Mom Life in the PNW

10 Sites You Can Earn Amazon Gift Cards for FREE!

10 Sites You Can Earn Amazon Gift Cards for FREE!
 

Every time Christmas or Birthday’s roll around, I usually have enough Amazon gift cards saved up to purchase all my gifts for absolutely FREE! All it took was a little bit of my time out of the day to earn them. Some of these websites are survey companies, GPT (get paid to) sites, and search engines. I have written a previous post on how to complete GPT offers that you can check out if you’re interested, or have never heard of them. Read it over, it has plenty of useful information.

  1. Swagbucks (Search Engine Reward Site) – This site is pretty much a must-have for everyone who is on the internet. You search the internet anyway so why not get free prizes for it? All you do is install their search engine add-on and search like you normally would. Now, they do have it to detect if you are just typing random stuff right after another to try and win. You won’t get Swagbucks by doing that, so I wouldn’t waste your time. Usually, the win times seems to vary hours after your first win of the day. So, say you do some searches in the morning and win, you can probably expect to again later in the evening. =) It’s quite easy, nothing to it really… and if you install their toolbar they randomly give away free Swagbucks and occasionally they will post trivia on their twitter site. Also, if you refer people to Swagbucks you get what your referrals win. It is definitely a win/win situation.
  2. Opinion Outpost (Survey Company) – You do need to have a minimum of $5.00 in points to request an Amazon gift card, which can easily be accomplished by completing only 2 surveys. They range from 2.00 – 10.00 that I have been sent thus far. You will receive your gift code instantly upon request. That’s one great thing about this site!
  3. Points2Shop (GPT site) – This is my top money making site and so far I have received $1144.58 worth of cash and prizes. When you are from UK, USA or CA you get 15% of what your first level referrals earn, 3% of the second level and 2% of the third level. On top of that, you can also earn up to $1.00 for each member you refer. If you don’t want to earn points to spend on Amazon.com you can always join their sister site, cashle.
  4. Cashle (GPT site) – Sister site to Points2Shop. Can transfer cash earned into your PayPal account or into an Amazon Gift Card.
  5. Zoombucks (Search Engine Reward Site) – Same mechanics as Swagbucks.
  6. Cash Crate (GPT site) – The minimum payout is 20.00. And they will mail your check on the 15th after each month that you meet your minimum payout. For example, if you earn at least $20.00 in October, They will mail your check on November 15th. You currently earn 20% of what your referrals make and 10% of what their referrals make. You’ll also receive a $3.00 bonus for each referral who earns their first $10.00. I won a Nintendo Wii in one of their earnings contest.
  7. iRazoo (Search Engine Reward Site) -Same mechanics as Swagbucks
  8. Rewards1 (GPT site) – This one has a minimum cashout of 5.00 and you can request it daily.
    Referral bonus of 20% (and up to 30%) of what they make forever! Earn more by getting active referrals! Every month they check to see if you’ve gotten over 50 or over 200 active referrals and adjust your referral percentage accordingly! You’ll get a 25% referral bonus for referring over 50 active users and you’ll get a 30% referral bonus for referring over 200 active users!
  9. Mturk – Amazon’s quick task job site where you can earn money for completing various job tasks that users have implemented on Amazon. A great little side hustle if you need cash or gift cards.
  10. Valued Opinions – (Survey Company) – Similar to that of Opinion Outpost.

If you would like a little bit more information or more opinions on these companies that I have worked with, don’t hesitate to ask. I am here to help you, just as much as I am here to help myself.

Great Educational and Fun Learning Apps for Preschoolers!

Need help with your preschooler/kindergartener in the learning department? I guarantee if you try these out, they’ll be breezing through class in no time. They’re all 3 fun and educational!

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Update 3/10/15

I’m glad they added more free options, but I feel like $9.99 would be worth it to unlock everything completely since my niece loves playing around in it.

As the title says, my 3 year old niece thoroughly enjoys it! She loves singing along in the karaoke section and watching the dog be interactive. The farm cards are a nice surprise too! But, you get limited access to each book, so in order for your child to thoroughly enjoy what’s offered in the app, you’d have to pay $9.99 for full access.

 

Great learning tool for preschoolers

My little niece hasn’t entered preschool yet so this gives her a head start on being able to read and write letters and numbers. I love it! She loves tracing, which she then is able to remember and do it on actual paper. She feels so accomplished and smart with this app. I can’t say greater things about it.

 

The graphics are great and attention grabbing, which in turn makes the little ones want to play it. It’s the perfect app for those that need a little help steering their preschoolers in the right direction of basic learning. There’s even some fun songs to sing a long to!

 

This post was created in partnership with Mom Buzz Media and Kids Academy. All opinions expressed are my own.

DIY Paper Mobile for Nursery!

I of course didn’t come up with this myself, Pinterest had a little bit to do with it, okay A LOT to do with it. I was needing ideas to spruce up our nursery after de-cluttering it and getting it ready for baby girl and this DIY Paper Mobile caught my eye. I showed my sister and she of course wanted me to make her one in exchange for her making me a rag rug, so I did it in Oregon Duck colors like they wanted. *puke* not a college football fan, especially the Ducks since everyone and their grandma rides their coat tails around here.

