Safeway Back-to-School Event Giveaway

I am always on the lookout for Box Tops when I go shopping! My children are not school aged yet but I still like helping my local schools. Each Box Top is worth 10-cents and can be found on brands such as Cheerios®, Betty Crocker®, Juicy Juice®, Ziploc®, Kleenex®, Hefty®, Welch's® and many more!

Right now, the Safeway family of stores (which includes Dominick's, Tom Thumb, Randalls, Vons, and Genuardi's) is making it simple to give back with "2 Ways 2 Earn" cash for your schools with Box Tops for Education and the "10% Goes Back to Schools" program. That’s pretty awesome! We don’t have a Safeway chain store in our area and I want to pass along this great deal to you!

Box Tops for Education has already given away over $320 million to help the more than 69 thousand schools participating. And if that wasn't enough, earning Box Tops is even easier this year with four new brands participating in the program: Progresso Soup, Totino´s Pizza, Betty Crocker Cake Mixes and Gold Medal Flour.

To help your local schools even further just look for the "10% Goes Back to Schools" yellow school bus tags on over 2,000 of your favorite items throughout Safeway from August 11th - September 14th. When you purchase participating products with your Club Card, Safeway will give 10% of the purchase price to the local school of your choice.

Here's how it works:
* Check your receipt from August 11 - September 14. The total will be updated each time you shop.

* Beginning on September 18, a redemption code will be printed at the bottom of your receipt.

* Visit backtoschools.escrip.com before October 13 to choose your favorite participating local school, then simply enter your redemption code to make your donation.

To learn more about Box Tops for Education and Safeway's "10% Goes Back to Schools" program, visit www.2ways2earn.com. And while you´re there, don´t forget to enter the Safeway Bonus Box Tops Sweepstakes for a chance to win 1,000 Bonus Box Tops for the participating school of your choice!
HELP YOUR SCHOOL!

MyBlogSpark has offered to give (1) Family Treasures reader a $25 Safeway Gift Card and a Box Tops certificate with a value of 50 Box Tops!

To Enter:

Leave us a comment telling us which Box Top products you would purchase if you won the $25 Safeway gift card.
(Remember you MUST do this first or else your extra entries will be invalid.)

Extra Entries:

*Follow our blog (1 entry)
*Subscribe to Family Treasures (1 entry)
*Follow us on Twitter: KRussell82 (1 entry)
*Blog about this giveaway & provide the url (2 entries)
*Grab our button (1 entries)

Remember to leave a comment for each!
Also please make sure we have some way to contact you if you win! One winner will be chosen by Random.org. This giveaway will start today (8/25) and will end (9/9) at 11:59 p.m. EST. Open to US.

Disclosure: The Safeway gift card, Bonus Box Tops certificate, information and giveaway were all given to me from Safeway and General Mills through MyBlogSpark. I was allowed to keep the items, but the opinion I am sharing remains my own.

Keep your fork

I love this story! It was recently passed along to me in an e-mail, and now I pass it along to you...

There was a young woman who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and had been given three months to live. So as she was getting her things "in order," she contacted her pastor and had him come to her house to discuss certain aspects of her final wishes. She told him which songs she wanted sung at the service, what scriptures she would like read, and what outfit she wanted to be buried in.

Everything was in order and the pastor was preparing to leave when the young woman suddenly remembered something very important to her. "There's one more thing," she said excitedly.

"What's that?" came the pastor's reply.

"This is very important," the young woman continued. "I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand."

The pastor stood looking at the young woman, not knowing quite what to say.

"That surprises you, doesn't it?" the young woman asked.

"Well, to be honest, I'm puzzled by the request," said the pastor.

The young woman explained. "My grandmother once told me this story, and from there on out, I have always done so. I have also, always tried to pass along its message to those I love and those who are in need of encouragement.

'In all my years of attending church socials and potluck dinners, I always remember that when the dishes of the main course were being cleared, someone would inevitably lean over and say, 'Keep your fork'. It was my favorite part because I knew that something better was coming, like velvety chocolate cake or deep-dish apple pie. Something wonderful, and with substance!' So, I just want people to see me there in that casket with a fork in my hand and I want them to wonder "What's with the fork?". Then I want you to tell them: "Keep your fork, the best is yet to come."

