A sneak peek at tomorrow nights listing, and BTDL's 8x8 challenge

Well the lighting wasn't so great when I took the picture, but here is a sneak peek into one of my listings for tomorrow. Once again, my all time favorite colors to use together. The princess carriage was real challenge to put together but I am thrilled with the result. Full layout will be listed tomorrow along with 3 others and a piecing.

BTDL ® introduced its newest monthly challenge this Sunday. Of course, I was a day late in my listings but will try my very best to make the Sunday deadline every week. I LOVE participating in the challenges and am looking forward to listing every week...

The BTDL® Design Team is delighted to introduce the “Just Right” pages, perfectly proportioned pages for the increasingly popular 8x8 albums. Each Sunday night, search BTDL on eBay to find an excellent selection of 8x8 premade scrapbook pages by a variety of talented artists on our design team. Because 8x8 albums are "just right", they are easy to display, pass around to show off, or give as gifts. You’ll have a complete scrapbook faster than you can say “Happily Ever After.”

Here are my listings for the challenge...

What is YouData and InBoxDollars?

While doing my many searches for coupon deals, I came across a few sites that were talking about YouData and InBoxDollars. I thought I would go ahead and try them to see if the they really were as great as everyone was saying.

YouData, is an advertising site that actually pays you surf the Internet. Pays you to surf the Internet, shoot I do that for free so why not!? They send you to various sites which fit your personal profile. You click onto the site - which many of these places I would not have found without this service - view the site or advertisement and you are paid to do this! I have been sent to some very well known brand sites that were giving away free samples. Bonus! :) They transfer your dollars every Friday afternoon to your paypal account. This is an exceptional site!

InBoxDollars is basically the same thing. There are a couple of difference, 1) they send you emails to read, and you get paid to read those, 2) you can play games on line as well and get paid to play those, 3) You get bonus dollars for purchasing items from the sites they send you to, 4) You get paid to take surveys and 5) They pay you $5.00 just for signing up. :) There payment is different, where as YouData automatically pays you every Friday, with InBoxDollars, you request your dollar amount from them.

Both great deals and I would advise you to try them! :) All links are on the left hand sidebar! :) Goodluck!

This weeks layouts, coupons and Primas!

This week the children are home for Fall break. Brian also took the week off, needless to say, it has been a busy hectic week.

I am also beginning to think that I have been spending WAY too much time searching blogs to find the best deals and the best coupons. The time that I used to spend on scrapbook research has now been turned into coupon research! I must admit, it has saved me so much money and it is cute to hear the children ask "Mom do you have a coupon for "insert any random item here :)" so that they can get what ever it is. I have also hooked some of my fellow design team members on couponing. Couponing - is that even a word? It is fun to share your deal of the day with your friends.

I also got my order of Prima flowers in from Michelle's Scrapbooking this week!!!!! Okay so my love of Prima's border on obsession! Here is just some of my "back stock". I literally have shelves of flowers, I just can't stop using them on my layouts. I just love the way they bring life to even the simplest of piecings. I also find myself using them on boys layouts - why not? :)





Yes, that is 17 sleeves of Prima Sprites. My favorite all time color has to be the green. YIKES and I only got 2 in this order. Looks like I will be making another order shortly "OH Michelle!"

This week I had the best time making this fun piecing. I think I will be offering just the jeep and animal piecing next week. Maybe I will change it up and offer a choice of animals who occupy the jeep.



Another one of my layouts this week is my Pumpkin Halloween House. I know, I tend to make way to many houses during the Halloween and Christmas season, but I truly enjoy doing them. An average house can take up to 4 hours to piece. Many times I will leave the rest of layout a little simpler so the house - and of course the photo's - can shine.

I really had fun making the igloo in my "Baby it's Cold Outside" layout. I had hand drawn the igloo, cut out two pieces and used one for the ice bricks. I then chalked each brick before gluing it to the original cut out piece. I ran a line of Snow Writer down the cracks and filled it with Glamour Dust! We were expecting snow this week so I figured I would get a head start on Winter.



Well I hear the buzzer on my dinner going off. Please feel free to leave comments or suggestions for future layouts!

Sneek peek of tonights listing.

Alexis is out of school this week and the older children will join her next week at home for their fall break. Needless to say, it has been a busy week. :) I just wanted to pop in and give a sneak peak into one of tonight's layouts.

Sneak peek into tomorrows Haunted House listing...

I have been working on this one all day! It took me 4 1/2 hours to piece this house! I will be listing the entire layout tomorrow night on ebay. Just search seller "TYCAALAK" or BTDL....

Mommy come and look at this.....

How often are we asked to do just that? Alexis is always the one to be getting into one thing or another. She was in the loft, very quite I might add, when I hear her ask me to come in and take a look at what she was doing. Of course, I have no idea what I am going to walk into, could it be some Littlest Pet Shop monkey hanging from our fake tree as the rest of the assortment play in the moss surrounding it and now all over the floor? Aspen - our Chihuahua dressed up in her dolls clothing? Well low and behold, she has lined all of her crayons in a circle around the table.... How cute is that?!

While looking for this picture I found some others to post here. :)

This is Caitlin enjoying a summer day on our newly built back porch...

We also watched this tornado form right near our house. It looks really close but we were about 10-15 minutes away from it. It was the FIRST tornado I have ever seen. I know, we should have been taking cover but we were in awe of it.

It is a worrisome time

Times are tough for everyone. We see it everywhere we turn. Friends loosing their homes, their jobs. My family and I have had to cut costs in every way that we can, after all my husband is a district manager in the very volatile world of retail. I very recently, returned to clipping coupons. I just can not believe how much you are able to save! I have also found a great deal of blogs that are set up just to discuss coupons and where to combine them for the best savings. My friend Shannon started me on this quest and together we share idea's, unused coupons, and websites. Here are just a few that we have found that offer a ton of ideas to aid in our saving quest:

PRINTABLEGROCERYCOUPON

SHORTCUTS

MONEYSAVINGMOM

SUPERCOUPONGIRL


I would LOVE to hear your success stories with saving money at the register!

IT IS WEDNESDAY.............

My busiest day of the week! I have two layouts to complete, photo's to take and edit, and auctions to load.... Brian is out of town - again - so that always adds a little stress into the mixture.

I have so much that I have been thinking about adding on here but I won't be able to do so today. I just wanted to pop in and tell you about our newest contest. It went out in today's BTDL® NEWS LETTER... Here it is:

We at BTDL are excited to announce another contest for our wonderful customers. We always wonder what happens to the piecings and embellishments you purchase from us on our website and thought this would be just the way to get a peek! So click on the logo to be taken to our site for all the details on the contest. We look forward to seeing your submissions: