What's next? Is this it? Is this all there is?

Have the 2nd Talk with Poise #PoiseFab5

Do these items looks familiar to you? They didn't to me either until I went to the Walmart website one day and saw up in the corner a link for Poise and the 2nd Talk. What the heck was the 2nd Talk? Hang on to your seats, or rather your fans, it was about menopause. Yes, the nasty M word that my husband finds funny to taunt me with whenever I'm hot I'm taking off clothes and everyone else is putting a sweater on. I HATE hot flashes. Absolutely H.A.T.E. them and finding something that might help me with that could possibly make a big difference in my life. Yes, that might sound melodramatic, but it's true. I don't get flashes, I get hot hours....ugh!
I'm not the only one that has issues with hot flashes and other signs of menopause. I have a friend who, unfortunately couldn't find the time to come over this week to chat with me about this but I cornered her at her work and we chatted for a little bit. She too has a hot flash problem so I gave her the Roll-On Cooling Gel and she called me the next day to say it was awesome. She's going to go to Walmart to pick up some wipes too.

I called my mother, who went through menopause late in life because she had a hysterectomy close to 20 years ago and was put on hormone replacement therapy. She was just taken off of them a couple of years ago and her hot flashes were so bad that she would break out in a sweat, a dripping sweat. I called to tell her about these items and she immediately went to Walmart to find them. She couldn't find all of the items but she found the towelettes and the roll on and, let me tell you, is spreading the word like crazy.
September was menopause awareness month and I learned a lot from the Poise website with the 2nd talk information on it. Please do yourself a favor and take a look too.

So, when I went to Walmart I was able to use the coupon I found on the Walmart website when I looked at videos about the ladies pictured above.


I was able to buy four of the five items I was looking for after going to Walmart about 10 times, but it was worth it. If you want to look at my shopping trips just click here to see it.

Out of the five of these items, the Body Cooling Towelettes was definitely the winner, by a long shot.
I was able to talk to my husband, who was interested about this subject, believe it or not, and he was able to understand what I'm going through a bit more, which was nice.

There are a number of places you can get more information too. Take a look at the following places....
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest

Of course there was a coupon in the September issue of All You magazine but I forgot about it. I read on the Poise site that forgetfulness is a symptom of menopause. Thank goodness. I honestly thought I was going crazy!


Disclosure: I am a member of the Collective Bias Social Fabric Community.  This shop has been compensated as a part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias and Poise. #CBias #SocialFabric #PoiseFab5. All the opinions are completely my own.

Graduating one life, starting a new one

This is my son. Ok, he may not have been born to me but when I married his father he became mine. I watched him walk across the stage this past weekend and receive his diploma. A day we struggled for, for the last 4 years. He was not the best of students, he was forgetful and at times careless, but he always tried his best and treated people with respect and a smile.
Drew is a good kid. That's the best way I can describe him. He's a good kid. He would do anything for you and never complain (not to your face anyway).
He already has a job and has for about a month now and is already loved by all the people he works with. Is college in his future? I'm not sure. He's always struggled with what to do next but he loves his job so to him, that might be the answer. Whatever he chooses I will be there to support him.
So now I have 3 kids who've graduated and one entering the 8th grade in the fall. 3 down, 1 to go.

The 2 in the middle are my boys. The 2 on the outside call me mom and 'me madre' so I'll 'own' all 4 of them as mine. It's a good time to for me to be a mom!

Congradulations Drew!!

Family movie night with We Bought a Zoo #CBias #iLovemyK9

Once or twice a month I will rent a movie at Blockbuster or from the pay per view channels on my tv. This time I decided to do things a bit differently. I had to go to Walmart to pick up a few things, including something 'yummy' for my son, and saw the movie "We Bought a Zoo" as soon as I walked in the door. The other day when I was at Walmart buying dog food cat food I saw a 'get $4 off the movie 'We Bought a Zoo' when you buy 2 specially marked packs of dog treats'. I bought those dog treats and kept the coupon. The movie was on sale for $14 something and with the coupon I had it would only be a little over $10. When I rent a movie on ppv it costs $5 so, I thought 'what the heck' and bought it.

(Just so you know, there was a $1.25 coupon on these dog treats on coupons dot com if you want to check that out.) As I said, I also had to buy something 'yummy' for my son (his word) so I thought, instead of getting something 'junky' I would look to see what kind of fruit I could find in the canned fruit aisle because I had a coupon for fruit cups. Oh my gosh. I had no idea Del Monte had so many different kinds of fruit cups, and canned fruit. I bought some fruit salad for him, and everyone else.

