Swiss Colony Free Offers

Every year, we love getting the Swiss Colony catalogue and drooling over all the classic and new items they have.  They always include a free gift with purchase, like chocolate truffles, but we’ve found out from years past that they allow you to claim up to two free gifts (you need to place the order over the phone and ask for it), and we normally don’t like the truffles, so I have to research each year to find the best valid offers for our purchase.

So, I decided to post my findings for offers for 2009, for which ones they have available.

AW11874 – 1 pound, Extra Fancy Mixed Nuts ($22.95 value)
AG1316 – 36 Chocolate Truffles ($33.50 value)
AG1362 – 24 Chocolate Truffles ($27.95 value)
AG1344 – 24 Petit Fours ($14.50 value)
AG1310 – 16 Sugar-free Chocolate Macadamia Nut Clusters ($21.95 value)

In 2010, the 24 Chocolate Truffle offer no longer worked, but we got an offer for the following:

AG1410 – Ultimate Chocolate Collection ($19.95 value)

(side note, I once read that “SAVE2” lets you save $2.00 off the order, but I’ve never used that.)

6 Years

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Six years ago we moved into our house. It was the first house on our street, and since we moved in in November the builder had to wait until spring to send the landscaper over to finish our front yard. So our house was in the middle of a giant mud pit for that first winter. 🙂

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The builder had decided to build two spec homes on either side of our home. They didn’t have buyers for awhile.

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Here I am unpacking some clothes for Tyra. 🙂

Halloween 2010

We did Halloween early this year. The kids got to dress up yesterday for their parade and parties at school. I didn’t get very good pictures of them in the parade. Ethan was jumping up and down so the picture I got of him is extremely blurry. And by the time Tyra’s class came around there were a lot more people in front of me and I finally managed to get a picture of her as she was walking away from me. So the picture is of her back.

Chloe woke up barfy yesterday as well. She couldn’t even keep water down all morning. And she kept falling asleep in odd places all over the house. She would just seem to have disappeared and I would go to see what she was getting into and I would find her someplace random just sleeping on the floor. Once I found her asleep on the floor right in front of the garage door, then another time I found her asleep on the kitchen floor right in front of the sink.

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She just really was not feeling well dang it.

After school I picked Ethan and Tyra up instead of waiting for them to walk home, then we headed to Kyle’s work for trick or treating.

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Dinah was so excited, and ate a lot of candy WHILE still collecting. She also had great fun pointing out every other witch costume that she saw there.

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The kids went from cubicle to cubicle collecting candy. Most of the desks that had candy available had a flier with a ghost on it posted outside their cubicle so the kids could see where there was candy. I must say trick or treating like this has really spoiled us. They get a lot of candy fast, and it’s indoors where it’s warm and dry. 🙂

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Chloe stopped throwing up around lunch time so I took her in for a bit of the trick or treating. But since she hadn’t had ANYTHING to eat all day for fear that she would throw up again, she kept trying to eat the candy at every desk. Every time we put a new candy in her bucket she would reach down and try to get it out to eat, poor thing.

Since Halloween landed on a Sunday this year, our neighborhood did trick or treating today. We usually order pizza as our Halloween dinner tradition, and the only place close enough to deliver pizza to our house is REALLY expensive. So this year Kyle went out to pick up pizza from somewhere else. When he got home we ate, well Kyle and I ate, the kids were just too excited to get out of the house to bother eating anything. We helped the kids get their pumpkins ready.

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Then Kyle took the kids trick or treating while I stayed home to pass out candy and clean up after dinner. They just did our street before coming back to make a potty stop, and at that point Kyle dropped Chloe off and just took the others back out. Chloe was not very happy at being left behind. She ran to the door to watch everyone else go, and then every time some one came to the door she ran ahead of me to go help pass out candy.

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Thankfully Chloe was feeling much better today than she was yesterday. 🙂

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PS: There are more pictures in the photo gallery.

Pumpkin Cake Balls

In theme with the holiday season, Rebecca decided to create a new flavour cake ball. This one was very moist, and theoretically lower in calories than the other kinds (as the cake was so moist, it didn’t need a full batch of frosting mixed in.)  At least, this is what we will claim.

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A moist pumpkin cake, made from real pumpkin, and all the right spices mixed in.  Blended with a buttery cream cheese frosting, then coated with delicate orange coloured, vanilla flavoured chocolate!  And decorated to look just like little pumpkins! 🙂

The Trying on of Costumes

I am really late in getting out the bucket of costumes this year. Gratefully everyone found something that fit, which means I don’t need to go buy any costumes this year. However I probably won’t be so lucky next year.

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Dinah’s a cute little witch, and Jeremy is Snoopy for the third and last year.

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Chloe the care bear.

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Isn’t she just so cute?

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