If you happen to have saved your Buy One Get One Free Schick Disposable Razor coupons from the April 5 Smart Source coupons insert, now is the time to use them. Publix has Schick Disposable Razors Quattro High Performance 3-packs or 3 or 4-packs for Buy One get one Free this week. Since you can legitimately combine the manufacturer’s B1G1 coupon with the store sale, you walk out just paying tax for two packs of razors.

Overall, you save $6.29 x 2 = $12.58

About a year ago, I noticed the prices for razors and replacement blades went way up. Turns out it was due to an increase in steel prices. Now, more than ever, free is a very good thing.

Here’s a deal for you. Right now CVS has 3M Command hooks on sale two for $5, or $2.50 each. 3M has a current newsletter on their site that has a coupon for $2.50 off of one Command Metal Hook. That means a free Command Hook.

The closest CVS to my house did not have metal hook, which are the only variety covered by this coupon. A mile down the road, they did have metal hooks. Score! The smaller hooks are marked with a sign that says they are 2/$5. The large size is not. Though signs say they are $6.99 each, I scanned one of the large hooks and it came up as $2.50 as well.

Here is the link to the 3M printable coupons. They look great on your monitor, but be aware that they are actually very low resolution and some stores will not be able to scan them. They will have to manually input them. I just made sure to mention that I did indeed print the coupons off of the 3M website.
Now, if you want to buy multiple 3M products, CVS is giving you $5 in Extra Value Bucks if you spend $15 on qualifying 3M products. Since the CVS where I bought my Command Hooks will honor multiple coupons, I went ahead and bought six – which generated a $5 EVB on my receipt.

On another note, I found a little Hannah Montana Easter egg kit for 90% off (39 cents). I’ll tuck that away for next year and hope my daughter is still into HM by then.

When I was growing up in the Washington, DC suburbs I equated Florida with vacations. Now that I live here, I still equate it with vacations. I am well aware that I live directly in the midst of one of the most amazing places in the world that anyone could come to relax and enjoy life. And even though the day to day grind of work and parenting keeps me from being on a perpetual vacation, I try to enjoy this little paradise every weekend.

Amazingly, one of the most popular vacation destinations in the world is just about an hour from my house – Kissimmee. My daughter and I make the Disney parks a part of our time together as often as I can manage. It’s not the time or the distance that keep us from going more often. It’s the cost. The theme parks can get expensive.

Right now there is an exciting contest going on that means anyone can enjoy Kissimmee without having to shell out the cash. When you enter the Kissimmee Freedom Sweepstakes, you could win one of three weekend getaways (3 days/2 nights) for two people or one of two weeklong vacations for four people. Those vacations include airfare, car rental, theme park tickets, golf vouchers, and dining certificates. No matter if you live right here in Florida or across the nation, this is a worry-free prize package.

Go ahead and enter. You can do so by using your mobile device, by visiting the Kissimmee Freedom website, or by collecting game cards when you visit a participating Kissimmee destination.

Jack Hanna has been well-known since I was young. I grew up seeing him make the rounds on late night talk shows and TV specials. However, I have never been to any of his appearances.

Today I took my daughter to see Jack Hanna at Busch Gardens. I bought season tickets in January and made it my goal to go at least once a month. Here we are near the end of April and I realized we had not been to Busch Gardens this month. I was thrilled when I looked online and saw that Jack Hanna was scheduled to appear today. He will also be at the park next weekend, for any of you who may be in the area and missed today’s events.

He is just as endearing in person. I like the way he seems to blunder about verbally, almost stepping on his own words – all the while sounding casually informative. He’s never boring and his sense of humor is understated, sneaking up on the unsuspecting.

We had a great time and will make a point of seeing him the next time he is in town.

I do. I miss mascara. And lately, I have been missing eyeliner.

I am so very ready to go back to normal eyes. My eye allergy season generally lasts about a month, but it has been longer this year. I have a hard enough time wearing my contacts when my eyes are swollen from pollen. Adding mascara or eyeliner just makes my yes even worse – and when made to choose, I choose contacts.

My depth perception is way off when I wear my glasses and that just leads to overall mental fogginess. Mental fogginess is decidedly not a good thing when you are working with high school kids all day. They are lovable, but you need to be on your toes at all times.

