Birthday Freebies

I love celebrating my birthday with freebies. Here's a list of my freebies for 2015. I just signed up with American Eagle and Dairy Queen so I'm not quite sure if I'll get an email for my birthday. I tried joining Brio Tuscan Grille but they require downloading their app on the phone. I'm sort of maxed out on apps.

Arby's - free 12 oz shake with any purchase
Baskin Robbins - free scoop of ice cream
Blue Mesa Grill - complimentary guacamole, passion fruit iced tea and any desert with any entrée purchase
Buca Di Beppo - $20 off 2 entrees or pasta
Cold Stone Creamery - BOGO purchase
Corner Bakery - one free bakery sweet
Crabtree and Evelyn - 15% off order or purchase in store
Dairy Queen - BOGO coupon and discount on ice cream cake for signing up and I don't know about bday
Denny's - free Grand Slam on your birthday
Great American Cookie - free birthday cookie slice with purchase of medium drink
GNC - $10 off any $30 purchase
Jamba Juice - free small smoothie or juice
JoAnns - 20% off purchase (better coupons in newspaper or app)
John Frieda - $1.50 coupon
Johnny Carino's - free dessert
Half Price Books - 15% off entire purchase

Krispy Kreme - free donut and small coffee
La Madeleine - free croissant
Marble Slab - free cup or cone
Nothing Bundt Cakes - a free bundlet
Outback Steakhouse - free dessert
Piranhi Killer Sushi - complimentary specialty sushi roll
PF Changs - free appetizer or dessert
Schlotzsky's - free small sandwich
Sephora - free with purchase in your b-day month, mini Peter Thomas Roth cleanser and gel or mini
                  NARS lip liner and lipstick
Smashburger - free shake with purchase
Smoothie King - 20 oz smoothie for $2.99
Starbucks - free drink of your choice but need to use register a card
Sweet Tomato Souplantation - 20% off entire check. However, the regular monthly coupon is a better deal if you use the 2 for $10 coupon for every couple at your table.
Texas de Brazil - $25 off a regular dinner
Toni and Guy - 20% off service
Ulta - $10 off ANYTHING except Lancome.
Victoria Secret - $10 off purchase
Vitamin World - 40% off any item in store
World Market - $10 but you need to have membership which is free


Many of these offers require a print out of your email. Be sure to use the backside of scratch paper because they just throw your coupon away after you redeem it. No reason to use perfectly good copy paper.

  

free bundtlets from Corner Bakery and Nothing Bundt Cakes

 

free scoop from Marble Slab and 20% discount on haircut at Toni & Guy

  

This stuff is from World Market and was a little over $10. I got it all for free except for the change I had to pay. 

If you shop at Victoria Secret in January they are clearancing their winter clothes. I got this set for $19.98 with birthday coupon.

This is the lady's freebie from Sephora. You can sign up your man and he also gets a freebie on his birthday.

Getting $20 off our 2 entrees at Buca Di Beppo. Great deal because we took our leftovers home and had another meal.

This is a photo of some of last years freebies.

Highlighters for Bible

Sometimes when I'm reading my bible I look at some highlighted words and I wonder to myself why did I highlight this?  Then I realize the highlighted verse is actually on the other side of the page. Even though the highlighters in this kit was made for the thin pages of the bible it still bleeds through. I tried using a pencil highlighter but it wasn't smooth and I had to go over the verses several times before it actually highlighted and it was so waxy I couldn't write not over it. Then one day as I was reading my bible I came across a verse I wanted to highlight but my bible highlighters were downstairs and frankly, I was too lazy to walk downstairs to get them. So I used a manga brush pen and discovered that they actually work better. Now the manga pens do bleed through, but not as much. If I only underline the words it doesn't bleed through at all. I usually use the yellow, orange and green manga pens. I think the purple pen would definitely bleed through. 

Manga pens are more expensive than the highlighters but if you use the 50% coupon at Joann's Fabrics or Michael's it is very affordable. The 50% coupons come out about once a month. Both stores and Hobby Lobby have weekly 40% coupons.

manga pen

 

other side of page

highlighter

 

other side of page

Windex is My Insect Killer

Even though a fly has a tiny brain it can process sensory information into an appropriate motor response and make planning movements prior to take off when it first sees a threat. It makes its escape plan in 100 miliseconds. Michael Dickinson, who has been studying the flight of insects for 20 years (yes, you read that right) suggests, "It is best not to swat at the fly's starting position, but rather to aim a bit forward of that to anticipate where the fly is going to jump when it first sees your swatter." (source:  http://phys.org/news139142949.html#jCp)

In a nutshell the fly can calulate the threat and position itself for flight quicker than you can move your arm through the air. Our dear and dedicated flight researcher suggests to aim where you anticipate the fly is going to jump. Oh, if Mr. Dickinson could only understand that even though my brain is bigger than the fly's I cannot begin to even anticipate which way the fly will take flight considering it can change its body position and take off faster than my brain can tell my arm which direction to swat.

I'm no rocket scientist but I've got a better method than Mr. Dickinson's method.

Spray the fly with Windex.

