For months I have not only heard, but seen some of my blogger friends promoting the LifeLock Identity Theft Protection which has made me smile. Being a mom that used to work in the “collections” field for almost a decade, I know the importance of keeping your identity SAFE. Since I care about my friends, I love to hear when one of them is taking the extra steps to help protect themselves.

When it comes to LifeLock, this is a company that offers identity theft protection that works 24/7/365 to protect their members from identity theft before it actually happens. I have actually been interested in this service since I too have been a victim of identity theft.

I am proud to announce that I am officially a LifeLock Brand Ambassador and I am THRILLED!

In the upcoming months, not only will I be educating you about LifeLock’s Membership Plans and how you can benefit from using it, I am also going to be trying out the service for myself and will share my experience using LifeLock’s identity theft protection service and share the inside scoop with you.

I am super EXCITED to be a part of the #LifeLock Brand Ambassador Team!

Last week I was invited to the Roseville Galleria to the DownEast Basics store for a blogger mixer. I am a fan of the DownEast Basics clothing (especially the jeans), so of course I accepted the invitation. I was allowed to bring a guest so I brought my daughter and we enjoyed checking out the new DownEast Basics clothing line, try some of the clothing on and we even left the store with a few items.

What I learned was there is a store near me that I can come try on the cute DownEast Basics clothes. I thought they only had an online store and I am happy to know that I can find them in the mall now. I don’t go to the mall often, but I do like trying on clothes before iI buy them.

Here are some photos of the clothes I found while shopping.

To view more pictures of my shopping trip at DownEast Basics, visit my Google + Photo Album. If you love wearing cute and stylish jeans, you must check out their denim selection!

To find a store near you, visit the DownEast Basics Store Locator at: http://downeastbasics.com/location.aspx

Disclosure – I received an invitation to this event. This was not a paid opportunity but bloggers did receive gift cards as a gift for attending. This post is not a paid post and the opinions stated herein are 100% my own.

I have shopped at Safeway for many years. For the past few years, if not longer I have used my Safeway Club Card to save on the products that were currently on sale that I was purchasing or I would use my card to save a few cents per gallon when filling up my gas tank.

Last week I was invited San Francisco to learn more about the re-launch of Safeway’s Just For U program with 16 other bloggers from Northern California. When we arrived at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis we headed to the 4th floor to a special conference room for the Safeway VIP Bloggers.

The morning started with some yummy breakfast and a quick little meet and greet where we each told the group who were were and what we blogged about. After everyone got their turn, it was time to focus our attention to the front of the room to learn about the new changes in Safeway’s rewards program.

After spending some time with some of the members of the Safeway team, I learned that as a Safeway Club Member cardholder, you have THREE different ways that you can save with your card that include:

• By using your Personalized Deals
• By adding coupons to your card with the Coupon Center
• Save with Your Club Specials (special savings at your preferred store only)

When you access your Personalized Deals, you will get deals that are the best in the market. In addition to finding new deals each week, you will sometimes find FREE offers that you will want to take advantage of that won’t last long. At this event we logged in our account and I found a deal for a FREE Dozen Eggs (see screenshot below). I then hit the “Add” button on the screen and the deal was added to my Safeway Club Card to use before the expiration date.

If you are a regular shopper at Safeway, you will want to pay attention to the Coupon Center. As you use your Safeway Club Card at the checkout, your purchases are recorded and then used to give you coupons to use for products that you regularly buy. When you login, you will find coupons that are organized by your shopping history. There are new offers added each week so you will want to be sure to check your account often to find new deals.

What is neat about the Coupon Center is that you add these digital coupons to your card which saves you from having to clip or print them. I love coupons, but will admit that I forget to use most of the ones I clip to use.

Next we learned about the Club Specials section of the program. Again, if you are a regular shopper of Safeway you will want to take a peek at the Club Specials. Since your purchases are recorded when you use your card, when you visit the Your Clubs Specials section you will find products on sale that you currently buy. By using this feature, you won’t have to waste time looking for items on sale that you buy, it will list them for you.

Don’t let me forget to tell you how to use this program. You can either choose to go online to the Safeway website or you can download the app on your Smartphone. Currently the Safeway app is only available for the iPhone and Android phones. With the website you can add the deals and coupons to your card and print the a Savings List to use when you go shopping. With the phone app, you can add the deals and coupons to your card, then add them to your list on the app that allows you to check off the item once you have put it in your basket.

