Weird Wednesday: Monster?

I almost forgot about Weird Wednesday! Here is a figure from a local artist. I think it may be a monster? I saw this in a tattoo shop, Enigma Tattoo Studios. I am not sure who made it, but it is made out of plastic ware.

If you have a picture you would like me to share for Weird Wednesday send me an email.

Customized Stamp $.99!

UPDATE: Staples is not honoring the free shipping. I received an email stating that I had to call them and pay shipping or my order would be cancelled.
I just had to share this with you guys. I love all things involving office supplies! Right now over at Staples you can get a customer self inking stamp for only $.99. You can even get FREE shipping if you upload your own image. My total came to $1.04 including tax. We just moved into our first home in August 2012, so I got an address stamp. The customization options are endless. A few other uses are "this book belongs to...", you could put your child's teachers name, "Good Job!" you can use it for presents by doing a "TO:...... FROM:..." kind of think and if you have not found a permanent settlement just yet you could always just put your names on it and hand write your address.

You can also shop through Ebates for 4% cash back, ShopatHome for 3% cash back or Upromise for 5% cash back!

Be sure to come back here and let me know what design you put on your stamp. Here is what I put, of course it has my actual address though.

Living Room Design Ideas

The living room before we moved in. I would never own a leather  sofa.

Let me start by saying I hate the current color of my walls. The picture above is from before we moved in. The curtains and the light fixture are the only thing still the same. This yellow is so ugly and not in the best condition. Before we moved in I planned to have gray walls and a red couch. Easy choice. We have had red couches for the last 4 years or so and I love gray! I had chosen a nice medium gray. Exactly what I wanted. I couldn't wait to have the keys so I could finally have my gray walls and red sofa. Just after moving in I got started on painting the living room. By "started" I mean, I finished ONE wall.  Even though only one wall is finished, I love the way it looks. I planed on painting the other walls, but then I guess I got lazy and unmotivated. You would think these hideous yellow walls and the fact that squares have been painted around all the outlets and switches would be enough, right? Nope. :( It is now 5 months later and I still have 1 gray wall and 3 yellow walls with gray squares around the outlets. Really? Who does this!?! Who does this for 5 months?

But I mean, that's all fine because I can just paint the walls gray whenever I feel like it and just be embarrassed until then. I had people over for Thanksgiving, even with the mismatched walls and the ugly broken sofa. We had been looking for another red sofa to replace the old one almost, since the day we moved in. I also considered choosing a gray or black sofa but really, I wanted red. I mean I HAD to have red; I had already painted that one wall gray. I guess black would have worked too.  

I bought a gray sofa. Not just any gray, the exact color gray of the walls wall. About 1 month ago I became impatient. I was tired of sitting on our old red sofa that was falling apart and stained from our 2 year old. I think the sofa was more embarrassing than the walls. It was my birthday and I could not think of anything else I wanted or had been wanting more (except for maybe tattoos, but that is more of a process). We visited a new discount furniture store in our area and narrowed it down to two couches. A RED one and a gray one. The red one was about $100 less and much smaller. We chose the gray one. Why did we choose the gray one. :(

Now, I am left with this dilemma and BB Muffins is no help. He could care less what the walls or sofa look like. I don't think I can deal with all that gray. I don't like tans, definitely not this or any yellow, not blue (our kitchen and 1 of the bedrooms are shades of blue already and I have this thing where I don't any room in the house to have the same color, is that just me?)not neon green (our laundry room (below) is now painted neon green and that experience was awful) not white (how boring), and nothing too dark (I like to changes things up and don't want to deal with trying to cover something dark). In case you haven't been keeping track that pretty much covers all of the colors except reds, purples (which I think is the only color BB Muffins would oppose), and orange. 

I love the green for the laundry room, but not for the living room. I was thinking a light mint green might look nice or bright red. I don't think I could handle bright red for the whole living room. Maybe I should just do a red accent wall just behind the couch and then do gray for the other 3 walls. I love the modern look but modern is hard to pull off with a 2 year old. There are always toys everywhere. I have recently created a Pinterest board for my living room inspiration. I have only found 2 things I sort of like so far. If you have any ideas leave a comment with your Pinterest name and I can invite you to pin to the board or you can just leave a link below with your image.

