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Rent Your College Textbooks

June 20, 2011 By 3 Comments

I remember (a really long time ago) when I tried to go to college.  I picked up one book in the bookstore that was about a hundred bucks.  R.I.D.I.C.U.L.O.U.S.  And that was *cough*twenty*cough* years ago.  I can only imagine how expensive they are now.  Well, thank goodness today you have the option of renting your textbooks.  How cool is that?

You can now rent your textbooks for the semester and just send them back at the end. Renting your textbooks could help you save anywhere from 50-90%.  At campusbookrentals.com, there is free shipping both ways! You can highlight in the textbooks, there are flexible renting periods, you have the option to buy the textbook if you really want to keep it, AND they donate to Operation Smile with each textbook rented. Wow! Imagine, rent textbooks, save money, and donate to a charity. It can’t get much better than that :)

I think Campus Book Rentals is a brilliant concept.  I wish they had been around when I needed them.  Maybe I should just go back to school?

Or not.


 

 

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The Most Awesome Summer Toy Ever {Review}

June 12, 2011 By 2 Comments

A few weeks ago I briefly mentioned the fabulous item that arrived for my boys.  Well, we’ve had a few weeks to play on it, set it up, take it down, move it around and generally try to destroy it so I could let you know my thoughts.  And do you know what I think?

This Is Awesome!

Like every other person out there, I’ve rented commercial bounce houses before.  Where I live, we have a great little independent family owned business that rents out some really nice ones for a “reasonable” price.  I think it was about $200.00 for the day (or so).  We’ve rented from them about 4 times now.  Math has never been my strong suit, but $200.00 X 4 equals $800.00 in bounce house rentals.  As Bob would say, “What a Racket!”

For about the cost it takes to rent a bouncer twice,  you can own your very own inflatable bounce house and save yourself a TON of future money!

Rock Crawler Bouncer and Ball Pit by Blast Zone

Now that it is summertime you are probably racking your brain trying to think of ways to keep your kids amused during the day.  I love that we have this bouncer!  Really!!  It is easy for me and my 6 year old to set up and take down by ourselves.  When they kids start complaining that they “can’t do anything!” I just head outside and in about 5 minutes they are bouncing fools.

The Blast Zone Rock Crawler combo bouncer is ready to rumble! Crawl on in through the Rock Crawler Bouncer’s front wheel, and get ready for a rocking good time! Up to 6 Kids can play safely with the Rock Crawler Bouncer at once.

The Rock Crawler combo has tons of fun features to keep boys and girls entertained for hours: a ball pit in the engine compartment area, a crawl tunnel tire, a large bouncer in the cab and a 2-kid-wide tailgate slide.

A large bounce floor, ball pit/play area and a low height make the Rock Crawler an excellent choice for indoor and outdoor use. Kids go nuts for the active theme of this Blast Zone Combo Jumper, and adults love the easy setup and compact design.

Our toy is a bouncer, slide and ball pit combo.  We did not receive balls with our review item, so I can not say a lot about that part of it.  Just imagining the future though, I think the balls might be a pain in the butt.  It looks like it would hold a LOT of balls and gathering them all up each and every time you deflate it might get annoying.  Certainly for special occasions though, I think the balls would be fabulous and I plan on getting them soon.

The dimensions of  the Rock Crawler is 11′ W x 18′ L x 7′ H and it only weighs about 60 pounds.  It fits perfectly into our little grassy yard area and it is manageable for me to put up and take down by myself.  The bouncer takes about 5 minutes (tops) to unroll and get into position, it then only takes about 1 minute to inflate (and that is with three boys riding on the “bouncy elevator!”).

 

The only “cons” I can say about this particular bounce house is the open roof and dark (red) floor.  Come noon time, the floor gets really hot on little feet.  So we really only bounce in the mornings, then again in the evenings after the hot California sun has started to go down. This design would be a lot better off with at least a light colored floor to help keep it cool.

