Free Ebook: 7 Easy Christmas Crafts

Need a little help getting in the Christmas spirit?  Right now you can download a copy of 7 Easy Christmas Crafts for FREE!

This eBook has all kinds of projects to inspire creativity and festive feelings.  Kids can get involved in the craft activities and make their own ornaments, cards and centerpieces.

Click here to download your FREE ebook!

$30 of Top Quality Jewelry for as Low as Free (Great Christmas Gift Idea)

$30 of Accessories Direct Jewelry FREE ($7 for current SaveMore Members)

Here’s the perfect deal for checking someone off of your Christmas list.

Today SaveMore.com is offering  $30 of Top-Quality Jewelry for only $7 (and shipping is FREE).

Plus, you’ll get a FREE $10 credit when you sign up for SaveMore.com using this link. Use your credit on today’s deal to make it free!  Definitely can’t beat free Christmas gifts…especially when they’re prettty!

Click here to check it out!

Last Chance: Pillsbury Christmas Cookbooks $6 Shipped

Pillbury Christmas Cookbook Deal

Today is the last day to save 80% on Pillsbury Christmas 2008 & 2009. Each are only $5 with $1 shipping per item when you use code LST81 at checkout.

Click here to get your cookbooks!

Reminder: Christmas Cookbooks Only $6 Shipped

Pillbury Christmas Cookbook Deal

Just wanted to remind you that you can still get Pillsbury Christmas cookbooks for only $6 each shipped!

While fashions come and go, one things that’s always in style is good food! So when I saw a deal on 2008 and 2009 Pillsbury Christmas Cookbooks, I couldn’t wait to share them with you!

Right now you can save 80% on Pillsbury Christmas 2008 & 2009. Each are only $5 with $1 shipping per item when you use code LST81 at checkout.

I love Pillsbury recipes because they’re usually pretty easy to make and they taste incredible!

Click here to get your cookbooks!

Christmas Cookbooks Only $6 Shipped

Pillbury Christmas Cookbook Deal

While fashions come and go, one things that’s always in style is good food! So when I saw a deal on 2008 and 2009 Pillsbury Christmas Cookbooks, I couldn’t wait to share them with you!

Right now you can save 80% on Pillsbury Christmas 2008 & 2009. Each are only $5 with $1 shipping per item when you use code LST81 at checkout.

I love Pillsbury recipes because they’re usually pretty easy to make and they taste incredible!

Click here to get your cookbooks!

Start Planning for Christmas Now!

It’s hard to believe that we’re 2/3 of the way through 2011.  Christmas is less than 4 months away and while that may seem like it’s far off, it’s closer than you think.

It used to be that I’d wait til Black Friday, get up at the crack of dawn (Ok…it was more like the middle of the night) and head out to tackle my shopping.  I was sure that all of those Black Friday deals were saving me tons of money.  And while Black Friday can be helpful in saving money on your Christmas purchases, planning ahead can save you even more money…and it makes the Christmas season much more enjoyable!

Here’s how to make this Christmas less stressful and expensive.

1. Take the time now to make a list of everyone you plan on purchasing or making gifts for.

Be sure to include teachers, hair dressers, mail carriers and anyone else you may want to give a token of appreciation to.  Also, if you know you’ll be participating in a gift exchange, now is the time to be planning for this as well.

2. Set a realistic budget.

Figure out what you can afford to spend.  If you don’t have any extra room in your budget, start thinking of ways you can increase your income.

3.  Make a list of gift ideas.

If you’re thinking of making cookies in a jar, you’ll want to take advantage of the sale on canning jars.  If you know your child wants an ipod docking station, you can start comparing prices and looking for deals.  If you’re thinking of giving photo gifts to the grandparents, you can start putting together the photos you want to include.

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Tesco Direct.

Christmas in April

Glittery Glass Ornament Soaps

This year has been an unusually busy year for our family.  Between health issues, traveling, sports, and well… life, I feel like I’ve been playing catch-up all year!  Since Christmas, I’ve had a pile of Christmas presents sitting in my dining room.  I had them wrapped and ready to go long before Christmas, but since I was on crutches the entire month of December, I never made it to the post office.  You’d think that once I was off my crutches, that would have been the first thing I did, but alas…it still didn’t happen.

For months, this pile of presents has sat in the corner of my dining room…taunting me every night as I ate dinner.  I wished they would just mail themself!  I dreamed of how great my life would be if only I had a station that would print and apply labels and a conveyor system to move the boxes directly to the post office (or at the very least, out to my car).

I am happy to say that these packages have finally been sent!  I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders.  In reality, it didn’t take that long to get the job done, but in my head the task seemed a whole lot bigger than it was.

