Some holiday stretching

In the spirit of trying to stretch our holiday dollar a little further this year, I decided that I would try & make something for the brave souls who enter into the classroom everyday & patiently try to impart some knowlege on my 2 hooligans.

I am not a very crafty person, so my options for hand crafted items were pretty limited. I can't sew, or knit or crochet... at all. I can bake, but I figured the teachers probably get pretty tired of the tins of cookies brought in by other families. Since I love making cards, I decided to get on the computer and try my hand at creating them all some personalized stationary.

For the most part, I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out. Each teacher will get a dozen cards in 4 different colors with matching envelopes. I asked Mr. Crackers for his opinion on the idea and discovered that the concept of personalized notecards seems to be a complete mystery to him (to paraphrase Mr. Crackers a bit... apparently the appreciation of personalized notecards requires a vagina).

The most exciting part is that I had everything I needed for this project up in my office already, so the out of pocket cost for this project is $0. All it took was a little time & creativity.

Now that I've gotten started, I just can't seem to stop making them. I've been playing with the colors & fonts and designing them for other special people as gifts. And yes Mr. Crackers, all of the recipients will have a vagina.

A pink and sparkly Wednesday

On Wednesday, C's school had their annual White Elephant Sale. Kids in grades K-8 were asked to bring in toys that they didn't play with anymore to donate to the event. All of the toys were then priced and put on display for the big shopping extravaganza. All the students were allowed to bring up to $3.00 with them to school that day & were given about 15-20 minutes to shop the sale. All the proceeds were going to benefit "the Missions" (I am not sure which missions these are, but I it is held at a parochial school. I'm like 95% sure that they are sending the money to a worthy cause of some sort.)

K was really upset to learn that she was not allowed to shop at the sale. We pacified her by telling her she could come with me to Target that morning & pick out anything in the dollar section at the front of the store. Oddly, what caught her eye was not a toy. The item that she had to have; the item she clutched lovingly to her chest & would not let go of was a small bottle of pink glitter hair gel (or jelly as she called it). No amount of cajoling or other temptation would turn her attention from the pink princess glitter jelly. "Isn't it beautiful Momma?"

I put it in her hair once we got home & I learned that there must be a skill to get the glitter from the bottle into the hair that I do not possess. The gel part went into her hair no problem, but the glitter just didn't want to make the leap from my hands to her hair. No matter what I tried, my hands just kept getting more pink & sparkly and her hair just got more and more stiff. I think in total I probably only got about 5 pieces of glitter into her hair. On the upside, at least her hair stayed out of her eyes all afternoon. By the time I was done, I looked like I had raided Michael Jackson's glove drawer.

Once I was finally able to get all of the glitter off my hands it was time to pick the boys up from school. I got a little nervous as I waited in the carpool line & watched the teacher helping the kids out to the buses with giant shopping bags full of toys. I started wondering how much crap many cheap toys C would be bringing home with him. I felt a little bit better as he walked to the car & I noticed that he had no shopping bag. Whatever he had bought was small enough to fit in his school bag.

He got into the car & immediately started digging in his bag to proudly show off his purchases. The first thing that made it out of the bag and into his hand was a 4" high metal bee bobble-head figurine holding a shovel.

"Hmmm... is that what you picked out from the sale buddy?" (I thought that perhaps he had just grabbed the first items he saw once he got to the sale.)

"Yep, Momma. Isn't she cute? I got her for you!"

Holy Cow! I was in shock. I couldn't believe he used his money to buy me something at the sale. Not that C isn't a thoughtful boy, but I figured if you gave a 6 year old money and put him in a room filled with toys that he could buy, picking out gifts for family members wouldn't be something that would pop into his head right away.

"Did you get anything else? Did you get something for yourself at the sale?"

"Oh yeah, I got this too." he said as he pulled out a pink sequined phone with marabou trim.

"Wow...that sure is pink and sparkly." (even though it was the girliest thing I had ever seen, I was trying to assure him that he had spent his money wisely.)