My Anthony plays really hard.  I mean…really hard.  I said the first day that if Anthony didn’t break the bouncer that day than it would be a well made item.  So far, it has survived a month!  That says a lot about the craftsmanship and quality of this product.

The Rock Crawler Bouncer and Ball Pit is available at BounceHousesNow.com for only $459.00 with FREE shipping.


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Recipe & Review with I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter

June 8, 2011 By 6 Comments

Nothing like waiting till the last minute to enter a contest, huh?

Well today I’m here to tell you about some new offerings from I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter and share a favorite family recipe for the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter Toast Ambassador contest!  Fun!

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!® recently introduced two delicious new products – Whipped & Creamy Taste and Spray Made with Extra Virgin Olive Oil – that we can’t wait for you to try.

  • I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!® Spray Made with Extra Virgin Olive Oil is great for roasting chicken and vegetables. It’s the only spray made with extra virgin olive oil – 0 calories, 0g fat and 0g trans fat per serving
  • I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!® Whipped and creamy taste has 78% less saturated fat and 50% fewer calories than butter per serving

My husband has gotten me into the bad habit of using real butter on everything.  I won’t pretend it’s not delicious, but it really isn’t good for me.  Besides that, it’s a pain in the butt to break out a solid cube of cold butter to put on a soft piece of bread or toast.  I loved the Whipped & Creamy straight out of the fridge and it tasted just as good as the “real” stuff (just easier to manage and healthier for me!).  It’s a win win.

Grilled Pizza Sandwich’s

I was invited to create a toasted recipe with I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter and enter it into a National blogger contest with the winner being declared the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter Toast Ambassador!  Since it involves a trip to New York for the finalists, I figured I would give it a shot!

My family camps.  A LOT.  And I’m always trying to find cheap, delicious and easily portable recipes to take with us on our trips.  Last year we went to the Grand Canyon and I had the brilliant idea of trying to make pizza’s over the campfire.  We have these really cool campfire cookers that are really handy to have.  You can make a whole variety of sandwich’s and other toasted items in them over your fire.

Generally we had just been making grilled turkey and cheese, or plain grilled cheese sandwich’s but I wanted to spruce it up and try something different.  I brought along sliced mozzarella, some squeeze pizza sauce and sliced pepperoni’s.  Instant campfire pizza!

Here is my recipe!

Ingredients:

  • Sliced bread.  Any really will do, but I find I like a good Italian or Sourdough bread for my pizza sandwich’s.
  • I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spread (Original or Whipped and Creamy)
  • Sliced mozzarella cheese.
  • Pizza sauce (I find the Contadina squeeze bottle is really easy to use and take with you)
  • Pizza toppings!  I use pepperoni, but this would be really great with any pizza topping:  sausage, mushrooms, bell peppers!  The combos are endless

Directions:

Butter the outside of two pieces of bread.  On the inside of the sandwich, squirt some pizza sauce and put a slice of cheese (or two!).  Fill with any of your choice toppings.  Put the two pieces of bread together, butter side out and cook!

Now, I didn’t go camping this week, so I couldn’t show you my campfire version.  But you would put your sandwich in the campfire cooker and place in an open fire until toasted.

At home, grill over medium heat until toasted on each side.  Just as you would a regular ole’ boring grilled cheese sandwich.

The kids LOVE these!  They are so easy and fun.  When I make them at home, it really brings back memories of our fun Grand Canyon vacation.

Enjoy!


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Chilis Shout Out to Eat Out {Giveaway} CLOSED

June 5, 2011 By

I LOVE CHILI’S!

Honestly.  I’m not just saying that because they gave me $20.00 to eat there either.  My mom and I take the boys to Chili’s all the time.  It’s a great place to eat and I really can’t think of a time that I have not like my food.  It doesn’t hurt that they have slushies for the kids either!

