A Good Deal

My good friend, Heather had this on her blog.  There is a new invitation only site, TWSTY, that is starting up. They plan to open in 4 weeks. TWSTY is going to offer stylish clothing, fabulous Accessories, and amazing toys for babies and kids for up to 70% off.  Once you get signed up, you might want to start by inviting your friends. Each friend who signs up and makes a purchase will get you $20 in credits for you to spend on great gear. And the best part, there is no limit as to how many buddies you can invite! I did something similar to this on another site before Christmas, and ended up with half of my kids Christmas gifts for free!

Here's your invitation if you want to give it a shot! TWSTY

Rebuilding

I'm finally starting the next phase of The Pink Lemon Tree.  I'm going to be doing a series of posts which involve online selling. In my case, I've decided to scrap my old store, and start rebuilding from the ground up.  I have a lot of dead inventory, and Ebay is starting a new fee policy, so I figured this would be the right time to do it.

Here are the first steps that I'm going to be taking,

First, I'm going to be using a different ID for selling, so I need to set that up.  I have another Ebay account which I've used mostly for bidding on items that were meant for inventory.  I'm going to be using that one, but changing the name on it.

Second, I need to go through Ebay's new fee charts to see if it is worthwhile to pay the store fee now that they are changing their structure.  I'll be doing a post on my findings for this tomorrow.

Third, I opened a Photobucket account that is specifically for Ebay listing pictures.  I am no longer going to be tied to Seller Sourcebook.  It is a great resource for quick listing if you don't want to take the extra steps and don't mind paying their subscription fee.  I am in the process of creating my own template which will be used for all of my listings.  I'm going to be doing a post on how to do this in the next couple of days.  It's a lot easier than it looks.

Coming Soon!  The Pink Lemon Tree Ebay Store

Swagbucks

OK, so here's my plug for Swagbucks. 

I'm going to be completely honest...yes, I'm trying to get you to sign up under me. 

Here's how it works.  Swagbucks is a search engine that you can use like any other search engine, but the bonus is that you can earn Swagbucks for doing searches.  Swagbucks can be redeemed for merchandise or gift cards.  I only use it to get Amazon gift cards.  It takes 45 Swagbucks to get a $5 Amazon gift card.  If I'm diligent about using Swagbucks, I find that I can earn one of these about once every 10-12 days.  So far I've earned over $30, but I've got enough to redeem for $10 more.

If you can get friends to sign up under you, you'll earn a buck every time they earn a buck (up to 100 per referral) which is the reason why I'm pitching it to you ;). 

Here's how I do it. I installed the Swagbucks toolbar onto my browser, and I use it every time I want to visit a website like Facebook or Ebay.  I just type the title into the search box, and click on the link that it brings up.  I wouldn't recommend it for an intense search because the search engine isn't the greatest, but I find that I earn enough just by typing in my favorite websites.

So, there you have it.  That's my spill about Swagbucks.  If you sign up under me, I'll be eternally grateful.  Hey, we'd both get something out of it right?!

Making Your Blog Button "Grabbable"

Now that you've created your blog button, let's make it "grabbable". This is so simple. Just copy and paste the following HTML into an HTML element box on your sidebar. Don't forget to change the information that is in red...


<div align="”center”">
<a href="YOURBLOGADDRESS" target="”_blank”"><img src="YOURIMAGEADDRESS"/></a>
</div>
<div align="”center”">
<form><textarea rows="”6″" cols="”19″" readonly="”readonly”"><a href="YOURBLOGADDRESS" target="”_blank”"><img src="YOURIMAGEADDRESS"/></a></textarea></form>
</div>

It should look something like this when it's all done...

<div align="”center”">

<a href="http://www.teamcarterjay.blogspot.com" target="”_blank”"><img src="http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i287/bundypunk/button.jpg"/></a>
</div>
<div align="”center”">
<form><textarea rows="”6″" cols="”19″" readonly="”readonly”"><a href="http://www.teamcarterjay.blogspot.com" target="”_blank”"><img src="http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i287/bundypunk/button.jpg"/></a></textarea></form>
</div>


And there you have it! Your readers should be able to copy the code from your text box and place it on their own blog. Speaking of that...why don't you grab my button while you're thinking of it ;)

My Shopping Trip

Earlier in the week I took my coupon binder out for a test run.  Right now, our Smiths (Kroger) is having an awesome sale.  Here's what I got...

All of that for $27!!

Here's how it worked out...

The Quaker Quakes were on sale for $.49 each. I bought 10 of them. There are 75 cent off coupons out there, which would make these money makers, but I only had one.  I still bought a bunch because that's a pretty good price for a tasty snack.

3 Packs of Finish Dishwasher Power Balls.  These were on sale for $2.99, but I had 3 $2.50 coupons.  See how this works when you match up coupons with sales?

1 Purex 3-1.  This was an impulse buy because it was on clearance for $3.50 and I had a $1 off coupon.

10 packs of Kraft cheese.  These were on sale for $1.50, but there are printable Kraft coupons for $1 off of 2.  You can find it here: Coupons

I also got 3 boxes of Nabisco crackers, 3 packs of Toaster Strudels, and a can of Rotel for dirt cheap with coupons.

After that, I was off to Target.  My poor husband had an ear infection earlier in the week which required a few prescriptions.  Those paired up with a prescription Carter needed got us $40 in gift cards. The copays on the prescriptions only ended up being about $20, so this was a pretty awesome deal.  Here's what I got for Jovie for only $8 after the gift cards...

Now, if I had gotten this last week we would have gotten it on sale where we would have gotten another $20 gift card back, but Michael didn't need prescriptions filled then.  That's how we roll!