"Yep, it sure is. I bought it for K 'cause I knew she'd love it."

Again, I was stunned. "That was so nice C! What a great big brother you are."

"Want to see what I got next? Look!!" He then pulled out 2 Batman figures. "One is for Daddy and one is for me. Which one do you think Daddy will like best?"

"Daddy will love whichever one you give him sweetheart. It was so nice that you thought of us while you were shopping today!" (Honestly the whole thing completely blew my mind).

"You want to know something else cool Momma?"

"What buddy."

"I even still have money left over!"

That's right. My son brought $3.00 to school and came home with gifts for everyone in the family & still had $1.25 left over. Truly shocking! Clearly I can learn a few things from my little man. I would have kept shopping until every last penny was spent. Perhaps I should turn over the household budget to him (of course I'll probably have to wait until he learns how to add and subtract...).

I rest my case(s)

Right before I left my job as a buyer (with an employee discount) at a major national retailer over four years ago, I went ahead and bought Mr. Crackers & myself brand new sheets. They were expensive sheets with a really high thread count. Oh, how we love our sheets. It was quite a splurge for us, but we knew it was probably the only chance we'd have to get them so cheaply.

Uncharacteristically, I thought ahead and bought 2 sets of sheets. They were on sale & I knew I would be losing my employee discount, so it seemed the smart thing to do. As with most things I do, I made a small error in judgement. For some reason (that still baffles me) even though I bought 2 sets of sheets, I only bought 1 set of pillow cases.

Both Mr. Crackers & I love the feel of clean sheets, so I wash our sheets & pillow cases every week. We've had them for about 4 1/2 years, so according to my calculations I've washed this set of pillow cases about 235 times. Do you want to know what happens when you wash your pillow cases that much? They start to look like this:

They are disintegrating right before our eyes. Every time we try to take them off or put them back on the pillows, our ears are accosted by the sound of tearing cotton. Notice the way the trim is completely detached in many areas from the rest of the pillow case. Last week, we lost half the trim off of one of the cases. The kids were using it as a headband. And I can't tell you how many times I've recently gotten my arm twisted in the gaping holes that have formed in our beloved cases.

Mr. Crackers & I have been trying to cut back on our spending, so we've tried to put off getting new sheets. We've come to the point now though that we may be just one washing away from their total destruction. So, I started pricing out really nice sheets & I came to this conclusion: we can't afford really nice sheets.

Holy Egyptian cotton! I think that perhaps they are now starting to weave pure gold into high thread count sheets. I can't figure out why else my former employer would charge $200.00 for a King size flat sheet ON SALE! Good grief, if I want to replace my sheets and pillowcases I would have to spend over a million dollars! OK, so it wouldn't be quite a million, but it might as well be!

In a stroke of pure genius, I have decided that since our sheets are in relatively good shape, all we really need to do is get new pillow cases. While we still can't afford the $96.00 my former employer wants to charge for pillow cases, I figured I should be able to find really nice quality pillow cases from a different department store without having to re-finance my home a third time.

I went out today & found what seem to be really nice ones for $24.99 a pair. Compared to the $96.00 I saw at the other place, I felt like I was getting a pretty good deal. I may be slow witted, but I do learn from my mistakes, so I did buy two sets this time. I have a set in the washer now so we can test drive them tonight. If I get a thumbs up from Mr. Crackers I'll go ahead and wash the second set too.

I am hoping our sheets hold out for a few more years. I don't want to even think about spending the money to replace them anytime soon. I guess I should probably start playing the lottery, or learn how to weave. Knowing my domestic skills the lottery is probably a better bet.

Some good news, and some wait 'n see

A couple of days ago, I told you in an issue we discovered on Mr. Cracker's credit card,where the company RESERVATION REWARDS had been charging us $10.00 a month (for the past 20 or so months) without our knowledge to the tune of a little over $200.00! Since we already covered in that post how stupid we are how it came to pass that it took us so long to discover these recurring charges, I won't rehash that again. (You can check out the whole story here.)

