Congrats to our giveaway winners!  I’ve chosen winners for the Donate and Win giveaway as well as the Eat Well, Save Big giveaway for the 5 All You cookbooks!  I’m e-mailing the winners as we speak, and once I’ve heard from them I will be creating the Winner’s Post that I should have had awhile back with all of our giveaway winners from now and the past so you’ll all be able to brag about your winnings!  Hopefully that’ll all happen within about a week.

All winners have 48 hours to get back to me or other winners will have to be chosen so that I can provide sponsors with  the names and contact info!

**Something went wrong when I posted this earlier, and it looked quite a bit wacky!  This is what you should see, hopefully, but it seems like everything is always a work in progress!  Let me know if you see something that looks incredibly otu of place or mistyped so I can fix it, and if you have a problem entering contests please e-mail me so I can try to fix whatever problem there may be.  Sometimes the captcha codes mess up, but those are always a work in progress. Luckily I’m married to a technical genius who can fix almost anything

I have a few contests ending really soon, and if you haven’ t yet entered them I have to ask WHY NOT?  You’re missin’ out on winning some wonderful prizes sponsored by companies that we all know and really love!  Crocs is giving one winner their choice of a hot pair of  Crocband or Crocband Flip shoes!! That’s a great prize in my opinion, and everyone I know loves them.  Check them out for yourself   You’ll want a pair!

Enter here for my Sweetheart Week bash where you can win the HOT Crocband or Crocband Flip shoes.  Crocs is generously giving the winner their choice of shoes, so why not stop on over there and decide which one you want? Remember my promise of a bonus gift card for a referral too!  This giveaway ends March 6.

I have an even better incentive for you to enter the giveaway!  If a person enters the giveaway and wins the Crocs shoes, get them to tell me that YOU referred them to my site.  If they do that, just tell me YOUR name, I will give YOU $10 in Amazon gift cards!!  How’s that for cool?  You don’t have to do a thing except tell them to give me your name, and I’ll contact you when I get the names. 

I have a bunch of Eat Smart, Save Big cookbooks from All You to give away!  They have generously offered to let me give the cookbooks away after giving me 1 to review, which you can tell I just LOVE!  It’s already gotten a lot of use in my home, and I’m going to share my favorite recipe from it with you in a few hours.   The cookbook is perfect for the frugal gourmet cook, always looking to make a wonderful meal as inexpensively as possible.  I don’t know about you, but my palate is unfortunately a little more expensive than Ramen noodles but my budget is NOT so I have to find a way for them to somehow meet on the side of Ramen with a tiny flair of gourmet, if that makes sense.

Crazy Dog T-Shirts has offered another $15 gift card!! Don’t you just love reading funny shirts?  I do! You don’t even want to get me started reading shirts in a store like Spencer’s.   I try to stear clear of the, um, ah, things that I wouldn’t read in front of my mom but the rest are fair game.    I wish I was as clever as the people who design the t-shirts!  The gift card would be perfect to buy a shirt for yourself or to use toward a gift for a holiday or birthday.  Think of it as a tool to build your holiday fund!  Regifting items that you win, if it’s even called regifting, is great especially if you win items of great value!  I recently won a Seagate hard drive in a blog contest, and  I’m giving it to hy husband.  It’s not necessarily for any occasion but it’s nice to be able to win something to give to him that I know he will enjoy.  With blog contests, you aren’t competing against millions of people the way you are with instant win sweepstakes and other giveaways given by major companies like Coke or Pepsi.

There are even more prizes, and I have a few more reviews and giveaways coming up.  I would be thrilled if everyone that came by would please enter my giveaways! I know you’re coming by, so take a few and enter!  I don’t ever give your information to anybody.  The company who sponsors the giveaway only gets the necessary info to get your prize to you, and they are all extremely trustworthy so you have no need to worry there either.  And these prizes, even if you don’t need them, make wonderful gifts!

