I Save With YaySave

My 1st order from YaySave was over a year ago. I ordered dish washing liquid, Ivory Soap for laundry soap making, and hand sanitizer. Since then I've ordered a few more times - free shipping & fast service on quality products.

This past Saturday, I bought Charmin Ultra Strong tp - double rolls 2 ply 12 pack for $10.25. A good deal so I bought three packages, you can never have enough TP. The third only ended up costing me 25¢ or a total of $1.73 per double roll for the whole lot. 

I had a $5 credit from a previous order on YaySave which I took full advantage of on this order. Then I subtracted the upcoming $5 Amazon gift card that I'll redeem with a portion of the 500 swagbucks that was a promotional offer on YaySave this past week, (with a $20 purchase). 

Then on Sunday I remembered that my Mom would soon be needing a tissue run so I ordered her the Puffs special. Then I remembered that my very athletic teenage daughter has sneakers that can get up and walk on their own. I ordered her a can of Lysol disinfectant spray. That order also qualified me for another 500 Swag bucks. My 1000 Swag Bucks were deposited in my swagbucks account on Tuesday! 

                                                                       

Wednesday my order from YaySave was delivered to my door. Not bad @ all ... free shipping ... $10 worth of Amazon gift cards earned (+ an extra 100 swagbucks) all in 4 days from start to finish!

This week's YaySave's promotional offers are earn 100 Swag Bucks on Aveeno, Boon, and Olay products. I'm a Premium member ($19.99 for a full year) so I get free shipping, along with weekly special deals. 

YaySave also has a certified section where products are always a minimum of 25% less than other online competitors who's prices are also posted directly on YaySave's site- makes for easy comparison shopping. Each week the site focuses on a new brand as their bonus offering @ great price. 

Good customer service, fast (free shipping for premium members), and all the convenience of shopping in my pajamas for great deals on products that we use. 

YaySave also has a great referral program. If any of your referrals go premium you receive a sawbucks ($10) not to be confused with swagbucks, lol. But the real moolah making deal is that you can earn up to a C note ($100) per referral by collecting on every purchase. 

Even if you decide not to sign up under me using my referral link I still promise to share with you special E-codes for extra YaySave deals. Because after all, it's all about saving those green backs on products you really use.

Login or sign up with YaySave then to to "my accounts ". 
Your 1st special E-code for $2 is 94166d017e4caa0c922af359883ee4ef - Good til this Sunday the 25th. 


Stack the $2 E-code credit you just got with this weeks promo Spend $50 get $15 in YaySave Credit = $17 in totally free products. Stack those extra savings when you buy any products on YaySave that earn you swagbucks. Use swagbucks to earn paypal cards to pay for your Yaysave purchases.
Seventeen smackeroos without clipping coupons or throwing on street clothes to go shopping.


While you're @ it stop by this weeks giveaway enter via fb or email for their double C note a $200 valued baby product. 


Might be your lucky day, after all you just got $2.




~~ pelenaka ~~


P.S. - check out YaySave's twitter feed for another great code worth 50 cents, every penny counts. 

Cold Frame = Hot Love

Yeah, that's right when your a homesteader be it urban or rural it's gifts of cold frames and the like that tells you your man loves you. 

Loves you Hot.

This is the second cold frame Woodsrunner has built me. After 5+ years of marriage originating on yahoo singles (no he wasn't a online serial killer), he apparently loves me even more than when he built the first cold frame. 

Baby has Wood

Hubby's newest design makes the center height twice as high to accommodate marigolds (bug control) and  taller greens such as Swiss Chard. PVC pipe & wood was all scavenged from past projects around the urban homestead.

Early Spring Beige 

In place waiting on upholstery plastic to be stapled down. Red Onions made it through our mostly balmy Winter. So did the carrots which were some of the sweetest, most delicate tasting I have ever had.

Good haul ... if I was Tom Thumb. Neglected to use an object (like a quarter) for size reference but lets just say that rinsing them off greatly decreased the harvest.

Broccoli or rather 6 month old Broccoli starts but I did keep them alive through a warm Winter.

Surviving & flourishing are two vastly different concepts. Consider us starved if we had had to depend on the garden for total Winter nourishment.

It's been in the high 70s to record breaking 80 degrees as of late but I'm sure that there is one last howrah from Old Man Winter still yet to come. Maybe I'll still get to try out my new cold frame.

A hunk hunk burning love ...




~~ pelenaka ~~

Free Canning Jars - Blessings on the Curb

Bit of elbow grease makes for a new opportunity for food preservation. 

I scored 5 boxes of tall Ball Quilted Jelly Jars last week the day before my street was scheduled for trash pick up. The boxes were piled up in front of a neighbor's house along with glassware, books, and some clothing. Neighbor who I had only really waved to on my travels was purging her father's apartment contents due to his recent death. She was on her front porch taking a smoke so I was able to ask if she didn't mind me rummaging around the huge pile on the hell strip. That's when she told me he had died of complications due to diabetes.

