Frito Lay License to Snack Winners!

Wow, this was a great giveaway, I can’t believe there were almost 400 entries. I guess you all love Fritos as much as I do! I loved reading about your favorite chips as well as your Frito recipes. Apparently Frito pie is a big deal! My absolute favorite way to eat Fritos is to put them on a ham sandwich, it is really quite tasty.

Anyway, congrats to the winners and thanks to everyone who participated in the contest.

Here are your random numbers:

19	251	370	105

Timestamp: 2009-03-08 03:07:28 UTC

The winners are

Amanda

Lesley

Kelly

Wandababy

Emails will go out in the next 24 hours, winners have 48 hours to respond or I will choose another winner.

If you didn’t win this contest, enter to win a free online cooking class. I am taking it right now and love it!

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Linking Up

Here are a few items I wanted to pass on from this week.

Don’t forget move your clocks an hour ahead tonight. Whoever invented Daylight Savings Time obviously did not have children. This hilarious post written by a friend of mine pretty much sums up how I feel about this twice a year event.

Have you signed up for Swagbucks? Since posting about this a few weeks ago, I have earned almost 200 Swagbucks that can be traded in for gift cards, music, dvds, and other great stuff. I know that Carrie bought all of her Christmas presents last year using Swagbucks. Swagbucks are earned by searching the web, isn’t that easy? They even have a toolbar you can download to make searching via Swagbucks easier. There is also no spam involved. Since signing up I don’t think I have received a single email from them trying to sell me something or promote a product.

Claire over at Choyster Cash if running a free coupon course. If you are new to couponing this might be something worth looking into.

I saw this Depression Era cooking video over at Mom Advice and I am hooked. It is a great perspective on how things use to be, and will probably make you appreciate what you have. Her cooking tips aren’t bad either!

Dawn has some great tips for attending blogging conferences. I attended my first conference, Blissdom ’09, last month. I learned a lot and had a great time. If you think a blogging conference is in your future I would definitely read her post.

Are you gardening this year? I hope to start my square foot garden soon, if things ever settle down around here. I found this great post about making pots for your seedlings out of newspaper! I can’t believe what a great, free, and eco friendly idea is.

Finally, do you Twitter? If not you really should. Twitter is a great way to find deals, keep in touch with friends (real life and bloggy) and to stay connected in the blog world. Many times I will tweet about a deal on Twitter that I do not blog about. I also tweet personal updates throughout the day. So if you just can’t get enough of The Happy Housewife follow me on Twitter.

Castle Cake

One thing I love about little kids is that it doesn’t take much to make them happy. With the success of the Barbie cake a few weeks back, I thought I was ready to attempt a castle cake. It seemed only slightly more difficult than the Barbie cake, and it was requested by the birthday girl.

I guess I didn’t count on a little thing called gravity, because almost as soon as the cake was frosted everything started to slide, the cake, the frosting, the candy. I was worried it might not survive until the next day. Thankfully it did, and our little princess didn’t seem to care one bit her cake leaned severely to one side.

And since the cake was already lopsided, I didn’t care that the birthday girl touched and messed with the cake all morning.

I can’t believe our “baby” is three!

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This post is linked to Finer Things Friday and Friday Show and Tell.

Snow Day, Again

Apparently snow is a big deal here in Maryland. Everything shuts down for the day when the white stuff starts falling. Good for the kids as they had dad to take them out in the snow and were able to stay out almost the whole day.

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You can find more Wordless Wednesday at 5 Minutes for Mom.

License to Snack Giveaway

This giveaway is now closed. Thanks to all who participated!

I am not a big junk food or snack person, but every once in a while I will splurge and buy a bag of Fritos. Since all my kids love them too, they don’t last more than a day around our house. So when Frito-Lay contacted me about hosting a giveaway, I couldn’t resist.

Frito -Lay recently launched a new site called License to Snack. It is worth checking out if only for the personal dashboard section of the site. This section has several interactive calculators figure out your BMI, how many calories you should eat every day, calories burned, target heart rate and many more features. Once the baby is born I definitely plan on using this site to help me get back to my pre-baby weight.