I did want to check back though & give you the good news - I looked today & true to their word, the folks at RESERVATION REWARDS credited our card for all the charges they had made since March 2007. Even though I still maintain that their marketing efforts are just plain sneaky, I respect the fact that they made the whole restitution thing as easy as they did. I was anticipating months of back and forth to get it resolved. It was a nice surprise to find them so amiable to make the situation right.

I'll take that $200.00 back, thank you very much!

Unfortunately, I can't say I have good news to report on the whole iKitchen front. I can already tell that it is not going to be resolved as easily as our issue with Reservation Rewards. I have found as many complaints about iKitchen as I have freckles on my left arm (in short, there are a lot!). It appears that iKitchen may indeed be in the business of defrauding people out of money by taking orders for goods that they have no plans on ever shipping. Buyer beware, for this site looks legitimate. I also discovered after doing more research that the guy who operates iKitchen also runs the following websites with similar results:

EKitchenGadgets.com

KitchenHomeGadgets.com

KitchenKaboodles.com

HomeBrands.com

MetroMarket.com

Red-Tag.com

GiantSavings.com

OfficialRedTagSale.com

dotcomproject.com

Kitchen and Home Concepts HCG Logistics

It would appear that you have as much chance of receiving an item that you paid for from the sites listed above as you would fitting into the jeans you wore back in high school.

Not even in high school did I look this good in a pair of jeans...

In short, it looks like you'd be throwing money away by ordering from these companies, so save yourself the hassle and the money & don't do it.

Since I don't want to end this post on such a down note, I'll give you a little more good news just to put your minds at ease. I know you will all be happy to know that Mr. Crackers has already gotten me a new present to replace the one we clearly won't be receiving from iKitchen. I knew you'd be worried about it - no fear, I will have something to open on Christmas morning. Whew, that's one less burden for you to be carrying around. I hope knowing that I have something to open will help make your Christmas a little brighter! You're welcome.

Scam hunting 101: a beginners course

You know how you sometimes go looking for one thing & accidentally uncover something else entirely? Have you ever, without your knowledge, given a random company your credit card number and then allowed them to charge you $10.00 a month for services you wouldn't even use even if you knew they existed? And, have you ever done this for so long that you suddenly find out that you have given them $200.00 of your hard earned money for no reason what-so-ever?!! Aaarrrrggghh!


Never mind the screaming, that's just me & Mr. Crackers finally realizing that, through a series of small misunderstandings & oversights, we are the dumbest people in America we have thrown $200.00 right into the trash. Bitter? Me? Never!

And so, let me share with you my many readers reader, how we uncovered a sneaky scam that cheated us out of money right under our very noses for almost 2 years. It all started back in March 2007, when my husband ordered some flowers for his boss from FTD online after hearing that he had a heart attack. (That Mr. Crackers can be a very thoughtful guy!) After he hit the purchase button & finalized his order, a pop-up asked him if he would like a $10.00 rebate good toward his next FTD purchase. All he needed to do to redeem the rebate was to re-enter his email address. Being the man he is, he clicked yes & entered his email address to save himself some dough on his next floral purchase (here, I like to imagine he was going to get me some flowers -something big and showy like a 2 dozen roses in assorted colors. A girl can dream...)


But, instead of a rebate, entering his email address apparently authorized the company RESERVATION REWARDS to charge his credit card $10.00 a month for services we never wanted. It did this without even asking for his credit card information again. Let me repeat: he only gave them his email address. He never provided RESERVATION REWARDS with his credit card info, nor did he authorize them to sign us up as "members" for their services. Somehow this bunch of shady characters company was able to access his credit info directly from the FTD site!!!

And so, for the past 20 months RESERVATION REWARDS (notice how I keep saying their name to remind you who you should be wary of? Clever, huh?) has been charging us $10.00 a month for nothing, nada, zilch.