Somehow, not wearing makeup on my eyes makes me feel more like I blend into the crowd. I have always thought that adding a little eyeliner has quite a dramatic influence on my face. It’s night and day, so to speak.

On top of the makeup issue, my yes just plain hurt. They are sore and sensitive, weepy and red. It’s across the board uncomfortable.

For some reason, the angle of our screened in back porch does not catch the breeze the way the rest of our yard seems to. So, although sitting on the porch is usually pleasant, if I step out onto the patio I get a much more delightful breeze, even in the hear t of summer.

Since flying insects will soon be an issue here, the screened in porch is an important feature of outdoor recreation in Florida. I’ve considered getting one of those yard tents for the patio so we can roll up the canvas flaps and catch the breeze from all four sides of the structure. That way, I can just use the outdoor furniture I already have on the back porch and we can enjoy a better backyard experience for just the price of the tent.

I’m not sure I am using the right word, though. As I have been searching online for the product I want, I’m coming across more of the huge party tents one would rent for a wedding. I am looking for a canopy or gazebo type structure that goes up and down easily, but with screened sides.

I just thought of yet another thing I love about Facebook. Now that I have caught back up with so many of my old high school and college friends, I have more invitations for travel than I can fulfill in the next five years, at least. I have places to stay in Hawaii, Seattle, New York City, L.A., San Francisco, Vail, and dozens of other cities.

A group of friends is talking about getting together in Vegas, where several of my old high school friends now live. Of course, if too many of us gather there we won’t be able to stay in homes, but will have to book some Las Vegas hotels to fit the whole gang. Nothing wrong with that, since rates there are generally more reasonable than many other locations.

I was also surprised at how many of us made our ways down here to Florida. I did not list any of the Florida cities I could visit, because many of them would only be day trips for me.

Sometimes I for get that I live in a fairly sprawling area that includes three good-sized cities and more beachfront mileage than you can shake a stick at – [providing you are in the mood to shake a stick. The Tampa Bay area is not just Tampa. It’s also St. Petersburg and Clearwater and a whole host of smaller towns that are actually a lot like marble cake the way they entwine with the big three.

So, when I am looking for something to do with friends, I am often taken aback by my own habit of staying so close to home. So much is available with what amounts to a pretty short drive, over bridges and around the Bay, as well as up and down the Gulf coast. We tend to forget Tarpon Springs and Westgate, Kenneth City and Citrus Park, and the other tens upon tens of little Bay area towns and regions that offer restaurants and clubs and festival pretty much every weekend.

I need to motivate my friends to take the challenge to do something in a different city every weekend. I can hardly wait to see what we discover.

As I always state, if you want a synopsis of the film, you can probably get it on a hundred other blogs and websites. I am not going to repeat that information.

I just want to talk about my experience as a mother of a six-year-old girl. We went to see the Hannah Montana movie early this morning. My daughter really wanted to see it last night, but I reminded her that if we see a movie before noon on a weekend, we can both get in for $5 each. It would have cost me considerably more last night and although the movie was actually very good, I think it was much more worth my money at the $5 price.

The movie is chock full of references to family devotion, honesty, and the search for humility and looking for your dreams in your roots. The superstar side of the character (Hannah Montana) is not the focus of this movie. The story revolves much more around Miley Stewart and her family. She struggles with her desire for the lifestyle her fame as Hannah affords her, but we ultimately watch her discover that her family is a nobler pursuit.

When taking my daughter to a movie, I am much more concerned with the small details, like any use of questionable language, the way the young female characters dress, and how love relationships are portrayed. In true Disney style, we don’t see belly buttons or short skirts in this movie. There is no objectionable language. And, though there are a couple of onscreen kisses, the camera angle is such that actual lip-lock is obscured.

The movie uses many of the same characters and inside jokes as the Hannah Montana television show, but the movie also gives us some of the back story many of us may have misses – the story of Miley’s mother, how Miley got her nickname, and why Miley’s dad keeps such a tight hold on his county roots.

All in all, it is completely appropriate for a young child. Though a bit simplistic for adults, the movie still made me smile.