I guess I have the tendency to procrastinate on jobs that seem like they’ll take a lot of time or be inconvenient.  This week I’ve made a list of tasks I’ve been avoiding because they seem insurmountable and over the next few months, I am going to accomplish them all!

So tell me…am I the only one who tends to procrastinate on things around the house? Do you have a job you’re putting off?  Leave me a comment and we can tackle our list together!

Lots of Free Christmas Music Downloads

Today is the last day of  Amazon’s 25 Days of Free! Amazon has been giving away a free download of a holiday song every day since the 1st of the month.   I’m not sure how much longer these songs will be available for download, so you’ll want to take advantage of them now.  If Santa brought you an MP3 player for Christmas, this is a perfect way to start building your free music collection!

Here’s a list of all the songs that have been available.  Download them before it’s too late!

December 1: “White Winter Hymnal,” Fleet Foxes

December 2: “Your Holiday Song,” Indigo Girls

December 3: “Winter Games,” Superchunk

December 4: “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful,” Abandon Kansas

December 5: “Angels We Have Heard on High,” Point of Grace

December 6: “Auld Lang Syne,” Chris Isaak

December 7: “Winter Night,” Little & Ashley

December 8: “Joseph Dear Oh Joseph Mine,” Manheim Steamroller

December 9: “Time of the Season,” Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan

December 10: “Ain’t Nothin’ Like Christmas,” Shelby Lynne

December 11: “Angels We Have Heard on High,” Chanticleer

December 12: “Joseph’s Lullaby,” MercyMe

December 13: “Punk Rawk Christmas,” MXPX

December 14: “The Wexford Carol,” Carly Simon & Andreas Vollenweider

December 15: “In the Bleak Midwinter,” Dan Fogleberg

December 16:  “Toy Packaging,” Sara Groves

December 17:  “Oh Come O Come Emanuel,” Halford

December 18:  “Together at Christmas,” moe.

December 19:  “Father Christmas,” Cary Brothers

December 20:  “You’re Here,” Francesca Battistelli

December 21:  “I’ll Be Home For Christmas,” BarlowGirl

December 22:  “Santa Loves to Boogie,” Asleep at the Wheel

December 23:  “Silent Night,” Sixpence None the Richer

December 24:  “Away in a Manger,” Mindy Smith

December 25:  “Very Merry Christmas,” Dave Barnes

Go here to checkout all the other freebies I’ve posted recently!

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Merry Christmas

After 2 weeks of dealing with some crazy health problems and after my visit to the clinic here in Jamaica today, I’ve decided to take a few days to recover and enjoy time with my family.  I’m on 5 different medications and hoping these will kick in soon!  I’m not planning on blogging again til after Christmas.  I hope you all will have a wonderful Christmas and that you have a special time with your family and friends!

I wrote this last year and had so many emails from those of you who were struggling with their finances.  I hope this will encourage those of you who are struggling with finances as well as those who are doing OK financially!


It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year…or so they say. Although Christmas is a time to celebrate the birth of the One who brought Hope, when you’re struggling with your finances, Christmas can seem like the most hopeless time of the year. As a parent, you feel compelled to not only give great gifts to your children, but also to their teachers, your co-workers, and numerous other people.

Last year at this time, I was buying Christmas presents and praying like crazy that we wouldn’t max out all of our credit cards. Things were extremely tight, yet I felt like buying cheap gifts for my friends and family or sharing with them that I couldn’t afford to buy Christmas presents {GASP!} would be an admission of my failure as an adult. So I continued on, buying gifts we couldn’t afford, buying extra groceries we couldn’t afford, and pretending that all was well in our world! Our finances were a disaster!

By the time Christmas came and went, we had no money in our checking account.

On New Years Eve day, my husband Fred headed out to run some errands. He came home with a book (purchased on a credit card) that would rock our world and change our finances. He purchased Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. He started reading it as soon as he got home and then handed it to me and asked me to read the first 4 chapters. Not only did I read the first four chapters, but I finished the entire book in one setting. And I began to feel the stirring of something I hadn’t felt in a long time…HOPE.

Hope
that we might not be in debt forever.
Hope that we might get our acts together.
Hope that at some point our finances would be in good enough shape that we could adopt again.

When we sat down to figure out where we were financially, I felt extremely torn. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know how bad it really was. I knew that our monthly spending exceeded our income, but I wasn’t sure what the big picture was. It was REALLY ugly. The reality is that the amount of our debt surpassed a full year of income for my husband and I combined…and that wasn’t including our house. There were lots of things that contributed to that amount of debt…our adoption, the house we live in (that ended up needing $30,000 in improvements to make it livable instead of the $10,000 we planned on), and some poor choices in spending (eating out more than we needed to and trying to keep up with the Joneses).