I also want to give a special shout out to my Realtor +Judith Loving. She has been so amazing during this process. I messaged her to get her to find the pictures from before we moved in and within a few minutes she had emailed them to me. Not only that but she offered to have a designer come out and give me some tips/ideas. I cannot wait! :) I will be sure to post all the details of that visit; we haven't set a day yet. I will also be sharing more about our house buying story in another post.

tl:dr
We bought a house, painted one wall, then bought a couch the same color as the wall. Now, I need to finish decorating this room. I started a Pinterest Board for living room design ideas. And last but not least my Realtor +Judith Loving is the BEST!

Mailbox Monday!

Just as I promised, I kept better track of my mailbox freebies this week. One of the most AWESOME things I received for free was the Samsung Note 2 case and TecTiles for my husbands phone. The retail price on the Samsung case is $39.99 and the TecTiles are $14.99. This offer was available for a short time for customers who had purchased a Galaxy Note 2 or Galaxy S3.
What the heck are TecTiles? They are actually pretty cool. TecTiles are small programmable square stickers. You can program them to change all sorts of settings on your phone or start applications and alarms. We plan to put one in the car. When we turn on NFC and touch our phone to the square it will automatically turn on Bluetooth, open the music player and start playing music! How sweet is that?

I also received a Kroger coupon book with 4 coupons, a sheet of Disney stickers, a CPU magazine and a BOGO John Frieda coupon.

Wanna see what I got in my mailbox last week?

Share your mailbox goods in the linky below! I would love to hear about the awesome things you received.
I will monitor the linky to keep out anything that does not involve mailbox freebies. I would LOVE it if you would subscribe or like or tweet or any of those fun things as well. If this goes well, I hope to make this a weekly feature. :)

Sun Sunday 2

I had not planned on Sun Sunday being a normal thing and then last Sunday's post was the 2nd most popular post on the blog. Here is an image of the Sun going through its Solar Max cycle. That cycle will peak sometime this year. Basically this means the Suns solar activity will reach its peak this year. How cool!

Check out the NASA details here.

How to Track your Giveaways

For many bloggers, hosting a giveaway can help get traffic to your blog. Once things get going you may find yourself posting giveaways quite frequently. As a part of my New Year resolution I am going to be more organized so, I created a simple form to help me keep track of my giveaways and the winners. There are sections to track the company I am working with, the prize and the winner information. I thought I would share it here just in case someone else was looking for a way to track giveaways on their blog.

If you are like me and like most bloggers just starting out you are probably watching your Alex Page Rank and hopping for something awesome to happen. No? Well, I can't possibly remember all of the numbers I see when I check the page. I am not sure a paid subscription is what I need this early in the blogging stage. So, I made myself a simple spreadsheet to keep up with my numbers once a month or so. It also automatically calculates the difference in the new number and the previous number for the overall rank and the US ranking. Here is the page rank tracker just in case you might want to give it a try.

I also made a tracker for all of my affiliate links. Each sheet is a different category. Just click the link to be taken to Google Docs where you can access the spreadsheet. They certainly are not the prettiest but they are functional. :)  Feel free to share any blogging tips you may have. Trying to come up with a spreadsheet to help you along the way? Just let me know, I would be glad to help! What do you use to manage your blog?

Be sure to check out my current giveaways.

Need help with your blog or need a blog button? I would be glad to help! Just leave me a comment or send me an email. :)

Quick Giveaway: $20 to Tinyprints.com

UPDATE: Claimed!
The first person to send me an email at realweirdblog@gmail.com will receive a $20 promo code to tinyprints.com. There is no minimum purchase required to use this code. To win you must be following the blog in some sort of way (your choice). Just send me an email including your following method. This promo code does expire on 1-24 so be quick! I will update the post once it has been claimed. Have fun!

PS: If you weren't the first to email me and you are new to tinyprints.com you can still save $10 off a $49 order or $20 off a $99 order and get free shipping with the code FRIEND0111.

Chuck E. Cheese's Double Tickets

We are planning on taking our daughter to Chuck E. Cheese's on her birthday in March. This will be her first time! Of course when I decided that this was what we were going to do I imediately signed up for their email list. Signing up for a company email list is the best way to ensure that you are in the know. They have sent me some pretty good coupons so far and I keep an eye on the ones that are often in my paper. Tonight they sent me an email with offer to earn double tickets just for playing their online games! I went right over to check it out and I have to say the games were pretty easy but fun. They are probably not made for adults. lol The easiest one is the Chuck E. Rocks game I got 99% both times I played which awarded me 50 tickets! As long as I bring in the certificate before March 31st I can redeem it for 100 tickets!!! There are 3 other games to play a Skee-ball, Ticket Blaster, and Chuck E. Blocks.

