how I earned $150 for christmas

Everyone loves the holidays, but nobody loves the pinch that comes from buying gifts and traveling.  Christmas always feels really tight on our student budget.  We take out a small amount every month so that we have a little money to spend on birthdays and holidays, but I'm always looking for ways to stretch our budget.  Using all my tricks this year, we pooled over $150, which I'm planning to spend on gifts for the kiddos during black Friday next week.

Most of these rewards programs allow you to redeem your points for lots of things, but mainly gift cards and merchandise.  Depending on the site, using the points for merchandise may be a better deal than redeeming for gift cards.  Because I already had a shopping list, I redeemed all of my points in Amazon or Walmart gift cards.

Swagbucks | $30
Swagbucks pays you rewards for shopping through their links, completing surveys, answering daily polls, and watching sponsored videos.  I usually pull up an nGage video set whenever I'm online and click through it for 2-4 points.  They also reward for searches, and the rewards are pretty big, but they are totally random, so I generally prefer to use bing.  The surveys are really hit or miss, but the shopping rewards are great.  Whenever I book flights, hotels, shop on amazon, I go through swagbucks.  Usually, the rewards are about 2 points per dollar spent.  They have most major retailers (Old Navy, Walmart, Target), so that is my big earner.  I've heard of people earning that much every month, but I'm pretty laid back about it and only get really active in the fall when Christmas is coming.

Bing rewards | $20
To earn with bing, you can do daily challenges or just use bing when you search!  Every two searches earns you one point.

Huggies rewards | $30
Really, the rate of rewards here is terrible.  This was our points collection after an entire year and a half of buying Huggies diapers, and for half the year we've been buying for two!  The moral is, if your diapers have a rewards program, just do it.  Entering all the little codes was super tedious but worth it for the extra few bucks.

Shopkick | $5
I just hopped on the shopkick bandwagon in October, so I'm barely earning my first gift card.  So far I love the concept though - you get points for walking into stores in your area.  You can get additional points for scanning items in the store and, if you link your credit card to the app, buying items.  I'm nervous about that so I haven't linked my credit card.  Sometimes the app can be a little glitchy, and not recognize the store I'm in until after I've left.  It's frustrating, but it still works often enough that I use it anyway.

Credit card rewards | $75
We get 1% cash back, but we just opened a new card that gets special rates for gas and travel so I'm hoping for even more rewards next year!  If you don't have a rewards program on your credit card, switch now!

Walmart Savings Catcher | $12
Android | Apple
I always scan in my Walmart receipts.  I try to do price matching on my own, but this catches little things that slip through the cracks.  It doesn't seem like much ($12 in about 6 months) but every little bit helps!

Miscellaneous | $100
My husband is a law student, and some of the law databases (Nexus and Bloomberg) offer rewards for anyone with a subscription (so, mostly lawyers).  Obviously these won't be available to all, so I did not include them in our grand total.

I'd love to know how you earn a little extra for the holidays!  Let me know in the comments.

fall color walk

Oh man, fall is my secret love.  Secret because, being named Summer, summer is supposed to be my favorites season.  It's great, but I love the cool weather and the vibrant colors that make up autumn.

It is imperative for my mental health to get out of the house each day, and it is super good for the boys too. Today we got to combine our walk with a color search!  Fall is perfect for this since there are SO many colors to see.  Mono always likes to collect treasures on our walks- rocks, sticks, and berries are among his favorites.  I can't even tell you how often I find his treasures in random places in our home.  Anyway, he thought it was so fun that mama was collecting treasures with him today.  He helped me look for all our fun colors, and it was the first time I heard him say many of the color names!  It was a great activity.

He also loved helping me arrange our colorful leaves and berries.  We sorted by color, size, and shape.  But his favorite thing was putting the leaves all in a bowl, them dumping them back out.  The white poster was the perfect background, since it brought out the vibrant colors!  I'm thinking tomorrow we will collect leaves again, then I will color the poster different colors to help Mono figure out the sorting by color a little better.

 Aren't these colors just amazing?  We didn't go anywhere special - just our usual walk around the neighborhood.  My favorite leaf is the second from the left in the picture below- the green and yellow combination is so vibrant!

Do you do a color walk or drive?

toddler play: milk cap treasure chest

Hoarding milk caps is old news- there are so many awesome things to do with them.  Most of the ideas I've seen before revolved around cutting holes out of plastic lids.  I had saved up a huge collection, but when I did my lid-cutting it came out super awful and a little sharp.  In the end, it was not a huge hit.

