Stepping Out in Faith

For quite a while, Tim and I have discussed opening up our blog to paid advertisers. 

We've gone back and forth on this a lot, but feel that this is a better option for us than an advertising company since it would allow us more control of what companies and products are advertised. We want to make sure we can honestly support the products and services seen here. 

If you have an Etsy shop, blog, product, company, service or ebook that you think would be of interest to our readers we would be happy to consider you for advertising! 

Right now we are offering the following advertising options. (We also are still open for product reviews & giveaways as well.)

These are introductory rates so be sure to get them before they're gone!

* Location A ~ 125x125 pixel button ~ 3 available ~ $15 per month (above the fold)
* Location B ~ 125x125 pixel button ~ 4 available ~ $10 per month (below the fold)
* Location C ~ up to 350x250 pixel button ~ 1 available (at this time) ~ $15 per month

Sign up for 2 consecutive months of advertising and save $7 off your total!

For more information or to contact us please click here.

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Moolala: 50% Off a Great Bag for a Great Cause

Today's Moolala deal is $24 for a Bold, Handcrafted Hobo Bag from Della ($48 value.) These bags and beautiful and functional. Most importantly they provide sewing jobs to women of Hohoe, Ghana. 

From the Della website:

Los Angeles based designer Tina Tangalakis touched down in Ghana unaware of the changes that would occur. As a volunteer and teacher at the Happy Kids Orphanage, Tina met local seamstress Beatrice Agabe. The two quickly bonded over their shared love of design and passion to improve the lives of others. It was there, in the vibrant village of Hohoe, among the scraps of fabric, rough pencil designs and long conversations between two unlikely friends, that Della was born.

Della is committed to the long term success of our community, working to build a foundation for economic independence.

Would you please consider supporting these women by purchasing this deal today through Moolala? You can easily join Moolala (a free daily deals site) here.

Want to know more about Moolala? 

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List It, Link It ~ Ways to Earn More Swagbucks

Thankfully, we joined the Swagbucks bandwagon soon after they launched. We've been thoroughly blessed by using Swagbucks to purchase Amazon gift cards.

First things first, Swagbucks is a search engine which randomly rewards you with Swagbucks for searching (like Google, although not quite as good). You can then use these Swagbucks to purchase a huge variety of items, our favorite is the Amazon gift card.

Swagbucks started out simply offering rewards for searching, but there are now lots of different ways to earn.

Signing up for Swagbucks is really easy. Just fill out this simple form and you're done. Please, only sign up for one account per household or Swagbucks will close down your account. Just learn to share your Swagbucks :)

While you can easily earn enough Swagbucks for a free gift card each month, Swagbucks also has a great referral program to help you earn even more.

Here are just a handful of ways we earn Swagbucks on a regular basis. For lots of other great ideas make sure you read Crystal's posts on 15 Ways to Earn More Swagbucks.

6 Easy Ways to Earn More Swagbucks

1. Install the Swagbucks Toolbar ~ this makes it so easy to remember to search through Swagbucks.

2. Search for sites you visit frequently instead of typing the web address ~ We typically earn at least 10-15 Swagbucks each day by doing this.

3. Print & use coupons from the Swagbucks site ~ We don't personally do this because we don't have a printer, but you can earn 10 Swagbucks for every coupon you print and use.

4. Watch Swagbucks TV ~ I typically turn this on when I'm working on the computer anyway. You do have to manually click for a new video, but you can easily earn 3 Swagbucks for every 10 videos you watch. The animal and food videos are kid safe.

5. Take the Daily Poll ~ Earn 1 Swagbuck each day in about 3 seconds. 

6. Purchase Daily Deals through Swagbucks ~ We haven't found any yet that we wanted to purchase, but Groupon usually has deals you can buy through Swagbucks' link and earn 160 Swagbucks.

Do you use Swagbucks? What's your favorite way to earn?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Okay everyone…it’s your turn now!!! You may link to any family friendly list. Here's a list of ideas to help get you started.

Please follow the guidelines below.

1. Link to your actual list, not your blog's home page, so we can find it easily.

2. Let us know what list you are sharing in your name/title, for example: Allyson @ A Heart for Home (Ten Favorite Children's Books) 

3. In your list post, link back here so that your readers can come join the fun. Feel free to copy & paste our List It, Link It Button into your post. (Just copy the text in the box below the button, click on the "Edit HTML" tab for your post and paste it there.)