This year, we have worked and planned and saved and been more creative than we have ever been. Was this an easy year for us? No. Our house flooded and we lost over $30,000 in belongings (our insurance for our basement was only $10,000). We had some health issues that came with some major bills. We had some dental issues that came with some more crazy bills. And on top of that, we got a letter from the IRS that due to some incorrect paperwork, we owed a TON of money! If any of this would have happened during the previous year, I’m not sure what we would have done. I just know that it most likely would not have had a happy ending.

Are we where we want to be financially? Not yet, but we now know we WILL be able to get there. Here are a few differences between last year and this year.

  • The feeling of hopelessness is gone.
  • This year’s Christmas shopping has been stress-free (partially because I purchased things throughout the year when I found them at rock bottom prices).
  • We don’t need to use credit cards anymore because we are living within our means.
  • I don’t dread opening the mail box because I know that we will be able to pay our bills.
  • I am able to stretch my dollars further than I would have thought possible.

If you are feeling the burden of finances this Christmas, I’d like to encourage you that there is hope for you too. Jesus came to bind up the broken-hearted and to proclaim liberty to the captives. I felt broken-hearted and imprisoned by our debt and finances, yet that is not God’s desire for us.

On a practical level, there are quite a few things you can do.

  1. Write down (or track online) everything you spend for one month. It will make you think twice about buying frivolous purchases and it will enable you to see areas where you can improve on your spending.
  2. Use coupons. Don’t go crazy, just try to reduce your spending by 10%. If you don’t have time to figure out where the good deals are, consider subscribing to The Grocery Game. They have a list each week that matches up that week’s best deals with coupons to give you the rock bottom prices. You can get a 4-week trial for only $1. (I wouldn’t bother with the CVS or Walgreens subscriptions as there are tons of blogs that provide the best deals on these stores each week).
  3. Come up with a plan. I am quite partial to Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. His advice is practical and biblical! {He’s also doing giveaways on his site every day between now and Christmas}.
  4. Stick with your plan (see number 4)! Facing your finances is tough, but it’s so worth it!
  5. Find someone who will encourage and support you. If you’re married, you and your spouse can hold each other accountable. If you’re single, find a friend you can confide in.

I hope you will begin the journey to get your finances in order. If you need encouragement or some suggestions, please feel free to email me. I’d love to help in any way and I’d be honored to pray for you. I don’t have it all together, but this is what works for me!

Free MP3 Download of In The Bleak Midwinter by Dan Fogelberg

It’s time for Amazon’s 25 Days of Free! Everyday between now and Christmas, Amazon will be giving away a free download of a holiday song. These songs will only be available for a limited time, so you’ll want to make sure to download them before they’re gone!

Today’s song is In The Bleak Midwinter by Dan Fogelberg.

Be sure to check out all the other songs in the 25 Days of Free!

December 1: “White Winter Hymnal,” Fleet Foxes

December 2: “Your Holiday Song,” Indigo Girls

December 3: “Winter Games,” Superchunk

December 4: “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful,” Abandon Kansas

December 5: “Angels We Have Heard on High,” Point of Grace

December 6: “Auld Lang Syne,” Chris Isaak

December 7: “Winter Night,” Little & Ashley

December 8: “Joseph Dear Oh Joseph Mine,” Manheim Steamroller

December 9: “Time of the Season,” Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan

December 10: “Ain’t Nothin’ Like Christmas,” Shelby Lynne

December 11: “Angels We Have Heard on High,” Chanticleer

December 12: “Joseph’s Lullaby,” MercyMe

December 13:  “Punk Rawk Christmas,” MXPX

December 14:  “The Wexford Carol,” Carly Simon & Andreas Vollenweider

Go here to checkout all the other freebies I’ve posted recently!

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Last Chance: 60 Photo Cards for Only $4.90 Plus Tax (Includes Free Overnight Shipping)

Today is the last chance to get 60 Photo Cards from SeeHere for only $4.90 plus taxwith free overnight shipping! It’s really easy to do!

  • Sign up for for or login to your SeeHere account and choose Photo Cards.
  • Select a 4 x 8 card and choose your design template.
  • Drag a photo from your computer to the template and add text.
  • Add exactly 60 cards to your cart.
  • Choose overnight shipping and then use code 50cards.
  • You’ll only pay $4.90 plus tax at checkout!


This is a totally sweet deal! If you’re more organized than I am and you already have your Christmas cards, why not consider making photo thank you cards!

This deal is only good through December 12th at midnight eastern time, so snag it while you can!

