Texas Thanksgiving!

This Thanksgiving my Grandparents, Uncle and Sister all came to Texas to visit. We had a ton of fun so here are just a few pics from the week. Clyde is getting into the Texas spirit with a cowboy hat at Sheplers in the pic above!

In this pic we are all playing Wii Sports Resort Bowling. Clyde especially loved playing the Wii and he was pretty good at wakeboarding. Grandpa dominated bowling and was thinking he might need one of these machines at home!

Here is a look at Jenn's Thanksgiving plate! We had a lot of food and good company!

Seaworld! No trip to San Antonio is complete without Sea World!!

Here we are in the Bird Sanctuary at Sea World. As most people know I hate birds but I was forced to join in on this craziness. Clyde and Grandma loved the friendly little guy who ate out of Clyde's hand and sat on our heads to rest.

Just waiting for the Shamu Show to start! We watched all the shows twice!

We were lucky enough to get a trainer to help us out while feeding the dolphins. Clyde and Grandma and Grandpa loved being able to feed, pet and watch the dolphins do their tricks for us. They had many many opportunities to interact with them and this guy is the favorite. I have nicknamed him Buddy. He is a famous movie star and was in Jaws 3. He is the at least 43 yrs old and is the most well behaved dolphin they have. So they are able to get him to lay on the side of the pool so we could pet him!

Just a random pic of Jenn and Grandpa enjoying themselves at Rainforest Cafe on the Riverwalk in downtown San Antonio. We stopped here for appetizers and dessert so they could experience the Rainforest! We had so much fun and did a lot more activities but that is all I am going to post for now. I have to go get ready for the USAA Christmas party at the Alamodome. Free food and an REO Speedwagon Concert! Then next Tuesday we are headed back to the Pacific Northwest to visit family for Christmas!! So if I don't post until after Christmas then Happy Holidays!!

Swagbucks=Free Stuff

I joined Swagbucks at the beginning of September because they were having a promotion where you downloaded their toolbar and they would send you at least one free swag buck code per day for the entire month! Since then I been hooked.
Basically it is a search engine that gives you "swagbucks" for using it. It searches through Google so it is just like a regular search! You can then trade these swagbucks in for prizes. The best deal that I have seen is 45 swagbucks for a $5 amazon.com gift card. The great thing about it is that you don't have to do anything different and you earn free stuff! It is random when you search if you will win any bucks or not and it usually only gives you swagbucks once per hour at most. The swagbucks are usually one or two bucks but sometimes can be five and on "Mega Swagbucks Day" which is every Friday you can earn up to 100 in one search!
I started September 5th and I have already redeemed $10 in amazon gift cards (90 swagbucks) and I have 23 swagbucks left! My strategy is to use the search engine for simple searches like "facebook", or "yahoomail", "hulu", or "netflix" instead of typing in the dot com because with that one extra click I can get credit for my search. I found the more I use it the more I seem to get!
So, if you want to sign up then send me comment or message and I can email you the referral link! Don't forget to download the toolbar because it makes it really easy to search and allows you to get the emails that often have free codes attached! Also a great way to hear about free codes is to be a fan on facebook because they release free codes every so often that you just type in on the swagbucks site to redeem! The widget comes in handy when you want to know if there are any free codes around and the blog allows you to get swagbucks as well! So go ahead and sign up and let me know what you think! I wasn't too sure about it at first but it totally worked for me and now you guys can get free stuff too!

Ornament Wreath

So the wreath is almost done! All I need is a nice big ribbon for the top and a few more weeks until I can place it on the front door!

I got the idea from this blog post and this blog post who got the idea from this website! It was a super simple project that took all of twenty min and about $8 in ornaments from Dollar Tree. No glue involved! The instructions can be found on the original website but if you have any other questions just ask!

Sorry about the bad lighting in this pic, I will put up a new pic when it is actually on the door. It really does look a lot better in person. I just wanted everyone to see it so they could make their own in time for the holidays if they want! Since it was so easy (and I had to buy ten wire hangers so I have a few extra!) I am thinking I could make them for other holidays like the original website did. I will be on the lookout for different colored ornaments during the after Christmas sales this year!

