Saving Money

My wonderful husband has always been an excellent provider. He has never let us down. He provides everything we have ever needed and then some. He is the hardest working man I have ever known. We met when we were 17 and he was a hard worker even then. Money drives him. He borrowed $1500 from his father many moons ago to purchase a trailer and a compressor, paid him back and has grown his contract framing company into one of the most respected in Central Florida.
Times are a changin' though. We have watched the housing industry plummet severely in the last 6 months and know it's not over yet. The gas prices are insane and only getting higher. Is this a major recession? It has to get worse before it gets better. It's nice to own a business when business is good but when it's not, you have no steady paycheck to count on and a handful of employees counting on you to keep their families fed as well.
So..I am not going to look at this with a "poor me" attitude. I am sure I'm not the only one in this situation. I am working on ways to cut back on spending and bring more money into the budget.

Here's my list of things to do. How about you? What would or are you changing?

1. Stay home more- The less you go out, the less you spend...period.

2. Cut back on the electric bill- It's finally just cool enough to turn the A/C off here in Florida. I am also making sure that all lights and tv's are off when no one is using them. All laundry is getting washed in cold water to help with the hot water heater use. I will also use the crockpot and grill to save on oven use.

3. Grocery spending- We don't have any stores that double or triple coupons here but with a little research I can still save a lot of money. A newspaper for $1.50 on Sunday can save me a ton. Now I buy 4 papers. Often, the stores here have buy 1 get 1 free sales. This is my favorite way to save. I can buy 1 get 1 pasta for example for about $1.09. Then I will use 2-.50 coupons making them nearly free. Stock up when you have a really good deal like this, hence the 4 papers. Check out www.CouponMom.com to match sale ads and coupons in your area. www.Families.com has awesome forums for coupon trading and deal posting. They're both free to use.
Don't go crazy and buy everything just because you have a coupon though. Buy only what you will use. If you don't have a CVS card, get one. You can find a sale, use a coupon and then get Extra Care Bucks back making items free or nearly free. Sometimes they even pay YOU. Most CVS deals are for toiletries, cleaning and paper products.

4. Christmas Shopping- I absolutely am addicted to GottaDeal.com. People post the cheap deals that they find from all over the internet. Comparison shop for Christmas. Ask other people on the forums if they have found something cheaper at a certain place. When you see a really good deal on GottaDeal, jump on it. It doesn't last. My recent deal from these boards were Jumpstart K, 1 & 2 disks and workbooks ALL for $3 shipped. Wow! My kids are way past 2nd grade but I have the perfect person in mind to gift it to.
I am also going to do a lot of baking for Christmas this year so I will make sure I have plenty of extra for neighbors and friends.

5.Powdered Milk- This goes along with grocery and Christmas spending. I plan to use powdered milk when a recipe calls for milk when I am baking. I know some people swear by powdered milk and at $4 a gallon, milk is getting really out of control. I could never force myself to drink it though. What I can do is use it in baking along with the free applesauce I acquired this year (thanks to coupons) in place of vegetable oil.

6. Cell phones- I plan to sit down with my bills and see if I can change some plans around to save us a few dollars. If you haven't done that in a while, now is the time. Companies are always changing their plans and you may not have the best one for your needs.

7. Insurance- YIKES! My motto is- if it weren't for taxes and insurance, we'd be rich. Being self employed, we have more insurance than I can shake a stick at or keep close track of for that matter. Liability, worker's comp, commercial auto, personal auto, homeowners, flood, life and that nasty $600/month health insurance bill for the family. OUCH! I know people who work a regular job just for the health insurance benefits. That's sad! I plan to take a much closer look at our policies and see if we are really getting the best deal for our money. I am also going to see if we can raise our deductibles any higher.

8. Phone bills- I really don't think I can beat what I have for local service without getting some sort of VOIP which I know nothing about. Our long distance bill is phenomenal as well. A long time ago I went to LowerMyBills.com and found a company that provides us long distance for .04 per minute. The only requirement is that they don't send you paper bills and you have to give them a credit card to charge monthly. There is NO service fee. I am lovin' it. Here's how a telemarketer call goes in my house. "Hello. I can offer you long distance for .045 per minute." Me- "No thanks I can get it for .o4." Them- "What sort of fee are you paying? I'll bet we can beat it." Me- "Umm. No you can't because I don't have one." Click. It's awesome! LowerMyBills.com saves you on other bills as well. Check it out. What can it hurt? It's free.

