My $80 find for $3.11

Little A loves all things construction. He has a small construction playset, but it's a cheap one and most of the pieces are now broken. He asked for a new one this year. I found this set on Amazon from Mighty World.



It was listed for $79.99 at the time so it's been sitting in my wishlist for months. A few weeks ago I noticed the price dropped to $53.11. Much better. I decided to cash in my Swagbucks I've been saving for a $50 Amazon gift card. Once I applied it I paid $3.11 for a complete construction set! Since it's over $25 it qualified for free shipping, but as a member of Amazon Mom, I have Amazon Prime free for 3 months and got quicker shipping!

If you haven't heard about Swagbucks yet, it's a search engine where you can earn points for searches. I use it in the place of google for my normal internet usage. In addition to searches you can earn points via:

1) Answering a daily poll
2) Participating in surveys
3) Utilizing the Swagbucks Toolbar
4) Completing Special Offers
5) Shopping at partner webstores
6) Finding SwagCodes
7) Referring others

I use Swagbucks just as I would any other site normally. I don't do paid offers or shopping unless it's something I'm going to do anyway. This is just to say you really can earn swagbucks for little effort and for free.

You can redeem your swagbucks for various prizes or giftcards. I like the giftcards the best because then I can use them on whatever I want (like the construction set).

If you haven't signed up for swagbucks yet, get moving and use it! There's still plenty of time to earn free money for the holidays!

Win a Custom Christmas Ornament from StellaBaby

I'm happy to announce that this week's giveaway post is all about you! Instead of listing the giveaways I've entered this week, I have a giveaway to host.

Growing up our family had the tradition that each year we would each get a new Christmas ornament. When we moved out as adults, we got to take our ornaments with us so that we had some for our own tree. When I had little A I decided to continue this tradtion. I found a great snowbabies "baby's first Christmas" ornament the first year (which was a challenge because he turned 1 10 days after Christmas and I didn't want something too babyish).

The second year was more of a challenge. There were few things that he really liked so finding a store bought ornament proved difficult. This is when I decided to go custom and looked on Etsy. I stumbled across StellaBaby. Jessica is a stay at home mom to 2 children. For the most part she does custom painted items including ornaments, wall letters, glasses, etc. In my first interaction with Jessica she created a custom Blue's Clue's Ornament for us that Little A LOVED.

Last year I went back to StellaBaby and she created an Awesome construction themed ormanent for Little A. Now as we enter fall I'm on the hunt for Little A's 4th Christmas ornament as well as one for E and wall letters for above the crib. I'm still trying to decide what to do for Little A this year. It's between soccer and monster trucks. For little E though, StellaBaby created a gorgeous custom 1st Christmas Ormanent for us and it came in the mail this weekend!

I convo'd Jessica to enquire about creating this ornament. We discussed my ideas and decided upon gingerbread men since E's Christmas outfit had gingerbread men on it. From there Jessica comes up with a few ideas and then convo'd me again to get my input. Once again I absolutely love it. I'm always even more pleased with the outcome than I anticipate when the ornament arrives.

Jessica is offering my readers a chance to win a gift certificate to her shop for your own custom ornament (or other item of your choice). She's also offering 10% off any item if you would like to just purchase instead. To use the discount enter "notthemaid" in the message to sellers section of your order and she'll refund the difference to you!

WIN IT
One of my US readers will win a gift certificate to StellaBaby's shop on Etsy for $28. This will cover an ornament or you can use it toward something else.

MANDATORY ENTRY
1) Become a public follower of my blog. Then visit StellaBaby on Etsy and tell me what item you like best in her shop.

OPTIONAL EXTRA ENTRIES
2) Like StellaBaby on Facebook
3)Post about this giveaway on your bog and link back both to this giveaway and Stellababy's shop.
4) Make StellaBaby an etsy favorite.

Please ensure your profile is public or leave me your email address in your comment. Please be honest in your entries as I do check entries and will delete any non-qualified comments! This giveaway will end at midnight on November 5th. I will use Random.org to choose the winner, email the winner and post the winner on my website. Giveaway is open to US addresses.

Monday Giveaways - October 11

Giveaways I've been interested in have been slim lately, but hopefully they'll pick back up as we get closer to the holiday season. Here are the giveaways I've entered this week.

$20 paypal cash from Oh So Savvy Mom

Britax Marathon 70 carseat from Pieces of Me

$50 Pottery Barn Teen giftcard from Savvy Housewife (finally something for the big boys)

Mommy wasn't speeding

This weekend was little A's weekend with his dad. Since his dad lives 45 minutes away we usually meet half-way so neither one of us has to be in the car for almost 2 hours round trip. Every time I pick little A up there is crying. He is over tired, over stimulate, pumped up on sugar, and has had no discipline or structure for 2 days. I HATE Sunday's.

When I got to our meeting point and little A and the ex showed up, little A had a sucker. Then he asked if he could have a slushy. I told him no he couldn't have both a slushy and a sucker at 6:30pm and that when we got home we were having cake for B's birthday. This is when the crying started. And the kicking of the seat. And the screaming. And then trying to climb out of the car seat.

I immediately pulled over to the side of the road when he tried to undo the car seat. I explained why that's not safe and that we would just sit there until he wanted to calm down. I also explained that it may mean we got home too late and he didn't get cake. About 5 minutes into sitting a state trooper pulled up behind us. This thoroughly freaked little A out.

He started saying "I listen. I be good. Let's go!" I had to explain that we couldn't just leave now and had to talk to the cop. Thankfully he was very nice. He asked if everything was ok and I told him the situation. Then he had a little talk with little A who looked like a deer in headlights. Little A even got a sticker. When we got home B asked how his weekend was and he told him "we talked to the cop, but mommy wasn't speeding!"

Monday Giveaways - October 4

Can you believe it's already October? It feels nice and fall-like here today. I really need to find some ways to stretch my maternity wardrobe for the cooler weather. I only have about 5 weeks left so I'm definately not buying anything else!

On to the giveaways. Here's what I've entered this week:

$25 gift card to Hobby Lobby from Casa de Mask

$25 gift card to Kroger and $25 gift card to Shell from A Frugal Friend