So here are the links real quick to get to the giveaways, so you can enter them easily:

Enter here to win your copy of Eat Well, Save Big- the hot cookbook from All You- because even if you’re an amazing cook, you can “regift” this to a beginner cook for THE most perfect gift.  One thing I love about All You in the short time I’ve talked to some of them is their giving nature.  They seem like an amazing group of people who really care about their readers, and I hope that is one thing that I carry over into MY blog because that’s why I started blogging in the first place.  I want to help people in any way I can.  This giveaway ends February 28, so hurry you don’t have long!

Did you help any way in the relief efforts in Haiti, by donating your time, money, or something from your stockpile? Did you simply pray for them, for God to lift these people up above their trials and tribulation to a place where they find peace and love?  I want to thank those of you who were caring and who helped the relief efforts in Haiti, so enter here to win one of the Eat Well, Save Big cookbooks.  I pray that nothing this horrific ever happens again, but unfortunately life happens so I do pray that this book helps us all stretch our grocery budget and save money that we all use to help those affected by any kind of disaster, crime, or attack.  Money is so very tight everywhere in the world, and our country is facing hard economic times everywhere, but hopefully we can all figure out ways to save just a little to use to bless others who are in greater need than we are.

So there’s the long, drawn out plea for you to go and stroke my ego just a bit and enter these giveaways for me   I would love to see more entries on these contests, especially so I can tell the sponsors that the giveaways were HUGE hits so they’ll be gracious enough to sponsor more in the future.  Friends, if you like contests and to win GREAT prizes, enter! Get your friends to enter! I have a TON of prizes to go around!

Register to play the Long John Silver’s Spin and Win Fish Fry, which is actually a fun game, to earn points redeemable for coupons for free food!  When you register you will get a coupon valid fo ra free crispy breaded fish!

How would you like an extra $1,000 with just a little bit of work? Well, if you are a regular reader and/or subscriber of All You, you know that you have the opportunity to show off your creativity and win $1,000 in the All You Budget Recipe Cook-off!  I thought I’d tell you a little about the contest just in case you haven’t had the chance to devour your magazine from cover to cover, which is what I do the day I get mine in the mail!  You’d think it was Christmas once a month when I get my All You in the mail!  It’s funny yet terribly pathetic, I’m tellin’ ya.   Anyway, I digress.

The winner of the first All You Budget Recipe Cook-Off will win not only $1,000 but a supply of Weight Watcher’s yogurt.  We can’t forget your 15 mintues of fame, either!  The winning recipe will be featured in an upcoming issue of All You magazine!

Would you like to enter?  I know a lot of you are wonderful, creative cooks who are pros at cooking for your families on a budget so this is right up your ally!  Entering is easy:

Participating readers are asked to enter their recipes using Weight Watchers yogurt, one of the sponsors of the program.  You have the following categories to choose from: dips, desserts, weeknight dinners or kid-friendly!

ALL YOU staff will select the winning recipe based on taste (25%), originality (25%), use of the sponsor’s product (25%) and appropriateness to the contest theme: budget-friendly (25%). 

The winner’s recipe will run in the August issue of All You, along with a photo of the winner and his or her name and state.

To enter and for complete rules, go here.  The March issue of All You, on stands now, contains a $1 coupon off of 1 32-oz. container of Weight Watchers yogurt or any 5 (6 oz.) cups.

I know a lot of you are great cooks because you’ve shared recipes that I’ve cooked in my own home; if you aren’t a cook, this is a chance for you to start and perhaps win a prize in the end for your efforts.  Again, go here for more information and to enter! 

I would think it was so cool if one of my readers won.  As a matter of fact, if one of my readers won and wanted to do a featured guest post to share your skillz at Making Cents Out of Life I would welcome that with open “arms”!

For those of you who aren’t All You subscribers, I have a special fundraising price that you could take advantage of, getting 24 issues of All You for only $20!  That makes each issue only $.83 each, by far the best price I have ever seen!

I consider All You a necessary tool for savings in my home, and often end up wth 2-3 copies of the magazine because of the valuable coupons inside that often lead to free items!  I devour the content and read it from cover to cover the day I get it in the mail, for real.

