Finances on Friday

Blueberry muffins made with low priced Aldi blueberries.

actually baked these last week but I never got around to posting then 

my neighborhood has an addition-wide yard sale every spring.  My children have been cleaning out their homes and bringing their cast-offs here to get ready for it.  I don't need most of their junk but I was interested in this red plastic crate that one of them brought over. 

it fits perfectly on a shelf in our fridge and is so useful to hold all those extra condiments that tend to get lost in the very back.

it can be slide in and out, almost like a drawer. 

Our recent electric bill was the smallest ever in this house.  I think the switch from an electric range to a gas range has a lot to do with it. But I am not sure why it just showed up now, as we got the new range in December.  

Cashed out Swagbucks for $25 in Paypal and almost have enough to do it again.  

JJ's birthday quilt was sewn up completely with fabric, thread and batting from my sewing stash.  

not much shopping to blog about because all our recent groceries have come from Aldi but I do have a stack of coupons ready for Walmart and CVS that I hope will net some bargains.  You never know though....

Cut my husbands hair- I should say buzzed his hair. It is not my favorite thing to do but it is thrifty and quick and it makes him happy. 

Baked up a batch of banana nut muffins with some very ripe bananas and also a pan of cinnamon rolls. Both are in the freezer for Easter morning breakfast.  

Extra cooking this week as I get ready for Easter.- I made 4 pie shells and they are waiting in the freezer.  I also made a tray full of twice baked potatoes that are waiting in the fridge to be reheated.  

continued to bake all our bread in 2014.

Found these 2 Ethan Allen vintage nutmeg maple pieces at my favorite thrift store. The end table was $30 and the bigger piece was $45. I am thrilled with both of them and so is my husband. I will not be refinishing them and plan to keep them.
 My parents have Ethan Allen furniture pieces similar to these and so did my some of my aunts and uncles.  They just look and feel like home to me.

inside the drawers are the Ethan Allen stamp

We will be having our family egg hunting and coloring and a big meal to celebrate Easter on Saturday.

There will be at least 16 and possibly 19 here. 

To add extra seating for dining, I used a folding table that is same size as our dining table and put them end to end. Counting high chairs and the 2 chairs in the sewing room I have not moved yet, there is seating for 16 now.

The tables needed covered and I thought about buying fabric or vinyl table cloths but went with a thriftier and easier option. In that garage sale pile, I pulled out a full size flat sheet, off white with an tan stripe. It was the perfect size to cover both tables after I cut it lengthwise down the middle and machine hemmed those 2 raw edges. I think it was probably quicker to do that little bit of sewing than it was to go shopping. 

The brown doilies were all crocheted by my mom.

The white bunnies are thrift store treasures and the brown ones were made by a friend many years ago.

just using what I had makes for a natural neutral table and I am happy with it.

I hope you all are having a pleasant and thrifty week too.  

Linking up with Rebecca at Renaissance 

another I Spy quilt

This I Spy quilt is for grandson JJ who just turned 1.  I finished it about 2 weeks ago but am a bit behind with my blogging.  Anyone notice?  it seems a lot of my favorite blogs are not posting too often -I think everyone is busy.  

so, here it is.   I think this is my 4th quilt finish for 2014.

 I tried to use prints that had some meaning to JJ and his family.  The sewing mouse on the spool is because I sew.  The tractors for his tractor loving cousins.

 JJ's family visits the beach most every summer so the little beach boy and seashells really suit them.

the funny chicken fabric came from my Aunt Evelyn's scrap box.  

 these last 3 are all turned wrong but I am on the big PC instead of my Ipad and can't get them to turn.  

a golfer because his daddy is a golf coach
a dinosaur because of his 1st party's theme

cowboys and a coyote because we live in Oklahoma

The church sort of resembles our church

JJ had a very fun dinosaur 1st birthday party and enjoyed his cake about as much as anyone could.  

He ate a little of the cake but it was mostly a wonderful plaything. 

some grow, some don't

another picture of another batch of celery and romaine ends- trying to be regrown in saucers of water

there were all started within a few days of each other.  

One Romaine took off growing and looks great,  it has been planted outdoors and continues to grow. 

But the other 4 didn't grow a bit

the celery is trying to grow in the center- but I have no guess on whether or not it will

in the background,  I was making  a big salad for Saturday supper.   

Yes, I saved those romaine ends too

Thrift store dining room table found ........

Our dining room has the strangest shape but it still needs to seat a big group.

See how the window wall is on an angle and the back wall closes off the space with a curve, I would change both of those if I could. 

I got this old heavy handmade trestle table at my favorite thrift store this morning.

Before I found this one, i thought I wanted a longer table than this 6 footer. 

But once I got it home and set up, I could see our 9 dining chairs fit around it just right. A longer table would just take up more room than we really have to spare anyway. 

The price of this one was really good too - $70

I would prefer a different table cloth but none of mine were long enough so I will be on the lookout for a pretty floral length of fabric to sew one up. 

I am really thankful for good thrift stores! 