So, I decided to borrow my sisters newly purchased Cricut Explore to do this tedious task. I didn’t realize how many circles I would need or how time consuming this would be. If I decide to start on one for baby girls room, I think I will do less because this one turned out long. I imagine it’s because I didn’t make the circles super close together to create a fuller look as you can see on the middle ring below.

diy paper mobile

In the instructions, the original poster used a giant hole punch. I figure to lessen the costs, I’d just set it to however big I wanted the circles on the Cricut and rinse and repeat. I made about 20 circles on an 11×8 stock card piece of paper in the colors I chose, and divided up the amount of circles for each string in the 4 different colors (dark green, regular green, yellow, light yellow). There were also images on the Cricut explore to make the paper mobile more football oriented so I selected the football and the duck feet which are both on the middle-inner ring to go with my Oregon Duck football theme.

Overall, I think it turned out cute, the most frustrating part was stringing all of the circles because I couldn’t get the sewing string to double knot in the same spot so it wouldn’t fall through after poking it with a needle. After a day or two of fiddling with that, I finally got it down and it made it go a lot faster.

For step by step instructions, please check out the original posters tutorial on the DIY Paper Mobile.

My final outcome.

diy paper mobile

 Sorry about the crappy photo, hopefully my sister will hang it up soon so I can have her take a better picture.

First Boy in the Family Has Arrived!

My sister was induced last Wednesday and my nephew Braylon has arrived weighing in at 7lbs 14oz, which is about a 1lb bigger than her girls were. Unfortunately though, he’s been in the hospital ever since birth because his bilirubin count was extremely high, so it had the doctors worried during his first 24 hours of life. He’s been in the photo therapy light machine since, but apparently one day they left the top lights off for who knows how long so his levels raised again. He’s 6 days old now, so even though his levels are still what I’d say are high, he’s able to go home for the time being but is still being monitored with blood tests every day. His poor little foot has had enough damage from all the blood draws. I hope and pray that he gets better and that none of this is a cause for concern, but seeing photos of him in this machine is heart wrenching. Poor little fella!

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I haven’t gotten a chance to see him in person yet since they live 3 hours away, but I am hoping I get to love on him soon. He needs it after being in this thing for so long.

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My sister kind of eased my fears a little bit with her 3rd birth since she ended up getting the epidural for the first time ever. She said she doesn’t know why she never did it with the other 2, because it ended up bringing on great relief which helped with being able to push when the time came. Pitocin is not something you’ll want to endure long without an epidural I heard since it makes contractions 100 times worse. I am just hoping and praying that I do not have to be induced. I don’t want to have to deal with that kind of pain even for a second! She said she never tore either, but I imagine that’s because she’s already birthed twice. Either way, I am hoping that doesn’t happen to me either! LOL wishful thinking.

Here’s to hoping I have a kind and gentle labor and delivery…

Natural Ways to Reduce Aches and Pains

Natural Ways to Reduce Aches and Pains

One of the leading causes of most aches and pains is being overweight. Our bodies are not designed to cater to the extra weight which should be a no brainer. When I see or hear people complaining about how they threw their back out time and time again, I just shake my head and think silently to myself because no one wants to hear they’re not healthy or that being overweight is contributing to their pain issues.

When I was 40 lbs overweight, I had constant knee pain that would occur every time I had my knee bent. It would only go away when I straightened it out which is not something you can do if you’re traveling on a plane, in a car or any other place with tight knit quarters. It was not fun! I decided I needed to do something about it, like lose 40lbs which helped tremendously as I do not have any more knee pain!

There are other natural ways to reduce aches and pains as well, for instance; MELT Method Training.

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The MELT Method® (MELT) is a self-treatment technique that helps people get out and stay out of chronic pain in just ten minutes a day. When pain becomes chronic, the body’s natural state of stability and balance declines. When a body isn’t stable, it can’t be efficiently mobile. By learning how to MELT, you can learn to actively partake in decreasing stuck stress daily so it doesn’t accumulate and cause symptoms that sap your vitality and energy.

To effectively do the MELT Method for natural pain relief, you’ll need to buy soft body rollers and balls in order to do the techniques in the book. Doing this method quickly re-hydrates connective tissue which then releases the bodies long-held tension. MELT also re-balances the nervous system and boosts the body’s natural healing and repair mechanisms.

 

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MELT improves:

• flexibility & mobility
• posture
• the results of exercise
• range of motion
• sleep & digestion
• overall well-being

 

MELT reduces:

• aches & pains
• wrinkles & cellulite
• tension
• headaches
• risk of injury

 

I think I am going to have order the book so I can try this out for myself. I woke up with hip pain this morning and is still bothering me at this moment. It’s probably from being 33 weeks pregnant, but still, doesn’t hurt to try!

Have you ever tried the MELT Method before?