I had 2 of my childhood birthdays there, the first when I was 10 and the second when I was 16! I had a blast both times and I hope Zoey enjoys it too! Did you ever celebrate at Chuck E. Cheese's?

$5 Sweet Frog Gift Card Giveaway

I decided to host Giveaway #2! I hope you all enjoy this one. Included will be a $5 Sweet Frog Gift Card, the 2 coupons above (thanks to BzzAgent!) and a random selection of coupons. The winner will actually get to send me an email telling me what their favorite coupons are and I will see what I can put together. The more specific the better!

Be sure to check out my Coupon Tips section and to enter my other giveaways.

Below is the entry form. This should make it much easier to enter. Please let me know if you have any issues with the form. There is not a certain required entry. You can choose any entry option from the list and may complete all of the entry options if you wish. Entries will be verified before winner is chosen.

Entry-Form

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My Bargains @ CVS! 1-13

Sorry, I didn't take a picture of this one, but I thought I would share my shopping trip for CVS the week of 1/13 to 1/19. Literally just as I had pulled into the parking spot I received an email from CVS letting me know I had gained $5 in ECB's for purchasing $50 worth of Beauty products! Talk about perfect timing. I did use the $5 ECB's today but I don't like to include ECB's in my total because I consider them "cash". By that I mean that when I plan my shopping trips I subtract my ECB's from what I pay at that time. When I use the ECB's later it is like "cash" because I already calculated the discount when I chose to buy the item that gave me the ECB's. Make sense? Anyway, here is what I did.

I bought:
2 -12 packs of Scott's 1000 Toilet Tissue
2 -Packs of Huggies 1 Snug and Dry and 1 Little Movers
Coupons I used:
-$1 off Scott 1000 Tissue, exp. 2/23/13 (SS 01/13/13 R)
-$1.50/1 Huggies Diapers, exp. 2/9/13 (SS 01/13/13 R)
-$2/1 Huggies Little Movers or Little Snuggies Diapers, exp. 2/9/13 (SS 01/13/13 R)
-I will also get back $5 in my Endorse account

OOP was $34.96 I got a $10 CVS cash card and $5 back into my Endorse account.
Total: $19.96

From the magic coupon machine (as Collen from Hip2Save says) I got a coupon for $2/2 Carefree or Stayfree items and $2.50 off any Hair Color purchase. Anyone have any good ideas for the hair color coupon?

My Bargains @ Target

I went to Target looking for the BIG drop in toy clearance. Should be going to 70% off any day now. I have my eye on a few Thomas the Train toys. It hasn't happened yet :( but here are some of the great bargains I found.

   $7.72 =$1.93*4 Jimmy Dean Delights
 -$8.00 =4*$2/1 Jimmy Dean Delights Product, exp. 2/17/13 (RP 01/06/13)
= -$.28 -Somehow Target allowed the overage this time.

   $5.49 1 Starbucks Doubleshot
- $3.00 into my Endorse account
=$2.49

$2.68 Pack of toddler socks with the rubber spots on the bottom.

Total was just $4.89 which is less than the cost of the Starbucks drinks!!

Did you find any awesome savings this week? I would love to hear about the deals you found at Target or anywhere else.

UPDATE:
I went back today 1-17, and the toy clearance had dropped to 70%! Thanks to Totally Target for the heads up this morning. I was able to score about $150 worth of stuff for about $38! Also, not in the picture I was able to find 3 different pairs of night pants for about $3 each. :)

Weird Wednesday: Caterpillar

All over the blogging world today is wordless Wednesday. I thought I would change it up a bit and do a Weird Wednesday post. I searched through some of the pictures I have taken and found this little guy. I found him in our yard a few months ago. He is the most interesting little caterpillar I have ever seen. Normally we just little black ones with white stripes. Maybe next week I can find something a little weirder.

Check out the New Tab!

Look there is a new "Everything Else" tab at the top of this site. This is the place that I will post random stuff that I feel like sharing but I don't quite feel like it should be included in the main blog. So far you can find links to my nail art, some coupon/saving stuff, and a list of places to enter giveaways or list blog giveaways. Be sure to check this out frequently as all of these items will constantly be updated. If there is anything you would like to see here just let me know.