Each issue of All You magazine has at least $30 worth of valuable coupons inside, but usually far more than that!  Occasionally there will be a coupon inside for a FREE item, and lots of  Buy 1 Get 1 Free item coupons are often found.  The coupons are for items that are typically found in many homes across America, not for rare items that nobody needs.  You can easily get a great subscription to All You here.  It can take up to 12 weeks for your subscriptions to arrive depending on which one you order.  My mom’s All You only took about 4 weeks.  Yours may differ but that’s the average time. 

For those of you who do subscribe through my link, thank you because you will be supporting my mom’s 2nd grade classroom.  They do not get any additional supply money from their school,  and most of the children cannot afford to donate the supply money that the teachers need to get by for the year so it comes out of each teacher’s own pocket.  As you can probably guess, it gets to be a big burden on their own families.  Teachers are not at all exempt from the effects of the terrible condition of the economy.

Go enter the All You Budget Recipe Cook-Off featuring Weight Watchers yogurt, and win $1,000!!

**This contest is now over.  Thanks to all who wntered!  Please remember to leave all of youro blog posts, Facebook posts ad other posts until all winners have been contacted;  Unless oterwise jnoted please leave your postos up until March 17th. This will give me enough time to go through all of your wonderful entries because I got so many that I can just tell will bring a smile to my face and help spread the word about our sitel  I’m really looking forward to creading them.  Random.org will choose the winners, of course, but I will read them all . 

Thank you again for all your partipvipation!

I had great plans to do a huge Valentine’s Day gift guide but God had other plans for me.  They weren’t fun and still aren’t but I’m sure He has His reasons.  I’m sure gonna ask Him when I get the chance!  Anyway, I have a couple of wonderful giveaways for you to celebrate Valentine’s Day, so will you be my Valentine and enter to win these great prizes?  There’ll be a few winners, but only one entry method per person so it’s easy!

The first prize is generously sponsored by Crocs!!  I’m so excited to be able to award my first place winner his or her choice of their VERY popular Crocband or their Crocband Flip!!  Crocbands combine retro with today’s pop culture, and you have a mix that’s just perfect to go with all of today’s styles.  Each shoe features Croslite™ material midsole that provides lightweight comfort and come in beautiful colors perfect for warm weather!  I will have one winner of the shoes, and their value is $39.99!  I will be doing a Crocs feature later this week for their new sale and I’ll tell you more about them then.  You’ll want to win these shoes; everybody loves their Crocs!

Here’s a list of the rest of my prizes:

(1) $15 Crazy Dog T-shirts  gift card
(3) Everyday Coupon Book: Exclusive Offers on Hundreds of Food and Household Items

(2)  Eat Well, Save Big Cookbooks that were generously sponsored by All You 

I will pick winners using Random.org on March 6 at midnight.  When you can no longer comment the contest has ended.  Winners will be based on the  number of entries to the contest. 

That’s 7 pretty darn good prizes if I do say so myself!  I’m blessed to have these sponsored by the wonderful companies from which they came, other than the books.  I’ve given those away before and they seem to be a hit so I got a couple more for you!

You want to win?  It’s easy to win one of these prizes but I just need 1 favor: Spread the word about the giveaway! 

To win: Just help me spread the word in one of these ways:

• Twitter
• Email
• Blog
• Facebook
• Forum (another blog, Slickdeals,, anything!!)
• Comment somewhere else

All you have to do is come back here and leave a link to the place where you did one of  those things above!  I think early on it was too hard but this looks easy enough!  I just need a comment with one of the ways above that you helped spread the word! I really appreciate it!

If you use e-mail to spread the word, please put my e-mail address in the CC line: makingcentsoutoflife (at) gmail (dot) com.  This is the easiest way for me to keep up with it.  I appreciate it!!  Don’t forget to come back here and leave a comment so I’ll make sure to look for your e-mail.  Things happen, and I have a special file I put reader e-mails into so I don’t lose ‘em.

If you choose to use Twitter, please put @KristinBrianne and @Crocs somewhere in the message.  If you’ve already entered, no worries! 

Bonus:  If you help me with this, and a person wins and tells me that YOU referred them to the site I will give you $10 in gift cards to Amazon.com!!  All they have to do is give me your name when I get their mailing info for their prize.  Either way, you could be a winner!

