SwagBucks Birthday!
So I have pretty much wasted the day away looking for swagcodes. But I am pretty excited to be getting my first amazon gift cards soon. So quick little plug if you don't use swag bucks and want to sign up under us. All you do is search though it rather than google. Every once in a while I will still use google. But it does a good job and I get points to get free stuff. As you can see I only have two referrals. You don't have to get friends to sign up to do this site and get stuff like a lot of "free stuff sites." My referral link is http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/TsuaSai
Currently this month we will be get $43 bucks in amazon gift cards from me doing this site and another which is sunnysidecash which I don't recommend. I will have $15 bucks already saved for next month on swag bucks. Since amazon gift cards stack you could save them for pretty much anything you want. I have a friend saving all her to buy Christmas gifts with.
A Marriage of Blogs
Around the time Margaret was born, Liz and I decided to do all our blogging in one place. At the time I thought, Oh, one day I'll merge all the content from my original blog, forkmantis.com, into tsuasai.com. Well, I've finally done it. As of this moment, we have probably 90% of everything Liz and I ever produced on the web housed in this one site. Not counting this post, there are 1197 posts dating back to 2002, which is before we were even dating.
Homemade
So in one of my ways in trying to save money for our family I have started trying to do lots of new things. One of which being making my own soap. So far things have gone really good. I have made our dish washing soap and laundry soap. We are seriously talking about pennies per load. Both are extremely easy to make and have already saved us probably around $20-$30 a month. But I was ready to try something a little harder. They both work really good too I even wash cloth diapers with the stuff and it gets everything out.
For around the last four months we have switch from using traditional bottled shampoo to a shampoo bar. This saves on the amount of plastic we use and money of course. The switch was very easy for us we didn't have much chemical build up or maybe our hair just handled the change good, I am not really sure. I liked the idea I knowing exactly what I am putting in my hair and how it made my hair feel. However like all things organic or "natural" it cost around $6 to $8 dollars a bar. A bar will last anywhere from three months on depending on how hard the bar is and if you take good care of it. The only real care involved is just making sure you let it dry out real nice between uses. So after talking to some neighbors we tried our hand at making our own. I am to the curing process right now and have at least six more weeks to go before I get to try it out. I might even let it go a little longer so it will get extra hard. I have never had a really hard bar but from what I have read the harder the better. So to say the least I am really excited to see how this soap turns out. I have really high hopes there are so many options to soap making that if things go well I plan to make much more.
So for now the list just grows with things are a making either to save a little money or for fun.
Wanna Win?
If you visit the button on the side of my site you can enter to win a treasure chest full of Pirate's Booty natural snacks from @magicdandelions http://tinyurl.com/yfhg23x Ends 1/22 and $25 GC to EcoStore USA (all-natural household & bath/body products) http://tinyurl.com/yeyosgq Ends 1/25. @magicdandelions. So head on over and check it out!
Ordered Placed!
Yesterday I placed my order for some Vibram Five Fingers. I saw these shoes about a month ago and as soon as I started reading about them I was in love. I have even been having running dreams. Which isn't like me at all. In the past running for me has just been pain my ankels and knees always hurt. So excited to see what these will do for me. I am also planning on making these my main shoes unless it just pouring outside in which cause i'll just switch to crocs or something that is as close to barefood as I can get.
Old Guy Coolness
Thursday night Liz and I went to dinner at The Wingstop. Charla had offered to babysit Margaret for us. A few minutes after we sat down, a young family with a 9-12 month old girl sat next to us, and an older guy (late fifties, early sixties) sat across from us and sipped on a Shiner Bock. Liz and I talked for awhile, reveling in our temporary childlessness, waiting on our food. The young family and the old guy were waiting too. Out of the blue, the old guy reaches in an inner pocket of his jacket and produces a long yellow balloon. As quickly as he produces it, he inflates it and begins folding and twisting. Moments later, he's fashioned it into a dog. The young family, and Liz and I are all checking this out without trying to be too overt about it. As soon as he's finished making the dog, he stands up, walks across the aisle, and hands it to the little girl, who's grinning from ear to ear. He doesn't make a big deal of it. The family thanks him, and he nods and goes back to his table and sits down. Less than a minute later, they call his name, and he grabs a t go order of food and is gone. That's one of the coolest things I've seen this week. I can't wait to be an old guy so I can do stuff like that too. I think if I did it at my current age, it would come across in a very creepy pedophilic way.
Margaret’s College Fund
If you plan on doing any of your shopping this year at amazon.com
Mama
Margaret said mama today. And not just with her new sounds she is making. But she stuck her arms out and said "mama." Was too sweet.
New Syllables
Margaret has been saying "Bah bah bah" for a while now. Today we tried to get her to say something else. We got a few new things out of her today, including "Mmmmmmm", "mmmmah bah" and even one or two "mah mahs".