While it is true that couponing takes time, effort and fair amount of work, to be a successful couponer, does not mean you have to devote every waking moment to it. If you haven’t read the first part of this post click here: Successful #Couponing: Part 1

Planning Ahead

1. Plan out your couponing shopping trip – to the penny if you can. Use coupon matching sites to help you know what the best deals are. The more you plan it out, the smoother it will go in the store, so be as detailed as you can listing product name (and variety if necessary), size/ct., retail price, sale price, coupon value, and price you expect to pay.
2. Look at your calendar and shop accordingly. After major holidays you can find items that might have holiday specific packaging, which will be marked down with the rest of the holiday items.
3. Understand the coupons and sale prices usually coincide for free or near free pricing only twice a year. So if you CAN, buy enough to last your household six months.

Opportunity Awareness

1. Never go into a store that accepts coupons without your coupon binder. You never know when a store may be putting an item on sale – due to overstock, or package damage – that was not advertised.
2. When you have time, walk the outer perimeter of the store instead of the inside aisles. These endcaps often have items marked at clearance pricing.
3. Expand your store horizons – shop for cleaning products at home improvement stores, or hair products at a pharmacy.

Niceties

1. While you are a customer – like everyone else – your transaction may be a little more involved than others. So be polite and patient to both the other people in line and the cashier.
2. Never take more than a few coupons that are available in a store – peelies, tear pads, hangtags, booklets, recipe cards, etc. It is rude and will ultimately result in stores not putting them out as frequently or requiring you to ask for them at customer service.
3. Be the coupon fairy sometimes – if you have more coupons for an item than you plan to use or they are expiring soon, place them on the shelf next to the product. It’s a nice way to share the wealth, and make sure that a coupon doesn’t go to waste.

Stockpile Management

1. Rotate your products regularly. If you have a large amount of something, write the expiration date on the part of the label that will be visible while stacked on the shelf with a big marker, this will make it easier to see which to use first.
2. Do not get a large amount of an item that your family would never ever use – even if it’s free – unless you truly and honestly plan to donate it. For example – don’t get 30 bags of cat treats, just because they are free, if you don’t have a cat! Also consider the life of a product. If you have worked out a deal to get 20 pounds of strawberries for free or close to it, you need to be sure you have a means to use them all or freeze them.
3. Store items properly – cool dry place for most items, and freeze all of the freezable items.

There are some movies that just never go out of style. Amazon has a great deal going on right now for the Back to the Future trilogy on Blu-ray. This normally sells for $79.98 but it’s currently on sale for only $19.99. That’s a steal at 75% off.

This would make a great gift or Valentine’s Day treat but you’ll have to move fast. Amazon prices change quickly.

{guest post submitted by Mina of Mina’s Journal}

It is that time again when we remind those special to us that they are thought of and loved.

Make these easy stand up Hearts for Valentine’s Day, a quick project that almost anyone can do, and a nice alternative to the regular Valentine’s Day card.

Materials:

• Stand Up Hearts download (*NOTE: You need Adobe Reader to use this file. Save it to your computer for future use. Design by Mina Keenan.)
• Card or paper
• Scissors
• Glue

Technique

• Just trim around the outer edges, and fold along the tab lines where indicated, and as shown in the photo.

• Apply glue to the end tab and bring it to the back of the heart, letting it ‘naturally’ find it’s place where to stick, approximately two thirds of the way up the back of the heart.

I start math education early around here. Most parents do, they just may not realize that’s what they are doing. Counting, sorting, and matching games are perfect for teaching valuable skills that will help kids learn more advanced math later on. Pizza Mania from Learning Resources is a great game for kids ages 4 and up that teaches early math skills, including basic addition and subtraction, listening skills, and matching.

Pizza Mania is a fun little game that will entertain kids so much they won’t even realize that it’s educational. The little pizza chef is batter operated and shouts out commands to his tiny pizza chefs in training to let them know what they need to add or take away from the pizza.

