Don’t leave money on the table, use Coupon Cactus!
Jun 28, 2010 Paid/Sponsored Post
The following is a sponsored post. I wrote the entire post myself based on my own experiences with CouponCactus.com, and can truthfully and wholeheartedly say that I really like the site and will continue to use it.
I do most of my shopping online at this point, everything from shoes to food to batteries to computers. One of the best things about online shopping is the ability to comparison shop and get the best price, and every bit of savings helps. So the chance to earn cash back for purchases that I would be making anyway gets me giddy.
Coupon Cactus is a cash-back, coupon and sale site with savings from thousands and thousands of stores, and the best part is that it is completely totally 100% free to use. There are three ways to save money using this site. I’ve used one of them, cash back, twice already. I signed up for the site very quickly and got started.
Cash Back
A few nights ago a light bulb fell out of my kitchen ceiling onto the counter and glass shattered everywhere. Besides nearly scaring me half to death, it reminded me that I needed light bulbs. One by one those particular recessed reflector bulbs have been going out and I haven’t been able to find replacements locally – it’s a weird size. So I went on to the Coupon Cactus site and searched for “light bulbs” and was happy to see a bunch of results. A store called 1000 Bulbs sounded promising, and offered 3% cash back, so I checked it out. They had my bulb, so I bought a dozen, because the bulbs were cheaper if I bought twelve or more. So, I got a great price from a store I’d never heard of before, and I’ll also get about $1.60 in my Coupon Cactus account.
The way it works is this: you sign up for Coupon Cactus – and remember, that’s free – and then use it as a portal to get to online shopping sites. As long as you’ve signed in to Coupon Cactus and make your purchase from that same window you started in, that’s all you have to do. You don’t have to enter any codes or do anything special, just check out. And then later you’ll see the money in your account. Four times a year, Coupon Cactus sends you a check or deposits your money in your PayPal account (if there’s less than $10, they roll it over to the next quarter).
Then this evening as I was cleaning my desk I noticed that I’m running low on business cards, and with BlogHer coming up I don’t want to get caught without any. So, I went to the site I always go to for business card printing, UPrinting.com, and started ordering. Then I remembered Coupon Cactus, and thought I’d check just in case UPrinting was offering cash back. It was! So I put in my order, and the 4% cash back I’ll get from ordering my business cards is already pending in my Coupon Cactus account.
Coupons and Sales
Another way to save with Coupon Cactus is by using their coupon codes and sale listings, and often these savings are in addition to the cash back I talked about above. With some of the coupons you need to copy a code and enter it at check out, with other offers the savings will be reflected automatically. There are some great coupons listed, like 25% off of Ross Simons (+ 2% cash back), 20% off of Popcornopolis (+ 4% cash back), and a Steve Madden coupon that almost made me fall off of my couch: 15% off of a $75 or more order, plus free shipping, plus 5% cash back. Drool. And that last one is exclusive to Coupon Cactus! Keep in mind, these offers do expire, but new offers come in every day as well.
Referrals
Quite possibly the easiest way to earn money on Coupon Cactus is to get your friends, family, co-workers, dog walker, kids’ teachers, and blog readers (ahem!) to sign up for Coupon Cactus using your unique code (mine is 129693 – please use it!). For the rest of eternity, as long as the internet and Coupon Cactus exist, whenever someone who signs up with your referral number gets cash back, you also get cash back – 25% of what they got! And that doesn’t come out of their share, it comes out of Coupon Cactus’ share, so spread your code far and wide and you could earn free money just because your friends and family went shopping.
Searching
Depending on what you’re shopping for (browsing or going for a specific item) and whether or not you know which store you want to buy from, there are a bunch of different ways to look for coupons and sales and cash back. The tabs at the top let you look for the biggest discounts, or the newest discounts, stores that have free shipping, sales and coupons that are expiring, the most popular discounts, and of course by store or category. Or you can just search for a specific item, like “water shoes” or “camping stove.”
