If you purchased from Amazon this holiday season, check your email for a special $3 Credit towards any Amazon MP3 or buying or renting from Amazon Video on Demand. Each time you make an Amazon MP3 or Amazon Video On Demand purchase through January 31, 2009, we will automatically apply your promotional credit until you have used its full $3 value. Your credit card will not be charged for Amazon MP3 or Amazon Video On Demand purchases made through January 31, 2009 until your $3 credit has been used.

The 25 Days of Free Holiday Music is still available for Free Download.

(*Promotional credit has been offered to customers who have purchased $25 or more in a single order of goods sold by Amazon, have a US billing address, and have not previously purchased Amazon MP3 or Amazon Video On Demand items or previously received promotional credit towards Amazon MP3 or Amazon Video Demand items.)

Hope you are having a Merry Christmas!

It may be too early for some people to start thinking about next year’s Christmas BUT the after Christmas sales are a great time to stock up on all your holiday needs. Most stores will have all the Christmas decorations, wrappings, holiday sets at least 50% off on December 26th. The discounts keep continuing until it is all gone. Don’t wait too long as the selection will just keep dwindling.

Also, if you have a few extra bucks, keep checking Amazon.com’s Mover & Shaker’s List  list as this is also a good opportunity to stock up on upcoming birthdays and even for the holidays next year. Subscribe to the Mover & Shaker’s list of your choice to get the best deals right away! (I subscribe to the Toy Mover & Shaker list!)

KidsMealDeals.com is a site that gives you scoop on restaurants which offer free meals. So if you have kids and want to save, it could be a good resource.

Claim your free 2 year subscription to Family Fun Magazine. This is through Rewards Gold and you will do a very short survey to earn this magazine. These do come…ask my husband, our mailbox is overflowing with magazines. Act quick as these don’t last long and this is an excellent magazine!

Other Free Magazines:

• 1 Year Subscription to Prevention Magazine
• Free Subscription to Sound & Vision Magazine
• 10 Free Issues to More Magazine and/or 5 Issues to Cosmopolitan Magazine from Start Sampling. You must be a member of Start Sampling before you can request this magazine.

Don’t miss out on any deals: Subscribe to my free newsletter via email or RSS.

Meijer Christmas Eve Coupons

Good from 6am to 7pm

Other Meijer Deals good until 12/24

• 20% Extra off Board Games in Toy Department
• 20% Extra off Hand & Power Tools in Hardware Department
• 10% Extra off Digital Cameras & Camcorders
• 20% Extra off All Phones includes Home & Cell Phones
• 20% Extra off Fashion Outerwear & Cold Weather Accessories (Excludes Sporting Goods & Boots)
• 10% Extra off Digital Frames

You can print them out from the below document and can use the same coupon as many times as you would like.

Christmas Eve Meijer Coupons

As some of you may have read on twitter or facebook, our desktop computer crashed. We have the black screen of death and some type of clicking noise. This was our “main” computer we used for storing pictures, music, spreadsheets, etc. Fortunately, most of my pictures I had either on disk, uploaded online, or stored on the laptop. I may have lost some that were taken in the past couple of weeks, which some people may be happy about – including myself – some very unflattering pictures of me from Steph’s 40th Birthday Bash – ha ha.

I did lose our music, all my digital scrap elements, Adobe Photo Shop (I purchased online and downloaded and I can’t figure out how to download onto another machine since they have a newer version out), all my button files, header files, fonts I downloaded, my 2008 Grocery Savings Tracker Spreadsheet, etc.

We are having a computer guy try to retrieve any data he can off the computer. But I’m still mad at myself, I knew better and knew I should back up more of my files. I have been wanting to get an external hard drive FOREVER but never followed through. So please use this as a warning for yourself. Spend a little time and make sure everything is backed up. Another reason some of our stuff wasn’t backed up on disk was our CD writer went kapaut a few months back.

Tonight, I bit the bullet and purchased an external portable drive. Western Digital My Passport Essential 320 GB in fun orange, which should be plenty to back up everything. For $94, in the case of a hard drive loss, worth the money as it will probably cost us around $100 for data retrieval or if we had it all backed up online and wanted to make an archival CD(s) could run around $100 or more. The Western Digital My Passport Essential has great customer reviews on Amazon.

Our computer guy is also going to use this if he is able to retrieve any data from the drive. One thing I liked about this is it is portable and can be synched with another computer. So I can synch with a couple of computers, have it stored on the backup drive in case of any other kind of hardware failure. If I store this somewhere handy, it might be easy to grab this in case of an emergency evacuation like a fire so we don’t lose those precious memories.

We don’t plan on replacing the desktop computer right now as we do have our laptop. The desktop is almost 5 years old and probably not cost efficient to rebuild it as it needs more than just the hard drive.  No need to spend that extra $ right this second. Eventually, I’m sure we will replace it because sometimes it is nice to sit down with a desktop computer. We will eventually find the right deal! :)

More good news, you know the zero weather the midwest is having, our furnace went out in the middle of the night one of those nights. Luckily, we have some connections to get it fixed. At this time it looks like the main problem is pretty simple – we need a new thermostat. I’m just waiting to see what breaks, fails, etc. next. (I think I also lost my zoobook my mom bought for my birthday. Yep, that is a real tragedy. I know I put it somewhere special. Just can’t remember. I’ll probably find it 1-1-10 when the coupons are expired.)

Live near Hershey, PA? Join in the holiday tradition and bring your family to Hershey Park Christmas Candylane. Just $9.95 per person!

• Visit Santa and his reindeer
• Enjoy the Music Box Christmas show
• Browse our quaint village shops
• Delight in over 2 million twinkling lights!
• Save $2.00 off regular price admission

Hershey Sweett Lights a winter wonderland awaits at Hershey Sweet Lights, A Holiday, Drive-Thru Spectacular for $20/car.

You can make your holidays a little sweeter and stay at one of the Official Resorts of Hersheypark. Check out their Overnight packages or Visit ChristmasInHershey.com for complete information about Christmas In Hershey!