Halloween

We had us a great Halloween tonight! This year Hailey went as sleeping beauty, Callie went as Merida from "Brave", and Brynlee went as a fairy.

Miss Kayla was at that age where she couldn't decide if she wanted to dress up or not, last minute she decided to throw together a zombie look, I thought she did pretty good!

We had a few minutes to trick or treat to some of our neighbors before Craig and Jillian came with their girls.

Brad borrowed his parents trailer and four wheeler to give us all our own Halloween ride again this year.  A nearby church had a fun drivethru set up, so we went through that first.

 

After that we decided to stop by the nursing home because we knew they would like to see the little ones.

Then we did our regular trick or treating route.

Kayla met up with some of her friends while we were out.  This year about half her friends were dressed up and half weren't :)

October happenings

We just happened upon the funnest Saturday ever today! We thought it was going to be just a trip to the mall, but lots of fun surprises came our way. First we remembered that they were building Monster Catchers at Lowes. So we got ready to head over there. Before we left, the girls unexpectedly got some Halloween cards in the mail from Kayla's grandma Tony. They were so excited to have their own money to spend in Little Rock. So we went and built our monsters first, which turned out super cute, but were very hard to build. Kayla had to redo hers twice and it took me about 45 minutes to "help" build Callies and Haileys. I thought these projects were for kids, lol?
 Anyway, after that we headed to the mall. They were giving out free Halloween balloons at Old navy and that would have made the girls day right there, but when we went downstairs to have lunch, there was a whole "Halloween Fest" set up. Radio disney was there and there were tons of other things going on like cookie decorating, coloring, cake walk, games, halloween bags, cups, ghost glasses and more. The girls had a great time.
(These are cell phone pics so they are a little blurry).

After that Callie wanted to go to Toys R us to spend her money.  They were having a "Lego Party".  And although legos aren't typically my girls idea of fun, they got to build a creation and then were given a free lego pack to take home.    So they were excited about that.  Kayla headed to a halloween party tonight with her friends, so we will here from her soon.  All in all it was a great day.

Callie

This little girl is growing up, she lost her first tooth last night.  Brad tried to tie a string around it first to pull it, but it just wouldn't work, so he finally just pulled it out with his fingers and it came right out.  It was ready!  Callie was surprised when she saw it was already out of her mouth.

Red Ribbon Week

Well I have not been good about getting all the pics of the girls dressing up each day for red ribbon week.  But here is a cute one for today. At Callie's school it was 80's day.  And Kayla's school was cowgirl/cowboy day.  I am honestly surprised Callie let me talk her into wearing everything that I did, because for anyone that knows her she wants to be comfortable!  Maybe she went for it because it involved a tutu :)

Niece time

Over the weekend my nieces came over for a few hours and we got to have some fun together. We had homemade pizzas, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and made some cute little monsters. And we might have watched a few to many halloween cartoons :) But hey, you only live once, right?

I told this next story on facebook, but I wanted to record it here as well since I use this like a journal.
Earlier that morning we went with Billy and Debbie to have breakfast and to help them pick out granite for their new house.  When it was time to leave Callie spotted a big slab that she liked . She begged for us to buy it for her room, when we said we wouln't she broke down in tears. A nice lady finally gave her a sample of it , ha ha ha... Can you believe us mean parents wouldn't buy our 6 year old a $3,000 slab of granite?
 

Goul buses

Last weekend I took the kids to a Lowes building clinic where they built "Goul Buses". We have been to a few of these before and the girls love them, especially Callie. She was so excited to do her own this time. She followed all the directions on the sheet and made the whole thing from start to finish by herself. She even hammered in her own nails. Hailey and Kayla built one as well, but Hailey and Brynlee were more about the suckers that they were given than the actual project.

The finished project!

Later that day we got home after a long day of shopping and Kayla wanted to go hunting with her dad.  They ended up both getting one on their "doe only" gun hunt.

Homecoming week

Before I write about Homecoming week I had to post this picture. It was just to cute not too. I always get the girls ready for church first and then put a movie on for them while I hop in the shower. Most of the time I am praying that they don't undo their clothes or hair while I'm in there. This week I came out and they were just glued to the t.v. and hadn't moved a muscle :)

This week was homecoming week for Lonoke.  We've had lots of school spirit all week.  Unfortunately I only got pictures from some of it, even though Kayla dressed up every day.  Today Callie was supposed to  wear as much purple as she could to show her school spirit (each class was counting how much each student was wearing for a contest.)  Callie had on 11 items that were purple!  Even her fingernails were purple. She tried to tell me that she needed purple makeup, but I didn't go for that one :)  She also got to have "Donuts with Dads" at school today.    Pretty much her two favorite things, Donuts and Dad!

After school we went to the Homecoming parade where the girls caught lots of candy.  We also met Misti and her kids over there and she stopped at our house for a few minutes so we could give them all big hugs goodbye before they head out west for the winter.

The girls even got some balloons from the parade that we put spooky faces on.

This was the only picture I got of Kayla dressing up, she has been busy all this week!  This is from "mismatched day".  Kayla also went to a couple games this week and also helped decorate for homecoming and work the door at the homecoming dance. 

Grandpa's work picnic

We had a great time at Papa's work picnic today.  We didn't do so well at Bingo, which was surprising since we had so many people there, but the little kids won $5 a piece at bingo, so they were very happy about that.  We had some good food: nachos, hot chocolate, ice cream, barbecue.  Afterwords all the kids went out on the big blow up toys. 