There are coupons and cash back offers for just about everything you can think of, even travel. If you have any questions you can check out the CouponCactus FAQ page for all of the details. As for me, I have a gift to buy for my husband, and I’d love to save some money on it!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has Compensation Levels of 12 & 13. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information. Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, and the NYC Moms Blog.
Tags: Coupon Cactus, review
Weekend Brunch
Jun 26, 2010 What's Going On
I love lazy weekend mornings more than just about anything. They’re so different from a typical weekday morning. On school days we all come downstairs at different times and grab whatever we have time for. Jake can make things like toast or frozen waffles, so if Fiona happens to be downstairs when he’s there, she might get a hot breakfast. But most of the time she prefers a piece of fruit or a handful of cereal. If you don’t get ready in time for breakfast, I toss a cheese stick and some pretzels at you as we fly out the door.
Sometimes we have places to go on the weekends, but when we’re not setting alarms and rushing off anywhere, the kids get up and watch TV or play video games and let their grateful, lazy parents sleep in. Eventually I get up, sometimes because the kids tell me they’re hungry and sometimes because The Ass decides that the kids are probably hungry and acts like a passive aggressive alarm clock, tossing pillows around and rearranging the covers until I can’t stand it anymore.
Then I sneak downstairs and hope that everybody else stays upstairs until breakfast is ready. I love this quiet time, watching TV and making one of the few real cooked meals I make all week, with a set table instead of “Grab a plate!”
We alternate between the scrambled eggs-hash browns-bagels-veggie sausage meal, or pancakes. Chocolate chip pancakes for me and Jake, rainbow sprinkles for Fiona, and banana walnut for The Ass if he can convince me to make a totally separate batter just for him (he usually can, I’m not that hard to convince, but I make him do it anyway so that he won’t take it for granted after all these years). If we have enough fruit for fruit salad, then I make a big fruit salad that Jake will eat the strawberries out of, and we won’t care because we’re happy he’s eating any kind of fruit. If Fiona comes downstairs before breakfast is ready, the fruit salad is her job. She eats half of it before it ever gets to the bowl.
Every once in a blue moon I’ll convince them to let me make something else, like French Toast or omelets or muffins, but generally we stick to the usual stuff. The Ass will bring his crackberry to the table and we’ll have a back-and-forth about how wrong it is for him to read the news during one of the few times all week we all sit down together, and he’ll claim that he’s paying total attention to us, and we’ll all vote on whether he should have it at the table or not. Jake always sides with me, and Fiona always sides with her Daddy.
Just when Jake thinks he’s going to get away from the table without having to take his vitamin, Fiona remembers them and looks right at him with a devilish look as she yells “Vita-mints!” He glares at her as he chews his, and he shudders as he swallows it down. Fiona savors hers. Gross.
After the kids are done, The Ass and I are left to have a little quiet time together, and I can’t help needling him one more time about reading at the table. Then I start to clean up and sigh a little, knowing we’ll be back to the normal morning rush soon enough.
Now that choir is out for the summer, we’ve got double the chances each week for a lazy weekend brunch. Definitely my favorite time of the week.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information. Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, and the NYC Moms Blog.
Tags: brunch
My recipes: no more paper!
Jun 21, 2010 What's Going On
The bowl was full when I sat down
Last week I went to a launch party for Microsoft Office 2010. This was incredibly exciting for me because, well, I’m a bit of a geek. Getting to sit with an expert from Microsoft and eat orange M&Ms (orange being the color of Office, of course!) and learn tips and tricks for some programs that I already love was really very cool. I also spoke with some real people (seriously, not robots!) brought in by Microsoft to help explain how Office 2010 can make my life easier, more productive, and more organized.
One of the people I spoke with was Michelle Coolidge, who showed me how she had organized all of her recipes into Microsoft OneNote. I’ve been using OneNote for several years, but for some reason it had never occurred to me to use it for recipes!