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To help promote their new site, Frito Lay has offered to giveaway four prize packs to my readers. To enter the contest all you need to do is leave a comment on this post. For an extra entry, twitter about this contest and then leave me a second comment letting me know. This contest will end Saturday, March 7th at 10 pm EST. Four winners will be chosen at random from the comments. Please make sure you leave a valid email address so I can contact you if you win.

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Panama

Start at the beginning, Part One.

It took about ten seconds once the plane landed in Panama for me to realize I wanted to take the next plane back to the States. No one spoke English, or at least they pretended not to, and the airport was not very passenger friendly. I wandered around helpless until I saw a long line of people and decided to join them, in hopes that it would lead me out of the terminal. After what seemed like hours, but was probably only 30 minutes, I was through the line and on my way out of the airport. Dh and a friend (the one who was driving us to our house) were waiting for me near the exit.

As soon as I stepped outside I was met with the most intense humidity I had ever felt in my life. Everyone was covered with a sheen of sweat and soon I was too. I got in the car which of course had no air conditioning and prepared for the 2.5 hour drive to the other side of the country. As we drove through Panama City, I talked nonstop about how much I already didn’t like it and made sure to point out every flaw and problem. Then we entered the “country.” My constant complaining was silenced by the extreme poverty that surrounded me. We passed neighborhoods in which every house was made from cardboard boxes. Garbage piled ten feet high lined the streets and the medians. Dogs ran wild and children did too.

My shock turned to terror as we then began passing checkpoints with Panamanian armed guards, and it became obvious there was a good way and a bad way to make it through the roadblocks. The good way involved pretending to speak no Spanish (even though dh is fluent) and the exchange of some money. The bad way… well I did not want to find out.

At some point we reached the Panama Canal. I thought this would be the highlight of the drive until I realized that if you arrived at the canal at the wrong time you could sit in your car for up to two hours while ships passed through the locks. I probably don’t have to tell you that we arrived at the wrong time. By the time we started moving again I was a complete sweaty, scared mess that wanted to close my eyes, tap my heels together 3 times and end up back in Kansas.

Finally we reached the base, I was relieved since now I would be living under the protection of the US Army, but of course I was wrong again. The base was guarded by the Panamanians and was open to everyone. As we entered the gate the driver started telling me stories about all the recent break-ins that had occurred on the base. I decided right then I was never leaving the house without dh. My only hope was that we didn’t own anything worth stealing anyway.

As we drove through the windy roads of the base I started noticing how beautiful and green everything looked. I guess 100% humidity is great for the environment. The flowers were the brightest colors, the trees a deep green, it started to resemble paradise and I forgot for a moment that I was melting in the back seat.  Then out of nowhere I was jolted out of my fleeting fantasy. Large cinder block buildings appeared around the corner. They were old, but more importantly bullet holes marred every building. Apparently this base was occupied by the Panamanians when we invaded a few years earlier. The ransacked barracks still stood vacant along the road. I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to those who had lived in those barracks, did they live, did they die, did they leave behind a family?

Finally we pulled up to the house. It was a yellowish color stilt house with a tile roof. I remembered thinking it was pretty, sort of… then I noticed that under the house there was a carport that also housed the washer and dryer. As I walked by I remember thinking that since I had already decided I would never leave the house alone, dh better get use to doing the laundry. The washer and dryer were covered with a film of dead bugs and other items I didn’t want to touch. I hurried up the flight of stairs ready to see my new home and lock myself inside it for the next two years.

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Sick Computer

My computer is sick. Actually, it has been sick for about six months, but I do everything on my computer. From blogging to homeschooling to banking my computer is a huge part of my life. But, I need it to work correctly so I am sending it off for repairs. This means I will be without my little friend for about a week. I still plan on blogging, but probably not as frequently as normal. I have some old posts that I wrote when no one read the blog that I plan to run again as well as a few great giveaways. So check back to win some great prizes. Right now I am giving away a Kajeet cell phone. You can enter to win the phone here. I also plan to post another installment of Our Story before the weekend. Thanks for hanging in there and I hope to be back on track next week.

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Blogging away at Blissdom.