Happy Halloween

Since I have been sick on and off for pretty much the entire month I have spent a lot of time at home doing crafts. Unfortunately I can't share any of them because they are mostly Christmas presents except for these very cute Halloween jars that I finally finished! I got the idea from notsoidlehands.blogspot.com which is a craft site I really like- check it out for lots of fun ideas!

Magazines

Since I haven't been working since we moved to Texas I have had a lot of free time on my hands. I have been able to spend time during the day checking blogs and finding good deals! I had gotten a few subscriptions to magazines for free in the past years but lately I have been able to get a ton! Right now I am currently subscribed to O Magazine, Shape, American Baby, Parents Magazine, Glamour, Business Week, Woman's Day, Elle Decor, and Travel and Leisure (just to name a few- I know there are a few missing from this list) and I haven't paid anything for any of them! When I was telling my mom about a magazine she was excited and wanted some for herself so I thought maybe everyone would be interested to know how I found them all. Most of them are from a service called RewardsGold but I have found them through links from the coupon blogs that I read. Most of them are listed to the right of my blog in the "Coupons and Giveways" section. I recommend checking them out so you can get free magazines too!

Other products I have received free from these blogs range from free meals at restaurants (from special coupons), free computer fonts, free toiletries, free microfiber cloths, to free Glidden paint! Some of the blogs offer free fridays so they will list all the free items you can find online on Friday. The magazines go quick so you should just check in whenever you have a minute. Most of these blogs also offer information on how to save money in many other ways with coupons or sales listings. Some of them even offer giveaways that you can enter. I would recommend using an alternate email for anything you sign up for just in case they send out some spam with their free offers. I have just updated the list with the blogs that I find useful or particularly interesting. Good luck on finding fun free stuff!

Mom and Dad's Visit

A few weeks ago mom and dad graves came to visit! We had a ton of fun and visited lots of San Antonio locations. As you can tell they brought some nice pacific northwest weather with them which made it a lot easier to spend all day outside! Unfortunately the day we visited the temple was not a very good day for pictures because of the weather and the fact that all the water features are off because of the current water restrictions. We did get a lot of pictures at the Spanish Missions so take a look!

Nick at one of the Spanish Missions modeling the cactus and more pictures of us at the Missions

One pic of the natural bridge caverns. It was hard to take pictures inside so you will have to just go to the naturalbridgecaverns website to see more or visit yourself!

And of course no San Antonio trip is complete without Sea World!

We had so much fun showing them the city and have already thought of more places to take them next time they make it out here to Texas. Hopefully sooner than later!!

Organizing Projects

So we have been doing a few organizational fixes in our house and this weekend we spent pretty much the whole time sanding, priming, painting, sawing, and installing all of our new shelves and my new craft organizer. The pic above is Nick fixing the fan so it doesn't make any noise anymore!

Here is the gameroom closet with the extra shelf so I can now use the other side for my crafts!

Below you will see my new spice rack. We spent entirely too much time at the container store and bought a few fun organizers. Here you can see how the spice rack can be pulled out and down so I can actually see all the spices! Congrats to whoever thought of this idea. It has already proved useful!

Nick is hard at work creating the brace for my pegboard craft organizer!

Works all done! I have started to fill it up with my stuff and am very excited about how it turned out!

After all the hard work we decided to check out an Italian Gelato Cafe that we heard was pretty authentic tasting because the owners are from Italy. Nick always tests Gelato by how well they make his favorite flavor, Pistachio, and he said it was delicious! I had a "forest berries" (which is really just mixed berries but they translated it directly from Italian) milkshake and it was really good. I can't wait to go back to get a panini because they looked delicious. And in case you wanted to know the difference between Gelato and Ice Cream, Gelato is made with milk instead of cream so it has less fat!

Now that we have all the organizers up we just have to put away a few more things in preparation for Nick's parents to visit us! They are coming in two days and we are very excited to show them around San Antonio!!

Lowes Home Improvement Center

This is what Nick and I did today! This weekend we were busy but we finally managed to take some measurements to get organized. Here we have the makings of closet shelves, craft organizers and even a rake to clean up those pesky mesquite tree seeds. Wish us luck on completing all these projects this week! Nick is going to sand all the edges of the boards to match the shelves we already have and I am going to paint, paint and paint some more. Luckily we had a rebate check from Lowes for buying our washer and dryer there as well as a gift card! I am very excited because after all the cutting we ended up with a lot of end pieces that I now get to make crafts from. Maybe if I have enough time to be creative I will post some of them up for you.