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Simplified Saving Christmas Day 9: Chex Holiday Gift Package (Includes Chex Cereal & $25 Kroger Gift Card) {CLOSED}

With Christmas just around the corner, I thought I’d share my recipe for Christmas Chex Mix. I’ve tried making this a variety of ways and every batch I’ve made has always been delicious.

White Chocolate Christmas Chex Mix

3 cups Rice Chex

3 cups Corn Chex

3 cups Pretzels

16 oz white chocolate chips

12 oz Red and Green M&Ms

{If you have peanut lovers in your family, you can add 2 cups salted peanuts.  I love peanut butter, but am not a big fan of peanuts, so I left them out}

Melt white chocolate in a large microwavable bowl. When chocolate is melted, with cereal and pretzels.  Spread mixture in thin layer on wax paper covered baking sheets.  Let cool completely.  Break mix up into small pieces and add M&Ms. Store in an air-tight container.

{I was a little out of it when I made this yesterday and I mixed in my M&Ms with the other ingredients.  It won’t affect the taste, but it’s definitely not as pretty if you add the M&Ms too early!}

As I said earlier, I’m not a big peanut fan, but I absolutely love peanut butter.  I thought I’d try something different and made a peanut butter drizzle to go on half of my Chex mix.  I mixed together peanut butter and white chocolate chips and microwaved the mixture til it was easy to pour.  I drizzled it over half of my Chex mix.

It turned out to be quite yummy!  I’ll definitely be making this again!

You have a chance to whip up some yummy treats with Chex too!  One lucky reader is going to win a Chex Holiday Prize Pack!

Want to Win?

One lucky reader of Simplified Saving will win a Chex Holiday Prize Pack which includes 2 boxes of Chex cereal and a $25 Kroger Gift Card

Ways to Enter:

  1. Share your favorite Chex mix recipe or your favorite type of Chex cereal
  2. Subscribe to Simplified Saving by Email
  3. Subscribe to Simplified Saving in a Reader
  4. “Like” Simplified Saving on Facebook
  5. “Like” Chex on Facebook
  6. “Like” Kroger on Facebook
  7. Follow Simplified Saving (@SimplifiedSavin) on Twitter
  8. Follow Simplified Saving on Google Friend Connect (scroll all the way down and look on the left)

The Fine Print: If you already subscribe, like, or follow me, that counts as well!  Please leave a separate comment for each entry. Comments that just say “I want to win” or “Thanks for the giveaway” will be disqualified! This contest will end on December 19th at 8pm Eastern Time. This giveaway is limited to US residents only  18 years old and above.  Winner will be chosen at random.

Disclosure:  Kroger and Chex provided me with the above gift pack in conjunction with My Blog Spark.  All opinions expressed were my own!  No other compensation was received.

Here’s A Little Something Fun For Christmas

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!

Free Download of Auld Lang Syne by Chris Isaak

It’s time for Amazon’s 25 Days of Free! Everyday between now and Christmas, Amazon will be giving away a free download of a holiday song. These songs will only be available for a limited time, so you’ll want to make sure to download them before they’re gone!

Today’s song is Auld Lang Syne by Chris Isaak.

Also, be sure to check out all the other songs in the 25 Days of Free!

December 1: “White Winter Hymnal,” Fleet Foxes

December 2: “Your Holiday Song,” Indigo Girls

December 3: “Winter Games,” Superchunk

December 4: “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful,” Abandon Kansas

December 5:  “Angels We Have Heard on High,” Point of Grace

Free Make it a Red Heart Holiday eBook

FaveCrafts

Now that Thanksgiving is over, you can put your Christmas plans into high gear.  Have you downloaded your free copy of Make it a Red Heart Holiday ebook?  If you’re looking for Christmas ornaments to knit or crochet, free Christmas crochet patterns, or Christmas knit patterns, it’s not too late to take advantage of this holiday eBook from Red Heart Yarns.

Nintendo DSi Holiday Bundle for Only $149.99 (Best Deal I’ve Seen)

If you have Nintendo DSi on your holiday shopping list this year,  you can pre-order it on Amazon for $149.99.  Plus, as a bonus, you’ll get the Mario Party game. As an extra bonus, you’ll receive a $25 credit to use on any physical item in the video game store. The release date for this product is Friday (11/26).  You can choose from 2 colors: orange or green!

The only other deal that comes close to this is at Kmart on Black Friday between 5am and 11am.  They are offering the Nintendo DSi bundle for $149.99 and are including the Mario Party game, but you’d still miss out on the $25.00 Amazon Video Game credit!

Hurry over to Amazon to pre-order your Nintendo DSi bundle today!

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