After we learned about the Safeway Just For U program, added some coupons and deals to our cards and learned how to use the Safeway App on our phones, the #SafewayJ4U group headed to a local Safeway store in San Francisco to do some shopping. I added products to my card and then to my list that I would normally buy.  Once they were added to my list, I then went through the store on a mission to find all the items on my list and to see how much I was going to save.

We were given only about 45 minutes to shop for the items on our list. Once I found all of the items I wanted to buy, it was time to check out and see just how much savings I was going to see. I tried to calculate my total in my head but kept getting distracted while I was shopping. I knew I was over $50, but I knew that I was going to go under $60. I also didn’t want to know my savings until the ends so I let the employee ring up all my purchases before I scanned my Safeway Club Card.

After the employee was done scanning my items I took a picture of my shopping total before using my card. My total purchase before my savings was $81.79!

I then asked the employee to scan my Safeway Club Card. I watched my total slowly start to go down and after my savings were applied from my card my new total purchase was $58.62.

I saved a total of $23.17! For the amount of items I purchased, I think I did really well with the amount of savings I received. If I would have had my coupons in my purse I probably would have been able to save even more. With the Personalized Deals, you can stack your paper coupons with your purchase to save even more!

To find out more about the Safeway Just For U program, watch this video:

You can also visit Safeway at: hhttp://www.safeway.com

Disclosure – I was invited this Safeway sponsored event. This was not a paid opportunity but bloggers did receive gift cards as a gift for attending. This post is not a paid post and the opinions stated herein are 100% my own

Just a couple days ago I announced that I was making my way to New York in August for BlogHer’12. This is a huge trip for me since I will be traveling all the way across the United States and will be on my own. I have went on a few blogger events in the past couple years but usually everything is all planned for me. This time I am being a big girl and going to have to figure out how to make it through the Big Apple on my own.

When Trisha at MomDot announced the Brandcation trip, I didn’t even think of being able to go. I had only just thought in my head “I wish” and moved on to other thoughts because bringing up my wants to the hubby to go on another trip without him and the kids was something I wasn’t really ready to do. Lucky me, the tickets for the Brandcation trip went FAST and I was glad. If there were no tickets, I wouldn’t have to think about finding a way to go.

I will admit I kept thinking of this beautiful log cabin and how I wish I could go….

Then Trisha announces there is a ticket left and a lucky blogger was going to get it. I then begin to think I needed to enter the contest.  I decided to procrastinate and was hoping the contest would end before I had a chance to enter so I didn’t have to think about it. That didn’t work so well!

Today I seen a post on Tricia’s Facebook page today that tonight is the deadline to put up a post on why I would want to attend. The pressure has been on today because I really want to go, but there are so many different reasons why. Instead of listing them all, I thought I would list the reasons that are on the top of my list!

• My first reason is I LOVE the MomDot community. I have been a member for almost 2 years and have over 4K posts on the forum under my belt. There are so many ladies from this community I would like to meet in person,  build new friendships and of course take fun pictures with to share on Facebook!
• I want to LEARN  from the other fellow Brandcation members. I just love blogger events and have learned so much valuable information from all the wonderful conversations that happen between bloggers. Some of the people I consider my good friends are those that I have met on trips in the past.
• I want to go to Dollywood. I remember seeing Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson as a child at my first concert and have been a fan of both of them ever since. There also has been jokes throughout my childhood that Dolly is my aunt (don’t ask why) so I would love to be able to say I have been there.
• Don’t let me forget that cabin. I have always wanted to stay at a log cabin, but have never got the chance. This is definitely the Dream Log Cabin for sure. What makes it more exiting is that this log cabin will be filled with a ton of wonderful ladies that is going to result in one big slumber party!

There are of course many other reasons that I could mention, like I would love to be in their group photo like this one:

Brandcation is something I really would love to participate in. If I don’t get this chance, I will be looking forward to more opportunities in the future. For those that are sponsoring this event, thanks for the opportunity to win!

Disclosure:  This Brandcation giveaway is sponsored by Momdot, Minnesota Blogger Life with Levi and Toni from Just Stop Screaming