Been awhile

Geez! It has been awhile! I have definitely been busy! Eat, work and sleep! I'm usually too tired to read but I've started listening to podcasts. I like listening to popular podcasts and podcasters that no one knows. They all crack me up and keep me listening. It's fun to see the different styles. Spotify has plenty to chose from and so does amazon music. My go to music listening app is usually amazon but spotify hits it right with the different podcasters to choose. Can't go wrong when Adam Devine, Anders Holm, Blake Anderson and Kyle Newacheck get together in their hilarious podcast This is important. This is important is probably one of my favorite podcasts that many know. They all are some of my favorite actors. Workaholics is a great sitcom. I've recently came across a duo, Amanda and Josh, that no one knows that are pretty interesting to listen to, the podcast is called No one you'd know. Watch out definitely don't want to listen while around kids or people who might get offended, probably why I like it. They only have a few episodes but it keeps me listening. Check them out.. No one you'd know I'll keep adding podcasts as I find interesting ones. Leave a comment if there are ones you find interesting.

i.glide.me/join or i.glide.me text spam alert

I always get random text messages from numbers telling me to sign up for their "free cash" or their loans. I usually just ignore and delete! Well a couple weeks ago I receive a text from a familiar number for i.glide I didn't click on the link but instead looked up i.glide. Turns out its an actual program for video messaging or something similar. The problem is, is that the person who "sent" the text didn't even know that she sent it. What happens is anybody who installs the i.glide app from the apple store or the google playstore automatically gives the app permission to send out a massive text to ALL contacts on their phone list. Just like the same message I received about trying it or join me on i.glide. The problem is, is the unsuspecting people who download it, don't read the fine print that says the app WILL send a text to ALL of their contacts! So when that happens it sends a link to your contact list with a text then those people download and get MORE text sent to contacts. It's the never ending spam chain! Next time you get a text with a link with an app or website. Check first if it's really being sent by the person or if its an app sending it. Sometimes it could even be a virus doing the same spam text just like in email messages when they say don't click links well don't if its a text either!

Download Kindle books for free!

I love to read and a few years ago my hubby bought me a Kindle 3! A friend of mine told me about pixel of ink website where they find kindle books for free! Of course me being the "too good to be true" type I had to research to believe it. Sure enough the books are free. What pixel of ink does is search Amazon to find Kindle books that are either free or on sale. BUT sometimes the books are only on sale or free for that one day! So get them fast!

Here is how it works: When you go to pixel of ink you select the category of free books you want or select the days date. Pixel of ink will show a couple books for that day in parts. It will be part 1 has 2 books for free and 1 or so that are on sale. Then later in the day there will be a part 2. When you find a free book you like and you click on it, it sends you to Amazon directly where the book is. Make sure the price still says $0 since they do change quickly sometimes. Then just download it to your Kindle or download it to your kindle app! Even if you don't have a Kindle you can still download the books to a kindle app for an android phone or even an ipad! I have the app on my smartphone!!

When I got a Kindle Fire a few months back I figured I would put all my books on it and leave more of the kid/hubby books on the Kindle 3. I was shocked to see I had over 1200 kindle books and I didn't pay for any of them. I let hubby know that I paid for the Kindle 3 easily 30 times over! Of course there are books for kids, hubby and myself but all for freeeeeeee! I just checked how many books and apps that I downloaded (also for free) for my Kindle Fire. I have 2146 and probably 2100 are just books! So I basically paid for my Kindle Fire already too because a lot of the kindle books are any where from .99-9.99 or more! The average price being about 3.99!

I don't know how many times I had to get out my smartphone and use the Kindle app to entertain the kids when we had an unexpected wait time! So if you like to read and have a Kindle or Kindle app make sure you check out pixel of ink! Get your free books while you can! Even if you don't have a Kindle go download the app to your compatible device and get free books!

Watch out for penny bid auctions like Quibids.

I was asked to look into one of the many penny bid auction sites. What I found went with the saying "If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.".  Everybody gets so excited to get a good deal but if you don't read the fine print of some of these sites you will end up feeling like you were scammed!

I started with the Quibids auction site and didn't notice anything really alarming so I started with my good old google search for Quibid reviews. It's never good in any rating to have a 2 out of 5 stars! When I started reading all the reviews many people thought it was a scam. Upon further digging and research I found that in fact the Quibid sites much like the other sites are technically legit you just have to read the fine print and it's much like gambling! So in theory you could get a $1000 item for $500 BUT here is where the sticky, scammy parts come into play. 

Say you want to get an Apple Ipad that is retailed at $1000 so you hop on the penny auction and notice one that is only at about $1. So you figured you'll get a better price then retail if you go for the penny auction. First when you sign up you HAVE to buy a bid package say $40 worth of bids. Then when you find the item you want to buy every time you want to bid the price goes up a penny BUT in the tiny fine print that penny bid just cost you 25 cents plus the time adds back on. If you sit and watch some of the penny auctions going on (without having to sign up) you'll see that every time the auction price goes up a penny, the time goes back to 15 seconds! So lets say you end up winning your item you wanted (it happens but rarely, like I said its like gambling). When you win you have to pay the ending price say it ends at $500 BUT you also have to pay for how many bids you made on that item...if you bid 100 times then it would of cost you 25 cents times the 100 bids which would be $25. Now if you get a retail item normally priced at $1000 for $525 that is a pretty good deal. BUT say you didn't win the item. You still have to pay the $25 it took to get those 100 bids!

