WFMW: Pet Shopping in the 21st Century

Sometime last week, somehow between contemplating about Ethan starting to get lonely and Mike and I not being quite ready for the responsibility of having baby #2, I may or may not have inadvertently promised Ethan we would get him his own “Bolt”.

It fits. We’re moving into our new home and Ethan loves to play with dogs. It’s never too early for him to start learning some responsibility, like feeding or walking the dog. And we want to settle in first before trying again. A pet is a natural addition to a family without the pregnancy, right?

Right.

So now we’ve all convinced ourselves we’re going to get a dog.

But we have to wait until we settle in the house which probably won’t be until July – after closing, we still have some stuff to do in the kitchen before we want to move in. So to satisfy our excitement for now, instead of rushing to the shelters, we started perusing through Pet Finder – which is an awesome site in this Facebook/Twitter era for those looking to adopt a pet.

You can search by breed, age, size, gender, and of course, location. Majority of them have photos, and most even have their histories posted in their profile!

This little guy is definitely one of our runner ups…

Works For Me Wednesdays: How to get Cheap Prints at Walgreens

Once upon a time, in the world of film cameras, most of us didn’t have a choice but to get our rolls of film printed. Otherwise, we’d never see the photos we took. Nowadays, it’s become quite normal to have hundreds (even thousands) of photos sitting in a hard drive without having to be printed.

That’s me. Guilty as charged.

I have more photos that what I can imagine to do with it, and yet, I don’t have any albums of actual printed pictures.

Every once in a while though, I run into mini-deals like this and I try to take advantage of it.

Upload your photos at Walgreens online and select in-store pick up to save shipping. It’s $5 for the first 50 prints by using code 5dollars. If you have more than 50 to print, don’t worry, it’s still .10 per print.

This coupon expires in April 11th, but they'll have this sale again, in cae you miss out.

Works for Me Wednesdays: How to Watch TV Shows/Movies Online

Fact #1: I don’t have time to watch tv.
Fact #2: When I do find the time, I would prefer to not have to watch commercials.
Fact #3: DVR is one of the greatest inventions known to mankind.
Fact #4: When you can’t access your DVR, if someone deletes your DVR recording, or if you don’t have the channel to DVR to begin with, you can always go online. Rest assured, someone else in cyberspace has recorded your show and have posted it online for your viewing pleasure.

Online streaming is how I survived 2 seasons of Top Chef and Project Runway without having Bravo on our cable package. I’ve also found myself watching Friends from the very beginning. How great is it that you can watch any show you could ever think of on demand, AND without the annoying pause for commercials.

But it’s not just tv shows anymore either. Gone are the days when you have to wait until weeks after release from theatre for it to go on betamax//VHS/DVD at your local Blockbuster. These days, movies get posted online before they are even released in the US. Granted you have to sort through several to find a good quality copy.. they do exist.. and they can save you the $20 you were going to spend at the movies.

My top picks are Tv Links, Surf the Channel and watch-movies.net.

I’m sure that there are plenty others, maybe even better ones. But these are the sites that I have been using and have consistently given me hours of entertainment without annoying popup ads and worse, viruses.

Works For Me Wednesdays: How To Volunteer When You Don’t Have the Time

I’ve always been a firm believer of paying it forward. I was a girlscout throughout grade school. In high school, some of my Saturdays consisted of waking up at 5am to help peel 500 potatoes for the local soup kitchen. In college, I spent a lot of time as a youth leader for the youth ministry, and once, I helped fix a home for a very deserving family through Habitat for Humanity. In my few years as an Army wife, I spent a lot of time with the Family Readiness Group, a nonprofit organization that helps families when their Soldiers are deployed.

Nowadays, being a working mom doesn’t leave me with very much time to dedicate somewhere outside of my work and family. Physically, anyway…

Thankfully, there’s plenty of opportunities for virtual volunteering! In this day and age, you’d be surprised how much you could do from home and over the internet. One of the organizations I’ve worked with recently, Youth Technology & Education Center in St. Louis Missouri, asked me to design a postcard to thank all their sponsors and contributors.

All it took were a few emails to get that simple sense of contribution -- as little as it seems.

I found them through Volunteer Match. It’s easy to search by location, by areas of interest, by groups and you can filter for virtual opportunities. But of course, if you’re so inclined to volunteer the old-fashion way, there’s plenty of opportunities for those too!

Works For Me Wednesdays: Swapping Instead of Shopping

One girl’s old rags is another girl’s treasure!

I somehow ran into this idea surfing through the web and I thought it was brilliant….

It’s a phenomenon in the frugal world of bargain shopping — especially these days. And heck, you CAN’T get any better than FREE!!!! There’s a huge organization set up that does only swaps, but they haven’t posted any LA events… so we decided to try to pull one off on our own.