The pastor's eyes welled up with tears of joy as he hugged the young woman good-bye.

He knew this would be one of the last times he would see her before her death. But he also knew that the young woman had a better grasp of heaven than he did.

She had a better grasp of what heaven would be like than many people twice her age, with twice as much experience and knowledge.

She KNEW that something better was coming.

At the funeral people were walking by the young woman's casket and they saw the pretty dress she was wearing and the fork placed in her right hand. Over and over, the pastor heard the question "What's with the fork?" And over and over he smiled.

During his message, the pastor told the people of the conversation he had with the young woman shortly before she died. He also told them about the fork and about what it symbolized to her.

The pastor told the people how he could not stop thinking about the fork and told them that they probably would not be able to stop thinking about it either.

He was right.

So the next time you reach down for your fork, let it remind you ever so gently, that the best is yet to come.

And keep your fork.

Sweets Perfume Review!

Hey guys! So my next review is for Sweets Perfume. Sweets Perfume is this really cool website that has tons and tons of different fragrances of perfumes, if you want it odds are they have it! I received a sample of ten different ones in the mail.

Here are the fragrances I chose:

- Beautiful
- Sweet Pea
- Cherry Blossom
- Divinity
- Flirty
- Green Apple
- Green Tea & Cucumber
- Spiced Apple
- Pink
- Sparkling Mandarin Tangerine

Wow, all of these smelled amazing. From the second I opened the packaging I wanted to wear them all. My favorite has to be the Green Tea and Cucumber. It is easily my new everyday scent!

I love flowery scents but I'm also into fruity smells, as you can probably tell from my list, it's just a nice change of pace. And just for fun I wanted to try Flirty because well with a name like that it had to smell great, and it did.

Also the scents weren't too overwhelming, if that makes sense. They were just enough to smell great but not like you bathed in perfume or Green Tea and Cucumbers for that matter, haha. You know what I’m talking about. I’m sure everyone has passed that one person in the shopping area where you smelt them a mile before you saw them. I hate that! It always makes me sick, really too much perfume makes me ill and that’s no fun.

Besides the sampler set you can purchase your favorite scent in a refillable bottle. I can’t wait to purchase the heart shaped keychain bottle!

All in all, you guys should definitely try Sweets Perfume out. They have almost 50 scents to choose from (49 to be exact) and it might take you a while to pick out one scent because they have such a great selection, but trust me it is so worth it.

Buy It! Head on over to Sweets Perfume's website and browse their awesome selection. Their prices vary from $3.95 to $49.95 depending on how fancy the bottle you want. :)

Safety Tat review and giveaway

What if . . . . .
It is a question that has played over and over in my mind many times since having children. There are many scenarios that that bring up this question.

- The very crowed play area at the mall
- The zoo
- An outing at the park
- Anytime my husband (or anyone but me) goes out with the kids alone

Children are so quick and nimble, that they can easily slip away from you in a matter of seconds. I recently had to live through one of those split second moments of fear when you don't know where your child is. I'm hoping that I won't ever need to experience that again now that I’ve found Safety Tat. After all its frowned upon to duck tape your child to you and my Lila has figured out how to unbuckle the child harness we had. (I'm not getting into the debate over child harnesses. So please don't debate it on my page)
With Safety Tat, I knew that if the dreaded were to happen, and they did wander off, someone would know how to contact me. I was so excited when Safety Tat offered to send me some of their temporary tattoos to try out and review. With the weather being so nice we have scheduled many outings, like trips to the falls. What a great place to give them a try. And . . . what kid doesn't love tattoos?


Safety Tat also offers option for kids with food allergies, diabetes, or special needs such as autism.


They also offer customizable Safety Tat's that you can write on with a special marker. These are great for when your child is away from home with grandma or on a school outing.

I was very pleased with my Safety Tat's! They went on easily and stayed on very well!