You may now be thinking, " Mrs. Crackers, are you guys completely idiots or what? why didn't you or your husband catch the $10.00 monthly charge?" Well my friends friend we actually did, but due to a slight misunderstanding and a small communication error we thought (I guess I should say, I thought) that the charges were a recurring business expense for a website that my husband hosts for his company. I also assumed (again in error) that we were getting reimbursed for this monthly expense. So, I diligently (& later found out stupidly) logged the monthly charges into Microsoft Money as I paid all of our bills without giving it a second glance.

If not for a problem Mr. Crackers was having with another company we believed may have been scamming us, we would never have discovered what was going on.

Last night, Mr. Crackers asked me to pull up his unbilled activity on his Visa card online. You see, he had ordered my Christmas present from a company neither of us had ever heard of called iKitchen (I'll just point out here that I did give him a link where he could buy the gift from a more reputable place, but he found it cheaper there...) and he had no word on the status of his order. Not only that, when he tried to reach customer service, he discovered that the only way to reach them was via email - they had no phone service. This of course started to make him a little nervous. He had emailed iKitchen to check on the status of his order & (not surprisingly) had never heard back from them. Getting more and more leery of this company, he wanted to check his Visa to see if they had billed him for something that it appeared we may never receive. As I had a vested interest in all of these goings on (it was my gift after all!) I jumped at the chance to help him investigate what was happening.

It was during this search that we found the $10.00 charge from Reservation Rewards.

Mr. Crackers turned to me & asked "Ummm, what's that charge for?"

I politely replied "Oh, you know, that's the monthly charge for your website."

"Uh, no, it's not", Mr. Crackers replied, "that charge is on my American Express Card."

I will now spare you the ten minutes of not so polite back & forth where we eventually learned that perhaps we don't always do such a bang up job of listening to and/or understanding each other as we had previously thought.

After doing a bit of research online, we found countless articles that warned readers about the bad bit of business trickery that RESERVATION REWARDS uses to scam people who think they are getting rebates into paying a small monthly fee on their cards that may go undetected for, let's just say, as many as 20 months!

Mr. Crackers immediately called the customer service number we found & after a few minutes of talking, got someone who agreed to shutdown our "membership" and refund the $200.00 they had stolen charged us within the next 3-5 days. Now, I am not sure yet if this will actually come to pass, but I just wanted to send a warning to all of my readers, to you my friends, to you Mom not to get sucked into this terrible scam. I am keeping my fingers crossed that we can resolve this issue with them as quickly and as smoothly as possible. I have my doubts, but I will keep you updated.

Please learn a lesson from us, the dumbest people in America the Cracker family, and resist the urge to respond to pop-ups promising great rebate deals, even if they just want your email address. Afterall, you may just be one click away from a slow and random draining of your cash reserves.

We've got a lot of hope hanging on 2009.

I interrupt what would normally be another blog about holiday cheer and merriment to bring you some important news: The economy is bad. I know that is not really what you would call breaking news (an investigative reporter I am not!), but it is really and truly starting to freak me out a bit.

The city that I live near is a GM town. The automaker has contributed to the local economy in the form of jobs at their local plants as well as all of the jobs in the companies who tie their existence to the auto industry. This includes steel plants, engineering firms, auto supply manufacturers and the hundreds of other small businesses around town who rely on the auto makers for their livelihood. This is not a post about the auto industry, they are just one of the more recent victims of the recent economic downturn. I read an article on Yahoo last week that named the town 12 miles to the south of us as one of America's Top 10 Dying Cities.

I've been watching all the news reports on the economy, just as I know you have. Mr. Crackers & I (like countless other Americans) have watched our retirement accounts & kid's college funds dwindle to mere shadows of their former value. But for some reason none of this really started to freak me out until it started affecting our friends & family in a much more direct way.