Mailbox Monday

So, how about a Mailbox Monday? I got this box of cereal in the mail today from BzzAgent (more on them later). I also got a $15 Starbucks gift card in the mail from Huggies Enjoy the Ride program. That is all I can recall for this week, but I will keep better track for next week's Mailbox Monday! Did you get anything awesome in the mail?

Edit: I also received a special Target coupon book. I am still trying to determine how/why I got it. I think it is either because we moved into a house or because we now have Target grocery stores. Both of these things happened about the same time so I am not sure.

Have I Mentioned I like to Coupon?

As a part of my resolution to organize Because my drawer was too fucking full to put anything else in it, I decided it was time to clean out some of the coupons! There they are about 9 months worth of coupons (do you see my AWESOME label maker in the background :)). I usually keep the whole years worth of coupons but thanks to True Couponing I will no longer be doing that. If you follow that link you can see a current list of the expired coupons. They update and re-post the list quite frequently. I think I will check back every 4 months or so to keep the coupon drawer light and clean. I SO wish I would have found this sooner.

Just a bit of coupon insert saving back story... I have been couponing for about 2 years now and have tried many different ways of doing it. I have tried the binder method and the don't cut anything until you need it method. In the end I found that a combination of the 2 worked best for me.

Each week when the paper arrives I will go through it and find the coupons I know I am likely to use and cut them out. I store those in a pencil type zipper bag in my purse. One side has the grocery type coupons and the other side has anything else that is not food. Since I don't cut out that many I keep them with me always (we are pretty sporadic when it comes to grocery shopping). Whatever I do not cut out I keep stored, by month, in my file drawer. Whenever I see a good deal online I can go right to the drawer, pull the insert and cut any extra coupons I need.

Make sure to check out all of my other coupon tips and leave a comment below with another coupon tips you have.

Sun Sunday?

In trying to get on some sort of blogging schedule I have playing with the idea of different themed days. My husband, we shall call him BB muffins, and I were thinking about different options. We thought of Zombie Zaturday and You're Doing it Wrong Wednesday and Tubesday (to give him the opportunity to join in all of the fun with YouTube videos). Sorry to hurt your feelings but none of these are happening. But how about Sun Sunday where I post an awesome picture of the sun? What do you think? Have a better idea for a themed weekly post? Share it in the comments!

Lady Bug Nail Art

I painted these cute lady bugs for my daughter this morning. I had barely just finished and the pointer got smudged. Note to self: paint 2 year old's nails when she is sleeping. The design is pretty easy to do. Paint a base coat (red). Draw a T, with the top of the T being thicker (black). Add black dots on both sides. Add 2 white dots for the eyes and then 2 black dots on top of that.

Be sure to check out all of the other nail designs we have done.

You're Not Going Anywhere Near my Face with That!

 So I am not quite sure where I want to go with this blog just yet. I don't know if I want to be a mom blogger who says words like fuck and somehow expects companies to throw free shit at me so I can give a super awesome review of it or if I want to post all of the really weird things that are real or if I want to pretend I am an awesome writer/crafter/organizer/couponer or whatever else so that people will flock to my blog in awe. In the meantime you(if there is anyone actually reading this regularly, ha) will get a random mix of everything I feel like sharing.

Today that involves these weird ass massage glasses. There is no way in hell** I would ever wear anything like this. Giant plastic rods pointing directly near my eyeballs? Also, why does this next photo involve a child? What purpose would a child have for such a torture device? Now if for some reason you are actually interested in purchasing these things they can be found over here and they only cost $14.05.

**Did I mention how I still use words/phrases like "no way in hell", "I swear to god", "OMG" and many more? I don't know, I still find these phrases useful. Maybe this should have been one of my new years resolutions? I mean you will NEVER catch me saying, "god bless you"...

13 for '13!

So I have been contemplating whether or not I should create and post some New Years resolution or not. The idea to me is kind of silly. If I want to change something why not start right away? Why wait to use new years as a prerequisite of changing for the better? Then I thought well, I haven't started doing anything different yet... I don't normally just set goals (is that weird?). So without further ado here is my list. 13 things I will try to work on for 2013.