9. Credit Cards- Don't use them! If you can't use cash, don't buy it. I know. Sometimes there are emergencies that only a credit card can save us from. If you are carrying a balance, call your company and ask them to lower your rate. You can also transfer your balance to an intro. 0% card. Just make sure you pay your bill and then some on time and don't use that card! The card company wants you to use the card. Say you have a $5500 balance with a rate of 0% and make a purchase for $34 at the purchase rate of 7%. When you send your payment in each month you think you're paying the $34 back, right. Wrong! The companies put your payment towards the 0% and let the 7% build and build and build eventually costing you $100's for that $34 charge. Beware!

10. Making money- Aside from helping dear hubby find work, I also have a small embroidery business. I own www.BaaBaaBlankies.com and www.BibsandBurpCloths.com. I make personalized baby blankets, bibs, burp cloths and aprons. I plan to use some free marketing strategies along with my trusty friend Ebay to keep the orders rolling in. Every little bit helps! Do you have a talent that you can offer on the side? Babysitting, lawn mowing, crafting? Surely you can think of something!

I hope my little list helps you get through these rough times. I know there are so many more money saving ideas out there. Google frugal living, living on a budget, saving money, etc.. You are sure to find a wealth of info!

Viewing blocked comments on MySpace

Has someone (like your teenagers) hidden their comments on their MySpace.com profile so you can't read them? Here is a little trick to see what all the secrecy is about. Use your best judgment on if you should check this out or not. I truly believe in privacy for my kids UNLESS they do something to get into trouble. Then it is our job to do what ever it takes to keep them safe. :)

First of all, you have to be a friend if their profile is set to private. If it is public, you're good. As long as you can see their profile, you can do this.

Now make sure you are on the profile page of your choice. Right click with your mouse. Then click view source or view page source. You will get a pop up window with a bunch of funky looking coded words and stuff. This is called html. This is how people make web pages in case you didn't know. Each of those codes is telling the page to display something.
Anyhow.. Scroll down in that html window until you pass where you see friend this and friend that. Find Commentlinks. When you see that word you will start seeing comments. In Firefox, the code is colored and the comments that people have written is in a black font. I'm not sure how it is for IE browsers.

Please keep in mind before you try this that you are moving in on people's personal space and only use this trick when completely necessary for the safety and well being of others, namely your teens. You also might want to think about what you may see there before you go forth. You could find a few comments about what a bee-otch you are or how much your kids mom sucks. ;) Also be prepared for the emotional turmoil when you find out that your kid wasn't where they said they would be or that they did something really bad and be ready to discuss it with them.

My main advice for the day: MySpace is the one place where you SHOULD be your kids friend first....Just in case.

The Joy of Scrapbooking...Digitally!

I love the idea of scrapbooking but don't like the idea of having a billion bins of tiny little pieces of "stuff" to store. I know I could spend a fortune on papers, tools and such so I have never taken up the hobby. That is until now. I found digital scrapbooking. The idea is the same. You add papers and elements to a "page" and fit your pictures in. The only difference is that you are doing this all from your computer in graphic editing software.

The layout above was made using Ronna Penner's Express Yourself kit at www.scrapadelic.com . I also used template 6 but there is no credit page included with the file. If you know who the designer is, email me. I'd love to give them credit!

There are several different softwares that you can use such as Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro an the free Gimp software. You can search for digital scrapbooking kits on the net. There are some really talented artists out there. Be sure to search blogs for digital scrapbooking artists as well. They often hide their freebies there. Here are a few links that I like.

http://www.twopeasinabucket.com/

http://www.scrapartist.com/

http://www.elementalscraps.com/

http://www.shabbyprincess.com/

http://www.sweetshoppedesigns.com/

It is wise to purchase an external hard drive to store all of these downloads and NOT to have satellite internet. :) When you are finished with enough pages for a book, you can upload them to a photo site like http://www.snapfish.com/ and have them print them into a bound book.