The game comes with cute little pizza toppings, including pepperoni, peppers, olives, and mushrooms. Sometimes the pizza chef tells you to add toppings to your pizza and sometimes he tells you to take some of them away.

At the end of the game, the pizza chef tells you what toppings you should have on your pizza. The whole thing is very upbeat and fun for kids. My 4 and 6 year olds love it but even my 8 year old isn’t above getting in on the fun. This is a great little game to play together with your kids or they can easily play it on their own if you need something to occupy them for a few minutes.

This is one of those things that is so much cuter if you see it in action.

Enter to Win

Learning Resources is giving away one Pizza Mania game!

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I love new readers. It’s so much fun to watch as kids grasp concepts that they once thought were well beyond their reach. Reading opens up so many things to kids and reading ability will play a huge role in your child’s future academic success.

As a former teacher and a homeschooling mom to 3 kids, I have found a few favorite products over the years that I think are essential for teaching basic reading skills. Each of these products share one thing in common — they make reading a fun experience for the child and help increase skill level.

Letter Tiles

Letter tiles are the first thing I pull out when I have a beginning reader. They can be used for the very basics, from identifying letters and their sounds, to more advanced skills like building words or creating simple sentences.

My favorite set of Letter tiles is one made by Lakeshore Learning because they are magnetic, which makes them easy to use on any magnetic surface (and makes it harder to lose them) and they are nice and chunky so even younger kids can manipulate them without a problem.

Bob Books

I’ve always heard everyone rave about Bob Books for early readers. Now that I’ve tried them, I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why I didn’t buy these when my oldest son was learning to read. We bought sets 1 and 2 for my 6 year old son a few months ago (and have since bought every other set in the series) and I cannot say enough good about them. The way they teach reading is just so logical and getting kids reading full books right away builds so much confidence that they quickly learn to love reading.

My 6 year old is constantly asking to read his Bob Books with me and I constantly hear him say, “I am SO good at reading”. It makes my heart happy to watch as he really develops a love of reading and now it isn’t uncommon to see him pull aside his younger brother and show off his new reading skills by reading a few Bob Books to him.

Magnetic Poetry for Word Play

 Remember how much fun magnetic poetry was on the fridge in your college apartment? It’s even more fun for new readers who can sound out some words but may not be able to put a sentence together on their own. Magnetic Poetry has a great line of magnetic words for kids and they come in several different reading levels.

I came across an older version of these while looking for something to make writing fun for my older son and was thrilled to discover the first words version for my new reader.

We keep a magnetic wipe board up in our family room because it’s great for all kinds of activities and my 6 year old loves to sit with this magnetic word set and build his own sentences. It’s a great confidence builder and he really enjoys all the silly sentences he can come up with.

For younger kids, Magnetic Poetry makes a large letter version that’s appropriate for kids ages 3 and older.

Rusty and Rosy Reading Softward

LeapFrog TAG Reading System

One of the biggest issues I see with early readers losing motivation is that they want to read, and they want to read NOW. When learning to read takes longer than they think it should, kids get frustrated and decide that it’s too hard. The Tag Reading System from LeapFrog is a great way to keep up the momentum and get kids reading right from the very beginning.

We’ve loved the Tag reading system so much that we have 3 of them, one for each kid, and those were all products that we purchased on our own (i.e. the company didn’t send us a single one). We’ve gotten a ton of use out of our Tag systems and one of my favorite things about them is that they use real books, many of them old favorites.

We started our youngest on the Tag Jr. when he was only 2 and it’s been one of his favorite toys from the very beginning.

Audio Books for Kids

The most important thing you can do to help an early reader is help him develop a real love for learning. If a child loves to read, then learning to read will come naturally. There are some great audio books for kids available, or you can make your own by recording your voice reading some of your child’s favorite books.

Audio books allow kids to read whenever they want to and are a great alternative to T.V. time when mom needs to get something done or perfect for a road trip activity. My 6 year old would go nuts for this set of audio Curious George books.

