Speaking Engagements

I have 2 speaking engagements coming up.  I am so excited and nervous at the same time.



The First one is at our church's Whole Ministry Center at 7pm on January 13th, and the topic will be related to food, grocery shopping, meal planning, making things homemade, gardens, etc - pretty much anything food related.


The second one will be at our local library in their multipurpose room in the back on Monday January 31 from 630pm until 8pm.  I will begin with the same topic (different crowd) but will expand into laundry and electricity as needed.


I am soooo excited!

Workout DVD Rentals

I haven't posted about renting DVD's from the library in about a year and a  half, so let me reiterate.  Most libraries have an online catalog that you can search and hold specific items, including DVD's.  I do this often, and each free rental is 3 weeks long.  Here is  list of titles I have gotten recently:

• Jungle Book 2
• The Rescuers
• Jillian Michael's 30 day Shred
• Denise Austin Pilates
• Denise Austin Yoga
• Disney Classics Collection (includes Casey at the Bat, Morris the Midgette Moose, Ben and Me, and several others on the same DVD)

This is a very small sample of available titles.  If your library is like ours (and we are NOT in a large town at all) then it is linked to several local libraries and they transport titles back and forth for you for free.  There is also the opton of interlibrary loan, which is sometimes free, and for us, sometimes it costs $1 - which is still cheap for a 3 week loan.

Take a few moments, and find a good DVD/book/CD from your local library system and entertain for free!

Redbox *updated*

If you like to rent movies, but are trying to be frugal....try redbox. We have 3 of these redboxes in my area (at grocery stores). They rent movies for $1 per night...and no membership or subscription fees. You can rent at any box, and return at any box. The best thing to me is the opportunity to have free rentals. When I signed up, they emailed me a code good for one free rental, and I have found some free-movie monday codes listed online, so potentially you could get one free movie a week (if the free monday code continues). This is about all my family would have time for anyway. You can use the online page to see what inventory is available in each box (each box varies), and you can reserve your titles from your computer...and pick it up when you run your errands.

(Apparently, there are weekly free codes emailed to you as well...I'm still pretty new to this, so I haven't personally recieved one, yet.)

* Update...I got the email for the free monday movie code...and it worked beautifully...you have to sign up in a different spot for the free code email*

Temptation

My husband and I resisted temptation like crazy mad people this weekend. We borrowed a friends Wii to try, and of course we enjoyed it. So, later that same day, hubby offers to let me run free for a few hours while he has the kids (yay for me), so I go first to wally-world then to a myraid of other spots. Well, I look at the Wii's then the Wii Fits and I'm just uneasy about dropping that much dough on a game. Then I go to kmart - out of Wii, then yesterday we go out of town for church and went to their local wal-mart - no wii. By this time, we were not only okay with the fact that there were no Wii's to be bought, we were a little giddy - and then when considered the fact that we had just saved about $400 smackers, we shared a kiss of joy.

There are still a lot of activities you can do for cheap or free - do them instead.

Free Movie Rentals

The Public Library in our town carries movies of all types. We have rented Veggie Tales, Saturday Night Fever (didn't like it BTW) and We Own the Night (got disgusted with the content after about 30 seconds), and there are many more on my 'to watch' list. We rent these movies for free and the rental is 3 weeks long. Our library is also part of a regional library system which means I can go online and search the library catalog for the entire system (about 6 branches) and have whatever book or movie that I want shipped to my home library (for free) and they even call me and let me know it's there. There's also no limit on how many movies I can have out at once - as long as I dont' abuse my videos while they are in my possession.

Free is better than cheap (like the netflix and blockbuster mail in systems), especially since no one wants to pay for movies they didn't like.

Free Exercise Videos

Do yourself a favor, don't buy another exercise video that you know will just end up collecting dust and taking up precious space after about 2-3 weeks of use. Rent one for free (for about 3 weeks at a time usually) from your local public library. The loan time is generally about as long as your interest in that particular video will be anyway. AND, to optimize your workout you're supposed to change it up every couple of weeks anyway to keep your workouts effective and calorie burning. You could also look for free workout videos from myspace and YouTube also, but please, don't pay money for them!