It is SO comforting to finally see science and the media outlets talking about Oral Allergy Syndrome. I have had it since I was a pre-teen and my daughter developed it by age two. I had to learn about it years and years ago by reading obscure allergy journals and other scholarly publications I would find in the moldy stacks of university libraries.

Even when I try to explain to people that I can eat cooked apples, but not raw apples (and peaches, plums, pears, cherries, etc.) I get looks of disbelief. My own family struggled to understand. I went through years of assuming it was due to pesticides. Then, I finally figured out it was due to enzymes in the fruit — or proteins if that makes more sense to you.

 CNN is currently running the most concise explanation I have read to date:

Have you ever experienced itchiness or hives in your mouth area after eating raw fruit or vegetables? Do you also have seasonal allergies?

If so, you may have oral allergy syndrome, whose symptoms occur because the proteins in some fruits and vegetables are similar to proteins in some pollens.

“They’re not identical proteins, but they’re similar enough to confuse the immune system to have these reactions,” said said Dr. Robert Wood, chief of pediatric allergy and immunology at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

That’s not to say that everyone with pollen allergies has oral allergy syndrome. A person may sneeze all spring long and not have any obvious food sensitivities.

But oral allergy syndrome may help explain why some people have seemingly mysterious reactions to certain foods — for example, raw apples but not cooked apples. That’s because there are proteins in raw apples that are very similar to the proteins in birch pollen, experts say.

Cooking the offending fruits and vegetables will “denature” or change the shapes of these proteins, so people with oral allergy syndrome will usually be able to eat them without a problem, said Dr. Stanley Fineman, allergist with the Atlanta Allergy and Asthma Clinic.

Some people find that the peel of a fruit has more allergens than the meat, so peeling first helps, Wood said.

Because the reaction is usually localized to the mouth area, including lips, tongue, and throat, some people will choose to ignore the symptoms and continue to eat offending foods, Wood said. For people with reactions confined to the mouth, this is a “reasonable” choice they could make.

“Patients will typically decide on their own, without any discussion with a doctor, whether they enjoy the apple enough to put up with an itchy mouth, or whether they hate the itchy mouth enough to avoid the apple,” he said.

But in rare cases people with oral allergy syndrome experience anaphylaxis, a life-threatening reaction that may include blocked airways, hypertension, anxiety, vomiting and diarrhea. The most severe reactions require the use of an injection of epinephrine to subside, which is why many people with food allergies carry auto-injectors for emergencies.

Over-the-counter antihistamines alleviate symptoms of reactions for some people, experts say.

Studies have shown that some people who undergo allergy shots for pollen allergies will experience relief in oral allergy syndrome, Wood said, but at this point no one should get shots just for that reason, since they don’t work on most people’s food allergies.

“If you are a good candidate for allergy shots otherwise, this may be a side benefit,” he said.

While other kinds of food allergies present in the first two or three years of life, pollen allergies that contribute to oral allergy syndrome develop more slowly, Wood said, peaking in the teenage and young adult years. Some people may develop allergies even later in life, he said.

A person who moves to a new part of the country, having never been exposed to the native pollens there, may become allergic to those pollens and have some spill-over into food allergies, Wood said.

Typically, once people start to react to some foods, they will also react to other foods in the same group. People may find that their allergies to raw fruits and vegetables subside during the season when the associated pollen levels are low. For example, a person may react to raw apples from March to October, but feel fine when eating them from November to February, when birch pollen is low, Wood said.

About half of people with pollen allergies have improvement from puberty through adulthood, which correlates with associated food allergies, Wood said.

“The better the pollen allergy gets, in most people, the less the food allergy will occur,” he said.

*sigh*

That was me releasing the pent up stress I have been holding onto for the last week and a half – ever since I took the FTCE certification exam for English 6-12 here in Florida. I went in so confident. I’ve been immersed in literature all my life and I have spent the past three years absorbing everything there is to know about teaching theory, methods, and best practices. Still, I came out of that exam with my ego deflated.

Today, though, I came home to an envelope in the mail from the testing center. I got that crazy heartbeat in my neck feeling right away. I tore open just a bit of the envelope and peeked inside. I was just looking for the word “PASSED”. I saw it right away. What relief. The notice came just in time for my application packets.