Swagbucks - how I do them

I have been a member of Swagbucks for years and I used to do just a few searches and their dailies and that was it. But Swagbucks has added so many ways to earn, it looks complicated but is usually pretty easy.

First let me say, this probably looks like lunacy to people who have never done online earning programs. If you think this is crazy,   fine,    just come back later when I blog about something else. 

But I like doing Swagbucks and I like what I earn from them.   Some of you sweet readers have asked for advice on them.  

So here goes! 

Swagbucks can be earned on a PC or iPad or tablet or smart phone or Kindle Fire. It is ok with Swagbucks to use multiple devices simultaneously.  I mostly use a laptop and Kindle Fire.

This is how I start my day. In the kitchen, while I fix my husbands lunch, unload yesterday's clean dishes, and get ready for the day - I start Swagbucks.  See the 2 devices on the right? 

There are 2 apps for the Kindle Fire that pretty much run un-attended. They do take a couple hours to do them all the way but the SwagBucksTV apps will earn 50 and the EntertaiNow will do 30 every day. 

On the laptop, I start out by going to Swagbucks and looking at the homepage. Sometimes there are new quick offers there.  If nothing looks quick and easy, I click at the top on Discover and then Encrave on the drop down menu. 

Encraves changes a little every so often. I like to do the auto run ones, they have an arrow in a circle in each one. I click on an auto run square and wait for the screen to come up. Then on the new screen, in the top left, click on the X until to switches to a green check and discovery mode. Now, you can go about your other business but keep an eye on the screen. When the cycle finishes, a pop up box in the right corner will announce your earnings. Now, click on another video, be sure to check the discovery mode and just do as many as you want to. 

They may change around during the day and go away if you play a lot of them. 

Back to the homepage, 

In the top left you will see a box with your daily goal. If you make goal for a week straight or the entire month, you will earn a bonus that will be paid on the 5th day of the next month. 

They will also give you a second bonus after you complete the first and second goals. 

The goal sizes depend on your past scores. Mine are about 100 for the first and 250 for the second. I try to make both goals everyday but if I am really busy or won't be home much, I just concentrate on getting the first one. 

Under the goals are the To Do List. 

Toolbar - if you put this on your PC, you will get 1 SB for logging on everyday - I don't use the toolbar 

Poll- I do this everyday, 

NOSO - I do this everyday 

Searches - search wins are random and you can search anytime you want but the winnings seem to spaced out though the day. I hope to get 3 wins a day but have gotten more than. Searches may award 6 up to 50, but 7 or 10 or 14 is most common. 

Sign ups - there are a thousand or so of these but I don't do many of them. 

 Contests - I will enter these when SBs are rewarded 

Coupons - I do look at their coupons and use ones that help us. Each one you use at a store will earn 10 SBs sometime in the future. 

Shop and Earn - when you make purchases at merchants through Swagbucks, you will earn so much per dollar spent. It takes about 6 weeks or more to get credit but it can be really. I have used it a few times when I bought things at our local Walmart and Bestbuy. I shopped online but then picked up the items at local stores and earned SBs for doing so. 

Swagbucks has dozens of stores in their network. 

There are many other ways to earn but I mainly play videos on the Kindle Fire apps and Encrave videos. 

I look on the Swagbucks Facebook  page and see want others are talking about. I've got good hints about easy opportunities and snags here. 

Special days- Swagbucks has special days when they offer lots of codes and contests and giveaways. I do pay attention to these and check often on Facebook on those days, especially for codes. 

Codes - short phrases with time limits offered randomly and on special days.  At the top right on a Swagbucks page is a circle that kind of looks like a wheel. When you click on it, a drop down box appears and that is where the codes are entered. When I find a code, I cut and paste it as spelling counts and they be odd. 

iPad - I do have a swagbucks app there and use  it mainly for special offers. They offer a lot of game apps but once I get credit for them, I usually delete them afterward. 

Surveys- you can earn a lot of SBs at once doing surveys and I have friends that do well with them but I rarely do them unless Swagbucks send me an email asking me to take one and I have time to sit- surveys can take 5 minutes to an hour I think. 

Smart phones-  I've read that SBTV can be watched on a smart phone but I've never done it. 

Swagbucks TV on about any device- you can earn a lot from and their are lots of video catagories,  I don't do it much because it requires to viewer to click after each video to advance to the next one.

there are even more ways than to this to earn but what I listed are the ways to score.  But if you want to really put a lot of time into it,  you can find more.  

Yesterday was a special day at Swagbucks with everyone divided into 4 teams and the higher your team scored , the bigger the bonus.  I earned about 300 SBs and contributed 172 points to my team. If you look just under that, you can see the high point earners on my team, they REALLy earned a lot. 

So with Swagbucks, if you have time and multiple devices, you can earn about as much as you want to Swagbucks. 

If you have read this far and want to try earning with Swagbucks,  I hope you will sign up with my referral link

swagbucks.com/refer/stwoliver3

referrals are another way to earn Swagbucks. 

Comment if you have any questions or if you do Swagbucks and have any advice or anything to add. 

this link will take you to a site if you have a Kindle Fire and want to try the EntertaiNow app.