Uncle Ross told Callie that next time she got to the top, she needed to jump up as high as she could.

 

Brynlee was loving uncle Ross, he would take her around wherever she wanted to go!

This game is harder than it looks.  When I was on it with them, Cory was tripping me on purpose, but I didn't know it till he told me!

Brynlee wanted to go on this slide so bad, we kept telling her no because she was to little.  Finally her uncle gave her a ride down.

Who would have ever thought we would have enough girls to fill a whole bounce house?

Callie was loving the 3d golf.

This last one I had to throw in here, because it is Brynlee's new favorite spot to climb in our house.  She thinks she's so clever when she gets up here :)

The secret to saving...

Okay, after my last post I had a lot of people ask some of the different ways that I save on things or get things for free.  I have avoided writing this post, because there are really so many different methods I use, that it is hard to point them all out, but I will name just a few. This is super long so if your not interested, skip it, it's going to be boring, lol!


First way that I save, is once a day I check a website called: hip2save.com

Really there are tons of  "deal" websites, but this is the only one I use for a couple reasons.  First to get a lot of these deals you have to be fast.  Most of the promotions are limited to so many customers.  The lady that runs this website has the deals up fast and she has a wide collection of deals, so you may not like some of her stuff, but I usually find at least 2 things a day that use.
Do yourself a favor and create yourself a "junk" email.  When you sign up for all these deals they will want an email and you really don't want to be getting all there mail.  I use my yahoo email as personal, and a hotmail email strictly for signing up for things.
 I get at least 5 different magazine subscriptions right now for free because of her website: Ladies home journal, Rachael Ray, Taste of Home, O.K. magazine, Oprah, Family Circle... to name just a few.
She posts every time a new website runs a promotion to get new customers (they offer free credits).  So say a new toy company starts a website, they offer a free $10 credit to customers that sign up.  Because I have a lot of different credits from signing up I usually bookmark the pages that I have credits at.  That way if I don't see something I want the first day I just check back later till they have something I want.  Also,  a lot of these places offer free shipping occasionally so when she posts about that, I jump on the website, use my credit and get something completely free.  I get a lot of Christmas stuff this way.
She also posts free pictures deals from Walgreens, Shutterfly, etc, I never pay for any of my prints anymore.  Also, at least 1-2 times a month she posts about card company's offering free cards.  You go online create a personal card for free and don't have to pay any shipping.  So if I know someone has a birthday coming up, I just create one in advance when she has a code. I haven't bought a card for someone in over 3 years.
I could go on and on, about the different deals I get but just do yourself a favor and check it once or twice a day and scroll through all the deals and just check them out for  yourself because they are constantly changing.  A couple nights ago, she posted that facebook was offering a promotion where you could get a $10 gift card to Sephora just for liking the company "Wrapp".  I got one for me and for my husband on his facebook.  So that was $20 in gift cards for like 2 minutes of my time.

Now onto the mobile apps that I use.  Sign up online for an account at: wrapp.com  After you sign up download the app on your phone.   This is a website that works with your facebook.  You can send gift cards to people for free for their birthday.  You have the option to add more to the gift card, or you can do like I do and just use the free gift cards.  Most of the gift cards are for $5.00, but they are to good places like Gap, Sephora, levi's, office depot etc.  I can send gift cards to Brad's account and he can send gift cards to mine.  So basically you get twice the cards.  You can only do this though if it states "one per customer" instead of "one per household".  Also, it doesn't have to be their birthday.  It will list your friends as their birthdays come up, but you can search for and send them to any of your friends any time.  Once a week they have Wrapp Wednesday where you can get a gift card for yourself by sending 3 to your friends.  There are no strings attached, just send them and the next day they credit your account with a gift card.  That's only on Wednessdays though.

The next app that I like is "Old navy Snapappy".  Download it on your phone.  The way it is supposed to work is you snap a picture of an old navy logo and it lets you spin a wheel for prizes.  I discovered that you don't have to be in store to do this.  Pull up the old navy website take a picture of the logo and you can spin up to 10 times per day for prizes.  You can get a free $5.00 to old navy with no minumum purchase every 5-6 days.  I have been doing it for the past couple months and I score at least one free item at old navy every week. They also have other coupons that are good that you can use.  The only drawback is they only last for like 7 days, so I usually just spin it and get my free item once a week and then leave it alone till the next week. 

Shopkick is another app that is supposed to be good, however I haven't quite figured out how to redeem my gift cards, but basically you get points just for walking in stores.  I don't like this app so far, but I have heard great things about it so someone else my like it better if they figure it out.

Last but not least every time you go to hobby lobby, use 40% mobile coupon, same with michaels, they always have good mobile coupons.  If your going to chuck e cheese sign up all your kids for the birthday club.  They will send them 20 free tokens on their birhday and every half birthday.  So we get free tokens 8 times a year.  If you play their online games before you go, you can print free tickets.  Every time we go we take at least 120 free tickets with us just from playing online games.  I never have to spend money at chuck e cheese we have gone completely free  this whole year.
If you want to go bowling check out "kids bowl for free" program.  Your kids can bowl free games all summer long, you only have to pay for shoe rental.

Well that's all the savings I'm listing for now, because I'm tired :) Hope that helps!   Oh and don't pay for your christmas cards!  Hip2 save will be rolling out some deals in the next few months and you should be able to get them for free, so have a picture ready to go and just personalize them when she posts them.