My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings » percentage

Box Tops & A $50 Giveaway Too!

Lisa — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:55:05 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

The school that Madison is going to next year collects Box Tops. If you don’t know what Box Tops is, let me explain. There are a ton of items that you can buy that have the image to the left on the box. You collect these for your local schools, and they get 10 cents for every one you turn in. Now, that doesn’t sound like a lot, but when if you can get a bunch of people together, it adds up quickly. Now, the school’s goal is to earn $750 from Box Tops. Last year, they made $536, and I would love for them to meet their goal for this year (even though Madison is not even enrolled yet. I understand that any extra money to the school with benefit her). Now, there are several ways we can do this for our local schools.

First, you need to log into the Box Tops site and create an account. You enter your state and your school or if you don’t know that, just enter your zip code. I personally entered the school and state. From there, you are able to see how your local school is going. Now, how do you increase that number? Well, you can collect box tops with that logo on it. They also have a Marketplace. Now, until recently, I did not know about the Marketplace. This works so awesome too! There is a list of stores that will give a percentage of whatever you buy from them back to the school. There are stores like Avon, Gap, Kohls, Best Buy, Leap Frog, Target, and Walmart (this is just a couple of them — the whole listing is on the site). All you have to do is log into the Box Tops Site, click on marketplace, then click on the store you want to shop it. That’s it. Once you checkout, the percentage you purchased will then be applied to your school. If you are Christmas shopping online anyway, why not help out your local school (and if you don’t want to help any of them out, I’ll tell you the school we are sending our money too, and you can use them).

Did you know that Box Tops has donated more than $250 million to schools nationwide since 1996? Would you like to help raise that number? Then start collecting Box Tops and use their Marketplace to do your online shopping! To help you get started, I am giving away a $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble (thank you Barnes & Noble for your support of such a great program!). What do you have to do?

Each one of these things will give you one entry:

1. Leave a comment on this post. I want to know why you want this $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble!
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify.
3. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
4. Add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc.

For 5 additional entries,

1. Blog about this on your blog. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
2. Add this to any forums you belong too. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
3. Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed
4. Add my badge to your sidebar:

This contest will end November 26th at 8:00 pm CST and is for US residents. Good Luck!

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Bravo Tom Dart!

Lisa — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:41:17 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

I am not sure if this made the national media yet or not. However, my Cook County Sheriff has stopped evicting people from foreclosed properties. They have found that a good percentage of people they were throwing out of their houses were renters who did nothing wrong and didn’t even know that the house they were living in was being foreclosed. From now on, banks will have to present his office with a court affidavit that proves the home’s occupant is either the owner or has been properly notified of the foreclosure proceedings. Illinois law requires that renters be notified that their residence is in foreclosure and they will be evicted in 120 days. However, it is evident, that isn’t happening.

“My job as sheriff is to follow court orders, absolutely,” he said. “But I’m also in charge of making sure justice is being done here and it is clear that justice is not being done here.”

Bravo Tom Dart! Since this isn’t an election year for you, I am glad to see that you are standing up for the little people. I doesn’t surprise me that you are already being sued for this decision. However, I personally think you are doing the right thing!

Big Decisions To Be Made

Lisa — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:39:14 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

We decided to join a new church here. We haven’t 100% decided to send Madison to private school yet (we have a school referendum on Nov. 4th. If that passes, it solves all of my issues with the public school. However, after watching the debates of Friday night, that may not hold true either. If McSame, I mean McCain, wins he proposed a spending freeze. In theory, that sounds great. However, the schools don’t have enough money for No Child Left Behind as is. If they keep the amount frozen, that means even less money going towards the kids.) The church we joined is a part of hte private school we are looking at. It is a very cool looking church, and we have been there before. Bill’s friend got married there and his daughter will be baptized there this weekend. We also started working on her tuition. They have a program called VOICE. That has you buy gift certificates from them for stores like Speedway, Kohls, Jiffy Lube, Walgreens, etc. to name a few. A percentage of the purchase amount goes towards the school. Madison has to raise $150 with that. With the certificates I bought on Sunday, we are up $17. Woohoo! The cool thing is that everything we earn over the $150 gets taken off her tuition. If we don’t end up sending her there, I just figure that money will go towards another family who can use it. I just think that is super cool that we can start earning towards this now already! So, if anyone needs gift certificates come Christmas time, let me know!

I’ll be honest, this school decision makes me sick. I get a stomach ache every time I have to think about it. I would rather have to use a colon cleanser than have to make this decision. Public schools are suppose to be good. I shouldn’t have to worry about the class sizes or if subjects like music and art are being taught. I just always assumed that my kids would be able to have the same education I have.

**okay, whine over. I think**