The idea is simple:
1) Everyone brings in clothes, shoes and accessories they just simply don’t love anymore and are taking up precious closet space
2) We come together, put them in piles, and look at what everyone else brought
3) What’s lefts gets taken to charity

My sister and I started posting on Craigslist and telling friends/co-workers about the idea. The response was pretty overwhelming. Those who couldn’t make it wrote emails begging us to organize another one (before the first one even started!) Next thing you know, there are 33 people who had RSVP’d yes, sending us scrambling to set up in the yard instead of the garage (turned into the dance room).

I’d say, there were about 20 people who ended up showing up. We provided some snacks/drinks and a dressing room (ie a designated bathroom) for those who wanted to try on clothes. There was music blasting, mirrors set up, and tables full of clothes, shoes, purses and other accessories.

Our rules were simple: bring what you can, take all you want BUT be considerate. In the end, everyone went home happy with their “new” and replenished wardrobe MINUS THE GUILT! And surprisingly, there is an unbelievably deep sense of satisfaction knowing that your clothing has found a new - and appreciative - owner. It was fun seeing other people pick up your clothes and saying “This is cute!” and responding with, “I know, that was mine! But it looks good on you!”

AND we had plenty left afterwards that we dropped off at a local women’s shelter.

Everybody wins!!!

Overall, it was a good time. People had already asked us when the “next one” is… some have requested we organize one for kids clothes – which I’m seriously considering. Maybe next month! :)

Works For Me Wednesdays: How To Get Free Hotel Rooms

So I decided I would (starting today) post every Wednesday… little tips that I have found to “work for me” [hence the name] in hopes whoever reads this can learn from it. Simple, right? It’s apparently a phenomenon in the blogging arena – check out the blog carnival here.

Though I’m not promising any life-changing revelations (for example, one week, I could talk about “How Not to Find Yourself Doing 8 Loads of Laundry on a Beautiful Saturday”), BUT… I do promise to (try to) post something every Wednesday. It’s my self-medicated approach to lagging.

Today’s WFMW is how to score a free hotel room – even if you don’t really need one.

I have to start my apologizing I didn’t get to share this sooner, because the program actually ends at the end of this month. Which means, you have 20 days to score a free one if you want. I discovered this deal last year and have since then been able to enjoy close to 50 hotel stays all across the US for FREE. I’m saddened by the news of the program’s conclusion – but you know what they say, all good things must come to an end.

Spoken by a true cynic.

Here’s the skinny:

Wyndham is a company that owns thousands of hotels and motels around the world. These hotels include the brands of Ramada, Howard Johnson, Baymont Inn & Suites, Super 8, Days Inn, Wingate by Wyndham, Knights Inn, AmeriHostInn, and Travelodge. Its Best Rate Guarantee (BRG for short) basically lets you stay for free for one night if you find a rate for their hotels that is lower than the price on Wyndham's site.

The basics rules are:
1) You must find a publicly available rate for a specific Wyndham hotel that is lower than Wyndham's posted rate for the same hotel.
2) The room type for the rate you find must match the room type on the Wyndham site.
3) You must book your reservation through Wyndham Rewards or one of Wyndham's hotel sites.
4) You must notify Wyndham of your claim within 24 hours of making the reservation and your reservation cannot be booked within 48 hours of arrival.
5) Only the first night is free for each eligible stay.

Here’s the kicker: finding the cheaper rate can be as easy as searching on Kayak or HotelsCombined (where they search hundreds of hotels for you and the rate variations can be obvious as day), but that doesn’t always pan out. Another great resource is the Best Rate Guarantee Blog – they post these rate variations almost daily. And for the last stretch of the remainder of this month, they’ve been knocking them out left and right.

Sometimes the competitor rates are only 99 cents cheaper than Wyndham's rates, but the guarantee is still honored because their Terms and condition require at least .25 difference – therefore you still a free night. If you plan well in advance, you could get an entire vacation’s hotel stays for free. You could move around different Wyndham properties in the same city and get multiple nights for free. Or if you’re traveling with a partner, you could alternate days.

For our anniversary week last year, I got 7 days of free hotels in DC, Baltimore, Maryland, Ocean City, Maryland, Virginia Beach, Virginia and Richmond, Virginia. Total hotel bill for that week = $0.

Days Inn Inner Harbor – Baltimore, MD



Ramada on the Beach – Virginia Beach, VA



Days Inn Oceanfront – Ocean City, MD


Wyndham Virginia Crossings – Richmond, VA

Hopefully, I’ve armed you with enough to get as much as you can before the program rests in peace on April 1st. Fair warning though, there are some hotels that are not worth staying in EVEN IF THEY ARE FREE, so do you due diligence in reading reviews before you get to excited.

Happy hunting!