Your Guide to Online Holiday Shopping From Dirt Devil

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Hoover and Dirt Devil. All opinions are 100% mine.

Whether you need to give your neat freak friend a gift for the holidays, know someone who needs to turn into a neat freak or if you just need to make sure your own house is tidy for the parties and holiday hosting, Dirt Devil of course has all you need!!

Dirt Devil Holiday Gift Guide has launched and its a great spot to stop and shop! Dirt Devil has compiled all the best places to do your online shopping this holiday season, and the opportunity to save a bunch o' dough! Not only that, there's tons of tips and tricks to help you save even more money! Can you believe that they have listed OVER 300 ways to save during the holiday season??

Of course black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving where you'll find lots of in-store sales and deals, and in the Dirt Devil guide, you'll find links to all of the best sites for finding the best black Friday deals. Did you know about cyber Monday though? The Monday after Thanksgiving is known as cyber Monday, and again, the awesome Dirt Devil has compiled your best cyber Monday links. No need to be searching around unnecessarily, your time is precious!! There's also a huge list of places where you'll be able to find coupon codes so that you can redeem them to save even more!!

Starting on November 25th, Dirt Devil is rolling out lots of sale options for your shopping, you can get free shipping on Dirt Devil Gator hand vacs, get free filters for the broom vac, and there are lots more great sales popping up from Dirt Devil!! My favorite part though of the guide is the tips about free shipping, I didn't realize that December 17th was free shipping day! Tons and tons of online retailers will be offering free shipping that day and guarantee Christmas delivery!!

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Pad your wallet with Sponsored Tweets

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Sponsored Tweets. All opinions are 100% mine.

Being a stay at home mom, living on one income, which doesn't happen to be as much as I'd really love for it to be, I'm always looking out for ways to make money. Yes, I'll be heading back to work officially tomorrow, but that doesn't end the need or want for extra money. I love being able to pad my wallet with money from doing simple things, or things that I already do, even if it's only a buck or two at a time.

Ever since I've started blogging, I've loved all the Izea sites and opportunities to make a little bit of money while doing what it is that I do here at A Couch With A View. Their new launch of Sponsored Tweets is one of my absolute new favorite things! With Sponsored Tweets, you can ethically participate in campaigns that will pay you your set price for being a tweeter of the companies advertisements. I love that I can accept advertisements that are relevant to me and the people that I tweet with, and I love that I can set my own price for each tweet that I send out using the Sponsored Tweets system. I'm not sure that they could make it any easier truthfully.



And although I'm just a lowly mom blogger who uses twitter and Sponsored Tweets, there are some serious celebs that use the system as well. People like Bob Vila, Kim Kardashian, Leann Rimes and others, its almost comforting in a way that I'm able to use the same program that the celebrities use to make a little extra money!!

Click through here tosign up for sponsored tweets or click through the icon in my left hand sidebar!

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Leap into your searches with Leapfish!

So far, for November, my biggest online searches have been for Holiday Gift Guides or great holiday gifts. I'm feeling a bit unprepared for the holidays this year and I want to be sure I'm not missing out on anything that could be a great gift for anyone. There's really no reason that I should miss something to add to the "to buy" list!!

Leapfish has launched and its a whole new searching experience! Using leapfish is just as easy as using any other search, but with a whole new take on the results that you'll receive. Its more user friendly in my opinion with the leapfish homepage automatically giving you information that you might have searched for. Leapfish is a real time search engine that gives results from practically anywhere, including some of my most favorite sites like facebook and twitter.

I headed to Leapfish and searched for holiday gift guides and it definitely gave me the results that I wanted. Seriously there were no random links tossed into my results like you'll find with other search engines. I loved how the video results for my search came up in a separate section as well as the twitter results separately too. Oh yes, and the motherload- blog results came up separately as well. I can't tell you how much I LOVE that!!

Take a peek at leapfish in this video:::


Try out the leapfish real time search for yourself, I have to almost guarantee that you'll be impressed, I know that I am!!

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Bring Furbabies Into Your Heart

Though there's probably a million reasons that I wish we owned our own home, adopting a new pet is definitely one of them. The landlord here didn't really even want us to have our cat, but we talked them into it. The kids love their kitty and adding to the furbabies in the house would be something that they would just love. When we got my very first cat when I was no more than 13, we adopted the "Ever-Lovely Miss Violet May" from the aspca. We didn't have a computer at the time and we didn't know what resources were available.

Petango.com is making it easy for you to adopt a pet with their real time, searchable database for homeless pets. Instead of dishing out hundreds of dollars for a dog or a cat, you can always adopt an animal that has no home or family to call its own. Those are always the animals that would genuinely love to be a part of a family.

Petango.com makes it easy to search for these sweet animals by your zip code, so you can narrow down your choices to what you're looking for. Cat? Dog? Puppy? Kitten? You can even search "Other Pets" for other animal choices... I searched other pets in my area and six of the most beautiful horses came up. I wish I had a farm and a field of my own for these guys... There were even 120 dogs in my area, my heart breaks for them and like I said, I wish I had a home of my own so I could make a difference in just one's life. But what is even more heartbreaking to me, there are 703 cats in my area that need some lovin's... 703!! That's ridiculous!! (people PLEASE spay and neuter your animals!!)