Just don’t forget to come back and leave a comment and a link to wherever you left your comment about the giveaway.  I really appreciate the help!  I hope you all have great luck; those shoes look comfy!

Thanks goes to Crocs and to All You for sponsoring some of the FABULOUS prizes for this giveaway.  I was given an Eat Well, Save Big cook book for review before this giveaway and I love it!

Stouffer’s automatically comes to my mind when I think about frozen dinner.  Not a TV dinner like I used to think of that’s icky and congealed and cold, but a real dinner that you get a little help with from the frozen section at the grocery store.  Believe me, there’s a difference!  They have some delicious side dishes when you need something quick to go witn your main dish. My husband and I LOOOVE their mac and cheese as well as their cheddar potato bake.  Yummy and cheesy!

Stouffer’s realizes the importance of a true family dinner- the entire family sitting down at the dinner table together and sharing a meal AND their lives really does foster a child’s sense of belonging and make them much less likely to get into trouble.  My dad worked a lot when I was a small child but when he had a normal shift at work we always had dinner together in the evenings about 5:30-6:00.  My mom is a teacher so luckily we always had that time with her!  It was that way until I was in college in the evenings and my brother was working after school; we still had meals together on the weekends and every other night possible so I really believe in all of this.

Stouffer’s has a new contest/challenge called Let’s Fix Dinner and I thought you might be interested in it so you can get some great savings on Stouffer’s products as well as try to win some awesome prizes.  The challenge will allow you to track your family’s progress, too. 

You will get a $1/1 Stouffe’s Family Size, Party Size, Large Family Size or Skillet Meal coupon when you set your family’s goals.  You can read more about the challenge rules and prizes you could possibly win each week on their Official Rules.   It looks like you have the potential to win a few great weekly prizes!

If you aren’t already a member, Stouffer’s also has a great rewards program called The Dinner Club where you can cash in points for buying Stouffer’s products to “buy” cool gift items!

I like any opportunity to win prizes for doing things I already do, and why not reap every benefit you can from doing soemthing?  For those of you who already eat dinner with your families this challenge will be a snap and you might win something really nice!

Due to recent events that have rendered me unable to manage this campaign efficiently I am extending the entry period and adding 1 more way that you can win!

Tonight was the the Help for Haiti telethon.  Did you watch, DVR to watch it later or is it just too much for you to bare to watch?  I recorded it on my DVR, and I’m watching it now.  The pictures, the devastation that this already-poverty-stricken country continues to suffer is heart breaking.  I cannot stand to see a child in pain; these children are beyond pain.  I’m not sure I will be able to make it through the entire show.  These children, however, are showing a bravery and a strength that I’ve never shown during tough times in my life, and I’m much older than these poor kids.  They have already suffered so greatly in their young lives that this is just one more obstacle in their lives that they believe will pass, but they all wish that help will come soon.  For some it is, for others it isn’t coming soon enough.

These kids had nothing already, were already helpless and without care that they need but at least they had families.  Now these children are alone, unsure if their parents are alive or dead.  They’re starving, scared, and have nobody to rock them to sleep at night and tell them everything will be OK.  Even now, at 30, I depend on my mom and dad to tell me things will be OK when things happen in my life that make me feel as if my world is crashing down, and a hug from my Daddy makes everything OK again.  There’s a safety and a security in that hug that I have always depended upon, but that those  babies, those sweet, precious babies do not have.  I don’t think a hug from my Daddy or even my husband’s arms around me can fix the heartache I feel for these people right now.  I feel helpless, and to be honest although I pray for these children and their families, I feel anger at God.  I feel anger toward my loving, caring God Who is allowing these INNOCENT children to go through such pain and sufferage.

I spoke last week of how my husband and I weren’t in a financially able position to help at this moment in time and at that time, and still now, there isn’t much we can do.  Our income is diminutive, and if it weren’t for the help of our families and God’s grace we would not be living as we are now.   We have a roof over our head, a roof that is safe and that is clean and is stable.  We know that we will have food on our table and in our refrigerator.  We know that we have loving families who rush to our sides when we need them, to offer whatever we need but most of all to offer love.  I feel ashamed that I said we had nothing to give.  At that moment, to be honest, I did not lie.  Times are hard, but I will find a way to give even if it is just $10 to this cause.  I will give, and I will give gladly, because I have time to figure out how I will give.  The need in Haiti isn’t going away overnight.  It won’t be “fixed” by Monday, or by next month, or anytime soon.