About a month ago the woman who lives next door to me, who by the way is raising 5 boys between the ages of 10-17, lost her job. Did I mention that she is a single Mom, raising these boys on her own? Yes, her husband lives about 15-20 miles away, but he's not what you call "involved" in the finances or the actual hands-on raising of the kids. So, my neighbor has been hard at work trying to find a new job. She has been focusing her efforts on a couple of local universities, so that she can get reduced tuition for her boys when it comes time for college. She figures the salary cut she'll take will be more than off-set by the savings she'll get on their education. She's an attorney & one smart cookie. I am hoping that 2009 will bring her some good news in the form of a new job.

Today we heard some more upsetting news. The engineering firm where a good friend of ours worked was closed today. They shut their doors at 3:00 & told the employees that they hope to re-open right after the New Year. There was no advanced warning & there will be NO PAY until the company opens it's doors again. This family has 3 sons, 2 of whom are my son's very best friends in the whole world. We see them almost every day either during our daily carpool to school, in church or just running around the neighborhood. Tonight, we were supposed to go to a Christmas light display together in a neighboring town to soak up some holiday cheer. Instead they will be sitting down to figure out how to make the money they have in their bank account last them until the next paycheck comes.

They are a single income family like we are, so I know it will be extremely tight. We've invited them over for dinner tonight & we will do whatever we can to help them through the next few weeks. I hope they decide to come and eat with us. We will pray and keep our fingers crossed that the plant opens back up in the New Year and that his job & pay will be restored.

I could go on about other people who have been affected by this downturn - whether they be relatives of our friends or other neighbors (I won't even mention here my parents who are just 1 year into retirement & have already seen the value of their investments plummet more than I can fathom. Ooops, well I guess I did just mention it, didn't I?). These are truly freighting times.

Mr. Crackers & I have have been trying to tighten our own belts just in case. We have racked up some debts of our own while I have taken off work the last few years to stay home with the kids. We figured that we would get ourselves back into the black once I rejoined the workforce in a few years. But I am now afraid we might not have a few years to wait. We need to get ourselves in a better position financially now, just in case we get caught up in this whole mess too. I fear that no matter what we do it will not be enough. As we discussed all of these goings on earlier, Mr. Crackers & I decided that we need to do more - so we will be joining our good friends and try to live off much less. I'm not sure how we will do it, but until things turn around in the economy we need to make it happen.

I know that it might be a bit early to start talking about wishes for the New Year. We haven't even gotten to Christmas yet, but as this is all happening now, I'm going to do it anyway. So here is my wish for 2009: I hope that it brings more security (whether that means financial security, better health or keeping you and those you love out of harm's way) to all of us. I think we all could use it.

Now, we return you to your normally scheduled programming of Christmas Merriment.

An assortment of crackers

Just a few updates today from the house of Crackers:

1. My addiction to Craig's List has paid off! Someone just left the house with our very large train table. Whoo, woo! To date, we ended up making over $200.00 selling off the kid's old and unused toys. I think my excitement over these sales has the Cracker children nervous. They have started screaming, "please don't sell that!" whenever I take a close look at one of their toys or scoop a stray doll or car off the floor to put it away. I have assured them that I have no plans to wipe out their toy stash, but they just don't seem to believe me.

I understand their concern. About a year and a half ago Mr. Crackers & I were hit with Garage Sale fever after a particularly successful day at our neighborhood sale.

We started hauling out tables, area rugs, and really anything else that wasn't nailed down and we thought we could "move" (& by move I mean sell quickly probably for a price well below what it was worth). Thankfully by the time the fever really hit us, the sale was winding down, and we ended up hauling much of our furniture and small appliances back into the house again.

Looking back I am glad our fever peaked so late since we were thinking seriously about selling our kitchen table. Never mind that we eat all our meals there, we thought it was perfect to sell for about $150.00. We wanted a bigger one someday anyway (we lacked the presence of mind at the time to realize that purchasing a new table to replace the one we sold for $150.00 would probably cost us at least $1500.00).