So, over the past few days I bought treats for everyone in my zoo. My dogs got @PupPeroni and Milo's Kitchen pet treats and @KibblesnBits dog food, my cats got @MeowMix, cat food and my family got fruit from @DelMonteFoods.

 My cats and dogs ate their treats and we got ready to watch our movie. They had no school so everyone was home. (the kids that is, not the animals)

 Now it's time to watch the movie. The kids sat on the couch with their bowls of Del Monte fruit salad. Keep in mind that my kids range in age from 21 to 12 so it's hard to get a movie that they will all like and that I will like too.

This movie seemed to make us all happy. For me it had enough romance, laughs and Matt Damon. My youngest son thought it had a lot of funny parts in it. My oldest son, well, let's just say he said Scarlett Johansson isn't hard to look at. My daughter really liked it too. She doesn't often sit with us and watch whole movie but she did for this one.



Here is Matt Damon in a scene close to the beginning, but I don't want to ruin anything for you, so I won't include any more than this one. He was having an arguement with his son, hello! Who hasn't done that?  I really did like it though and my 12  year old has already watched it again so it made it worth it for me to buy it using the coupon.

A couple things you might want to know......

You can get a coupon for Del Monte fruit cups in the month's issue of First for Women.
If you look in Parade Magazine or Woman's World you can see Del Monte products featured along side this great movie.
This shop has been compensated at part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias #CBias but all the pictures and opinions are completely my own. 

If you want to see more of my shop for these great products click here for my Google+ story.

Some Facebook links for you:
Del Monte foods
Kibbles 'n Bits
MilkBone

#iLovemyK9

Adding to Paypal using Coinstar #CBias #PayPalCoinstar

Hubby and I had a full day yesterday. We had so many errands to run, including the doctor, the DMV, the grocery store and so on. I had gathered the change around the house and thought I'd look for a Coinstar kiosk to get rid of some of it. I was surprised when I got to my Brookshire's and saw that it is connected with PayPal now. To be honest, I may have seen it in the past but didn't really pay that much attention.

I have a PayPal account that I use for my Etsy store and Ebay transactions, and my kids each have a student PayPal card that I can add funds too when they're out and about and need a few extra dollars and don't want to carry cash (or just need an extra shirt as far as my daughter is concerned!)

It is so easy to use. All you have to do is follow what it says on the screen. It's a touch screen so even a kid can do it (and my son has used one of these kiosks in the past). I don't really like that there is a fee for processing the change from the kiosk to the PayPal account, but I guess nothing is free. I chose the 'Add coins to PayPal account' and entered the email address of that account, my daughter's in this case, and waited for the next prompt, which was to add my change. 

It kept adding up and and up. I honestly thought the money I got from my husbands bucket from on top of his dresser, out of the bottom of my purse and in the van, would add up to about $6 but I ended up with over $12 after the coin conversion was done. Sure does add up fast, and it was so convenient!

 When it was done it printed out a receipt and told me exactly how much was in my PayPal account, or rather my daughter's account. She got a notification on her phone (of course she has the PayPal app on her iPhone) and called me to ask where I was that I added funds to her Paypal account. I told her about the Coinstar kiosk at Brookshire's and she thought it was very cool. Of course, she told me I could add some bills to it too, and while I could have if I wanted to, I didn't want to. This is good for her, to have money on her PayPal card because she can buy things online with it.

 This is what the receipt looks like and it has all the totals on the bottom of it, including the minimal charge it did take off for the service fee. I did think that it was cool how it told how many of each coin there was. I don't know why exactly, but I just thought it was cool.

 It even thanked me for using it, how polite! lol

I didn't pick up a lot of things at the store today as my main objective was to convert coins into cash, but let me tell you, I can do some damage in this store. The fact that they know me by name or as 'the coupon lady' should be enough to let know that I'm in here a lot!

Now, I do have to say, this is the first time I saw this 'Coming Soon' Brookshire's kiosk. It said it was for in store benefits and has a place to slide your card. I'm a saver, so I'm very excited about this.

You can get more information about the Coinstar Kiosks in your area by visiting the Coinstar Facebook page or the Coinstar Twitter page. There is also a PayPal Facebook page and a PayPal Twitter page too if you want to check them out.
I made a Google+ photo album of my busy day too if you want to check it out. There is a lot of pictures on there from Brookshire's and the Coinstar PayPal kiosk and all the running around we did, including going to the DMV. Check that out here.