Michelle Coolidge, showing off her recipe organizing skills
I find most of my recipes online these days, but I still print them out because I want to be able to make notes on them and change things. So I’ve ended up with dozens of papers all over the kitchen, some of them multiples of the same recipe because often I can’t find the one I need so I have to search through my bookmarks and print it out again, and then of course I find the original. All of those papers drive my husband a little crazy and cause me to waste time, so the other night I started putting all of those paper recipes onto OneNote. I couldn’t believe how quick and easy it was!
Don’t believe me? Here’s a screencast of me moving a recipe, and a little tour of my OneNote recipe notebook. Definitely make the screen bigger so that you can see what I’m doing.
Headed for the recycling bin
Wasn’t that fast? I can do it even quicker when I’m not explaining as I go along.
I love this, because now I can’t lose them. Even if I lose my computer, the files are saved to Microsoft’s SkyDrive, which means that I’m also able to access these files online, whether the computer I’m using has Office installed or not. I can take all the notes I want in the same place. I don’t have to search through piles of papers. And best of all, I replaced all of these in about ten minutes.
Next I’m going to work on the couple hundred recipes I have bookmarked online. Those will be even quicker, because I won’t have to hunt down random pieces of paper hiding in my kitchen.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has Compensation Levels of 1 & 5. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information. Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, and the NYC Moms Blog.
Tags: Microsoft, Office 2010, OneNote, Recipes
Father’s Day Waffles…eventually
Jun 20, 2010 What's Going On
We all just got done with our Father’s Day brunch. Or maybe it was lunch. I’m not sure where the dividing line is on that, maybe it was actually breakfast since it was the first thing anybody ate, despite the fact that it wasn’t ready until almost noon.
The kids let us sleep in this morning, and I let The Ass sleep in some more for Father’s Day while I went downstairs to make his breakfast request, waffles. I’ve made waffles a bunch of times since we got a waffle maker earlier this year, but I usually just make a simple batter that takes about five minutes to put together – quick and easy and…just OK. I mean, an OK waffle fresh from the waffle iron is better than no waffle at all, but still. I thought maybe since it was Father’s Day I should do something a little more special.
This is where all of you experienced cooks are saying “Don’t EVER make a recipe the first time for a special occasion (or for company)!” I’m impressed that you can speak parenthetically. And yes, you’re right. But they’re waffles for goodness’ sake. It’s not like I was going to attempt a Father’s Day flan for the first time.
I grabbed my laptop and started looking for Belgian Waffle recipes. I discarded the first few because they used a ridiculous amount of eggs and butter. This is why restaurant food tastes so freaking good, because you can’t see how many eggs and how much butter goes into things. But after looking at about twenty Belgian Waffle recipes I realized that if I wanted to make super-duper-special Father’s Day waffles, I was going to have to suck it up and make light, fluffy, eggy, buttery waffles. And quickly too, because it was getting late.
I settled on one that used the least amount of eggs while still resembling the rest of the Belgian Waffle recipes. There was just nothing I could do about the butter, they all used a ton. But I didn’t have regular yeast, only instant, and I only had two cups of flour, not four, so I had some substitution research to do. Once that was finally done and I had settled on instant yeast and bread flour, I got to work. And it’s not that the recipe was kind-of a pain-in-the-ass, it was that I’d never made it before, so there was a lot of checking and rereading and rechecking. The butter was supposed to be melted and then cooled to room temp. Oh well, no time for that! The milk had to be 110 degrees, and I made it 140 by mistake, so I had to mix in some cold milk then re-measure. But I got it all done, and got to the end of the recipe, where it instructed me to cover the batter tightly and let it rest for an hour.
Fuck.
I know how yeast works, I’m not sure why this was a surprise. But I hadn’t gotten much sleep and hadn’t read through to the end of the recipe and, well, I didn’t have an hour! The kids had already come down twice asking when breakfast would be ready and now my husband was awake and downstairs and sitting on the couch with a cloud over his head, grumbling that anything would be good at this point and why hadn’t I just made the regular old batter, and I was starting to panic. So I covered it and got to work on the fruit salad and Jake’s pancakes (don’t get me started – he was the one who got us hooked on waffles and decided he didn’t like them right around the time we got the waffle maker).