However, a few weeks later, I finished up a box of pampers wipes.  I prefer huggies wipes, so I was going to toss the box but Monkey Boy was fascinated with it.  After watching him play, a light bulb clicked and I ran a grabbed our milk caps.  What do you know?  They fit perfectly into the wipe cap opening.

Mono played with these pretty often.  He loved that he could dump them all out and make a mess.  Some of the lids were juice lids, and the milk lids were smaller and could be snapped inside the juice lids.  He loved that.  After a few weeks my hubby had the idea to paint all the lids like coins.  So I whipped out my gold and silver spray paint (actually, he did it) and spray painted the lids.

It was like a brand-new toy.  Monkey boy thought the lids were SO cool and is playing with them all over again!  Amazing what a little spray paint can do.  Now all I need to do is grab some brown and we can paint the box like a treasure chest.

 Do you save your milk caps?  What do you use them for?

seven things

1.  On this lovely Halloween weekend, I have Christmas stockings in mind.  I bought this pattern last year, and made Mono a stocking, but my sewing has come a long way since then and I'm thinking I'm going to re-make it, and make stockings for the rest of the family as well.  Does your family do matching stockings?

2.  All of the sudden, Baby Bear (almost 5 months) has refused to go to bed at night.  He falls fast asleep, then wakes up a minute or two later and is completely inconsolable.  Tonight we are on our fourth round of this!  I have no idea what the issue is.  A week ago he had no problem with bedtime.  Welcome to the wonderful world of parenthood I guess.

3.  My latest netflix obsession is White Collar.  Oh my goodness, how come nobody told me how good this show is?

4.  Monkey Boy is in need of some winter boots.  I have my eye on these.  Cheap enough to justify, but nice enough that they should hold up until he grows out of them (in two weeks).  Also, no laces.  Nothing worse than trying to hold down your two-year-old long enough to tie his shoes.

5.  I'm trying a new meal planning strategy for the month of November.  I'm a little nervous about it, but the idea is that it will cut down our grocery budget.  Stay tuned...

6.  Currently reading this book.  If you read it, what did you think?  I loved it at the beginning but I'm about half way through and starting to get bored.

7.  I am so ready for bed.  BUT.  I want you to know that I almost have picture of me (and the family) ready to put up on the about page.  No more ghost posting!  Okay.  Peace out.

toddler play: pipe cleaners and straws

There are some days when getting dressed and leaving the house are just too overwhelming for me.  It's fine and dandy for me to stay home all day, but it makes Monkey Boy crazy.  He has so much energy, so on days when I don't take him outside to run around and be free, I try to come up with a new activity or game for him to play with me inside.  With winter coming on, there are more and more fowl-weather days and I know we are going to be stuck inside much more often! I'm working on coming up with new activities that promote play and learning.  As I scour the internet, I'll share my favorites here with you!

This week is an activity that I like to think I invented- straws and pipe cleaners.  I'm sure someone else has thought of this before, but I'll take credit for it anyway.

Set up is super easy.  I keep pipe cleaners in different varieties on hand, and all you need to do is cut up straws into varying sizes.  The bendy part of the straw was really fun for Mono.

I usually put the straws in a container to keep them from rolling all over the place while he plays.  Of course, they end up getting dumped out.

For a little while, Mono enjoyed trying to thread the straws onto the pipe cleaners.  When he got frustrated with that (it takes alot of focus!), he wanted me to thread them so he could pull them all off.

Obviously, threading the straws is great for fine motor practice and teaches patience.  For younger kids this can get really frustrating, and until now (20 months), Mono hasn't really tried threading the straws.

 When he was done with the threading, he had alot of fun dumping the straws out and picking them up.  Whatever keeps you occupied, kiddo!

What do your kids do with pipe cleaners?  I've seen so many ideas, but I'm looking for something new.  We've done pipe cleaners in the colander about a million times!

confessions of a formula mom

This post was originally written on my personal blog in May 2014.  I had to give up nursing for medical reasons relating to the baby.  I want to share my feelings to hopefully help other moms in similar situations feel more accepted and less alone.

I loved this article.  It made me think.

It absolutely killed me to have to give up breastfeeding after only 4 weeks.  I had plenty of milk and I had a lot of determination.  I'd almost lost breastfeeding when he was in the NICU, so I really cherished being able to nurse him.  Before we permanently stopped, I pumped for almost a week to keep up my milk, just in case TJ could nurse again.  I worked for it.