I offered my condolences and thanks for the jars and for the first time we chatted a bit. She mentioned how she always saw me riding around the neighborhood. Then spoke about how much in the past she enjoyed riding. I gave her my card and told her to call sometime we could go for a ride. She didn't seem too enthusiastic perhaps when I drop off a few filled jelly jars I can nudge her to go for a short ride.
When your ready I told her as I pedaled away with the jars bungee corded to my bike rack. She gave a wave with the hand that held her Indian Pride cig and gently rocked on the porch swing.

Two of the 12 packs boxes were filled with what was peaches in heavy syrup and perhaps pureed pears.
No labeling but I wasn't planning on eating the contents anyways, it was all about the glass.

Two boxes worth went to my bbgf (barter buddy girlfriend) as an early Mother's Day gift. The other 3 twelve packs down to the cellar. I need to do some serious canning this year especially since I slacked off last year.

I get allot of stares when I haul cargo home on my bike, not so much when I'm just out & about. It always pays to have the means to carry stuffs on a bike. Being street level usually results in good opportunities and the chance to make new friends.


~~ pelenaka ~~

Fugal Package for Homemade Gifts

Store with the bail off & bottle upside down. 

If your a greenie or short on cash here's a packaging idea that works great & only costs a nickel.
We buy these wire & bail bottles back from the neighborhood redemption place which although not as fun is cheaper than purchasing them filled from the corner store.

Good soak in boiling hot soapy water then a bit of elbow grease scrubbing the labels off with an old toothbrush.

Fill with homemade apple cider vinegar, secure the cap, add label. These work well for flavored extracts, oils, & vinegar. I could even see these holding homemade lotions. There is the obvious of course ... homemade beer or wine.


~~ pelenaka ~~

Free Amazon Kindle Books

Amazon recommended these free kindle books to me today ... oh how they know me so well.  I haven't had a chance yet to read any of them but in case there's only a 24 hour window of opportunity (read free) I wanted to share.

~~ pelenaka ~~




Gardening - never enough points of view.

Green Living - this catch phrase makes me lol.

Turning the Unemployment Tide 

Just in case that interview is group affair.

4 reviews 5 stars - got my attention.

$

Hopefully I'll learn something new.

Foreclosure Next Door

3rd in a series of the perfect storm (foreclosures) surrounding my urban homestead.

Twin

Foreclosure due to Illness/Poor decisions - I'd been expecting the foreclosure of my neighbor's home since October when he had casually mentioned his bank note hadn't been paid in months. He had apparently missed the financial boat sometime within the 15+ years of home ownership to refinance @ a lower rate. Years later after smoking two packs a day for forever he came down with the big C, surviving isn't always the half of it. It is also surviving the cost of cancer. 

Without a steady paycheck burdened with a McMansion sized mortgage note, fed up with responsibilities of ownership he choose not to find a solution. Just as he choose not to have his roof replaced, or his furnace fixed, or gutters hung in times of plenty. Repairs now to the twin far out weigh it's current value. 

My neighbor's choices in life are now resting on my front stoop and my heart. My worry is that the twin can become a rental. Secondly, the value of my home has over night sunk even farther down the real estate rabbit hole. 

I had on the occasion of my marriage to Woodsrunner, made a promise - that with the last child out of high school we would move to the country (yes I would blog through that transition & no it wouldn't be a 100% happy move for me). Now not unlike a million other homeowners while not exactly upside down on my note, I have no pipe dreams of being able to sell. And I don't mean sell for a profit (no profit no raw land), I mean just selling to break even. 

The twin to my 1902 two story farmhouse built on a stacked stone foundation with a hand dug cellar in the balloon frame method is @ the widest point 13' from my own home. 

The floor plans is exactly the same with a few exceptions from remodels on both. The twin has had an additional toilet installed downstairs in what was originally a walk in kitchen closet that was then blocked off & door rerouted. My twin had a wall & doorway removed converting the downstairs bedroom into a dinning room. Not the smartest move, downgrading a home from three to two bedrooms. 

The most visible difference between the twins is exterior. 

For most who aren't gardeners the difference is house color. 

For others it's the porch designs. 

Neighbor's twin has two driveways a sweet deal where on-street parking can be the norm. 

But for me who has lived with spacial confinements and lack of life giving sun shine the biggest difference between the twins is MORE dirt for one twin, not enough for the other.

The other twin sits on a double lot, a full 60' x 90'. 

It also sits off to the right on that lot giving that extra 35' of lawn all day sunshine. An extra 420 inches. 

I covet my neighbor's lot.

~~ pelenaka ~~