<center><a href="http://a-heart4home.blogspot.com/search/label/List%20It%20Link%20It" target="_blank" ><img border="0" src=" http://i443.photobucket.com/albums/qq160/aHeart4home/Blog/ScreenHunter_41Oct301026-2.jpg"/></a></center>

If you don’t have a blog, please feel free to share your lists in the comments section!

Okay, are you ready? Start linking and be sure to visit some other blogs when you get a chance.

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Five free codes today + 20 free points for new sign-ups

I know I recently posted about Swagbucks as part of Thrifty Thursday, but today they have a great sign up incentive going on.

Today Swagbucks is hosting a big Summer Swag event. They are releasing five different free codes. In addition, every 7th winning search on Swagbucks will be awarded 25 points!

To get these free codes, make sure you are signed up with Swagbucks and then read the post here on how to follow along and snag the codes they are releasing.

If you’re new to Swagbucks, it’s an online search engine that rewards you for searching online. It’s very simple to sign up for. In fact, it takes all of about one minute. There are no fees, no credit card required and no phone number or address requested.

When you sign up, you are credited 30 points to your account. Plus, you’ll be rewarded randomly 5-20 points for searches you do online through their search engine. You can also earn points by downloading the toolbar. Also, Swagbucks routinely gives away free points on their blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts.

With just a tiny bit of effort, you can pretty easily earn enough to get a $5 Amazon gift card (or a number of other prizes worth around $5) every 4-6 weeks.

Now, you may be thinking, “What’s the big deal if I only earn a $5 gift card every month?” Well, maybe $5 isn’t that exciting, but that’s only the beginning. Your earnings will exponentially multiply when you refer others.

Do you know anyone else who searches online? Tell them about Swagbucks, send them your referral link, and you’ll not only instantly earn more points when they sign up, you’ll also earn points for the searching they do online.

Tell lots of people and you’re well on your way to funding your entire Christmas budget with free gift cards from Swagbucks. Really, you can earn that much! We earned over $450 worth of gift cards last year and are well on our way to surpassing that this year. It really works!

If you have a blog, you’ll especially want to jump on board with this. It’s free, it won’t take much of your time to do, and it could generate a nice stream of gift cards in your mailbox.

Disclosure: If you click through the links in this post and sign up, we get a referral credit. So thanks in advance!

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Our Thrifty Tip

My friend Kristin is hosting Thrifty Thursday on her blog, Bits & Pieces from My Life, throughout the summer. Stop by her blog for great thrifty tips and to share your money stretching or saving ideas.

Our tip involves iron on transfer paper,stainless steel water bottle, USB flash drives, a cordless phone, Italian leather toddler shoes, a glow in the dark Frisbee , and rechargeable batteries. What in the world do all these have in common? We got them for free by using gift cards we received for free. That's right, free things from free gift cards. That's a whole lot of FREE!

I would have to say that one of the ways our family has saved the most money is by joining and using Swagbucks. If you've read our blog in the past you probably already know how much we love this program, but if not I highlighted a few of the reasons here and here.

Swagbucks is a search engine that rewards you for searching. Just by using Swagbucks to do everyday searches such as "healthy muffin recipes" or "free coloring pages" you can gain points that can be used to get all kinds of free prizes. Our favorite prize is the $5 gift card to Amazon, although a Starbucks gift card is a nice treat for date nights. Amazon gift cards can be combined without a limit and a lot of their products also ship for free if your order is over $25.

Remember, Amazon isn't just a place to buy books anymore. While they do still carry lots of great titles, they also carry sippy cups, knife blocks, book lights, men's hats, nursing bras and much more. How do I know? Because we've order all of those items and received them for free by combining gift cards that we earned through Swagbucks.

When searching with Swagbucks you randomly earn points. With their new setup I've earned anywhere from five to 35 swagbucks. We've also earned the random 1 to 3 swagbucks for having the swagbuck toolbar. When you join Swagbucks you also have the opportunity to have people sign up through your affiliate link. You can easily do this through a blog, facebook, or even email. When people sign up through your link you are given a swagbuck for every one they earn by searching up to 1,000 swagbucks per friend.