So my gift will be $10, minimum, beginning on February 3, each month for 10 months.  This will be a $100 total.  This is not as much as others are giving,  but I feel like my $10 can go toward many different causes and since we do have so little to give I want to choose another,  just as deserving, cause to support.   I want to feel no more shame when I say I have nothing to give, as I sit here and watch a TV I paid too much for, while I sit here and thumb through my (super cheap) All You magazine that I spent more than ten bucks on for the subscription.

The reason I say these things?  Most of us will spend ten bucks on something we don’t need within the next 10 days, yet many of us will give nothing to a child with no food, no shoes, no family.  There IS a shame in that, and I feel that shame that I was one of those people.  For days, I was going to be one of those people because I really didn’t think we could spare $10.  I will find a way to spare $10, whether it’s by having many more “stay at home days” to preserve gas or by passing up my favorite shrimp lo mein once  a month.  It’s too greasy and I’m on a diet anyway!

I just changed this giveaway, so if you saw the prior post I’m sorry.  The giveaway rules now are simple:

Give at least $1 (money) or give materials to the Haitian relief efforts, and tell us which organization you supported.  Did you give to the Red Cross? Doctors Without Borders?  Compassion International?  Just tell us which organization received your financial donation or your donation of some sort of materials like food or clothing, and leave a way I can contact you.

((NEW!))  Put a link to this giveaway on your blog, Facebook Wall, another forum or another blog and leave a link directly to your comment or link in a comment here. 

I have 2 of these to give away, and I will choose the winners on February 28 at midnight.  The readers’ information will be passed on to All You, and they will be the ones sending you your book!

The winner will be asked to provide proof of donation of either money or your material donation, so get a receipt or take a picture but just make sure you can provide proof.  You can black out personal info, and I will be the only person to see the proof, but it is a requirement to win.

I am so grateful that they provided me with these prizes to give away.  You can expect a review on Sunday, but I wanted to get this post up ASAP so you had time to make your donation as soon as you can, so you can win the book.  Remember it can be as little as one dollar ($1) to enter, or you can donate material possessions like non-perishable foods or clothing.  Just do something, and don’t make excuses as I tried to do.  Your conscience will eat at you until you make it right.  Mine did!

 This contest has been closed and winners have been chosen!

**Due to some personal events that have rendered me unable to effectively manage this campaign for the last week, I’m extending the giveaway entry period and adding a new method of entry for those of you who have already entered.

I am starting out our Valentine’s Day Gift Guide a little early because the great folks at All You have sent me a copy of their new cookbook  Eat Well, Save Big  to review.  They also have given me a few to share with you!  I’m so excited!  Have you seen this yet?  The dish on the cover looks delicious!

For those who aren’t familiar with the Eat Well, Save Big cookbook from All You, it’s a compilation of 148 recipes that are not only very tasty but also easy on your wallet AND your health.  The goal of the cookbook is to bring to you recipes that have ingredients that are readily available and easily affordable, not too terribly time consuming for the most part, and meals that really are healthy.  They exceeded their mission by a long shot, because I am a pickier eater than any kid I know but there’s not a recipe in this book I wouldn’t eat!

For the cooking challenged (ahem, yours truly!) the book is filled with tips and tricks for simple things like chopping and graduating up to tips for things like making the perfect pasta.

One thing I really liked about Eat Well, Save Big is that each recipe broke down how many people it served (unless you eat like us!) and the cost per serving.  Now we all know that as couponers we can lower those costs tremendously, but the cost per person for these recipes is super low.  Some of them might be $2.50 but a lot of them were around $1.25.   Most of my favorite recipes cost less than $2 per serving, and I know that I often find coupons for some of the items in the recipes so I can easily lower those costs. 

My favorite recipe is for Corn and Cheese Enchiladas.  The cost per serving is less than $2, and from looking over the ingredients I know I can lower that cost using some of the coupons I can print from All You!