Rusty and Rosy Reading Software

For early readers, repetition is just a part of the game. Learning each letter and the sounds that they make is an essential first step to reading but nothing about that has to feel repetitive when there are so many great options out there to make learning to read fun.

The Rusty and Rosy Reading Software is an adaptive program that helps teach your child all the basics they need to read in a way that feels more like a game.

Dr. Seuss Books

I’m a firm believer that books for kids should be fun and no one does that better than Dr. Seuss. With so much fun word play going on, it’s hard for kids not to be drawn into the classic Dr. Seuss books and many of the early readers are easy enough that kids can start reading them on their own right away.

I read Dr. Seuss to my kids from the time they were tiny babies because the books themselves are so timeless that I still enjoy reading them. I love the Dr. Seuss beginning book collection because it has so many favorites that are prefect for new readers.

What are your favorite products for early readers?

Welcome to Winning Wednesday for 2-1-12! Anyone know what it’s called when a word, phrase, number, or other sequence can be read the same forward or backward? (pause for those of you who need to hit up Google) That’s right – a palindrome! Today’s date is a palindrome. Just thought I’d put that bit of geeky goodness out there.

Today I would love to hear from you in the comments after you post your giveaway links. We’re glad you come here every week to promote your giveaways, but maybe you can give some help to others and tell us:

where else have you found success listing giveaways online?

Together with your combined knowledge and resources, maybe you can help another blogger find a new way to promote their giveaways online. Thanks for your help!

Amazon has an amazing deal on a Kodak mini video camera. My 8 year old son has almost this exact same camera and he has had so much fun with it. He creates his own movies using his Lego’s and other toys and documents some of the more random family events. I suspect that we’ll have loads of fun in a few years, looking back and watching some of the videos he’s created.

This Kodak mini video camera normally sells for $99.00 but it’s currently on sale for 60% off at $39.95. This is a great deal if you have a budding videographer or if you just want something small to fit in your purse.

Thank you to who?Comics for sponsoring this post and encouraging my child to read biographies in comic book form! Please click here to learn more about the app. And follow who? Comics on Twitter for updates!

We’re hitting our mid-year homeschooling slump at the moment. This year I’m blaming it on pregnancy, but regardless of the cause, it’s clear that I need to do some serious revamping to get my kids excited about learning again. One tried and true way to get them excited about something is to incorporate technology so I use quite a few websites and ipad apps when we need something to get us out of a funk.

Who?Comics is a new app. that features biographies of famous people in comic form to make them more exciting for kids. The comics are geared towards kids ages 8 and up so when my 8 year old son started complaining that he was sick of doing math earlier this week I surprised him by parking him on the couch with my ipad and his choice of comics. Needless to say, he was thrilled.

The comics themselves are very visually appealing to kids. They have a bit of an anime style to them and in my son’s eloquent words, “I like them, but I don’t know why.”

I thought a few of the illustrations of people’s faces when they were angry or excited were a bit over the top and a bit on the scary side but my son didn’t seem to even notice that. As far as content goes, I really liked that they focused on some of the little details that might not be included in a regular biography but are really appealing to kids. We read the Steven Spielberg comic and my son thought it was hilarious that they included the pranks he liked to play on his family as a kid. It really made Spielberg real to my son and drew him into the story.

I really liked that the comics didn’t talk down to kids. I’m always in favor of teaching my kids with all the information I can, even if some of it is a bit above their heads initially. The Bill Gates comic included specific details on early computer technology that my 8 year old son hadn’t heard of before but it didn’t discourage him from being fully engaged in the comic and he picked up some new information. I have been told that some of the comics are more appropriate for older kids so you may want to either read with your child or preview the comic beforehand.

The app is new so it’s still a bit buggy. I had trouble actually purchasing a few of the comics. It just seemed to load and load and load and would eventually freeze up the app, which is a shame because there are quite a few my son still wants to read. I would have liked to see the app itself as a free download since you pay for each comic individually, although it does include several free comics so I suppose that makes up for the cost of the app.