Books are expensive....

So I have recently rekindled my relationship with the library. When I was younger I used to love library day at school and would always check out the maximum books allowed (which I think was three picture books or two chapter books). I would finish them as quickly as possible and then plan out the exact book I could chose for the next week. Often when I was done with my work early I would beg the teacher to let my friend and I go to the library during class to exchange books. Once I got to third grade we had set aside personal reading time and I was allowed to exchange a book whenever I got done! I must have read every single Roald Dahl book at least twice, all the box car children books that were out at the time, and unfortunately I read all those Goosebump books too.

Now as I got older it was less cool to go the library and get old used books so I decided to purchase the books instead. Although I have tried to save all my books they often get passed around through the family and I have found that when you are reading through a book in a week and then giving it away it really isn't worth the ten bucks. So I have recently got myself a library card. So far I have only had small reservations about the germs that must reside between the pages. I know they lysol the covers but you never know what is on the inside! It is nice to not worry about reading too fast to get my moneys worth and I love that I can go online and request the books I want to read. I get an email when they are ready and all I do is go pick them up. I don't even have to browse the library. It is a smaller library just five min away but they get my books from all over San Antonio. Since I have been reading at least three books every week it has saved me a lot of money just in the month that I have used it! I am a little sad that my book collection is not growing for our future personal library but oh well. I am having fun reading new books and old favorites all for the low low price of FREE!

San Antonio Temple

The Joys of Homeownership

This is a picture of our water meter leaking all over. Someone drove onto our lawn and broke our water pipe. It is really really dry out so it makes it easy for the hard ground to crack the pipes. We were notified we would be fined if we did not fix it since the water is leaking into the street and we are on water restriction. If it was not fixed we would be charged $500 a day for breaking the restrictions. So I called a plumber and got it fixed. It was pretty pricey. Oh the joys of homeownership. One positive was that I met a lot of my neighbors while I was outside watching the process! Sorry no pics from when they dug it all up. I am so bad at remembering to take pics!

Crafts

When my mom and sister came down here a few weeks ago my mom brought me some more craft supplies! I really like to be crafty but often it is more expensive than it is worth. So with my new supplies I set out to find something to create!

What I found was a few boring old clocks that we got for our wedding. So I tore apart the clock we had and started to make it pretty. Above was what I ended up with. Sorry about the poor lighting. The clock is actually a bright lime green with light electric blue ink. It is definitely not done but its a good start! The writing says "Cherish the Moment". I still need to paint the outside black, add some numbers or position markers and embellish it a bit more, but I am happy with how it has gone so far!

This is the stamp set I used from Close to My Heart. I got it when I went to CTMH convention in January with my mom and it is by far my favorite set! Thanks mom!!

Here are the stickers I am going to use for my next craft project. I am thinking magnets?? Maybe I will make our other clock into an Italian clock for Nick?? Not sure yet but I know I will try to find something for these soon.

Christmas in August

Christmas Carol train tour came to San Antonio so we had to go check out the fun! If you don't know, Disney has a new movie coming out this November and it is called A Christmas Carol. They made a train filled with exclusive behind the scenes models, scenes and info about the movie and have been taking it across the country. Here are some of the pics from our day!

Jim Carrey as Scrooge.

After the train tour we got to see a first look at the movie in 3-D. It looks like it will be a really great movie!

Here is an example of how they filmed the movie's actors and changed them into a 3-D animation movie.

The outside of the train. We waited about at least an hour outside next to this train so I thought I would get a few pics.

Those poor singers. It was over 100 degrees out..

Jim Carrey as young Scrooge

Some of the period costumes in the train and below are the models they used to visualize the scenes.

Overall it was a fun day. I can't wait to see the entire movie in theaters. My favorite Christmas Carol is still the Muppet's so we will see if Disney can top that this year!

After the train tour we headed over to the Alamodome to see the Dallas Cowboy's training camp. We only saw a little bit of their practice but it was really fun. This H-E-B shopping cart was parked outside the dome and I had to get a picture with it. I really want to drive it! It would have been a perfect day if we hadn't gotten a parking ticket when we went back to the car!