The dad from my "Big Fat Greek Wedding" can add this to his list of all the wonderful things Windex can do.

One summer day there were three flies in my house and I had spent hours trying to kill them. I mean, not literally hours in a row but cumulatively the time spent trying to swat them became hours. They were the fast kind of flies too. The kind only Bruce Lee or Aeon Flux might be able to swat or catch in their lashes. Luckily, one of the flies flew onto the window pane and I quickly closed the blinds trapping the fly behind the shades. I squirted Windex through a slat and wet the fly down. It wasn't able to fly away. Then I was able to kill it. After that I was able to kill the other 2 flies and discovered I could spray the flies while they were in mid air. They fell down to the ground giving the opportunity to kill them as well.

The green (food safe) window cleaners do not work. You must use something with ammonia in it. I haven't tried vinegar yet but I don't think it will work since it's natural.

Another option is to buy the electric fly swatter which also works very well. However, with the electric fly swatter you still have to anticipate where the fly is going but you can swing the swatter around like a person who's walked into a spider web and possibly hit it. Be careful not to hit anyone with the swatter though. I haven't personally shocked anyone with it yet. But I imagine it stings.

This is a fly on my vehicle. That's just my reflection with an orange drink in the background. 

Never to Be Foiled Again

Last night as I was preparing tacos and talking to my husband I zealously pulled foil out of the box. The entire roll came flying out like a magic carpet unrolling onto the floor. Oops! It's because I don't have good hand-and-mouth coordination that this happened.  It was no big deal; hubby put the foil in the recycling bin and we ate dinner. But a little part of me still felt guilty about wasting money.

So this morning I was on Pinterest looking for nothing in particular but what should catch my eye is a pin on Reynold's Foil Wrap locking mechanism.  I was totally like "Duh!"  Then I had a flash back to a moment years ago when my husband pointed this out to me.  ("See honey, you do get justified.")  So I thought I would share this tidbit because it's just one of those things that we don't pay any attention to until we need it.  I think this discovery comes in a timely manner as Super Bowl weekend rolls around and many will be entertaining and possibly indulging in a few alcoholic beverages. They too might unroll the foil with a bit of gusto in all the excitement.

 

As long as I'm talking about foil I decided to look on Wikipedia to see which side of the foil to use: shiny or dull?  I once heard on TV that the shiny side has a coating that protects your food.  I always place a layer of parchment paper between the food and the foil  to prevent aluminum contamination.  As I was about to dig further into researching this I got sidetracked by this cute ladybug picture when I scrolled down.  The ladybug reminded me of a Martha Stewart painting tip even thought they have absolutely no correlation.  (Did I mention that I might have ADD?)  As soon as I finish writing this I'm going to dig the foil out of the recycling bin so I can save it for my next paint job.  I'm so glad I'm not wasting after all.

Back to the question of whether to use the shiny or dull side of foil.  I found a site Toxic Cookware that says to use the dull side of the foil.  Now I wonder who's correct.  The person on TV who said to use the shiny side or this website that says to use the dull side?  Can anyone help me with the answer to this question?

This tidbit was shared at:

Fall Decorating & "Give Thanks" Banner Download

I saw a Christmas commercial the other day and it made me anxious. The holidays are fast approaching and I don't think I'm ready.  I am hosting Thanksgiving this year and since time is of essence I decided to skip decorating for Halloween and just do fall decorations.  I allow myself 1 box of fall decorations because I have 17 boxes of Christmas decorations and storage space is limited.  This is the best I could do with the one box of decorations and pumpkins & gourds. It's not grandiose, but I think I did alright.

I thought it looked better without the feather wreath.

I glittered these nuts last year and they are holding up well.  I will probably use them for Christmas too.

 

We got this giant corn cob 90% off last year.  No one else wanted it - can't remember why I bought it either.

My one Halloween decoration. That Kisses were gone within the day. 

This beautiful banner is from At Second Street Blog.

 GIVE THANKS Banner Download 

I take no credit for creating the download. I actually saw it on Pinterest.

The only thing I did was glitter the border for my own personal touch. 

I added glitter around the border with Stickles Cinnamon.

 

The white box near the ceiling is our doorbell box. It is ugly. It makes me think of something from the 70s.  

I covered the doorbell box with a free download from Squidoo.com.  It is a public domain picture.

another free domain pic

I used the leaves that broke off the garland and taped them to the wall using poster tape. Poster tape is able to hold up to 1/4 lb weight without damaging the walls.  However, the leaves kept falling off and it was driving me crazy.  I tried removing the plastic vein of the leaf and scoring the back but nothing worked. Then  I realized that the leaf material would not stick so I glued tissue paper to the back of the leaves to stick to the tape on the wall.  This really works and it is cheap.

Measure your tissue and tear to size.

Press down & squish tissue so it won't show on other side.

Now tissue is stuck to tape.

I'm not a big gardener. My husband planted these for me a couple of weeks ago. 

 I've already blogged about my skills at killing plants.  

Please excuse the wild overgrown bushes in the background and our ghetto pot that I fixed with Gorilla Glue.

This project was shared at the following sites. The bloggers invite you to share your projects as well.

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