WIP Wednesday---I'm Getting There

Last Friday was the monthly sit n' sew at the quilt shop.  I'm loving this each month!  For one thing, I get to visit with other quilters, and for another, I actually get things done.  I sure get a lot more done when I take my sewing machine away from the house--and away from the computer and the TV.



I did complete the squares for the Emerald Aisle table runner.  Now to just get it finished!

I got in some more work on my string type quilt.  I'm starting to think this is the never ending project.  I got more squares ironed and cut down and have strips pinned for sewing.  I think I just have 9 more squares to get made.  I don't think I can make it any bigger with what fuzzy material that I have.

I have the top completed on the quilt for quilts for kids.  It's a cute pattern that I will try to make more of.  I need to complete this and get it back in the mail.

Time for my 2 week check in on my granny a day challenge.  Here we are to day 137.  I am no further this time around than what you see in the photo.

I've been working this past week to get things listed in my etsy shop and get that going again.  Also to get some things transferred over to my zibbett store.


I am linking up with the following blogs:

Adam Cohen--Like A Man Album Review and Giveaway

Singer/Songerwriter Adam Cohen's newest album is Like A Man.

Like A Man contains 10 tracks:
1.  Out of Bed
2.  Matchbox
3.  Like A Man
4.  Sweet Dominique
5.  What Other Guy
6.  Girls These Days
7.  Lie Alone
8.  Overrated
9.  Beautiful
10.  Stranger

After listening to the album a few times, I have to call this album Easy Listening.  Love songs.  Most of the lyrics are very sweet with appreciation to the one you love.

About Adam Cohen:
Singer-songwriter-guitarist Adam Cohen, the son of the legendary Leonard Cohen, released his new album Like A Man on April 3 via Decca.

Like A Man has gotten rapturous reviews in Europe and Canada. The Montreal Gazette raves “Like A Man is a real gem, an inspiring case of a late bloomer rising to what had to be a truly daunting challenge,” while the Daily Telegraph proclaims the album a “little beauty” that boasts “poetic, introspective, funny, philosophical and deeply romantic songs exploring what it means to be a man in love.”

Promotion Photo Courtesy of Shayne Averdiere


Enjoy this video of Like A Man:
 



Enter using the rafflecopter form for a chance to win a copy of the CD. Giveaway ends May 23, 2012 at 12:01 am EST. Open to residents of the United States only, sorry. Winner will have 48 hours to contact me with mailing details or another winner will be chosen.

Disclosure: Prize is being provided by Sneak Attack Media. Information is taken from their website as well as the artists website. I was not compensated for this review and any opinions are my own.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I just won 25 SuperPoints by playing the SuperLucky Button!

A 25 point bonus sign up available to the first person that signs up.  I know most do Superpoints, but if you haven't tried it, you should.  Easy and fun to earn the points.  I cash in for amazon most of the time, but there are lots of other options available as well including Wal Mart and paypal.

I just won 25 SuperPoints by playing the SuperLucky Button!

SIS-Shares in Squidoo--Homesteading

First of all I want to say to all Mom's out there:


Glitter Graphics, Mother's Day Glitter Graphics


Now on to the Shares in Squidoo blog hop :) Hosted by Ruth, please click the button and hop along with us.



This week I want to share an interest of mine, which is homesteading. There are loads of lenses on squidoo sharing journeys and methods. I am sharing a few of those today.

Living the Off-the-Grid Good Life by lensmaster RenaissanceWoman2010

Off the Grid Myth-Busting by lensmaster RenaissanceWoman2010

Homesteading by lensmaster steveffeo

The Wild Homestead Blog by lensmaster ss834

Homesteading-Living Off Grid by lensmaster WhiteOak50


For my own lens share today, I will share my Uses for Newspapers lens. It's along the lines of homesteading in ways to re-use newspapers for other purposes.

Until next week,

Two Great Purex Promotions!

This is your chance at a once in a lifetime vacation to Hawaii for free! Purex has teamed up with Outrigger Hotels and Resorts and want to send 1 lucky winner and guest to Outrigger Reef – Hotel on the Beach for 4 days and 3 nights! Let’s not forget the winner will receive a 2 year supply of Tropical Splash Purex Crystals!

Plus, there will be 500 other winners that will receive a coupon for a free bottle of Purex Crystals!

Ends June 15, 2012

Click HERE to enter and also you will want to make sure you like Outrigger Reef  on facebook too.

 

25 bottles of Purex Crystals for 25 days sweepstakes!

Purex Crystals are 87% natural crystals that go in at the start of the wash, so they spend more time with your laundry infusing them with long-lasting freshness.

Sign up for your chance to win and see why everyone is talking about Purex Crystals! We’ll choose 25 winners every day and send them a coupon for a free bottle of Purex Crystals.

Ends May 29, 2012

Click HERE to enter!

 

Frugal Friday Link Up--Living Below the Line $1.50 a Day Challenge

I want to continue this week talking about the Living Below the Line challenge I am taking part in.
I am taking part in this as a bzz campaign with bzzagent.com.

 I've ran across a lot of "nay-sayers" this past week.  Not only in comments on my own postings about what I am eating, but the postings of others as well.