In light of our past behavior, I do understand their distress. But really, my main goal was to clear out some space for new stuff while at the same time helping out with the cost of Christmas toys.

Come to Momma!

On second thought, maybe I'll make one more pass through the playroom, just to make sure I haven't missed anything.....

2. Remember when I was talking about how much I loved our Fisher-Price nativity scene and how much fun I had watching the kids play with it? It seems like just yesterday. . . In fact it was just yesterday. Well, I take it back. I know winter is just starting, but I forgot how hard it is to adjust those first weeks when we realize most of our playtime will now occur indoors. I have to say, today proved to be a painful adjustment.

Both of the Cracker children decided to play with the aforementioned nativity scene this afternoon. I wish I could paint an idyllic scene of 2 children playing happily and quietly with the holy family near the Christmas tree (would it be even cuter if they were both wearing coordinating Christmas sweaters - or is that too much?). However, what I got instead was a 3 year old screaming and sobbing, "I want the Baby Jesus, I WANT THE BABY JESUS. GIVE HIM TO ME NOW!!!!!". All while my 6 year old screamed back "Then give me the Fairy (a.k.a. the Angel Gabriel). You've had her the whole time! IT'S MY TURN TO HAVE HER. I WANT THE FAIRY!!!!"

For some reason, instead of leaving the room & hiding somewhere letting them work it out, I launched myself into the fray trying to dodge flying wise men while screaming at the two of them " JUST GET ALONG AND PLAY NICELY!". Needless to say, I was unsuccessful at forcing, threatening, coercing them to get along.

Finally I gave up & spent a little time with Mrs. G at Derfwad Manor . She always makes me laugh & by the time I was done the children had worked out their own problems and had moved on to other toys.....

3. A little update on Mr. Crackers who is looking mighty fine these days... Mr. Crackers ran a 10K race on Thanksgiving day & did a great job! He's been training since the spring and although he says he wanted to lose more weight, I think he looks great.

Did I fail to mention that Mr. Crackers is growing out his hair a bit? I have to say I do love that salt and pepper coming in around the temples. Why is it that he looks so good with some gray in his hair while my grays just make my hair look a little more dull and dried out? It hardly seems fair. I think I will lodge a complaint with our hairdresser when I see her in a couple of weeks.

Did I also fail to tell you that Mr. Crackers not only got himself new glasses (that I love, love, love) but that he also got his first pair of contacts? Hmmm..... should I be worried?!

Perhaps it is time Mrs. Crackers updated her look a bit as well.

That's all that's fit to print from the House of Crackers!

I think I am addicted to Craig's List

I've been busy the last couple of weeks cleaning out old toys that aren't played with to make room for all the new ones that will be entering our home over the next few weeks. Between Christmas and both of the kid's birthdays, we end up getting a lot of toys in just a couple of months. So, it's time to get ready for the onslaught.


I've got a pile to donate & a pile to sell. The pile to sell includes big things like our old train table (memories.... sniff, sniff), and other large size toys that the kids have outgrown.

Here's a shot of C right about the time we got the train table....almost 3 years ago




I don't really want to mess around with Ebay or garage sales, so I use Craig's List instead. It rocks! I find that posting all of these items on Craig's list is getting my old retail juices flowing again.

The beauty of it is that no matter what price I sell the stuff for, I win! Even if the item only sells for $8.00, that's $8.00 more in my pocket than I had when I woke up this morning. It really bugs me sometimes that I am not helping out with the finances. I used to work full time & I really enjoyed it (for the most part). Even though my husband & I both felt it was the right thing to do to have someone stay home with the kids while they were little, I still sometimes miss being a wage earner.

So for now, I will bring money in by using Craig's List. I love it & best of all (unlike my time spent as a buyer in a department store), I get to keep the money! I'm up to about $50.00 so far, but I just listed the train table today. Keep your fingers crossed, Momma needs the money