs I snagged at IKEA for my back deck…

Dinner on the grill...

Browsing the local greenhouses…

And the start of baseball season… Go Royals!

Money Saving Monday: Bing

Have you all heard of Bing? It's basically Google but instead it's Bing. I've been using Bing for a couple years now along with Google. You might ask yourself, why in the world wouldn't I always use Google? Good question my friend. The answer is Bing gives me gift cards for using them!

Right now I'm sure you are thinking what's the catch? Nothing. Really. Every morning when I need to Bing something I just visit Bing.com and type my search terms in the box, exactly like Google. It spits backs a ton of answers, just like Google. For each 2 items I "Bing" I earn 1 credit up to 15 credits per day in basic searches. Then I can Bing on my phone and earn an additional 10 credits and they always have at least one freebie of the day like a trivia question (that you can Bing for the answer).

By now I'm sure you are thinking that it must take years to earn enough credits to redeem for a gift card but that is not so! In fact, you can realistically earn a $5 Amazon credit every month without much problem at all.

Let's do some math…

30 searches a day on a computer = 15 credits
20 searches a day on a phone = 10 credits
1 (minimum) freebie search a day = 1 credit
Total = 26 credits a day!

I'm currently a Gold Member which is nice because it means I get discounts on rewards.

A $5 Amazon gift card costs a Gold Member 475 credits and a non-gold member 525 credits.

A handful of different gift card options available.

So 475 credits divided by 26 credits a day is roughly 19 days of searches. Which means, if you do as many searches as allowed every day, you will be able to have a $5 gift card every 19 days. Not too bad since you are probably Googling stuff every day anyway.

I don't normally Bing 50 different options a day on my own so what I typically do is click through the basic story headlines on the homepage. You don't have to do anything but click on each one. Takes maybe 2 minutes to click on enough to earn all your credits for the day. I also don't do a lot of bing searches on my phone (not convenient so I don't waste my time) so it does take me a little longer to earn the gift cards but not too much longer.

At this point I have redeemed for three $5 amazon gift card codes and I currently have enough credits for two more $5 codes.

Are you going to get rich with Bing? No. You will earn a few gift cards every now and then though for doing something super simple that you probably do daily anyway. Seems like a no-brainer to me!

Does anyone else Bing? What do you think of it?

P.S. I do earn referral credits if you click one of my Bing links above and use it to earn credits. No pressure… ;)

(No I'm not a sponsor of Bing, I just think it's pretty cool)

Things I'm currently loving...

Anything and everything gold!

The beautiful flowers my husband sent me for no reason on Tuesday.

The Maroon 5 song Sugar. It's so good!!

Gas prices. I can't even believe they are so low. Hopefully I'm not jinxing it.

(Okay, so maybe I used some fuel points on this one.)

Peeling wallpaper. Oh wait…I HATE that. 

Giant greasy hamburgers. Not sure why but almost everyday I want to eat a hamburger. (Don't worry I don't. Sadly.)

My husbands butt in these jeans…

American Sniper, the movie. It was really good and super intense. Makes you appreciate our freedom and what soldiers do for our country. You know it was good when the theatre is dead silent as the credits roll until people start clapping. Check it out. 

The lovely free printable Meal Planner I made for all you lovely readers :) You can find a downloadable file of it on my Blog BFF Kala's page My Breezy Room!

Have a lovely weekend!!

Money Saving Monday

I've realized I have about a million little tricks and tips for saving money. Since I'm pretty sure everyone loves to save money I have decided to do a little series occasionally called Money Saving Monday. 

With this series I will share ways (that I actually use) to save myself and my family money. This ranges from making freezer meals, to couponing, to using certain websites or apps to earn things like gift cards, cash and magazines!

If there is something in particular you are interested in saving money on let me know in the comments below. 

To get started…here's a link to a post I did a few weeks ago. I have currently earned approximately $70 in gift cards just from this app. (Hint: If you use the link I provide I earn bonus points and so do you!)

I'm not a failure

(I bet that title made you click, huh? I'm not a failure at my non-resolutions that is!)

My New Years goal to Simplify my life is going pretty well. Am I an expert at it yet? Not even close. Here's a few things I have done so far to help me get the process going...

I cleaned out a few kitchen cabinets that were literally overflowing. I purged a bunch of food that was expired or that I realized we will never eat and reorganized to make things easier to find. Now I don't dread opening up my cabinets. Win!

I set up a second checking account with automatic transfers from our regular checking account. A small amount is transferred each Friday (Seth's payday).  This money will be used on household projects such  re-roofing and re-siding our house. Which will help avoid the, "oh shoot, that's a lot of money to come up with" Yay!

I have continued to write my to do lists in my planner and then try to get through the items on my list each day. If I don't complete the item I move it to the next day. Re-writing the same thing over and over from day to day seems stupid to me so I just get the item done so I can check it off. I love checking off lists!


It might only be the second week of January but hopefully I will be able to stick with it. Wish me luck!

How have your resolutions or non-resolutions been going so far?? Any tips or tricks?