We are hearing things like--3rd world countries are eating beans and rice
Most don't have access to grocery stores, let alone sales and the use of coupons
The usual people commenting on losing weight, not getting near enough to eat, nutrition isn't good.
One person really got in to it commenting that this challenge isn't teaching anyone anything (and she is taking part in the challenge)  I can't go in to details on her comments without quoting her, which I do not have permission to do.

Others are very supportive telling us we are doing a great job.  

Here are my posts on gather if you would like to read about my journey and what I have eaten.  I will come back and link up the post I do tonight once I get it done.

Live Below the Line Challenge--I'm In, Are You Up To It? (bzz campaign)


Living Below the Line $1.50 a Day Challenge Day 1

Living Below the Line $1.50 a Day Challenge Day 2 

Living Below the Line $1.50 a Day Challenge Day 3 

Living Below the Line $1.50 a Day Challenge Day 4 

Living Below the Line $1.50 a Day Challenge Day 5


I am supporting the Global Poverty Project and you can find my page here: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/marsha32
So far I've not helped by raising any money  :(   I do hope that my postings have at least opened the eyes of some.

My husband and I have had a hard time keeping food in the house....or so we thought until this challenge.  In other words, we always have food, it's just not what we are hungry for, so we moan and groan about it.
Even though my husband and daughter didn't take part in the challenge with me, they have watched me and been supportive.

It takes a lot of time and effort to take what something costs, divide it out by ounces or servings and know a cost.  Take the Kool-Aid for example.  Now, I say Kool-Aid, but I am using the store brand.  I had to add the packet cost in with the cost of the sugar.  The sugar was on the package as servings by the teaspoon.  Boy wasn't that figuring fun  LOL
On that note, I would also like to add that I was asked if I was adding in the cost of the water for my tea and Kool-Aid.  The answer is no.  I would have no way of knowing what we pay the water company for each cup of water!

I posted about the challenge here in my Frugal Friday post last week.  I talked about how milk was on sale for $2 a gallon.  What a blessing that we stocked up somewhat so I could drink more of it.   Double blessings came Friday evening when my hubby called me from the store.  He was so excited to find half gallons of milk on a manager's special for just .50 each!!  He brought home 6 to make sure I had enough for the challenge.  This extra special price did afford me the luxury of a glass of milk with supper most nights too.

Also, eggs were on sale for $1 a dozen so he bought 2 dozen to make sure I had enough.  And, they had the 1 pound packages of potato salad and macaroni salad on sale for just $1.  He went a little overboard on those buying 5 packages of each!  We have some left for our Mother's Day dinner.

Could I have accomplished this challenge without using sale prices and coupons?  Probably so, but I would have been suffering through eating Ramen noodles every day.  I barely got myself to eat one package this week, half at a time.  I would have had very little else during the day.  

I want to mention that in our house we have a lot of food that didn't cost us anything.  I could have well used any of those foods and eaten 3 or 4 times more than what I did.  These are foods such as beans, rice, pasta, canned soup, etc that over time I have gotten from government commodities.   I also had made a trip to the local food bank recently and we still had some of that food left. (yeah, we had no meat whatsoever so I went to the food bank---of course the income tax refund came in the very next day.....and we did a shopping whopping stock up trip to Aldi)   I felt a little on the bad side using sale prices and coupons and didn't want to try to throw in things that I got free on top of those.   I shouldn't feel bad though!  If it weren't for sales and coupons we wouldn't eat near as much or as well as we do.

On that note, I would like to mention just yesterday, what a blessing of food we had!!  In the mail I rec'd 2 free coupons for any Gorton's seafood items.  I won those in a blog giveaway.  (I used one this morning for a 30 count bag of crunchy fish fillets that cost $10.97!) Later in the day the Fed Ex truck stopped with a package for me.  Inside I found a box of Honey Bunches of Oats cereal from PurexInsiders.  Along with that came 5 free coupons for more boxes.  I will be using one of those for us and giving the other 4 away here on my blog.
I was accepted at crowdtap for the McCormick Grill Mates party and will be receiving a box of marinades, bbq sauce etc.  I am signed up with bzzagent for the campaign on pork and will be receiving coupons to buy pork.  I just signed up for another bzzagent campaign for Private Selections.  With it we will get free coupons to get a bag of chips, a box of Angus Burgers, a pie, and ice cream.  (there's one whole meal totally taken care of!)    Am I counting my blessings?  YES!!

I think I have rambled enough here to call it a book, so will close for now.   I hope I have enlightened some on what it's like to try to eat on so little....as well as the blessings.   Please link up anything frugal you have to share in the linky this week.  I've not had much participation with the linky but would love to see it start to grow.  Inspire us all to live the simple and frugal life.

Disclosure:  I received a product sample, coupon, collateral or other special premium from BzzAgent. 

Squidoo Hopping---Still Chugging Along

I'm still chugging along in my updating of lenses.  I didn't get but maybe 1 or 2 transferred from one notebook to the other, so still about 60 that I've not updated yet at all in my adventure.