 I have been paid (at Coinstar's request to try and blog about Coinstar's products/services as part of a Collective Bias shopper insights study. All opinions are my own.

Dry eyes and Granny glasses

You know the commercials on tv that talk about dry eyes and how your eyes can't make enough tears? Well, for some reason, and I'm honestly not sure why, I've made fun of those for a long time. Looks like karma's a bugger! I went to the eye doctor for the first time in about 15 years because my eyes hurt all the time and I had trouble focusing after crocheting or doing something close up. And, you guessed it, I have dry eyes. All this time I thought it was allergies. I've been taking allergy medications for years now thinking I had seasonal allergies (all year long), not going on my computer as much in the past 6 months because it just hurt my eyes too much (must be my eyes getting bad, right?) and all this time I had dry eyes.
Not only do I have dry eyes but I need bifocals. Bifocals!?! But I'm 43 years old, I'm not an old lady, am I? Only old people need bifocals...right? Well, I guess after the age of 40 (don't you love how everything really starts falling apart at 40?) the muscles in your eyes start to relax and if you are doing something up close it's harder for the eye muscles to refocus. So, she told me, I won't need glasses for driving but for home I will.
So she gave me my glasses prescription and wrote down something that would be good for my dry eyes and off I went. I ordered my glasses online (no, I can't even pay full price for glasses. I found a discount website, let's just hope they look alright and I can see out of them alright) and I went to CVS and bought Refresh Liquigel drops. Who knew that simple eye drops would change my life??
Ok, have you ever seen the episode of friends where Rachel needs eyes drops and they all have to tackle her to put the drops in her eyes? Well, I'm not too far off from that. My daughter has to hold my eye open and plop the drops in while I try to close my eye and whine the whole time (don't judge me!). And with the very first drops that went into my eyes it's a different world. I can actually go on the computer without feeling like my eye balls are going to fall out. My eyes aren't burning and itchy anymore. I don't feel like I need to nap all the time because my eyes hurt and are tired feeling. I'm absolutely amazed something this simple is the 'cure' to my eyes. I'm amazed.
So, the moral of the story is, I should make fun of people winning the lottery and maybe I'll win it too!

International Delight #IcedCoffee tasting party

Well, to be honest with you, I had a bugger of a time trying to find this International Delights #IcedCoffee. First I thought it would be with the creamer but couldn't find it there. Then I thought it was a mix so I looked at the coffee aisle but it wasn't there. Finally I found it by chocolate milk, which, I thought, was a funny place for it, but I was glad to find it.I had heard so much about this stuff and I really wanted to try it and trust me, it was worth the search. When I finally found it I could only find the Vanilla variety so I brought them home along with a couple of International Delights creamers for my morning coffee. I thought it might be fun to have a few friends over to try it so I made plans to do so but it fell through at the last minute so it was just me and my family enjoying it.....which we did!

Yesterday I happened to take a look at Walmart again to see if I could find any different kinds and I did! I was happy. I bought one Mocha, one Original and one more Vanilla. Of course, the second I walked through the door everyone was on my heels to have a glass of it, even my 12 year old son! His favorite was the Mocha...surprise, surprise. My daughter says she thinks the Original is far and away the best, which surprised me quite a bit. She said "Oh my gosh, mom. You have GOT to try this kind. It's amazing!" I have not tried that kind yet because I'm just in love with the Vanilla it's hard to switch. Hubby said the Vanilla was his favorite, which isn't a surprise seeing how he just loves Starbucks French Vanilla drinks. He did say he could drink this International Delights #icedcoffee instead of Starbucks because he liked it that much.
Ok, while writing this I just had to try the Original and I have to agree with my daughter (please, let's keep that between us!). It is the best one, in my opinion. It takes more like coffee than the others. Very good.
(I wanted to add a bunch of pictures to this post but Blogger is giving me a hard time. I will post them at the end of this post so please scroll to the bottom)
Have you even heard of these drinks before? I hadn't but I'm so glad I did. They're so yummy.  You can get more information on International Delights and this Iced Coffee sing the following links...
Website: http://internationaldelight.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/indelight
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/InternationalDelight
 Also, click here to see my Google+ shop trying to find this #icedcoffee










This shop has been compensated part of a social shoppers insight study for Collective Bias #CBias but all photos and opinions and tasting, was my own.