I’m excited for what they have in the works though and I’m hoping to incorporate more of the who?comics into our homeschool plans for the year as the bugs get worked out. They have a great start on titles but I’d love to see more choices in the future.

Thank you again to who? Comics for sponsoring my post. Please click here to learn more about the app. Visit who? Comics for updates. I was selected for this opportunity by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions expressed here are my own. #CleverWhoComics #spon

I’m 18 weeks pregnant this week and, if I’m being totally honest with myself, I didn’t think this day would come. My last baby was born at 18 weeks and passed away in my arms 10 minutes after birth. With my previous pregnancies, despite the complications I’ve had, I was never really a nervous mom. I knew this time things would be a bit different but I wasn’t prepared for how emotionally draining this pregnancy would be and how much each tiny milestone would mean to me.

Weekly appointments with the Maternal Fetal Medicine doctor have kept most of my panic at bay, although my visits seem to alternate between being reassuring and discovering new potential complications. I’ve realized that the best I can do is take things one day at a time and celebrate each day I’m still pregnant.

I’m fighting the tendency to avoid getting attached to this pregnancy and celebrating each milestone as a small victory. These are the milestones that have meant the most:

A Positive Pregnancy Test

After a loss, the possibility of another pregnancy often seems so far off in the distant future that it’s a bit of a shock when you realize you have come full circle. For me, denial hit big time. I took 2 home pregnancies tests and requested 3 blood tests. Even after all of those came back positive, I wasn’t convinced until I’d seen the baby on several ultrasounds. Early pregnancy is when many miscarriages happen so it’s normal to feel cautious after a loss. If you’ve announced your previous pregnancies right away, you may be more hesitant to do so now. I decided that I felt okay about spreading the news only to friends and family members that I would tell if I did experience a loss.

Doubling HCG Levels

After a loss, your OBGYN will likely order a 48 hour HCG test. This is a simple blood test but it can give you a good initial idea of how strong the pregnancy is. Your HCG levels should double every 48 hours. If they do, it’s a good indication that the pregnancy is progressing the way it should. My HCG levels quadrupled at the beginning of this pregnancy and it was a huge relief to know that we were at least starting off smoothly.

Finding a Heartbeat

Once you see a heartbeat on an ultrasound (or hear it on a doppler if you are further along in your pregnancy) the risk of miscarriage goes down drastically. This can be very reassuring, as is seeing real proof of your little bean. For me, this milestone was less reassuring than it could have been since I experienced a loss later on in my previous pregnancy, but it was still comforting. I’ve never had a desire to rent or buy a doppler in any of my previous pregnancies, but I have to admit, I was very tempted this time. If my perinatologist hadn’t started bringing me in for weekly appointments, I probably would have caved.

If you do buy a doppler, be sure you avoid anything that says “listening device”. A listening device is much cheaper than a doppler but it’s is only useful in the second and third trimesters when the baby is larger.

Hitting Double Digits

This pregnancy milestone has absolutely no medical significance but for some reason I felt better when I moved into the double digits. Making the transition from 9 weeks to 10 just felt huge to me because those early weeks of pregnancy seemed to be dragging by so slowly that I just felt stuck. There was also the added perk that 10 weeks was just a bit closer to that magic 2nd trimester point when miscarriage rates go down and supposedly morning sickness goes away. I would have been very discouraged at that point if you had told me I’d still be dealing with morning sickness at 18 weeks. Some things are definitely better if we’re kept in the dark.

Moving into the Second Trimester

Depending on who you talk to, the second trimester of pregnancy starts sometime between the 12th-14th weeks of pregnancy. Once you hit that point your risk of early miscarriage goes down and in theory you start to feel a bit better. I’m still waiting for all that extra energy that the pregnancy books promise but it does feel better to see those weeks adding up.

Passing the Point of your Previous Loss

The most comforting milestone many expectant moms hit in a pregnancy after a loss is passing the point where you lost your last baby. This obviously varies depending on your last experience (and if you went full term before experiencing a loss you’ll likely be nervous until that baby is in your arms). For me, 18 weeks was that key week and until I got this far, I was absolutely convinced that I was waiting to repeat history.

