Swagbucks: How does it work?

I have mentioned several times about something called "Swagbucks". I was introduced to it through a friend on Facebook, and decided to give it a whirl. If you haven't heard of it before, or you've seen it mentioned on different sites, you might be confused about what it is. It's a free program you sign up for, and then earn "swagbucks" in various ways. The most common way is when you use their free search engine and are randomly awarded "swagbucks". You then redeem your swagbucks at "The Swag Store", my favorite items being the $5 Amazon gift cards, which are only 450 swagbucks each. Since I started using Swagbucks at the beginning of July, I have earned enough swagbucks to redeem for almost $50 worth of Amazon cards.


So how do you earn points? First, you have to sign-up. Then....

• Make the Swagbucks free search engine your homepage, and use it for all your daily searches. I win swagbucks for things as basic as "facebook", "gmail", "Money Saving Mom", and "Frugal Girls", which are all sites that I go to on a daily basis anyway. You don't win on every search, but I easily win 20-30 swagbucks a day this way.
• Refer swagbucks to your friends, family, and co-workers, and when they sign up, you earn extra points. (For example, if you click on any of the links in this blog to sign-up, I will earn some extra swagbucks. Then you get your friends to sign up under you, and you get extra swagbucks...)
• Catch "freebies", which are Swagbucks codes posted on their blog, Facebook, or tool bar.
• Participate in the daily poll or a survey, and you win extra points.

Those are the basic ways to earn swagbucks. Once you're ready to redeem your points, you can visit what they call "The Swag Store" to see all available prizes. Gift cards are actually "e-cards", so they will be posted to your account, not physically mailed to you. I have already typed in my e-cards to my amazon account, so I now have a positive balance in my account that will be good towards my next purchase! This will be great with Christmas right around the corner, as well as a growing baby boy who keeps me on my toes finding new ideas for foods, toys, clothes, and books! (and if you haven't signed up for "Amazon Mom" yet, you need to! You get 3 free months of Amazon Prime, which means free shipping on all Amazon orders!)

If you have any more questions, let me know!

FREE "Amazon Mom" Prime Membership for 3 months

Amazon is offering a FREE Prime Membership called "Amazon Mom" to all caregivers (not just moms). Once you've signed up, you can also add another member to the account, so I added my husband.

I am excited about this freebie, because I've been earning Amazon gift cards through Swagbucks, and I've earned almost $50 since the beginning of July. I've found a few things I would love to order, but I was waiting until I had $25 to qualify for their free shipping. Now I don't have to wait! And this will take me right until the beginning of December, so I might be able to order some Christmas gifts with free shipping, too!

Thanks, Money Saving Mom!

New Target Apparel Coupons

There are new Target coupons for apparel! Every time these have been available this summer, they have matched with some great sales/clearance. But make sure to print them as soon as you can, because they go quick! This month the coupons are:

• $2 off kid's denim apparel item
• $2 off any Merona accessory
• $3 off Merona dress (am I smelling a cute sundress on clearance?)
• $3 adult denim clothing item

Thrift Store Trip

Today I visited a local thrift store (the Village Discount Outlet), which is by far the largest thrift store/resale shop that I have ever seen. Over half my wardrobe probably comes from there, as well as probably almost all of my son's. In the last two weeks, along with cutting his 3rd tooth, Levi has taken a growth spurt. Quite a few of his one-piece rompers and onesies are having a hard time snapping, without me pulling and tugging and stretching them first. And for a little boy trying to master the art of crawling, having a tight outfit on isn't his favorite thing. So it was definitely time to visit The Village again.

And while they didn't have very many boy onesies or cotton sleepers for this next size, I used my ever-growing imagination, and found two-piece pajama sets, pajama tops that can go with cotton pants we already have, long sleeve shirts (instead of long-sleeve onesies) to go with a couple pairs of jeans I got from a lady earlier this week (who has a son just a few stages ahead of Levi), and some lightweight fleece sleepers as the nights (hopefully) start to get cooler.

The grand total? $16. Yep, that's right. 5 fleece sleepers, 1 pajama set, 6 longsleeves, 3 onesies, 2 short sleeves, and 1 polo romper, which makes 18 pieces of boy's clothing, and the total was $16. How is that possible? I like to go on Thursdays, because at the Village, not only are things marked decently low anyway, every week they change "half-price" tag colors, and for some weird reason they change the colors for the "week" on Thursdays. This week anything with blue or green tags were half-off. So I looked exclusively for those colors.

Crawling, walking, cool weather, and playing outdoors in the fall, here we come!