1. Blog more! (So far I think I am off to a good start.)
2. Take at least 1 picture a week. (Many people try to do a picture a day, that to me is not realistic. Hell, I not even sure I will remember to do it every week.)
3. Finish the list of repairs/upgrades we have planned for our house. (This one is a little out there.)
4. Organize EVERYTHING! (Ok, maybe not everything)
5. Start school again. (My eyes are set on Summer session but at the latest the Fall.)
6. Finish my tattoo sleeve.
7. Potty Train my 2 year old (She will be 3 in March. Maybe this should be my number 1 resolution!)
8. See a museum or attraction that I have never seen before.
9. Lose some weight? (I don't plan on starting any time soon but I should so maybe if it is listed here I will feel obligated to?)
10. Open an Etsy store. (I have been wanting to do this for a while but I am concerned that I would spend more money listing items than I would actually make.)
11. Get my savings account back to where it was BEFORE we bought this house in August 2012.
12. Go see a movie in a movie theater. (Sounds easy, right? Not when you have a little one and are "against?" baby sitters.)
13. Become pro at HTML or CSS or whatever. (Maybe not pro but there is definately more I would like to know.)

How do you feel about setting goals? or New Year Resolutions? What is your resolution list? Leave it in the comments!

Elf on the Shelf Non-Religious Option?

Sorry this one is a bit late. I had been too lazy to take a picture for this post.

Being an Atheist, it is important for me not to include anything about Jesus in our Holiday celebrations. She is much to young to be able to understand that type of information. Because of this I normally pre-read any holiday books before choosing them to read to our 2 year old. Unfortunately, I did not do this with the Elf on the Shelf book. On page one page there was a line that read "I won't get to tell him that you've said your prayers". We decided to take that part out and change the words to "I won't get to tell him that you've said your pleases and thank yous". As you can see I used my new label maker to make it appear seamless. ;)

Another thing I didn't really like about the book was that the elf seems like a tattle tale. We chose to have our elf be more of a sneaky jokester, similar to a leprechaun. Hopefully by next year I can find a better book to introduce Sparkly!

What do you like or don't like about the Elf on the Shelf? Have any great Elf on the Shelf activities to share? Put it all in the comments!

1st Giveaway EVER! (EdenFantasys)

UPDATE: Over now folks!

I am so excited to be hosting my very FIRST giveaway and with Valentine's Day just around the corner I am so glad that the giveaway is for EdenFantasys!

A few months ago I placed an order on EdenFantasys and purchased these fortune cookies (now discontinued). My family loves to go to any one of the various Asian buffets in our area and we love to play jokes on each other. My brother in law is also super gullible, so this was a prank waiting to happen! At some point while he was out grabbing a plate I alerted his wife that I had some naughty fortune cookies and that I wanted her to play along. She was all for it! I placed the cookies on the table and encouraged my brother in law to eat them right away. He opened one and read it. It said something like, "You will get lucky tonight". His jaw dropped. They have a thing where they put weird or funny fortunes on Facebook and he said immediately that this one was going on Facebook. We opened a few more and all had a laugh. It was even more funny when we told him that they were "fake" and I had brought them in with us.

Not only does EdenFantasys have cute party items but they also have everything you could ever possibly need to make Valentine's night and every night extra special. EdenFantasys makes it amazingly easy to find the right products by offering some pretty neat features.

They offer an option for you to view the actual size of the item on your computer screen. All you do is get a credit card or a $20, match the size of the card or $20 with the on screen slider and then your item is viewable in actual size. How cool is that?! This works for most of the products on the site. Now you can see how big that sex toy will be or even the actual size of the candles, lotions and other products. It really helps to have a visual of what you are purchasing. I wish all sites would have a feature like this. :)

Another one of my favorite things about EdenFantasys is that every single product has a ton of reviews! It is so helpful to have quality reviews of each product. EdenFatasys has really put together a quality site offering a wide range of adult products. 

GIVEAWAY!

PRIZE: $25 gift code for EdenFantasys.com

Required Entry:

Leave a comment on this post with the item(s) you would most like to purchase.

This blog is X-Rated so don't be shy. lol :)

*Bonus Entries*

Leave a comment for each of these that you complete. Each activity is worth 1 entry unless noted.

Like Real Weird on Facebook.

Pin something from this blog.

Tweet about this giveaway. Ex: Enter to win a $25 GC with @RealWeird and @EdenFantasys

Comment on another post from this blog.

Blog about this Giveaway. (5 entries = 5 comments)

Winner will be chosen via random.org on Feb 1, 2013 at 11PM EST. Must respond via email within 48 hours or another winner will be chosen.