Buy it: Safety Tat's can be purchased online at safetytat.com
Retail = $19.95 pack of 30.
To celebrate their 3rd Anniversary Safety Tat is offering a discount "up to" 30% off until August 21, 2010!

Win it: And you have a chance to win a pack right here at Family Treasures!
And for everyone Safety Tat is offering a coupon code for you that would save 10% off an order of $15 or more. Which doesn't expire until September 3, 2010! Thank you Safety Tat!
Coupon code is:FamilyTreasures (Must be typed as seen, case sensitive).

Mandatory Entry (this must be done in order for bonus entries to count):

Go to Safetytat.com and then comeback here and tell me what style you would choose.

Bonus Entries (1 per entry - leave a separate comment for each):

Follow my blog publicly
add my button (leave a link)
Signup for the Safety tat newsletter.
Follow @KRussell82 on Twitter and Tweet this giveaway (comment with your Twitter username)
Blog it! (leave a link)
As always enter any other giveaway get an extra in this one!

Ends 8pm eastern time on Sept. 4, 2010.

A little bit about my new city

For those of you who don't know we moved from Omaha, NE to Niagara Falls, NY.

I'm a city girl through and through. Omaha is huge and easily 4x bigger than NF. my husband is originally from here so after a week of driving around we have managed to find a few stores i didn't think Niagara Falls had, and that I cant live without. Lane Bryant, where I buy all my clothing as well as the normal target, walmart, carters, ect...
I'm slowly getting used to the new tax percentile and tax on food. (we didn't have that in Neb.) I've made a few friends already and cant wait to meet one across the border. I'm waiting on my original birth certificate to get a passport or enhanced licence.

Considering NF is a tourist trap :) its nice for a local too. Lila loves the falls and wants to go see the "big water" everyday.

Cover Girl Smoky Eyes Review

I’m back and with a new review and giveaway for my readers!
I had the chance to try Cover Girl makeup recently — from the Cover Girl Smoky Eye line. We can thank Drew Barrymore for the smoky eye inspiration. When I first opened the box of Cover Girl goodies, I was more than a little excited there were three “Smoky Eyes” kits — bold, glamorous, and natural (my first choice). So the Smoky Eye line is: CoverGirl SmokyShadowBlast, LineExact Liquid Liner, and LashBlast Volume-Blasting Mascara.

Step 1: CoverGirl SmokyShadowBlast: I really liked the roll-on eyeshadow (double-ended). Super quick and easy, I would actually purchase this product.

Step 2: LineExact Liquid Line. I tried it and its great if you like liner but I have always been terrified of liners. Something about sticking a pencil or brush that close to my eye just screams danger coming! My eyes tear up and it smears before I even finish applying it. (FYI it’s not just liner, I can’t even have contacts or use eye drops.)

Step 3: LashBlast Volume-Blasting Mascara. I love how light weight this product was and it really made my eyes stand out!

MyBlogSpark & Cover Girl have offered up a $20 gift card to Walmart to one of you — so let’s get this show on the road!

How to Enter the Giveaway: Leave a comment on this post, with the words “I’m a cover girl!
Extras: Get 1 extra entry for each of the following (& don’t forget to leave an extra comment with your bonus points!)
Follow me on Twitter.
Follow this blog publicly
Subscribe to this blog.
Tell me one make-up product you can’t live without.

Good luck to winning the $20 giftcard to Walmart provided by P&G.
US residents only ends 8/28/2010.

I've returned!!

Well we are all moved. The cross country move went as well as expected. Peyton screamed for 500miles at the end. The 15 hour trip took 24 hours and he didnt sleep at all!
We ended up selling our living room funiture becasue we couldnt fit it on the truck. So I sit here in my bare living room waiting for the new funiture to be devlivered in the next 6 to 8 weeks.



The house is actually pretty great. We have a pool and a fantastic yard for the kids. Besides needing new paint (sorry to the previous owner but I'm not digging the pink living and dining rooms or the 'hulk' green bedroom) the house is in great shape.
We have unpacked about 1/2 way and there is still alot to do. We got our internet, phone and Tv setup today so look forward to my usual post and tons of reviews/giveaways.