Extreme Couponing!

Last week there was a documentary on TLC about people who do Extreme Couponing. These people built up major stock piles of items in their homes and also purchased in large quantities - one guy bought over 1000 boxes of cereal and with his coupons got them all for free! (He donated the cereal to a food bank).

I have been continuing my couponing (although I hardly would consider it extreme). I have had some great deals on diapers and wipes (large box of diapers and large container of wipes for $10). In honor of the Extreme Couponing show I wanted to share my latest great deal (no pictures as the "stock" has been given out already lol)

Recently Walmart had a deal on Old Spice and Gillette deodorant @ $2 each. My brother uses the Old Spice brand and hubby uses Gillette so I took this as the perfect time to stock up for them. I had Old Spice coupons for buy two Old Spice products get $3 off AND I had coupons for buy one Old Spice Deo and get a body wash for free. So for $1 I got two deodorant and two body wash. A great deal!

The Gillette deal was just as good. Coupons for buy three gilette products and get $5 off plus the buy one deo get one body wash for free so for $1 three gillette deo and three body wash!

I was able to buy enough to stock up my hubby, brother and cousin for the year. Also had some body washes to wrap up for stocking stuffers for the men in my life. I donated some more to Siloam Mission and am giving some to the Dubois family ( a local family that recently suffered a terrible accident).

Not going to lie, I did get a bit of a thrill at getting such a good deal but rest assured I am miles away from becoming an Extreme couponer!

First Cards of 2011

I have been spending a lot of time over at the Split Coast Stampers blog lately. I find it to be a great source of inspiration for me. If you are a paper crafter you most definitely should check it out.

My stamping goal for 2011 is to get some serious paper crafting done this year! I have so many awesome stamps, paper and supplies and I really want to make the effort to use them. I have a great friend LH who is also an avid paper crafter and we have been encouraging each other to create. Here are some of the cards I made yesterday.

For the past few summers I have been getting together with a few stamping friends at the lake for a few days of stamping. We bring our supplies and share with each other and generally have a blast. These images were embossed using my cuttlebug machine. I embossed so many images my elbow was aching!

The flowers on this card were embellished with some diamond dots. They are a little hard to see in the photograph as the cardstock is metallic but they add some nice pop to the card. I used a peel off sticker to add the sentiment.

This card was made using the stampin up Manhattan Rose embossing folder. Love this folder. So beautiful, simple but yet elegant! I gave this card to my mom for her birthday today. The sentiment was stamped in Chocolate Chip ink and I used my two new Stampin Up punches to punch out the white oval and the red scalloped oval. The sentiment is mounted with pop dots to make it stick out from the card. Added a little red rhinestone bling and mounted the card on some Real Red cardstock. A cute card I think!

Variation on the theme. Grey and red with some Real Red grosgrain ribbon and silver "pearls" to embellish.

I was on a roll and found this purple shiny ribbon while looking for the red ribbon and whipped this card together as well. It is not quite done - needs a sentiment or further embellishement - but I think it has the "bones" of a cute card! I used my new scallop border punch to add some pizazz.

Knitting Tags

I made this little package of tags for my mother in law for her birthday. She is an avid knitter and I thought she might like some of these to attach to the knitted items she makes to give away. She has knit baby blankets for all of my husband's cousins new babies and so I made these tags a little large to suit a blanket. I packaged them with some coordinating ribbon in a clear plastic envelope. She loved them! I also made some up for my mom. I used a Stampin Up stamp set called Hand Knit. I love this little set.

I used my cricut machine to cut out the shapes for the tags.

Baby Shower

We had a baby shower for my sister to celebrate the birth of her little son. It was a bit belated (held when he was 4 months old) but a fun party. I made these party favours using a tutorial I found on splitcoaststampers. They hold ghirardelli chocolates.




These little clothes pin onesies were for a game called "Never Say Baby". If you said the word baby or my nephew's name you forfeited your clothes pin to the person who caught you. At the end of the game, whoever had the most pins won a prize. I used a wheel stamp from Stampin Up to make the little onesies to decorate the chocolate boxes and the clothespins.


This was made using my Cricut machine. I used the Cupcake Wrappers Cricut Lite cartridge to make these little wrappers for the dainties my mom made. They turned out pretty cute I thought!

Quilting Bee - the results

After two days of quilting the numbers are in. 20 quilts pieced, tied and sewn together. These quilts have been donated to Lutheran World Relief to be given to people in need of warm sturdy quilts for shelter and warmth.

A small group of 7 ladies from my church got together to work on this project. I was very happy that we were able to get 20 quilts done. We still have lots of fabric left over and plan another quilting bee in the next few months.

The quilts are definitely colorful (no designer fabrics here) just plenty of old sheets and scraps of cloth but meet the criteria of warm and sturdy. We used old blankets and flannel sheets to line the quilts and crochet cotton to tie them.

Lego Crayons

These were part of the party favours for Junior Jay's first birthday. I melted down crayons and poured the hot wax into silicone molds that I found online. I put the molds in the freezer for 15 minutes and then the crayons popped right out. I followed this tutorial.


The mini figure ones turned out so cool! They are the exact same size as the lego mini figures!


One tip I have if you are trying this at home is to use clothespins to hold the cans upright in the boiling water bath. Also - you can bend the cans to make a spout. I found that this helped my accuracy in pouring the hot melted crayon! Also - all the dads at the party thought these were super cool!

Snowman Card

Well it has been awhile - and not for lack of projects that I have completed! Just haven't taken the time to organize pictures and write the posts to go along with the projects. We ended up making the snow man card for stamp club. A cute and quick card using the Stampin' Up Top Note die.

I also made some invitations for my son's first birthday party. I went with a lego theme and thought the invitations turned out just like I wanted them to - simple, bright and suitably lego themed. And I loved the lego brads!