In the end the batter sat for about 30 minutes. It definitely had not doubled in size, but that was as long as I could stretch things out without completely ruining Father’s Day and having to revive the kids with smelling salts. And while I’m not sure my husband would say that they were worth the wait, he did say that they were much better than our normal, non-Belgian waffles. So I’ll be making these again for sure, just not after sleeping in until nine-thirty in the morning.
Here’s the recipe, it’s a good one. Just leave yourself enough time.
And now, after we all finally shower and get ready, we’ll be heading to Coney Island, my least favorite place in the entire world. But it’s Father’s Day, so this is the only place you’ll hear me complain.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information. Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, and the NYC Moms Blog.
Tags: Belgian Waffles, Father's Day
Instant Gratification
Jun 19, 2010 What's Going On
Fiona and I were just watching the “Dark Stanley” episode of The Simpsons. There’s some weird creepy music that sounded familiar, and my usual go-to person for movie and TV references that I can’t place – The Ass – didn’t know either. So I googled “simpsons music in dark stanley episode” and went to the first result that came up, scanned through more trivia than I would ever care to know for a single episode of anything, and found my answer towards the bottom: it was from Twelve Monkeys. Amazing. The whole thing took about a minute, from the initial wondering to the answer.
There’s no real point to this post, except my amazement at how easily inane information can be found online these days. In the past, I would have wondered about the music for a little while, and either it would have popped into my head or not, and then I would have forgotten about it. But now, knowing that the answer is out there somewhere, I can’t just let those silly things go anymore. Right now, there are countless geeks in dorm rooms and basements filling the internet with factoids that will sit there until the next time I can’t place that actor from the commercial for the thing who I think was in an episode of that show with what’s-her-name. The info will be waiting for me.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information. Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, and the NYC Moms Blog.
Tags: Dark Stanley, The SImpsons, Twelve Monkeys
Poisoned Peaches
Jun 18, 2010 What's Going On
Occasionally I do actually shower before taking the kids to school, and this morning was one of those rare mornings. While I was in the shower and the kids were having breakfast, Fiona came up to ask me if she could have a peach. She’d been waiting rather impatiently for the slowest-ripening peaches in the world, so I said go ahead. But, I remembered that I had sprayed for mosquitoes yesterday. And while I didn’t spray the kitchen, the peaches had been out on the counter while I sprayed the rest of the house (smart, I know). So while I’m sure there’s normally an old layer of pesticide on all of the peaches in our house, there was a really good chance that there was a fresh new layer on these particular peaches. I wanted Fiona understand the seriousness of the peach washing – on a good day she only hears about a third of what I say, same as her dad – so I told her that there was a little bit of bug-killing poison on the peaches, but they’d be just fine if she washed one well.
When I came downstairs I noticed that none of the peaches had been eaten. Fiona was watching TV, and I asked her why she hadn’t had a peach. “I was scared of the poison.” She looked so pathetic saying it, she had been waiting for those peaches and now they were ready, but possibly deadly. I washed one for her and gave it to her with a smile.
She stared at it for a moment, wanting to trust me, but then she decided not to risk it and put it on the counter. I told her it was totally safe. She picked it up, looked at it really closely, and then held it out to me. “Will you take a bite first? I want to see if you’re OK.”
I did, and I was. And she happily ate the rest. I can now add royal taster to my resume.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information. Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, and the NYC Moms Blog.
Tags: Kids, pesticides
Project Natal = Kinect? Kool.
Jun 14, 2010 What's Going On
So the cat seems to be out of the bag on the official name for Microsoft’s Project Natal, the camera-based controllerless game for XBox 360. I cannot wait for this to hit stores (not sure when that is yet, but it could be announced at tomorrow’s today’s – duh, I posted this after midnight – Natal press conference).
We had a blast trying Natal out a few months ago, it was really amazing. Basically, you just stand up in front of it, and play. That’s it. no signing in, no learning curve. Not only was it a blast, but it was a workout! I have no idea how many games will be available for Natal when it officially launches, but I hope some of them are specifically geared towards exercising. The possibilities are fantastic.
