Category: Money matters

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The Job Market

The job market here in the US is finally beginning to revive. The unemployment rate is slowly dropping, but still has a way to go yet. More and more people are looking at who is doing the most hiring. With this in mind, many are going back to school to further degrees, to make the most out of their education.

The medical field is hiring at the fastest rate, more then any other field. From medical billing, Nurses Aides, LPN’s to RN’s, there is a constant demand for more personnel. Over the next few years even more personnel are going to be needed as our population grows. Everyone gets sick from time to time, and managed heath care demands that people have regular check ups to keep people healthy. This helps keep costs down by helping to keep people out of hospitals.

Many of these degrees can be obtained through an online nursing degree program. This makes it easier to work and go to school, while taking care of your home life as well. If you are already an LPN or a paramedic, you can easily move up to the next degree in a relatively short amount of time.

There are many reasons to go back to school. The first and foremost reason is money. Everyone wants to make more money, to have a better lifestyle. Getting a college degree increases your money and it increases your chance at finding a job. Educated workers will have more job opportunities then those with only a high school education. In fact, they already do.

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Gardens

Everyone loves a water garden. Whether it is a small one in a pot, or a large one in your yard, people are just fascinated by the ecosystem you can create with water and plants. Not only are they beautiful but they add a serenity to your garden that you will appreciate.

Making your own water garden in a pot is relatively easy and inexpensive. You have to find the proper container or pot first. It must be sturdy enough to hold a lot of water without collapsing or leaking. Glass, copper or galvanized metal are usually the best. Ceramic will work as well, but you want to stay away from terracotta. Terracotta will leak or just plain give out as it is not strong enough.

Next you will need to choose where you want it (making sure it has plenty of sun) and buy your plants and water garden soil and gravel. Make sure to buy a blooming plant as well, because it will make your water garden really look nice. The water in the garden needs to move to keep mosquito’s from breeding as well. You can click here to see water pumps that are available for just that.

If you are doing a large water garden, there are several things you must take into account. First figure out where in your yard it is safe to dig (ie no underground utility pipes) and then decide how large you want the garden to be. Some can actually be built above ground with wood and flexible liners, these are relatively easy to put together.

You can also make a floating garden, within your water garden, by building floating “decks” to plant your regular garden on. Of course you have to make sure they are wired to stay in one place so they wont damage your water plants, but it makes for a two in one garden and is very beautiful and takes up less space in your yard. That is a bonus for those who have small yards. If you build one of those above ground, it can be drained and moved later one, if you ever change residences as well. Double bonus, because after all that hard work in building and maintaining your garden, you really wouldn’t want to leave it behind if you don’t have to.

Choosing the plants in your water garden is very important. You don’t want to over crowd it and it will need “weeding” or “thinning” from time to time.  Make sure to remove any dead leave or flowers as well on a regular basis. If you don’t you will get too much “compost” at the bottom of the water and it will get choked and can clog the pump.

Most of all, enjoy the work as you do it and the rewards will be well worth it. If you plan everything ahead of time and have all of your supplies handy, you will be finished in no time at all. Good Luck !

 

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Prevention and Protection

Moms are the beginning and the end when it comes to keeping our homes running smoothly. Not only do we take care of balancing the checkbooks, paying the bills, cleaning the house, and raising the kids, we also have to see that our home and family are protected. Protection comes in many different forms, from safety to pest control.

When you buy a new home, you have the obligatory inspection done. They test for everything from water damage, roof leaks and termites. When the report comes back, you decide if you really want the house or not. Ours came back clean but in order to keep it that way, it needed regular maintenance. I saw to it that we are continually protected from infestation by Terminix pest control.  I don’t want my dream home damaged by little bugs.

There are a few things that you can do for some extra prevention:

  • Make sure the soil slopes away from the house
  • Keep plants at least three feet from the house
  • Use plastic sheeting under the house to cover the dirt.
  • Point sprinklers away from the house

You should never have any standing water around the base of the home, as termites need water for survival. Get rid of any dead or dying trees and don’t pile up firewood against the house. You shouldn’t have those anywhere near it in fact. Make sure the base of the house shows about six inches of the concrete foundation all the way around it. Don’t use a lot of mulch around the house, as it breeds termites.

Depending on your area and the regular weather you have there, you might want to make sure there are no large trees too close to the house either. They can be knocked over by storms and you don’t want them to fall on the house. I know that they shade the house and help keep electricity bills down, but in areas with high straight line winds, those trees can be dangerous to your home and your family. Keep the trees well trimmed as well. This way you won’t have to worry about dead branches falling from them.

When you buy a home with a pool and you have small children, you should invest in a safety pool fence. Some of them are removable for those pool parties and such, but they are definitely worth the expense to keep your children safe. In addition to the safety fence, you can put latches or locks at the top of the doors to your home to keep the children from wandering outside. Kids have a tendency to do that the moment you turn your back or use the restroom.