By using Swagbuck's search engine, installing the toolbar, and getting friends and readers to sign up using our affiliate link, we've been able to earn over $600 in Amazon gift cards. Since we're in a tight financial period with Tim in school, this extra income has been a wonderful way to purchase things we need as well as gifts for our family. Right now would be a great time for you to sign up and start piling away gift card codes to use for Christmas presents.

While I'm telling you about the wonderful blessing this has been for our family, I need to take a minute and say a big THANK YOU to everyone who has signed up using our link. Our family truly has been blessed by this program and we are very thankful!

Now, you may be thinking that unless you can get a lot of people to sign up with your link this program is pointless. That's not true. Yes, it will take you longer to earn prizes, but it is still very possible. For example, my sister uses the Swagbuck's search engine and has the toolbar, but has not had anyone to sign up using her affiliate link. In the past year she has received a $20 Target gift card and has enough swagbucks to order $15 worth of Amazon gift cards. While this isn't a huge amount, $35 in free gift cards is still a nice gift for doing searches that you would have done anyway. You can also earn more swagbucks by shopping online and trading in old electronics.

So, what's my thrifty tip? If you search online, use Facebook, have a blog, shop online, or know people who do, I would suggest signing up with Swagbucks to start earning "bucks" towards lots of great prizes or gift cards. What do you have to lose?

Disclosure: The links in this post are affiliate links. If you sign up and earn swagbucks you will be helping us earn swagbucks, too. Thank you in advance!

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Earn a Little Income with Sponsored Tweets

I recently stumbled upon Sponsored Tweets, a Twitter advertising platform that connects advertisers with Twitter users.

With Sponsored Tweets sponsors compensate Twitter users for tweeting about their products or services.

As a tweeter, you can set your price, choose which sponsors to accept, and write your own tweets. Your tweets are then sent to the sponsors for approval. Once approved they are tweeted through your twitter account and the pay from the sponsor is deposited into your Sponsored Tweets account.

You can withdraw your funds when you reach a total of $50. These funds are then sent to your PayPal account.

To be eligible to sign up for Sponsored Tweets, your Twitter account must be at least 60 days old, have at least 100 updates, and 100 followers.

I just started using this program a couple of days ago and I've already been contacted by four sponsors. However, since I haven't reached payout yet I can't vouch for it 100%.

But, if you are a Twitter user and you would like to try to earn a little extra income, Sponsored Tweets might be just the thing for you!

Click here or on any of the above links to sign up.

By the way, if you don't already, please consider following us on Twitter.

Earning a little extra income is definitely a Thing I Love.

Disclosure: The links provided are affiliate links. If you join through our links we will be blessed with a small percentage the revenue Sponsored Tweets makes from your tweets. Thanks for joining with us!

Easy Grasp Baby Block

I've had this idea floating around in my mind for a while now. I finally whipped one up this afternoon while the little ones were napping. The block is about 3 1/2 inches square. It is stuffed and a small bell is hidden inside which makes a very soft jingle sound.

*In response to kpmattingly's comment, all of the ribbons are reinforced (stitched twice) so they are very secure.

This Easy Grasp Baby Block is a Christmas gift for an extended family member who's first baby should be arriving any day now.

Please, let me know what you think. I need constructive feedback because I hope to start making these to sell some time in the (hopefully) not too distant future.

I'm hoping that these Easy Grasp Baby Blocks will Work for Me!

Saving Money with Swagbucks

If you haven't noticed, we're really excited about Swagbucks around here. We started searching online with Swagbucks about 2 months ago. We also told some friends about it and wrote about it here and here. The reason we're so excited about Swagbucks is because it really works!

So far, in the past 2 months we've earned over 1500 Swagbucks. After looking at all the options, Tim and I decided that we'd redeem our points for Amazon gift cards. Gone are the days when Amazon was just for buying books. Now, you can purchase almost anything on Amazon, from diapers to digital downloads and power tools to groceries.

We've been redeeming our swagbucks as we get them and have received $165 in FREE gift cards from Amazon. We also used our swagbucks to get one FREE $5 gift card from Starbucks. We'll use this for an inexpensive date night.