Giving it up made me feel like a failure, even though it was nothing I had done wrong.  In fact, stopping may have saved TJ's life.  But we live in a weird climate where there is a huge backlash against formula feeding. The media all says, "breast is best, and if you love your child you'll breast feed."  I'm afraid people will think I'm a bad mom when they see me using a bottle.  When I hear people giving the breastfeeding propaganda, I feel guilty because I don't breastfeed anymore.

I see other mom's slip out to nurse and feel jealous.  I miss having those moments with my son.  As stupid as it sounds, it makes me sad that he doesn't need me now.  Anyone could give him a bottle.  I miss the way he watched me while he ate, the way he snuggled up to me when he was finished. Bottle feeding just isn't the same.

As if the emotional pain of giving up nursing wasn't enough, the physical agony was awful.  I don't know if my pain was necessarily worse than women who slowly wean, then stop nursing.  But going from feeding about four ounces every three hours to not feeding at all was sure not fun. 

On top of all of it, we were putting TJ on nasty, smelly, hypoallergenic formula that he did not like.  He cried and cried and missed meals...  It just shredded my heart, because I had what he wanted and I couldn't give it to him.  It's not so bad now that he's used to the formula.

I just have to remember the good things.  I don't have to get up with him every night.  Tyler and I trade off his midnight feeding, so every other night I get a full nights rest.  That wouldn't be possible if I was nursing him.  I don't have to cover up to feed him, or go somewhere private.  I just pull out a bottle and get to it. 

I wish I was still nursing him, but I'm not.  We were told we couldn't return to nursing until he had a diagnosis. It's been 6 weeks now.  Sometimes I wonder if I should have kept pumping, if I'm a bad mom for not being dedicated enough.  Ultimately, I think it was the right decision.  There were just too many things out of our control.


I'm a formula mom, and that is okay. 
-Mrs. Smith

costume inspiration 2015

I love seeing all the amazing, creative Halloween costumes up on pinterest this time of year!  I can't bring myself to buy the horrible, cheapy costumes made in bulk, so this year I'm on the lookout for some adorable DIY options for my boys.  Here are just a few of my favorites so far!

(Click photos for links)

The House that Lars Built posted a TON of cute book-themed kids costumes this year. 

 Seriously, these would be SO easy to make!

I'm so impartial to the little lumberjack look.  Another one that would be oh-so-easy.  By Oh Happy Day.

I couldn't pass up a tribute to one of my favorite shows...this Call the Midwife costume is perfect if you have a newborn this Halloween!  Done by Sarajolie.

What are your Halloween plans?

parenting book roundup

I told myself, when I had my first baby, I wouldn't get swept up in the wave of parenting books out there.  But, of course, it happened anyway.  Here's my take on a few of my latest reads!

The Happiest Baby on the Block by Harvey Karp

Honestly, Mr. Karp is an egomaniac who thinks he's the super doctor because he 'discovered' that babies like to be swaddled.  His calming method is probably good to know, so go to the Library and read through the introduction.  That is everything you need to know, right there.  The rest of the book is pretty painful- he says the same things over and over again and harps on about how brilliant his methods are (because nobody shushed a baby before Harvey Karp came along and told them to do it!).

Secrets of the Baby Whisperer: How to Calm, Connect, and Communicate with your Baby by Tracy Hogg

This has been my favorite parenting book so far, although I got a little sick of being called "luv."  It freaks me out when the author tries to converse with the reader- really not my style.  Other than that, she had some great suggestions (many of which we plan on trying).  If you're confused about baby-lead parenting, I would definitely recommend this book.  The big parenting fad of to today is baby-leads, meaning you do what the baby wants to do when the baby wants to do it.  Hogg sets up a system that allows for structure and flexibility, so you get the benefits of a schedule and the ideals of 'baby-lead.'  This is the only book I would recommend as a must-read.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

This isn't a parenting book, per se, but the theme of the book is Western vs. Chinese parenting.  As Chua points out, you can't argue with the results of Chinese parenting.  Asian kids top the charts in academics.  Although I don't love her extremest parenting style, I pulled some great things out of this book.  For example, she states that Chinese parents believe that their children can be the bests, so they provide all the resources to help them be the best.  I think that in the West, we settle for mediocre and give alot of credit for "trying your hardest."  I understand the need to value children for their individual abilities, but Chua makes a great point - Asian parents assume strength; they assume that their kids have what it takes.  Maybe Western parents just need to have higher expectations for their kids.  I thought this book was an interesting read, more for the culture of it than for the parenting.

Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn

I had a hard time taking this books seriously, since the author's name is "Alfie."  What a terrible name.  Also, the tone of the book is preachy and annoying.  The premise of the book is that children deserve to be loved unconditionally, but most discipline methods are a form of conditional love.  According to Kohn, when you send your child to time out, you are telling them "I don't want to be around you; I don't love you when you misbehave."  This book is the epitome of Western parenting.  I agreed with alot of Kohn's principles - children deserve to be loved, you need to value the parent/child relationship - I think his practices are unrealistic.  I don't think that you can teach correct behavior by just loving your kids a little more - I think they need rules and boundaries.  The best thing I got from this book was an opportunity to look at my parenting ideals with a critical eye.  For example, when I use time-outs, I want to send the message that my child and I are taking time to cool off and think about what happened, as opposed to sending away my child because he/she is annoying me.

The 10 Basic Prinicples of Good Parenting by Laurence Steinberg

This book was filled with common-sense parenting.  Reading it felt redundant, because everything Steinberg said seemed like a re-statement of well-known parenting standards.  Steinberg's writing style is a little condescending, like he's talking to a child.  I guess that happens when you are a child psychologist.  He does list lots of ideas for handling certain behavior, which might be helpful if you have very little experience with parenting.  I thought that most of his ideas were things I have/would have come up with on my own, because they are commonly accepted principles of parenting.

how to pick the right bottle for your babe

I was super gung-ho about breastfeeding when I was pregnant with my first baby.  I didn't even put bottles on my registry, because I had no doubt I would be the nursing champ of the century (ha!).  Then Mono landed in the hospital and the doctors told me I had to stop nursing.  I was heartbroken.  On top of that learning to mix and choose formula, I suddenly needed to buy a supply of bottles.  I was totally overwhelmed by all the options!  I bought one of everything so I could figure out what I liked best.

Here are the factors that matter most to me...

Nipple shape - I wanted something that was closes to a natural breast so my babies could maintain their ability to nurse.

Back-suck - I'm sure there is a fancy scientific name, but I mean that when a you suck on something without a pressure release, you have to break your latch to let the pressure equalize.  Most of the bottles on the market try to address this problem, but I found that only a few were successful.

Comfort - that is, comfort for ME while I hold the bottle for an entire feeding session!

Cost - if you are buying an entire bottle supply, you want something that works well for the price!

Everyone has different needs, but hopefully I can give you a little more information about what each bottle has to offer.





Avent bottles are my favorites.  This is because the nipple is closest to a natural breast shape, I like the shape of the bottle, and it's comfortable to hold in the 4-ounce size.  The 8-ounce is a little bulky.  Now that I nurse Oso exclusively, these are my favorite bottles to use.  They have an airflow mechanism built into the nipple that is supposed to solve the back-suck problem, but it doesn't work very well and I usually have to break the baby's latch every once in a while.

MAM bottles were mostly a big fail for me.  The nipples are oddly shaped, and the back-suck solution (a rubber ring in the bottom that is supposed to release to equalize pressure) leads to tons of leaks.  The body is also poorly shaped, and was not comfortable to hold.









Playtex bottles are great.  They are bottle frames that you purchase liners for.  The liners were far and away the best solution to back-suck, because they collapsed as the volume decreased.   I've only used the strait bottles (crooked-shaped bottles confuse me!).  The nipples are decent, and the bottle shape is comfortable.  The biggest con is the ongoing cost of these bottles - after buying the bottle, you still have to pay for bottle liners on a regular basis.  I loved these bottles for traveling, because I could bring a bunch of clean nipples and liners, and use just one bottle.  It saves major bottle cleaning hassle.



Dr. Browns bottles are comfortable to hold, but I thought the nipples were a little to small to imitate a natural breast and I hated dealing with all the little parts!  It was alot to take apart, then put back together.  These bottles do solve the back-suck problem really well, and I know alot of people who love them and swear they never leaked, but they always leaked for me.  For how expensive they were, I was not happy with these bottles.





Gerber makes your basic, run-of-the-mill plastic bottles.  Once I found out that we were done-done nursing Mono, I invested in these for the bulk of our bottle supply.  The nipple, like Dr. Browns, is small and not like the natural breast, but since I wasn't concerned about maintaining his ability to nurse anymore, I wasn't worried about it.  They are by far the cheapest and I had to break the baby's latch every few minutes just like with the Avent bottles, so this worked fine for us.






Basically, when I bottle-fed Mono, we used mostly Gerber or Parents Choice bottles.  When we traveled, I took my Playtex bottles and bought a box of liners.  Now that I am nursing Oso, I use Avent when I need to give him a bottle every now and then.

Do you nurse or bottle-feed?  What is your favorite bottle brand?