Speaking of coupons, All You never disappoints!  The last page of the cookbook includes $8 in valuable grocery coupons!  Eat Well, Save Big is one cookbook that won’t be in great shape in my home after about a month.  It’s going to be put to so much use that it’ll be bent, stained, dog-eared…very well loved and used!  Isn’t that how a good cookbook is supposed to look?

The list price of this cookbook is $14.97, but you can get at Walmart for just $12!  You can print a $1 coupon from AllYou.com so you’ll only pay $11 for a cookbook that your family will rave over.

To entice you, here’s a 10-recipe preview of what you’ll find inside the cookbook.

Would you like to win a copy?  It’s easy and I have 5 of them to give away!  I’m going to make it easy and give you just a couple of entry methods.  I can’t keep up with so many!

1.  Required Entry-  Leave a comment, with a method of contact, telling us your favorite money saving method.

2. Optional Entry- Follow me, @KristinBrianne, and follow All You, @AllYou, on Twitter.  You must tweet the following, only one tweet counts but all are appreciated: Win a copy of Eat Well, Save Big from @allyou & @KristinBrianne at Making Cents Out of Life’s Sweetheart Week Giveaway.  You must include a link to the giveaway, so you will want to use Tiny URL to shorten the length.  If you have to alter the tweet a bit, it’s fine but please keep it as close as you can.

3.  Blog about the contest, and come back here and leave a link to your blog post.  Please leave the link directly to the post.  For non-bloggers, leave a post about the contest on a forum somewhere OR put it on your Facebook page. Come back here and leave a link directly to it.  Only one of these two will count!

(NEW) 4.  Put a link to this contest on another forum or your Facebook wall.  Leave a comment here with a link directly to that comment. 

You have 3 4 great ways to win this awesome cookbook!!  There’s 5 books to go around so your chances are pretty darn good!  The contest will end 2/28 at midnight.  When you can no longer comment the contest has ended

When the winners are chosen, your prize will come directly from All You…so you’ll get it more than likely more quickly than I tend to get the prizes out!  That might make some of you feel better, as it has taken me awhile to get a few prizes out lately.

Good luck!  You really do want to win this cookbook.  It’s so much fun!

Sugardale has a few promotions worth mentioning.  First, you can download a free recipe booklet with plenty of bacon recipes! 

Then, you can enter to win a personal chef for a year.  Enter once a day to make your chances of winning better!  Moms, how much would you love to have someone cook for you and your family every day?  Seriously wouldn’t that be amazing!?!

Last but NOT least, want a freebie?  That’s what I thought!  Well you have to do a little work for it but it’s worth it, trust me.  All you have to do is submit your favorite bacon or pepperoni recipe here and then you’ll get a coupon for a free package of Sugardale pepperoni or Ready Bacon!

This is a limited-area proomotion good only in the following states: AL, AR, CO, FL, GA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MI, MN, MO, NC, NY, OH, OK, PA, RI, TN, TX, VA, WI and WV.

I think I could be a vegetarian if it wasn’t for bacon, but seriously I just love it!  I don’t often eat it but I love it just the same. 

Good luck!

I have a new contest to tell you about but I haven’t been up to putting together an entire Ten to Win list lately.  I promise to make it up to you as soon as I can.  This last bout with pain has me down for the count.  I won’t let it beat me though!

Subway $5 Footlongs are back, which means that “almost” every footlong sandwich offered by Subway is just $5!  This is one of our favorite places to eat because it’s reasonably healthy and the choices are almost endless!  Subway also has a new contest to go along with it called Footlong Nation Appreciation.   They pick a new winner every day!  You could win free Subway footlongs for a year!

Codes are found on specially marked 32 oz. drinks from Subway but newly registered players are given 2 free plays!

Subway is a really great place for the entire family to go to grab a fast, healthy meal.  I absolutely love all they do to promote healthy eating for children.  It’s almost impossible for a kid to get food that’s unhealthy, and as an overweight adult continuously battling urges I can even go there and get a good, healthy meal! I could easily eat at Subway for a year for free! 

Go on over and enter the Subway Footlong Nation Appreciation contest and see if you’re a daily winner!