20 Weeks

20 weeks is not much different than 19 weeks except that anything before 20 weeks is technically considered a miscarriage. I delivered an 18 week baby who was born alive and fought for 10 minutes to try and breath and I can tell you that nothing about that felt like a miscarriage. My son died in my arms with his tiny hand wrapped around one of my fingers. If you have a loss at 20 weeks or beyond, you don’t have to deal with insensitive family members trying to convince you that you only had a miscarriage.

Hospital policy varies but at many hospitals, 20 weeks is also the point where you can go straight to labor and delivery verses stopping by in the ER if you have any problems. I’ve found most ER staff to be clueless when it comes to pregnancy so I’m anxiously counting down the days until I hit 20 weeks this time.

Anatomy Ultrasound

Typically you’ll have an anatomy ultrasound between 18-20 weeks of pregnancy. This ultrasound can give you a good idea if your baby is developing properly and has any markers for chromosomal problems. If you want to know the gender, you should be able to determine that at this point too. I’ve found that knowing the gender helps you bond a bit more with the baby before birth.

Until I found out this baby was a girl, I had trouble separating her in my mind from the previous baby that I lost. I know that doesn’t make much logical sense but it was a trick that my brain played on me. Apparently I wasn’t the only one. My 6 year old son asked me several times if this baby was his lost brother coming back to our family.

The Point of Viability

A baby is viable between 23 and 24 weeks. Before that point, no measures will be taken to save the baby’s life if she is born prematurely. Survival rates go up drastically at 24 weeks and even though it’s best to keep babies cooking much longer than that, it is a huge comfort once you hit the point where you know your baby has a shot. I may have a party when I hit 24 weeks. Seriously.

Every Week Counts

Once the baby is viable, each week is something to celebrate. Survival rates go up each week and the chance of serious complications and lifelong health issue go down. The good news is, the days go by slowly but the weeks often go by quickly. . . or at least that’s what we tell ourselves after the fact.

37 Weeks

37 weeks is considered full term and the likelihood of the baby needing to spend time in the NICU is much lower. This is also my official pregnancy deadline because I’m not allowed to get further than 37 weeks since I have a history of abruptions and growth restriction.

Due Date

I may be a total dork, but I get really excited when I buy food with an expiration date past my due date. In previous pregnancies I would get all excited when yogurt expired after my due date and then when milk expired after my due date. I’m a long way off from that still but I’m already smiling at the dates on my milk carton.

What milestones meant something to you in a pregnancy after a loss?

{Guest post by Terri DeWulf}

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If your family is anything like mine, we love eggs! Individual quiches are an easy way to prepare a quick and delicious meal anytime of the day. And they are good for you too! What I like most about this recipe is they can be made to order for each member of the family, and they all can be baked at once.

Ingredients

-Large Eggs (1 per individual quiche)

-1/4 C 1% Milk per three eggs

-Cooking spray

-Salt and pepper

-Various fillings such as turkey sausage, shredded cheese, left over veggies, shredded baby spinach, green peppers, lunch meats such as lean ham or turkey, salsa, hot sauce. Get creative!

Baking Instructions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray muffin tins with non stick spray so the quiche will easily come out once cooked.

In a large bowl whisk three eggs, 1/4C of milk, salt, and pepper. Set aside.

In your prepared muffin tins, place your fillings. This is the fun part, especially for kids, because they get to choose exactly what they would like! Then pour your eggs into each filled tin. Don’t over fill because these will puff up.

Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Tops should be golden brown. Let cool for a few minutes. To remove them, take a knife and run it around the edges and gently pop them out of the pan. Enjoy!

Terri DeWulf is a stay at home Mom to seven children, ages 16 down to two and a half. She holds her degree in nursing and currently resides in Indiana with her husband and children. She enjoys cooking and gardening.