12.15.2010

House party

Thought I'd pass along an interesting site I heard about through a friend. It's called Houseparty.com and you basically sign up to get free stuff and then host a party to show off the products. It's hit or miss with the parties they offer, but there are some pretty sweet ones!

I had filled out the application to host the EA Sports party in December where we would have got the free video game and then just have to invite friends over to see the game...how fun is that?! Unfortunately, I didn't realize my app was incomplete until after the deadline, so I didn't get it in in time. Now I'm just waiting until another interesting product is available to host!

Just to give some examples, currently you could have signed up to host a NYE party if you have a PS3-- They give you all sorts of paper products, THREE games, 2 controllers, and a PS3 camera...not bad! Other ones may center around food products where you have people over to try Pizzas...or even Wine!

I'll be sure to post an update if I end up getting picked and host something!

12.14.2010

T-shirts recycled!

I've seen this idea on a few blogs and thought I'd give it a try while trapped inside with the snow yesterday! One lucky person (that does not read this blog) will be getting this as a xmas gift...and if she thinks it's ugly, then she can throw away since it was free! I made a scarf out of old t-shirts...and thought it turned out decent. Don't think it's going to rock anyone's world, but is unique!

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Here's what I did: Grab 1 or more old t-shirts. (I used some of Dustin's since he has I swear over 100 t-shirts piled up.) I picked Orange and Blue for Illini colors. I cut about .5-.75 inch strips across the shirt. Then wrap each strip several times around your hand to make it into a loop. Take small pieces of the shirt fabric (can use sleeves) to tie in a double knot to tie 2 of the loops together. Continue in this fashion and can leave open at the end or tie it into a circle.
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12.12.2010

Snowy Day

I was looking forward to going on a holiday house tour today, but awoke to snow on the ground and is still coming down...so those plans are cancelled!
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Dustin is monopolozing the tv with football, so what can I do stuck inside here all day??? Here's what I've came up with to pass the time (and force me to be productive):

1. Wrap all the xmas gifts!
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2. Vaccuum the floors. It's been 3 weeks and they are FILTHY
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3. Pick up the bedroom and Gus Mountain (the heap of clothes in the background).
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4. Eat a delicious hot dinner and sip a hot drink! We have leftovers of a great Cream of Asparagus soup that I found on Gina's Skinny Taste blog. I used a combo of fresh and canned asparagus. This has so few calories and is so healthy, but tastes as good as if it had 1000 calories per serving!

All right, time to get to work!

12.10.2010

Hilarious Boy Dancing on TV

So I saw this live on the Today Show and was laughing out loud at this kid who was amazed at seeing himself on tv, so he starts to dance and do funny moves....all during what was supposed to be a serious film segment. If you need a good chuckle, check him out:

Walgreens = FREE wrapping paper + money

Hi, so as I find super good coupons or deals, I'm going to try to pass them along on here. I visit Clippin with Carie daily for good deals in the St. Louis area-- of course, some are better than others. But it is amazing the money I've saved since using her site!

UPDATE: Carie reported on 12/10 that
Walgreen's has pulled this deal and no longer issuing the jingle cash. Sorry!


Here is a current deal where you can get Hallmark wrapping paper for FREE at walgreens PLUS actually make $1 on the deal.

Buy 2 Hallmark Wrapping Paper $1.99 – B1G1 Free this week
Get $2 RR/Jingle Cash
Use (2) $.50/1 Printable Coupon HEREFinal Price = FREE + $1 Money Maker

You can view Carie's site for an explanation on the Jingle Cash or RR if you are not familiar, but basically it will print a $2 Walgreens coupon to be used on your next visit (usually within 10-14 days). If you are like me and do not visit Walgreens often, then just get something in the store now that you need/want and have them ring that up as a second separate transaction and use your $2 coupon right then and there.

12.09.2010

A lone voice

Last night we took a mini-trip to Columbia to watch Vandy take on Mizzou in basketball. Mizzou was ranked 15 and Vandy is just outside of the top 25, so we knew it would be a good matchup. Unfortunately the game was neck and neck all the way to the end...went to OT....and Vandy lost. It was killer cause the game was tied in OT, Vandy has the ball and can hold to get the last shot to hopefully win. The moron is dribbling around wasting time and Mizzou steals the ball, runs down the court, and slams it in. Booooooo! Have I mentioned that I just HATE Mizzou...ugh! The only good thing is Illinois plays them in 2 weeks and we'll just have to demolish them!

So here's the funny part. We went to the Illini-Vandy game last year at U of I and Dustin and his friend LOVED that the arena gets silent when we shoot free throws. So they would scream out and be stupid whenever this silence happened. Then that night walking down the street they get approached by these students who were like "You are the guys! You are the guys from the game!" So they felt like celebrities since I guess half the stadium heard them and turned to stare at the bozos. They still talk about it to this day. So we go to Mizzou and as the game nears the end, everybody in the stadium gets super silent for the Mizzou free throws. So Dustin SCREAMS "Let's Go Vandy!" as a player shoots his free throw...and misses! We were excited it worked! Then today my parents are reading the stltoday article on the game and look at this excerpt:
Vandy went up 72-70 on an Ezeli tip-in with 1:07 to go. Five seconds later, English missed a free throw as a lone voice called out, "Let's go, Vandy." He hit the second to make it 72-71.

So now Dustin has sent this to everyone he knows and wants to be known as "the lone voice." I think he's going to have more fun going to visiting arenas to see Vandy just so he can pull this stunt!