Need a free $50?

I just got back from Rite Aid, and let me just say that if you have prescriptions that need to be filled, you might want to check this out.  There were two coupons in their Sunday ad.  Each one was for a free $25 gift card if you transfer a prescription to their pharmacy.  My little guy has plenty of prescriptions, so I took advantage of this deal. It was easy as pie.  I just walked in, told them I needed some prescriptions transferred, gave them some info, and came back to pick them up.  Now I have $50 in Rite Aid gift cards. Woohoo!  There is an added bonus in this deal.  They also gave me a coupon book that not only had a bunch of really good coupons, but it also had two more of the prescpription coupons in them.  They don't expire for another month, so it will give me plenty of time to transfer a few more.  I figure I can transfer them back to my preferred pharmacy later. 

There's also a printable Target coupon for a free $10 gift card on new or transferred prescriptions which can be found here: Target Prescription Coupon

Why I Haven't Posted

It's because I'm addicted to the Words With Friends game on the ITouch. Thanks a lot to my friend Wendy for getting me hooked to that one.  It's just like Scrabble, and you can play against your friends through your internet connection.  You can play against random strangers too, but of course it's more fun to talk trash to your friends.  Unfortunately it's cut into my productivity on this blog.  Amazingly enough I've still managed to accomplish quite a few tasks around my house. 

I got the chance to use my coupon binder, and I must say that it definitely makes life easier.  I would recommend it to people starting out with couponing.  I still need to do my grocery ad matchups for the week.  So far I've noticed that there are some killer deals on Nyquil and Enchilada Sauce which could make for an interesting party ;)

I feel like I'm finally getting caught up on some projects.  I've been doing this thing where I tackle one closet, room, or cupboard every single day.  Even if it's only a little straightening it's been helping me to keep on top of things.  One of my goals for the weekend is to set up a cleaning schedule for my house.  I find that I'm much more disciplined when things are written down. 

Task #1 Done!

I'm not gonna lie.

It seriously sucked putting this together.

It took 2.5 hours.

I had a LOT of expired coupons to get rid of.

But it's done now.

And I can't wait to use it!

The trick with this is definitely going to be keeping up with it.  If I let it go even one week then all of this hard work will be for nothing.

Now to figure out what my goals will be for the weekend.

Getting Started

There's no looking back now!  The blog is designed, and I'm ready to get rolling with this.  The first item on my to do list is to organize my coupons.  Now, couponing can be a seriously AWESOME thing, but it will never work if you can't even keep your stuff organized which is ALWAYS the part that I'm lacking in. Luckily, I came across this blog post by my good friend Frugal Burb Chick: My Coupon Binder . 

I'm doing this tomorrow. In order to convince myself that it needs to happen, here is a picture of what my "coupon cabinet" looks like right now.

You see, I actually do have a binder in there, but it's just holding coupons which were just thrown in there and are probably all expired by now.  This cabinet is enough to make my poor husband run into the neighborhood shrieking.

OK, maybe it's not that bad, but you get the idea. Here are my supplies.  I actually thieved the card sleeves from my old Football card collection.  That's right, there's nothing protecting that Jim McMahon rookie card now.

Wish me luck!

Using My Electronics To The Max

I've had a Samsung Instinct for about 8 months now, and I must say that I love it!  I know that I wasn't using it to it's full potential though.  Mostly I would check my email on it, and surf the web when Carter was in the hospital.  Well, the other day I decided that I would "deck" out my phone by finally downloading some apps.  I have an Itouch as well, but never really messed around on it.  Here's what I found. 

First, if you absolutely hate the web browser on your phone, you should see if it is compatible with Opera Mini .  My old web browser wouldn't access most websites, but Opera handles them just fine.  It's pretty awesome when my husband in playing XBOX and I don't want to mess up his internet connection by using my laptop.

Second, I found out about the most awesome application ever.  I love listening to music, and used to have Sirius but cancelled.  I downloaded Pandora radio to both my phone and my IPod and I LOVE it!  All you have to do is type in an artist or song that you want to listen to, and Pandora will create a custom radio station with similar types of music.  My only complaint has been that at certain times of the day I've found that it's a little choppy.  I've only had this problem maybe three times and I've been using it for almost two weeks now.  The other negative is that there are ads displayed on the album art as the music is playing, but seriously I'm listening to the music and looking at the screen.

Finally, who knew that the Itouch had so many FUN and FREE downloadable games?!  I'm seriously addicted to it now.

OK, so maybe EVERYONE knew that there were a lot of cool apps, but I'm still new to this lol!

Let me know if you find any more useful or fun apps by leaving a comment :)

My First Post

Welcome to my new blog! 

I'm very excited about finally getting it going.  Last year my life took a drastic turn when my baby boy, Carter was born.  You can read about him by clicking on his button on my sidebar.  Anyway, I've felt that my life has been chaotic ever since.  It's certainly not Carter's fault.  It's definitely my own.  I'm a very unorganized and undisciplined person who tends to only think of the now and not the future.  It's a good thing that I married a guy who's the complete opposite, or I'd be in big trouble!  While some of these traits aren't necessarily a bad thing, I feel that I'm lacking a lot of balance right now.  I've created a lot of messes by being unorganized when I lose something, or spending money on impulse.  For my New Year's resolution, I want to try and work on improving on those faults.  That's where this blog comes in.  I need something to keep me motivated and in check.

So, here's The Pink Lemon Tree.  I hope to post some tips and tricks that I do know, and learn more along the way.  Thanks for reading!