Browse Petango.com - Adopt a cat! and all the other furbabies that you can adopt in your area!!

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Focus on breast cancer awareness with Cryo-Cell

I'm sure we all realize its October, which means its breast cancer awareness month. There's so much more than just being "aware" about breast cancer though. Now's the time to start paying attention to what is going on in the world around you, the literature that is available, the precautions and the strides that are being made to get us to a point where breast cancer, (and all cancers hopefully) can be a thing of the past.

Cryo-Cell, America's most established family cord blood bank, has teamed up with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to expand on their knowledge of cell research. Cryo-Cell has made strides with banking cord blood, but why stop there when there's the possibility to help more with other "natural resources?" Cryo-Cell and C'elle are beginning to explore how menstrual cells can be collected, stored and used to help battle breast cancer.

Cryo-Cell, C'elle and NIH are getting heavy into this research, and could you imagine how wonderful it would be if its a option to use menstrual stem cells in breast cancer treatment?? You could say that its a scientific, ground breaking thing when "Aunt Flo" shows up each month!

Now ladies, Cryo-Cell has an awesome thing going here, not just with working with the NIH and C'elle, but you can "Protect Baby, Protect Mom" AND have a portion of the proceeds donated to the Susan B. Komen Foundation for each purchase. $50.00 is donated for the purchase that you make in the "Protect Baby, Protect Mom" program. When you enroll and purchase into the C'elle program, $25.00 is donated to the Susan B. Komen Foundation during the month of October. You can find out more about these programs here:
C'Elle Breats Cancer Donation
Cyro-Cell Breast Cancer Donation

Although stem cell research is a thing of great scrutiny, I'm still not sure why. I don't see what the issue is, if we can save so many lives. Save so many people from the pain and the toll that cancer takes on a body, why not invest in our own "natural, bodily resources" to take care of these diseases?

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Get your cook on!

Can I admit, the hub and I never got a honeymoon. If you've ever read our wedding story, you'd know why. He and I met, he was a cook and I was bartending and waitressing at the time, and sure enough, those titles have followed us throughout the years. Now back to the honeymoon part. I would never want anything that was too long now, cause I'm not sure if I could stand to be away from the kids for that long, but the cooking school weekend at Hilton Branson Convention Center would be so perfect for the hub and I to escape to!! This weekend, October 16th and 17th, you can reserve your spot at the Hilton Branson Convention Center for their fabulous cooking school weekend, and when you get there, you can kick it off with a beautiful wine tasting reception!

Hilton Branson Convention Center Hotel is making the cooking school weekend affordable at $398 plus tax for both nights- that's an unheard of price for an awesome weekend getaway in beautiful Branson!

Being able to stay at the Hilton Branson Convention Center Hotel for cooking school weekend is not all about work work work at cooking, the first night you'll get to enjoy the four course meal that the next day you'll learn to cook hands on!! You'll be ready to host the perfect dinner party for all your family and friends when you get back home!

Of course in your downtime from the cooking school weekend, you'll be conveniently located to the downtown shops, restaurants, river walk and more. If I were heading to cooking school weekend, it would be unlikely that I'd hit any of Branson's awesome restaurants- with items on the menu at the Hilton like Brimstone cheese fondue, smoked potato and ham soup and the definitely droolworthy apple normandy... who would want to fill up on anything else?? And hey Hilton Branson Convention Center Hotel, can you pass along that recipe for the apple normandy?? With fresh granny smiths, apple compote, apple glaze and the delectable real, fresh whipped cream, that's definitely on my "must-make" list!!

Branson is topping my list of places to go, and staying at the Hilton Branson Convention Center Hotel sounds phenomenal! When this vacation is eventually planned for the hub and I, it'll be our own little honeymoon, and hopefully we'll be able to attend a future cooking school weekend!!

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Track down the ones you miss

I remember when I was a kid, I had the best babysitter in the world. I used to love hanging out over there, and I was not treated like a little kid, but more like a sidekick. Then she moved away, and although I saw her family in passing, I had completely lost touch with her. She was one of those people who I forever wanted in my life, to brag about my accomplishments and one more person who matters to be proud of me for who I have become.

Time passes, people move, jobs relocate you, families have different agendas.

Throughout my life, I've had quite a few people who have touched my heart- my first brownie troop leader, the family down the street, my first tee-ball coach, and all of which I've completely lost touch with. Each person helped me become who I am today and I couldn't say that I am who I am without them. Have I tried to find them? Throughout the years, yes, but I've never had much luck.

I searched for my old babysitter on MyLife and was pleasantly surprised when there were results for her name. Though its been so long and I'm unsure of which listing she would be, I couldn't tell you where she lives now or what she looks like, its so comforting to know that I could possibly go through these listings and make an effort to reconnect with her.

I can see now why MyLife has become the leading people search on the web. Its ridiculously easy to use, its quick and it has the results that you would hope for when attempting to track down someone.

Now there's no excuse for having to lose touch with anyone, no excuse for not attempting to find someone who you hold near and dear to your heart.

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