12.07.2010

Another New Page!

It's still in progress, but you'll see I've started a new page ranking movies we've seen. I'm always interested to know what movies other people saw that were good/bad, so thought I'd share my views.

12.05.2010

Maccabeats Video

I had seen a clip of this on the Today Show and it instantly got stuck in my head-- I think they did a great job of making this parody!  It's a take off on the song Dynamite and they have transformed it into a Hannukah song.

Blog changes

Hi, you've hopefully noticed that I've spent several hours today changing up my blog some.  It's still in progress, but hopefully all the changes will be for the better!  So far you should see I've re-done my tabs up top and added a new page where you can link to the other blogs I read.  I've also added a sidebar on the right where you can quickly reference older post either by searching the archives by date or by the labels.

The other change I've learned how to do is make my photos larger.  So instead of where this was as big as my pics would post:

Now I can take a little extra time and step to make them larger like this:
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I can't say these few changes didn't come without near meltdowns unfortunately!  I seriously just struggle with learning all this computer stuff!!

12.03.2010

Adventures in baby-sitting!

So a couple weeks ago we baby-sat for Dustin's brother Keenan who is just over 4 years old. His parents were going to a Rams game, so it was a little over 3 hours-- perfect amount of time I thought. Well, by the time the runt left, we were EXHAUSTED! How do parents do this full time?!

Within 5 minutes of being there, he all of a sudden takes off down the hall and into our bedroom...so I follow after him and he's in our closet. It was like he had a magnet on him and knew there were xmas gifts back there! I had a stack of stuff in the very back of the closet, most of it were all girl gifts for poor people we were buying for....but there was 1 game of Hungry Hungry Hippos in there for him. So of course he asks about this stack of gifts and I say those are xmas presents for some little kids I know and let's just go back out to the living room with dustin. He looks at me and says, "But I'm a little kid." It was so cute and I'm like- well we still need to go shopping for you, so how about you tell me what you want. So that gets him talking and moving out of the closet. Ok, hopefully he just forgets about that stuff back there now!

So we go play some board games he brought over-- Candyland, Hi-Ho-Cherry-O, and I Spy. I told Keenan that in our house when we play Candyland, that also means we eat candy...so him and Dustin were excited to much on some skittles and suckers.


Well then he decides he wants to just wrestle around with Dustin and stop focusing on games. Dustin is flipping him all around no the couch and of course, I tell them to be careful cause the brick wall is right behind them. Within 3 minutes later, Dustin slams his head on the corner of the brick wall and blood starts gushing everywhere! Keenan had blood all over his hand and I thought he was going to freak out, but luckily he really didn't scream and was just softly crying/whimpering some. So we made him put a cold washcloth on it for a while and I was worried how bad it really was....but after a few minutes he's insisting to us he's fine and he can still wrestle. We're like- NO WAY- we can only sit and play games for a while! There was blood on the couch, so I was cleaning that off and he came over and asked if that was from him and then said "I'm Sorry." Here the poor kid is apologizing when Dustin bashed his head in! So after all this, he takes me back to the bedroom closet and points to Hungry Hungry Hippos and asks if we can play that cause he has seen it on a commercial and looked fun. What are you going to say at that point...so I'm like, sure we can open that and play that.

So after a bit we played some more active games again. One was just covering dustin with pillows on the floor and mild wrestling. Then I taught Keenan how to gather all the blankets and pillows and build a tent with the table and chairs. So we do this and he tells me he's done this before with his dad and grandpa and it's called Big Bad Wolf and you huff and puff and blow the house down. So Keenan and I would sit inside the tent and then dustin would storm in as the wolf and demolish it, then we'd run and hide while the wolf chased us. We had all the lights off and drapes closed, so it was actually pretty scary for me...but he loved it!



One cute story is he picked up this replica Eiffel Tower we have on our bookshelves and he's like "WOW!" I ask him if he knows what that is and he says yes, he's seen it on tv before. So I'm all impressed this kid knows the Eiffel Tower at this point! I tell him Dustin and I just went there on vacation and it's real far away from here. He says- no it's not....come here (and pulls me over to the window). He's like- it's right there, I think we could walk there! He's pointing at a red and white like cell phone tower or something! It was hilarious.

Finally we get hungry so decide to preheat the oven for a pizza. All of a sudden I notice a ton of smoke billowing out of the oven.....I go open it up and it pours out and there was some burnt cheese (from yesterday's pizza) causing this issue. So I shut the door and turn off the oven, but our place is filled with smoke at this point. So we open the windows, open the door, am fanning by the smoke alarm....the last thing we need is for the building to be evacuated or sprinklers go off! Of course Keenan is running around asking if there is going to be a fire? At one point he ran over to the window and shouted outside- Someone call the fire department! Hey, at least he knew what to do in an emergency! And in the midst of all this he asks if he can still have pizza or what will he eat-- I'm like, we'll clean the oven and get you some pizza. Well, his parents come to pick him up before the pizza is done, so he never even got any :(

So get this-- all he can talk about to his parents and to his grandma the next day is NOT the fact that Dustin gashed his head, but that Amy set the pizza on fire and there was smoke everywhere!

On thanksgiving, Dustin's dad brought him downtown to see the parade, so we met up with them for a bit. It got freezing cold out there and started raining, so was just MISERABLE by the end....so Keenan finally agreed that he wanted to go inside to Dustin's work to warm up for a bit and just watch it from up high.