Satellite Internet

As I've posted earlier, I love perusing the internet for information. I also happen to live on a small piece of land really close to town but just far enough that for the last 7 years there wasn't a cable company to service my house. For a few years I dealt with dial up. It wasn't that big of a deal. My kids were small, my husband probably thought www meant world wrestling something or other and I mainly used the internet for the occassional search and to check emails.
Now I have 3 websites, 6 or so Squidoo.com lenses, 2 MySpace pages and 3 blogs. I love digital scrapbooking. My kids are all at the age of downloading music and uploading pictures to MySpace and my husband LOVES ordering from Jegs.com, finding contract work through several bidding sites and chatting on mud racing forums. So a few years ago I found out about Hughesnet.com which used to be Direcway satellite internet. I was extatic! We could all be online and doing our own thing. Then I found out about Fair Access Policies. Oh Boy! Here's how it works. If you download/upload more MB's than what is listed in your plan each day, they cut off your internet for a short period of time. Do you know how totally annoying that is?! Kids were downloading music and all of the sudden I was locked out. What a bummer! I lived with it for a while , banned the kids from their beloved music and time passed. It got OLD real quick.
Then I found out about WildBlue.com from AT&T. I figured AT&T-big company-monthly instead of daily Fair Access Policy and the next thing I knew they were at my house installing a new dish. Keep in mind that all along I am calling every cable company in the book to see if they will install cable internet at my house. Each time it was a "No".
Recently I have discovered digital scrapbooking. Heard of it? That's my next topic so read on. So Wednesday evening I found an awesome site with some digiscrap freebies. I started downloading thinking it wouldn't affect my monthly MB's all that much. Oh boy! Was I wrong! Thursday as I peruse the internet I get dial up flashbacks. The kids are all on a pc and hubby is on his laptop. I couldn't get on any site to save my life. I had enough! I called around 1 more time. Comcast- "No ma'am. We don't service your area." Brighthouse- "Yes." "What?" I say. He said, "Yes ma'am. It shows here in the system that you are eligible for service." "No way!" I say. You just couldn't imagine the rush after 7 years of no's and dial up and satellite. I WAS getting cable internet! I am soooo excited! They were out here Friday. They weren't very happy about the line they had to run underground from the road up to the house but they are coming tomorrow to install it.
If you're thinking about getting satellite and do have the choice to get cable internet, don't! I could just imagine if I had a hobby of downloading movies.

Calling all Dale Earnhardt Fans!

CMT aired "Dale The Movie" last night on their cable channel. If you didn't get to see it, they are showing it again tonight at 8pm/7pm central.
My husband is a HUGE Earnhardt fan. We have a curio cabinet and acrylic display of all Dale & Dale Jr. memorabilia. Our game room in the garage is red & black, covered in the numbers 3 & 8. We have been to many Daytona races, went to the pits, bought fan packages and all and he's traveled to others on the east coast. The day Dale died was a sad, sad day in our house. Since my husband's father passed away, Dale had been a hero and inspiration to him. The Intimidator was a well known name in our house. Of course, we had to watch this.
I actually learned a lot from the movie. I didn't realize what a close relationship Dale & Richard Childress had or the bitter-sweet relationship between Dale & Darryl Waltrip. I was a little disappointed not to see Michael Waltrip telling his stories but I'm sure there was a reason behind it. And the way Jr. was portrayed as a kid dyeing for his father's affection & approval was new to me as well. I learned a lot about Earnhardt last night. I laughed a little, was ad from the memories and proud to be a fan as well. It's definitely a must see for every Nascar fan.

Countdown to Christmas

Would you believe there are only 111 days until Christmas?! Have you started your shopping yet? I must admit, I haven't even thought of making a list yet.
Last Christmas I was browsing the internet and found this awesome site. www.GottaDeal.com They have all kinds of coupon codes and some of the best frugal shopping forums around. Users post the deals that they find around the net. Unlike some of these deal sites that just have a few people posting deals, GottaDeal.com has thousands! Last year I was able to purchase Victoria's Secret PJ's, slippers and such for some family members and some bras for myself at around $3 each at another site because of glitches in shopping cart systems that were posted on GottaDeal.
They also have an awesome posting of Black Friday Deals as they come out. Check it out!

Do You Squidoo?

So I found Squidoo.com a short while ago on one of my "internet marathons". It's a really interesting place. Squidoo is basically a place to write about what you know well. This is called your lens. Along with information on your particular topic, you can add in these cool things called modules. There are different types of modules that let you do anything to your Squidoo page from adding a guestbook to adding products from stores that make you money when someone purchases them. You can also have Plexo modules which let readers vote for their favorite topic, link, item, etc.. that you have listed and they can add their own too. Readers can rate your lens as well. You can lensroll other lenses (which is basically linking with them) that are of similar interest to your readers.