One of my favorite things to get at Chili’s is their Triple Dipper.  I’ve been ordering this off the appetizer menu for ever, even before it became cool.  For a long time they only had a handful of choices, but lately they have gotten really awesome with the variety and have added a lot of new options.  Right now, Chili’s wants to know what three favorite foods YOU would want on a Triple Dipper plate?

I guess if I could choose anything to be on MY Triple Dipper it would be:  Pizza,  french fries and cheesecake (I never said it would be a healthy plate…)!  But since my choices aren’t actually available (yet) then I chose Southwest Eggrolls, Boneless Buffalo Chicken and Big Mouth Bites.

I do not usually get the Boneless Buffalo Chicken, but I was feeling adventurous and didn’t think the regular Chicken Crispers would do.  And many times I’ve gotten the new Potato Skins instead of the Big Mouth Bites.  It never matters what combination I get, I always love everything and I love that the Chili’s staff always brings me extra Ranch with a smile.

Can you tell I’ve had a few orders of Triple Dippers before?  It certainly shows on my butt!

Anyhow…

Chili’s if offering you LOTS of fun ways to win your own $20.00 gift card so you can experience Chili’s for yourself.

 

Tesa over at www.2wired2tired.com is hosting a Chili’s Linky Rave where there are 200 blogs linked up, all of which are hosting their own $20.00 gift card giveaway!  That means you can hop around to 200 blogs and enter to win gift cards.  You could potentially win enough Chili’s money to have a whole party!

 

 

If hopping around and entering 200 blog contests isn’t enough, then you can visit the Shout Out to Eat Out Sweepstakes site and enter to win more gift cards there.  They are giving away a $20.00 gift card every day with a grand prize of $333.00.  Just visit the site and upload your face onto a fun Triple Dipper card!

 

 

 

But of course, more importantly than any of that other nonsense is the fact that I am giving away a $20.00 Chili’s gift card right here!  Aren’t you glad you stopped by today?

First Mandatory Entry

Entering this giveaway is a little different today.  You see, I am in competition with those 200 other bloggers to win my own $50 Chili’s gift card.  So to enter my contest you MUST CLICK THIS LINK and enter Mommy23Monkeys in the box that asks the “Name of the Blog.”  THEN you need to leave me a comment saying that you entered my name into the contest box.  So please help a poor momma out!  It is really very easy.

Lot’s of Extra Entries!

1.  In a comment, tell me your 3 favorite foods you would like to have all on 1 plate (1 entry)
2. “Like” Chili’s on Facebook (1 entry)
3. Follow @Chilis & @Shoutout2eatout on Twitter (1 entry each)
4.  “Like” Mommy23monkeys on Facebook (1 entry)
5. Opt-In to Chili’s email club here http://bit.ly/m6HYef (You’ll receive a free appetizer certificate too!)
6. Tweet this out:

“At @Chilis Good Things Come In 3′s! Check out @2Wired2Tired http://bit.ly/linkyrave for 200 chances to win in the #tripledipper linky rave!”

Giveaway ends on June 12, 2011 at 10pm PST.  One winner will be chosen at random and notified by email.  Winner will have 48 hours to claim their prize.  Open to residents of the US.

CONGRATULATIONS WINNER!

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Enter The Jambu Haiku Sweepstakes

June 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Last month I got the chance to do a Jambu shoe review.  I told you then, I will tell you again.  I LOVE MY JAMBU SHOES.  They are SO cute and very comfortable.  I would buy another pair in a heartbeat.  Well it just so happens that they are having a contest on their Facebook page where you can enter to win a pair for yourself!  YAY!

All you need to do is “Like” the Jambu Facebook page, and use the entry form to write a “Jambu Haiku” from the point of view of your very comfortable feet. Imagine they are wearing the most comfortable pair of Jambu shoes – what would they say? Maybe something like…

Finally, I breathe
Comfort with color and style
Jambu, my new home

Contest ends June 23, 2011 and you can win a pair of Jambu shoes for yourself so you can see I’m totally not lying about how wonderful they are!

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