I can hardly believe it is the end of Spring Break week for me. I got a lost less done than I had planned. I still need to put together my packet of job application info, so I can be ready once the schools start looking at how to fill the teaching positions for this fall. I have my copies of my certifications, my letters of recommendation, my resume, and my various cover letters ready to go. I’ve been getting my office supplies in order to see what I need to have on hand for the coming month.

One thing I need to do is order a new set of address labels. Generally, I order mailing labels through Vista Print. I’ve found that you can always find a good deal on one thing or another there, the quality is consistently high, and the customer service is easy to work with no matter what might come along. I’ve ordered labels from them in the past, as well as photo wall calendars, annual Christmas photo cards, business cards, and even some t-shirts I designed to promote a website. If you look around for online codes and special links, you can always find what you want for free.

Right now I can get the address labels free. I only have to pay shipping. Usually, when I order from Vista Print, I upload my own design, because there is only a very nominal fee and I like to have a completely unique look happening. Plus, I like to be able to show off my graphic design skills. However, I have been browsing through their database of existing designs and found something I really like. They have a ton of designs that are appropriate for the education industry. They even have 21 designs under the category of special education – I’ll be going with one of those.

…does not make me believe the guy is actually not guilty.

So, Youssef Megahed was acquitted by a federal jury today. This, despite the other student he was riding in the car with when they were stopped and arrested on suspicion of illegally transporting explosives and possession of an explosives device in their car near a military base in South Carolina pleaded guilty earlier.

I ask you, if an American were to be thrown to the mercy of the courts in Megahed‘s home county of Egypt, would they EVER have been given a trial that would have resulted in being acquitted simply because in the end they could not prove he KNEW about the pipe bombs. You know, the pipe bombs that were found in the trunk of the car owned by his brother. And this, even though his “buddy” admitted he was guilty of aiding terrorists.

It is indeed difficult to prove what was or was not inside someone’s head. It’s just as easy to lie.

Now the guy wants to go back to USF and finish his degree. Let’s see how long it takes for him to get caught up in another shady situation.

Here is one more great thing about living in Florida – we only really have two seasons. OK, that might not sound like a great thing you, especially if you think about missing autumn leaves and spring bulb flowers. However, having only two seasons means that you only need to buy two wardrobes! Now, I love clothes as much as the next girl, but I also like thrifty living. Plus, I really have no desire to sacrifice precious storage space switching out seasonal wardrobes.

I generally wait until the end of the season to buy clothes. I get a literally thrill down my spine when I am able to pick up a new outfit for 75% off or more. I love the idea of doubling or tripling my spending power.

Take, for example, the green top I have pictures here in this article. It’s cute and I can wear it most of the year around here. Right now Sears has it on their website for only $14.99. And while that is only 38% off the full price, it goes perfectly with a pair of jeans they have on sale now for 75% off. Yes, deals all around. And those jeans – they can be worn all year.

Sears has all of their winter and fall clothing on sale through April 18, so there is plenty of time to browse and find a deal you can’t resist.

OK, all you crafty people out there – I have a website for you. Maybe you’ve already found your way to the Girly Things website. Maybe not. Either way, you’ll be glad you visited. It is without a doubt the most comprehensive website on the internet for free hair bow tutorials.

A few years back, I became very frustrated when I went online to find instructions for making hair bows for my daughter. I knew that almost any other craft you can think of is well represented with websites and discussion groups freely sharing patterns, instructions and crafting tips. However, when it came to hair bows all I could find were a handful of people selling PDF files with tutorials. And, the insult was that those PDF files were often very expensive. When I finally got my hands on a few, I found that for the most part they were low quality, shoddily made and quite short on actual instructions.

So, I put together a small website offering free hairbow instructions. Over the years, a great number of helpful people have donated instructions and step-by-step photo tutorials. Because of all of the kind people, it is now the biggest site of its kind on the net.

You will find that most of the people selling instructions are now offering a few sets of free instructions on their websites. Why? Because they saw that free is what people really want. They wanted my traffic and in some cases they lifted my keywords and titles wholesale. Classy, right? In any event, although they are offering a set or three of free instructions their goal is still to get you to spend your money. Don’t be fooled, though – if it’s out there somewhere, it will eventually be available for free. Don’t waste your money of PDF files when you can spend it on ribbons and other supplies. Shop smart.