Jake was especially into the game. It was torture for him to wait for our appointment, and once we got in there it was hard to get him to stop. I’ve seen him play Wii table tennis sitting on the couch, but with Natal, there’s no half-assing it. It knows if you’re moving.
Take a look at Jake playing a game where balls are coming at you, and you have to hit or kick them back. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to record shots of the game, but you can see what a blast Jake was having. By the end he was sweating – it was a real workout!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 5. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information. Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, and the NYC Moms Blog.
Tags: E3, Kinect, Microsoft, Project Natal, Xbox 360
God probably doesn’t even know who I am
Jun 11, 2010 What's Going On
This morning, after getting my kids to school late with my daughter dressed in the wrong clothes for a field trip and then burning my breakfast, I sat down with my laptop to check email and see what was happening on twitter. I saw this tweet from the always interesting Liz of Mom-101:
My mind immediately went to an email that was sitting in my inbox, signed “God loves you.” Every time I see an email signed that way, it annoys me. And I’m sitting here asking myself why? It’s obviously meant in a loving way, just as “blessings” is meant in a nice way. Am I just a horrible person to be annoyed by something so obviously meant as a gesture of good will?
I’ve spent hundreds of Sundays in a church, singing in a choir. The people who attend the church are fantastic, and as a visitor in their space I would never get annoyed if anyone told me that God loved me or gave me blessings or told me they’d say a prayer for me – I’m in their space, and it makes sense for them to assume that I’m religious. But outside of church, in listserv emails or in passing on the street, is it oversensitive to bristle when someone tells me to have a blessed day or proclaims God’s love for me?
As with most things in life, it’s not what’s being said to me that’s bothering me, it’s what I’m doing – or not doing – that has me bothered. I’ve never been one for bumper stickers, or their 21st-century equivalent, the customized signature line, where beliefs and attitudes are summed up in a snappy saying or a mini morality lesson. I could end every email with a pithy “God doesn’t exist – live your life well, it’s all you have.” But I don’t, because I don’t want to purposely and unexpectedly smack people with a statement that might stab at their core beliefs. I don’t feel the need to throw my beliefs – or lack thereof – in the faces of everyone I encounter. So why do so many religious people seem to lack that sentiment?
Not too long ago an atheist group ran an ad campaign in NYC subway stations, with posters posing the question “One million New Yorkers are good without God. Are you?” In an AMNY article a mother worried that she teaches her children to believe in God, and if they see the posters they’ll think she’s lying. And yet I can’t enter a subway car without seeing an ad with a bible quote. I can’t walk through Port Authority without passing tables filled with books about religion and having to walk around people trying to stop me in my tracks and convince me to believe what they believe. Jehovah’s Witnesses knock on my door. Christian ladies pass out flyers on the corner outside of my subway station. Do any of them stop and think about what I’m trying to teach my children?
My annoyance is not about what other people believe. My annoyance is rooted in the fact that I would never sign an email “God doesn’t exist.” I would consider it rude to blithely throw something like that around the same way someone else might end an email with a quote from Sam Kinison or a list of favorite TV shows. I am happy to go toe-to-toe with anyone who willingly wants to debate God and religion and separation of church and state, but I’m baffled by people who need to wear their religion as a badge. And I’m puzzled as to why it’s OK for Christian propaganda to be ubiquitous but a few atheist posters cause an uproar.
I can’t remember the last time I was offended, by anything. Other people’s beliefs don’t offend me, and someone wishing me well doesn’t offend me, no matter what words they use. People throwing their religion my way doesn’t offend me, it annoys me, on the same level that I’m annoyed by the very existence of Heidi Montag and the fact that Rush Limbaugh has found four different human women willing to marry him. But I do wonder how much scorn and derision would rain down on me if I ended every email with a polite “God is not necessary to live a full, moral, rewarding life. Love yourself and others.”
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information. Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, and the NYC Moms Blog.
Tags: "Good without God" subway posters, atheism, Atheist, religion