The Summer in Which I Became Frugal and Long-Haired Hippie ate Meat

Start at the beginning, Part 1.

Twenty-four days after I married long-haired hippie and moved out, I moved back in. Since I didn’t have a bedroom anymore I ended up moving into the living room, and dh came along too. This arrangement was less than ideal since the living room was the first room you saw when you entered my parent’s home. My mom hung up a sheet for privacy and we we moved all our earthly possessions into our new “home.”

This new living arrangement probably encouraged my dh to get moving on the whole get back in the Navy thing. Less than three weeks after moving in with my parents long-haired hippie became a short-haired petty officer. He was temporarily assigned duty in Jacksonville, FL while he awaited permanent orders. He stayed in Jacksonville during the week and drove home to Orlando on the weekends.

I spent the rest of the summer moving around Florida. For a few weeks I lived in dh’s grandparent’s empty condo in Tampa. This was nice except I had nothing to do during the week, no car, and no friends. This was also when I figured out dh wasn’t too good with money.

One thing dh neglected to tell me before we got married, although I don’t fault him for this- there wasn’t time,  is that he had accumulated a large amount of debt during his single years. We decided not to declare bankruptcy and to try and pay it off. This meant that most of his tiny military paycheck went to debt payments. I remember one Sunday night in Tampa, before he was returning to Jacksonville we counted out our money for the week. We had $7.62. Fortunately the car had a full tank of gas, but we didn’t have much food in the condo. I quickly learned about a grocery budget and purchased a few boxes of tuna helper and a few cans of tuna fish to last through the week. I felt bad dh’s first meal as a meat eater was tuna helper, but times were tough.

There was another time when dh took me to his favorite restaurant in Miami. Things were wonderful until it was time to pay the bill. It was only then that dh realized he left every penny we had under a mattress three hours away. I thought I would be washing dishes in Little Havana for the next week, but then remembered I had $30 in an old bank account. I pulled all of it out of the ATM in order to pay the bill and we quickly drove three hours in the other direction to retrieve our life savings.

I was very excited about dh’s rejoining the military (yes, I was naive). He told me about all the great places we could live and all the opportunities available for military spouses. I was shocked when he received orders to Panama, because to me that did not qualify as a great place to live. I was absolutely not prepared to move out of the country. In fact, dh had told me that there was no way we would receive orders to Panama because they were closing the base. He was wrong. I told him I wasn’t going to move to some third world country and he could go without me.  Dh begged me to go and told me there would be many opportunities for me to finish my degree, get a job, and see the rain forest. Finally, I agreed to go.

Dh needed to leave for Panama in a few short weeks and we quickly found out I could not go with him until he was assigned a house, which could be a month or longer. We heard through the grapevine that there were flights from Panama to Key West on a regular basis. Dh had a Navy buddy who lived in Key West so I decided to move in with him and dh could fly to the Keys on the weekend. We loaded up a small moving van and drove all night from Tampa to Key West. At some point during the summer we had also acquired two cats, and at a later point in the summer I discovered I am not a cat person. I remember trying desperately to stay awake during the all night drive. Fortunately I had two screeching cats in the back seat of the car to keep me awake.

We arrived in Key West and I settled in to my 4th home that summer. It didn’t take long for me to realize that dh’s Navy buddy lived like a pig and I didn’t want to live there. I was afraid to leave our stuff and the cats with the guy so I stayed. Meanwhile dh flew off to Panama and found out there were no such flights to Key West. I needed no more incentive to get the heck out of Key West so I called the movers, had our stuff packed, put on a boat to Panama and moved back into my parent’s house.

I spent the rest of the summer waiting for dh to be assigned a house in Panama. Finally in September he was assigned a house and I would be leaving for my tropical paradise in less than a week, or so I thought.

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The next installment has been published… Panama.

Make sure you don’t miss a single installment of Our Story, subscribe to The Happy Housewife.