Sign up for Swagbucks and start getting rewarded for searching online!

We've been using Swagbuck to help get items for the house and garden. Here's a run-down of the items we've "purchased" so far with our Amazon gift cards.

1. Cordless Phone
2. 2 USB Drives (4 GB each)
3. set of 8 Rechargeable AA Batteries
4. Heavy Duty Wooden Spoon
5. Y-shaped Vegetable Peeler
6. Small Stainless Steel Colander
7. 16 Gauge Aluminum Wire (164 Feet)
8. Buttercrunch Lettuce Seeds (4800+ pack)
9. Organic Kentucky Wonder Pole Bean Seeds (100 pack)
10. Oregon Sugar Pod Pea Seeds (50 pack)
11. Hales Best Jumbo Cantaloupe Seeds (50 pack)
12. Crimson Sweet Watermelon Seeds (40 pack)
13. Burpee Petite 'n Sweet Carrot Seeds (800 pack)
14. Organic Roma Tomato Seeds (30 pack)
15. Italian Grape Tomato Seeds (30 pack)
16. Imperial Black Beauty Eggplant Seeds (50 pack
17. Monnopa Spinach Seeds (250 pack)

For more information about how Swagbucks works go here. You can click here to sign up with Swagbucks and start earning points to redeem for your favorite items.

Read about how we're Saving Some Green in the Garden this spring.

Full Disclosure: The SwagBucks links in this post are our affiliate links and we'll get extra points when you sign up. Once you've signed up, you can email or post your own referral links on your blog to earn some extra points as well! :) Thank you to everyone who is helping us receive free gift cards by signing up with us and earning swagbucks!

Contributed to Frugal Fridays and Hooked on Fridays.

Writing for eHow

eHow is a database of over 500,000 articles and videos on how to do just about everything from How to Tie a Tie to How to Make a Budget.

We've recently begun writing how to articles for eHow in order to bring in a little extra income each month. eHow writers earn passive, residual income through ad clicks. This type of income, while small upfront, can in time produce a substantial part-time or even full-time salary. Once you write an article it is in the eHow database permanently and could potentially still be earning money 5 years from now.

Please check out our eHow articles here or by clicking on the button in the right sidebar.

Are you interested in writing for eHow? Learn how to sign up for the Writer's Compensation Program here.

Getting paid to write works for me!

Swagbucks ~ Earn Gift Cards For Searching Online

I've just discovered another way to help our family financially while staying home with our children. Swagbucks is a online search engine that rewards you for searching online. I don't know about you but we do a lot of searching online, anything from healthy eating to basketball game schedules, cloth diapers, and more. I first read about Swagbucks on Money Saving Mom, then I began some investigating of my own.

Swagbucks is very simply to sign up for. What I liked the most was that there are no fees and no credit card required. They don't even ask for a phone number or address.

When you sign up, you are credited 3 points to your account. You then have the option of downloading the toolbar. The toolbar is not necessary, but it does make searching through Swagbucks easier because it's always in full view. If you can't download the toolbar, you can still use Swagbucks by accessing their website.

Use Swagbucks searches just like you would use Google. In fact, Swagbucks search results come from Google and Ask, so they are just as good. You'll probably earn a few points a day if you search a lot. After only 45 points earned, you can get a free Amazon gift card. Or at 50 points, you can get a Starbucks gift card. There are lots of other prizes, too.

Now, a $5 gift card once a month isn't that exciting I know, but it's something and it's only the beginning. Your earnings will exponentially multiply when you refer others.

Do you know anyone else who searches online? Well, tell them about Swagbucks, send them your referral link, and you'll not only instantly earn more points when they sign up, you'll also earn points for the searching they do online.

Tell a lot of people and you're on your way to funding your year's gifts budget with free gift cards from Swagbucks.

For those of you who have blogs, this is a great way to earn some free gift cards. You can also post the Swagbucks button on your MySpace or Facebook account. It's free, it won't take much of your time to do, and it could generate a steady flow of gift cards in your mailbox.

I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty great to me! So what are you waiting for? Go sign up here.

Updated To Add: We've been searching with swagbucks & telling others about it for 4 days now and we've already earned 105 Swagbucks
It works for me. For more frugal living ideas visit Biblical Womanhood.