Christmas In July

I knew yesterday was going to be a good day, and I was not disappointed. It seriously was like Christmas. To start off, Terry Goodkind released his newest book, The First Confessor, in e-book format. Terry Goodkind is probably my all time favorite author these days; each book is filled with inspiration, age old knowledge and for me personally, his stories have given me a very different perspective on life. At first I wasn't too thrilled about The First Confessor only being released as an e-book, but I understand Terry's reasoning and I appreciate not having to wait to read it (now I just have to finish reading his last book!) Anyway, I was lucky enough to be among some of the first to read the first chapter of The First Confessor last night! Very exciting!

This will be my first experience really reading an e-book, so I will definitely be blogging about it and let you all know what I think!

Next up, I won 1 quart of coconut oil from Tropical Traditions and Between Two Rams! I was really hoping to win this, so I cannot tell you how excited I am right now! (Also - because I won this, I didn't have to buy lip balm yesterday morning, saving me more money!)

I went to Family Dollar first thing in the morning to buy a bunch of things, and I had a coupon for $5 off when spending $25 or more. So I bought a lot of things, but I also got a few polish related items since they were on sale and I had the coupon... and because I wasn't buying the lip balm :D

Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri Anti-Chip Top Coat was on sale from $4.50 to $4.00. It promises "dry any nail color! 30 seconds to set. No-chip shine up to 10 days." I read somewhere that this only works with Sally Hansen polishes. I'm willing to put it to the test... and even if it only does work well with other Sally Hansen polishes, I do own quite a few.
I also got Sally Hansen's Hard As Nails which is supposed to be a strengthener and promises "helps prevent chipping, splitting, cracking". It can be used alone or as a base coat. This was $2.50.
So, after the coupon and sales, I spent $1.50 on these two, saving $5.50 all together. Not bad at all.
I will be putting them to the test tomorrow.

Then I got my mail... and I got my July Julep Maven box! You can join Julep now and get your first box for only 1 cent, no strings attached! Just use the code MAVENINTRO or COLOR2012 at check out. I believe both of these codes should work, so just try one of them :) Anyway, here's my box!

This month I decided to get Bombshell instead of It Girl as my box. I thought it was really awesome of Julep to include the patriotic colored shredded papers, the Fireballs, not to mention the polish America for free! This is a subscription service, so the monthly box is $20. Here's all of what I got though:

• It's my second order with Julep, so I got the gift voucher for one free polish! I can't wait to figure out what to buy with this :)
  
  
• 3 Atomic Fireball candies; I've never been a big fan of these, but I'm sucking on one right now and it's not too bad actually! Wow it just got really hot all of a sudden - but that's OK, I love spicy food.
   
•  a lip gloss called Zinnia described as "Violet plum creme lip vernis. This ultra-creamy, long-wearing gloss has a mirror like finish and is the perfect color complement to your nails. Launched in July 2012."
   
• my free polish, America described as: "America the Beautiful is a shiny red with royal blue glitter and sterling silver stars, it's like nail art in a bottle! Launched in July 2012."
  
  
• Chelsea describes as: "Violet, purple, and silver multi-dimensional glitter.Launched in July 2012."
  
  
• Kate is described as: "Soft white pearl. Launched in July 2012."

Here's a picture of my ugly ol' lips while wearing Zinnia. I just wanted to demonstrate that it really isn't as dark as one might guess. Kind of disappointing for me, but it's still a nice color and one I will definitely wear often. It's a little bit stickier than I expected, but still not as sticky as Zoya's lip glosses so it's not too terrible.

As I said, I paid $19.99 for this box. Here's the savings breakdown, excluding the candies:
Zinnia retails at $18. America, Chelsea and Kate all retail at $14 each. Total retail price is $60 so I saved $40.01! Pretty darn good! Plus the gift voucher I received, which will save me an additional $14.

I also received my prize from Country Gourmet Home, which I wasn't even sure I was getting or not... but it was a very unexpected surprise and a nice one at that! I won Bill's Amazing Dry Rub which states "Great on Chicken, Pork, and Beef." it is 3.8 ounces and retails for $3.99. It smells really, really good so I can't wait to try this out.. which I will probably do in the next week or so. Going by the smell alone, I think this will be great with chicken but I might try it with some pork, also.

I also got a third package in the mail today which I wasn't expecting yet, and it's kind of boring... my Natural Vitality Natural Calm and my alfalfa from T-tapp. Nice to get so many unexpected things in one day... and it ended this evening when I purchased The First Confessor for $8.99 - retail is $9.99 but Terry sold it to us for 1 dollar off the first week it's on sale! :)

So, that was my very exciting and very fun day yesterday! Thanks for reading!