Moving Out, Moving In, Moving Out

Start at the beginning… Part 1

Over the next several days I stopped by my parents’ house to pick up my things and take them to my new home. I avoided going over when I knew my dad was going to be home because I just couldn’t take how disappointed he was in me. (Although I deserved every bit of it)

There were a few times dh and I went over together and everyone was home. My dad would sit on the couch, watch television and pretend no one else was in the room. It was incredibly uncomfortable.

As for me, I was settling into my role as The unHappy Housewife. I didn’t know how to cook when I got married, and dh was a vegetarian. I quickly learned how to make a two meals, beans and cornbread – can of beans, box of cornbread mix and frozen pizza – unwrap, bake and serve.

Meanwhile, crazy blind guy was driving me crazy. You see, crazy blind guy was legally blind as defined by the social security administration which meant he could actually see up close, but could not see well enough to drive. He also belonged to some weird sect at our college that didn’t believe in using chemicals or wearing shoes. This meant that crazy blind guy always smelled disgusting and the apartment was filthy since he didn’t wear shoes and only rinsed his feet. I refused to clean up after this guy, so the apartment grew dirtier and dirtier.

One week night, my now always smiling brother had a baseball game. I convinced dh to come to the game even though we knew my family would be there. Dh knew nothing about baseball and I grew up in a family that thought nachos were their own food group. We arrived at the game and took a spot on the bleachers close to my family.

As the game went on somehow my dad and dh ended up sitting next to each other. Then something amazing happened, I looked over and my dad was actually speaking to dh! God had softened my dad’s heart towards dh and he was actually laughing and joking as he sat next to him. Now, my dad is a guy who loves a good practical joke, and I think he knew he had some fresh bait, as his own children had stopped falling for his pranks years ago. Realizing very quickly that dh didn’t know the difference between a baseball and a basketball, my dad was feeding dh lines to yell at the ump. Dh, wanting to create peace in my family, shouted out whatever my dad told him to say. Every bad pitch and poor call was addressed in a loud voice by dh from the stands. My dad sat there chuckling as he feed dh line after line. As we said our goodbyes after the game I had a feeling things were starting to change.

My mother-in-law, who loves parties, insisted we have some sort of reception to celebrate our wedding. My parents, who were just starting to warm up to dh offered to host this reception since no one had any money to do anything different. The reception was attended by old friends and family. It wouldn’t have surprised me if there was some betting going around behind our backs regarding how long this so called marriage was going to last.

After the reception, we headed to Tampa for our “honeymoon.” It was wonderful getaway at none other than Busch Gardens and accompanying us was my husband’s best friend from the Navy. He had come down for the reception and dh wanted to spend time with him while he was in town. Can you say romantic? My honeymoon picture was a automated camera shot of the three of us on the first drop of the Kumba roller coaster.

Needless to say I was quickly getting fed up with a filthy apartment,  crazy roommate, a honeymoon for three, plus the fact that dh didn’t have a real job (he was currently employed as a daytime bartender making about $3 a day). I was working at a local restaurant almost full time paying the bills, while dh stayed at home and did…. well I don’t really know what he did, but I wasn’t happy.

Finally after we had been married about 3 weeks I laid down the law. I told him he better get a real job, get a haircut, and oh by the way, I was moving out. I called my parents and either told or asked them, I can’t remember, that I was moving back in. There was only one slight problem, my dad had turned my bedroom into an office. I didn’t really care, I was willing to sleep on the couch to get away from the mess I had created.

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Second Hand Shopping Just Got Better

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If you are like me your children’s items enter your home via thrift stores, yard sales, and hand-me-downs. While I love saving money, their safety is my number one concern. Items are not a good deal if they could potentially harm your child. I remember years ago we received a pack-n-play from a friend. I found out after using it for several months that it had been recalled. We stopped using it and purchased a different one.

Now it is easy to find out if those second hand items are safe. Parents.com has a feature that allows you to check the recall status of any baby item or toy. You enter the name, type of product, and time frame (if you know it) and it searches for recall information.

If the item has been recalled the site provides detailed information as well as weblinks if available. This site is free and doesn’t require you to register, which of course means saving time!

You can access the site by clicking on this link. Their information is compiled from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and other sources.  For more information concerning recalls, visit www.cpsc.gov or, for car seats, www.safercar.gov.

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