Lensmaster Ruthi had me put an attribute on my toothbrush rug lens stating that the photos in the lens were my own.  That started me on a trek of going through all of my lenses with my own photos to put that blurb in.  So far I've only gotten through the lenses that I had already transferred to my alphabetical lens.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time working on my charity donations lens.  I watch the HQ posts when new charities are listed.  I had only gotten 30 of the charities in to the lens when they took the module away.
As I am going through lenses, I am adding in manually ones that I didn't get to the first time.  I doubt I ever get all of the charity choices in to the lens, but at least it's a good point to start for those wanting to know what each charity does.

On the charities, those are also being added to lenses that I hadn't gotten to yet as I do my updating.  I try to choose a charity that has something to do with the lens if I can.  Like Guitars for Vets on my music lenses, and something like Room to Read or First Book on the homeschool lenses.  If nothing really goes with it then I choose something close to my heart like the Humane Society, ASPCA, or  March of Dimes.

I'm still updating daily to the Helen Steiner Rice lens.   I would love to see it make Tier 1 and stay there.  Updating I know helps, but also need to get the word out about it more as well.

That is one thing that I don't do often enough-----get the word out about my lenses.  I'm in 4 squidoo groups and that is the point of the groups---to share---yet I rarely do.

I do hope to see lots of you link up this week.  I tend to get lost in squidoo once I get started with it.  I hope this is a good thing and will "pay off" for me.  I really must find a way to make a good income.

Thanks for reading!  Link up below.  


 

WIP Wednesday--What Can I Say?

What can I say?  Just that as usual I am trying to do way too many projects all at once, and not really completing any of them!  LOL

I have no progress on my string type quilt.
I have very little progress on the Emerald Aisle table runner---only got a few more pieces cut out.

I had a request for me to make a plastic bag holder and I got stuck making more.  You all know by now how I am on new projects  :)

Yesterday was monthly sewing club day at church.  I finished up a quilt top that I had started before working on that scrappy quilt.

My quilt for kids kit came in the mail Monday, so once I was done with the quilt top above I got out the materials and got a start on making it.

 This Friday is sit n' sew at the quilt shop from 6-10 pm.  I haven't decided yet which projects I am going to take to work on!  One thing is for sure though.  I will have progress made on whatever I choose to take.  It's bad that most of my sewing time ends up away from home....away from the tv and this computer.



That is my report for this week.  I am linking up with the following blogs:
 

Guest Post by Author Angela Yuriko Smith--End of Mae Blog Tour Including Giveaway!

Welcome to Mae Awareness Month.  Please click the banner to see the activities for the whole month of May!

Today's post is a guest post by author of the End of Mae, Angela Yuriko Smith.  Be sure to check out the giveaway at the end!

"Why Mae?

The years before I wrote End of Mae I spent writing non fiction for news publications.  I didn't have much interest in fiction, not because I disliked it, but because it simply didn't interest me.  I was fictionally agnostic.

That changed for me one day at a writer's conference in Albuquerque, NM.  I was asked out of the blue did I "do fiction or non".  I replied that I suppose I did non fiction.  The questioner, a skinny man with an Abe Lincolnesque beard and thick, glued together glasses replied with a snort, "Probably because you have no imagination."

Yes, my dander was raised and I'm ashamed to say that I got involved in a loud discussion that had to be shushed by the administration.  Pulse racing, I vowed to show that opinionated man that writers were writers and no genre was better than another.  I started End of Mae that night. 

In my mind I have won that long ago discussion and proved that non fiction writers do have imagination.  End of Mae has been well received and gotten nearly all 4 star reviews or higher.  In a way tho, he has also won.  In my quest to "do fiction" I've fallen in love with it and have been converted.  If I were asked today if I "do fiction or non" I would have to answer "Both" with a lecture on genre equality."

For a limited time, by the graciousness of Angela, download your free e-book of End of Mae!

End of Mae: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/63958
Promotional price: $0.00
Coupon Code: TU95T
Expires: May 31, 2012

 

SIS--Sharing In Squidoo--This Week I Feature VAllain

This week for sharing in squidoo, I would like to feature a squidoo lensmaster.  I plan to alternate between a lensmaster and a subject.

I want to highlight lensmaster VAllain.    Virginia has become one of my mentors at squidoo.  She has over 500 lenses!  I can not imagine!

Many of her lenses are plain helpful to other lensmasters like these:
Easy Updates for Squidoo Lenses
What I Learned about Squidoo This Week
Newbie Lens-Making Mistakes on Squidoo

With over 500 lenses, she has plenty of lenses of interest for everyone!  Here are just a few more that I would like to share today:
Crafts from Rags or Yarn
Vintage Household Hints
Making Gift Basket--Ideas and Supplies
Too Much Stuff, Too Much Clutter?


I am still busy updating away---no easy task for sure.  This week I am going to share my top ranked lens.  I am hoping to at least see it in tier 1 for a little bit as I've never had one there yet.
Helen Steiner Rice


Until next week I want to thank lensmaster Ruthi for putting together this blog hop.  I look forward to seeing who or what other lensmasters highlight each week.  Click the button at the top of my post for all the information and to hop along.