I have to admit it. I'm addicted! I made my 6th lens this morning. I have a lens for Baby Gifts, Dream Sewing Spaces, Freebies & Deals, Florida Destinations other than Disney, Mud Racing and now Baby's 1st Birthday. It's a great site for networking but also for having fun if you like writing.

So...as I was editing my lenses the other day, I saw a little ad on my Squidoo page. It was for a site called Zlio.com. Hear of it? It looks pretty new but also very cool. I think it will be a big hit. Zlio.com is like a huge shopping mall. They have lots of companies that want their products sold so they pay you to do it. Zlio.com lets you make a store for free. You can make any kind of store like my baby gifts store. It is extremely easy to set up. It just takes a few steps...HONEST! You can then add products to your store by basically clicking your mouse a few times. There are 1000's of products to choose from by places like Cooking.com , PacSun, PetMeds, Barnes & Noble & Baby Phat. And guess what...it's all free!!!! I love it! I might just make another store. You know, you can have up to 20 Zlio.com stores.

What's up with Nursery Rhymes?

I have to admit that I got this idea from watching Last Comic Standing last night. One of the comedians was making fun of Rock-A-Bye-Baby. Think about it..It is pretty violent. Why in the world would someone decide one day to tell their kid that the tree with the baby was going to fall- baby & all?! How soothing is that?! Then I remember hearing something about Ring Around The Rosie. It is a little story about the Bubonic Plague. Yikes!
I looked up some little known nursery rhyme origins and found this helpful site. Nursery Rhyme Origins
It's no wonder everyone is disfunctional these days. Look what was recited to us. Stories of the London Bridge falling down, a king & queen being beheaded and Bloody Mary! Fascinating!

Useful? No, maybe not.....

Catgut- Did you know that it doesn't come from cats? It is actually a cord made from sheep or goat intestines. I looked it up after my son's friend found it as a trivia question on the internet. 12 year olds! They love that kind of stuff.

Did you know that you can make a volcanic type of eruption using baking soda and vinegar? Put the baking soda where ever you want the eruption to happen and pour some vinegar on it. Please use common sense safety. :) Don't stick your face in it when you pour the vinegar. Maybe even use some safety glasses!

WAHM is short for work at home mom. If you do something at home for money while you stay home with your children, this makes you a work at home mom. WAHM's make cool products, do computer work for companies, and lots more. You can do just about anything from home as long as you find someone to pay you whether it's a boss or a customer. Get your mind out of the gutter! Although I'm sure there are some, WAHM's don't usually sell their bodies from home. That's called a "hooker". Don't get them confused with the WAHM's that knit! (That, my friends, was a joke. Please don't be offended.)

With today being the 2nd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I'd like to take a moment and let those affected know that they are being thought of. My sister lives in New Orleans. She had to stay here with us for 3 weeks until they opened her town. Luckily, her home was not flooded. I know just from some of the pictures she sent me that I would never wish a disaster like that on my worst enemy.

Am I The Only One?

Let me start off by saying I am the farthest thing from a genius or a know-it-all. I would consider myself an average woman of average age living an average life. I wouldn't make it past $25,000 for sure on Who Wants To Be A Millionare and although I must say I am pretty good at Wheel of Fortune, I wouldn't try Jeopardy to save my life. I love learning, especially useful things that I can use every once in a while.

Some of my favorite down times are spent browsing the internet, watching DIY, Discovery type and game shows or reading. I'm not sure that this is such a good thing. I think I have to much information in my head. It's not ALL useless but some of it is really off the wall. I wonder if all of this "stuff" is crowding out the important knowledge that I am supposed to know like multiplying fractions or remembering a doctors appointment. I have a REALLY hard time remembering peoples names or sometimes that I even ever met them.

In an attempt to free myself of some of this "stuff", I have decided to write a blog. I plan on writing about all of the silly tidbits and thoughts that just pop into my head out of the blue for no apparent reason. Maybe this will make room for some real knowledge. LOL

Maybe, hopefully, somebody will come along, read this and have an "a-ha!" moment. Maybe you can even find something useful here. Maybe your brain needs a flushing as well? Feel free to share your tidbits too.