Make sure you have the safety plugs for all of your outlets as well. We all know that children love to stick things into small holes and spaces. We buy them lots of toys teach them to do just that and need to make sure they can’t do it in the wrong space. This goes along with cabinet locks to keep children out of chemicals and such as well. You would be surprised to learn how many children are able to get that Pine-sol bottle open and drink it.

Protecting your home and your family is not very difficult or even expensive if you take simple precautions. Most of it is common sense and easily done on your own without the help of professionals. If you do need a professional to help you, just do your research and you will be fine. I hope this helps you ladies. I know that a lot of it helped me when we first bought our home.

 

 

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Tide pods

Usually I don’t use tide. It is much more expensive than some of the other brands, but I got a coupon for a free package of the pods. I decided I might as well try them and was very happy that I did.

Of course we all know that tide works, but I never realized how much laundry detergent gets wasted when you measure it out yourself. Using the pods, I go through much less detergent and it seems to last forever. It doesn’t have to be Tide, but I would try the pods of any brand if I were you. It will actually save you money.

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Print shop

My brother wants to open a print shop here in town. I think he will do great with it, but he will need a trade printing company to help him start up. He want’s to be able to do all kinds of printing, from businesses to local school sports teams. He can also set up at the local fairs and such to do custom t-shirts and hats.

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Life is looking up

Well our lives are all looking up lately. Things have gotten much easier to deal with work and children wise. Work has been running along smoothly compared to the winter months when things we so crazy. My boss is tremendously happy with things and I received a raise as well as a bonus for outstanding work. That is where the “looking up children wise” comes in. That bonus allowed me to pay off the car and also put some away for a trip (I hope) to Disney. The travel agent I talked to was very helpful about it, but I haven’t committed to it yet. I will I am sure though.

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Work

Well work seems to be drying up everywhere. Everyone I know are either laid off or about to be laid off. This is just rediculous. My online work has dried up almost completely. I only get a few jobs per week now and it is very difficult to make ends meet. If this continues, I will have to break into the kids college funds to pay the bills and that is something I definitely do not want to do. My rainy day, Christmas and emergency funds are almost depleted and we are only in the third month of the year. I am pretty good at managing money, but I am finding it difficult to do so, when there is so little money coming in. I shudder to think about what the rest of the year will be like if we don’t get some kind of reprieve soon. *sigh*

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Unique Wedding Favors

I found some really Unique wedding favors for my friends wedding. There were little candy jar shaped salt and pepper shakers, little bird cages, a Cinderella carriage candle and so many more that it has become really difficult to choose. Some of them are practical things that can be used over and over. This is really cool because it gives the wedding guest a permanent memory that they can see almost daily. Whether it is a wine bottle stopper, stone coasters, salt and pepper shakers or something else. Every time the guest uses it, they recall the wedding and how much fun they had attending.

A lot of the favors are decorative. There are elegant, whimsical, silly, or just plain cute favors that will always bring a smile to the person who takes this favor home with them. I am really in awe at the genius of some of the favors that I have found. Anything that holds candy, is always a good choice. Everyone likes a sweet, and if you fill them with sugarless sweets, even those who are diabetic can enjoy them. You should always show consideration for people who have diabetes when choosing this particular favor. That way, no one feels left out. It is a good practice anyway.

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Bah checks are going to be late

The pay checks are going to be late coming in. Usually they are in by ten am Thursday, but apparently they wont be in until tomorrow. I hate it when that happens. That also means that next weeks check will be late as well. At least there is nothing really pressing that needs to be paid immediately. Nothing I can’t do without anyway. lol I am sure I can get it all together in time for the bills coming in.

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Keeping My Son From Losing His Things

I really love my child, but my son keeps losing his things. Somehow he managed to misplace his jacket at school, and this was not the first time that he did something like this either. He also managed to lose his shoes. How does a person lose their shoes? The answer to that question still escapes me to this day, and it really does not matter because it happened. What I need to do now is focus on trying to prevent him from losing his things. This is starting to get rather expensive!

I sat down and had a long drawn out talk with my son, but we all know how that goes. I am not even sure if he was listening to me. For some reason, kids seem to have this natural ability to tune their parents out. I don’t remember doing this to my parents, but I think I must have. It must be some kind of built in defense mechanism. Then it dawned on me. I needed to start using name labels for kids. This may not prevent my son from losing his things, but it certainly would make it a lot easier to find the items that he keeps losing.

With a label, I would not need to depend on my son to not lose his things. I could handle every single bit of it myself, and all I needed was something as simple as a label. So now it was up to me to find a label that I could use to label everything that my son owned. I had a plan.

Luckily I did not have to look very far. I found stuck on you and labelcity.com. They had a wide assortment of great labels that I could choose from. Now it was only a matter of getting a bunch of labels and adding the everything that my son owned.