Retail Therapy: That's what friends are for!

I'm so excited! I just attended a scrapbooking fundraiser for our local Memorial Library this weekend with my mom and several friends. It definitely renewed my interest in scrapbooking. One of my friends, Amy, had an amazing Canon Selphy ES30 photo printer that doesn't require ink!!! The paper is thermal, so the photo is essentially burned onto the paper. It basically did one color layer at a time and the end product was amazing! It was much better quality than any of the one hour photo pictures I have purchased.

I knew instantly that I had to have one. She told us they were around $99 on Amazon.com. I couldn't wait to get home to check it out. I love to find a bargain and my mom gave me the goal to come home and find it as cheap as possible. I was shocked to find out they were on sale for $50. I had $15 in Amazon gift cards from SwagBucks and $54+ in my fun/bow money and $2.53 in Amazon Rewards, so I only actually paid $5.66 for the printer and a 100-pack of paper!!!

By the way, if you aren't using SwagBucks, you should be. There is nothing better than free stuff. For me, it's Amazon gift cards! Here's a referral link if you need one: http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/Marlana

Now, I cannot wait until school is out to start playing with it!!! Shipping was free for standard, so I went with the cheapest. It will take longer to get, but it will be sooo worth it because I wouldn't have purchased it if it hadn't been a bargain. :)

For those of you who are thinking how expensive it will be to print the photos, I live about 20 minutes one-way from the nearest photo developing center, so this printer will be perfect for my scrapbook photos that I need to only print a few at a time. I will continue to get the inexpensive deals for my regular photos at Walgreens. ;)

Help our classroom get an HP Printer!

This may look like a super adorable, cute and fun Kindergarten classroom since I enlisted the help of a fabulous seamstress mother who treated me with ladybug curtains but I can’t afford the necessities for my kids like a printer, let alone, a printer/scanner/copier that actually works. Right now, our printer is so old that it isn’t compatible with the operating system on our computer. Not good! However, you can help!

(Insert shameless plug here)

Currently, HP is partnering with DonorsChoose.org to help fund projects for classrooms across the US. HP is willing to pick up the cost of half any HP product ordered through CDW or Quill. I promise that the grant proposal I submitted was for one of the cheapest HP All-in-One printer/scanner/copiers that I could find. Right now, we are $111.07 shy of having our proposal fulfilled. Please help if you can! You can donate as little or as much as you’d like.

Here's a link to our project: http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=368975.

I have had two grants fulfilled through DonorsChoose and have been blessed to know that generous donors are willing to support education.

Here is a link to a peek into our classroom from the beginning of this year. http://apeekintoournest.blogspot.com/2009/08/peek-into-my-classroom.html

It’s official, I’m out of the loop

Where have I been hiding and why haven’t I heard of this before???

After recently hearing someone else sing the praises of using Live Writer, as opposed to writing their posts in Blogger, I decided to give it a try myself. I don’t mind Blogger generally, but I never can get my photos to manipulate easily and I end up being stuck with them in whatever order they uploaded. That doesn’t always fit with my little anal mind, so I figured this is at least worth a try. It can’t hurt.

I have to admit, I kinda LOVE it! You can do lots more than you can with Blogger. Plus, it’s super basic. Maybe I’ll get around to posting more now.

Cole will be able to teach me to be more tech savvy before long. :) How sad is that?

I predict I will get nothing done for days!

One of the not so wonderful things about living in the country is the lack of basic conveniences like cable, trash service, paved roads, etc. When I go to my parents to spend the night, I am literally glued to HGTV. Last night, my husband sent me a link to Online Video Guide (OVGuide) and now I predict I will be glued to my computer screen watching as many HGTV clips as possible. Why didn't I know about this sooner? I knew you could watch things on individual sites, but putting a ton of links altogether on one site, pure genius. Thanks, honey!

Robyn's Ramblings

Robyn asked me to make a header for her after seeing Carrie's. She was so sweet! Go check out her blog.

A little more header fun

Carrie asked me to make her a new header for her blog after seeing Kelly's. Here's what I came up with.

Playing around with PSE!

Kelly is such a wonderful Christian woman. She is incredibly sweet and she actually used the header I played around with and finally had the nerve to e-mail her. Thanks Kelly for not thinking saying I am crazy! It gave me lots of practice using Adobe PSE. I'm babystepping my way to becoming a digi scrapper.