I'll stick to Ebay since I know that if I want to bid 1000 times on an item at least I'm not paying for the bidding. I also know that the auction will have an end time. Whereas the penny auctions keep adding time every time someone bids for an almost never ending auction! If you feel like gambling your money on the slim chance you'll get your item then make sure you still read all the fine print so you don't feel like you've been scammed!   

Get ready for tax time with Turbo Tax!!

Another great way to save some money is by doing your own taxes online! We've used Turbo Tax for years! It is so nice to be able to just add our tax information here and there as we get it in the mail. There are some years we have our taxes finished and money in our bank account by the end of February!

Turbo Tax is a pretty simple program. We don't really have any type of complicated tax paperwork that we have to try to figure out. We just get online answer the questions and follow the steps. There are people that you can call if you get stuck too. One of the really nice things Turbo Tax does for you is it remembers all your previous tax information from when you filed the year before and automatically incorporates it into the new tax year. No having to worry about finding your paperwork or hoping you didn't miss something and have to drive back to get it. The program also allows you to print out your taxes when you are done so you have a hard copy plus it lets you save to your computer if you lose your hard copy! I'm not saying that has happened to us but we've had a few close calls where we thought we were going to have to print another copy! 

If you are looking to save some money and are dreading having to find all your paperwork from the last year to take down to your normal tax guy, then try Turbo Tax. It's cheaper, more convenient (You could do it in your jammies at midnight if you want!) and you can start adding your tax information as soon as you get it if you want.

Grr kitchen tile grout cleaning....ew!

When I was in the kitchen this morning I happened to look at the grout on the back of the sink and I was pretty sure it wasn't suppose to look like a pinky brown color. I think it's suppose to be white. So of course I started looking online for easy, quick and natural cheap ideas to clean it.

With some elbow grease I was hoping the first option would work. The baking soda and water seemed promising. It was a bust. I cleaned a tiny spot with a lot of work..crap. That wasn't easy enough for me. Next I figure I'll try the toothpaste (You know the kind that you don't like but can't toss it because you'd be wasting money.). I was so hopeful the toothpaste would work that I scrubbed and scrubbed...nothing not a dang clean spot..double crap.

Well the only other option I knew that was suppose to work was lemon juice. Where I live there isn't a way to go outside and pick a lemon so I went with the next best thing..freshly squeezed from a bottle. SO I wet the toothbrush with lemon juice and scrubbed. I didn't see anything happening. No pink goo on the toothbrush. So it wasn't as easy or quick as I had hoped. So I did what any overwhelmed mom would do....wiped off the grout and sat down at the computer and went on Facebook! 

Of course on closer inspection after a couple hours I saw a little line of white....couldn't tell you which one it was but I need something faster! To be continued....dang pink grout anyway. 

How to clean old hardwood floors without using chemicals! Hidden gem! Hardwood under carpet!

After pulling up the carpet in the hallways and seeing all the nice hardwood floor under there, I started to wonder if the old carpet (that was here before us) has been the culprit of me feeling sneezy and sick in the winters.

Of course I had to go get my handy dandy tool box and get all the carpet I could in the house except the bedrooms since those will be a pain. There is carpet in one of the rooms that is probably as old as the house and it's stuck to the floor. I'm not sure how I'm going to get that out of there so at the time I was taking out the carpet I figured I'd focus on the rest of the house that way I could get most of the carpet out and hopefully the allergens too!

At first I only did the hallways and the dining/computer area and left the living room (who wants to lay on hardwood floor in front of the tv or stand in front of the pellet stove on cold floors, not me) Luckily while talking to my inlaws they had said there was a nice big area rug at their house that they weren't even using that we could have!! So I ended up taking out all the carpet in the front of the house and laying down a big rug! My only problem is, is keeping the rug clean with this houseful of feet that seem to always get the rug dirty. I do have a carpet cleaner but the bristles stopped working a couple years ago so now it just sucks up water instead of scrubbing the carpet. I may have to either fix it or just get another one.

This is the hallway before 

 And after. Notice the lovely paint splotches that the former owners so graciously left us. I think they painted then put carpet down not caring about the floors. The off brand or mr. clean magic erasers work great for getting the paint off without hurting the floors!

The living room floor. The floor probably needs to be refinished but with the houseful of animals and people I didn't want to re-ruin it. A good cleaning and oiling made them nice, clean, and shiny. I used black tea to clean them and a mix of grape seed oil and lemon juice after it was dry to finish cleaning up whatever was missed and made them shiny.

This is before the black tea and grape seed...ew.

And this is after. It isn't professional looking but it's definitely better then before and now it has character! I didn't want to use products that had chemicals in them since I didn't know what was used back in the late 60's on hardwood floor. I would rather use a more natural (cheaper) alternative that I know is safe for my family.

Just goes to show what a couple tools can do along with some natural products to bring life back into old hardwood that was covered up for years!