Category: Life

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Technological Advantages of Children Today

Kids growing up now live in a world where everything is instant or pretty close to it. No longer do they have to rely on things that take up a lot of time. The children of today have many advantages in technology that generations past did not have the benefit of. Microwaves have taken time out of cooking. The internet makes information accessible with the touch of a button. Telephones make communication with people across the world a snap.

Children today are growing up with everything around them happening soo fast.  It’s a wonder we can teach them to have patience at all.

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Children’s Literature Favorites

One of my most favorite books ever growing up as a kid was, Where The Wild Things Are. I remember Max tromping off into the scary woods and dancing with the wild things. I loved how he was dressed up and seemed to fit right in with the rest of the monsters.

I always wondered what had happened to him earlier in the day that led him to go to this far off place where the wild things lived. Did he get into trouble? Did he tell a lie? Was he trying to escape something he didn’t like? He sure had a gigantic imagination to dream up a place like that.

Every kid should have a chance to read that story. It would be a lot of fun to make up your own prequel or sequel to the story to explain what happened before or after to Max and his family. I might even do that with my own kids. I bet they would love to write and illustrate their own stories about Max.

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Best Way To Spend a Long Weekend

With Memorial Day coming up we have a long weekend ahead of us. On long weekends I like to relax with family and friends. We usually have a crock pot breakfast on Saturday morning and then just pass the day with family time. We like to play board and card games. If the weather is nice we’ll go to the park for a picnic or take everyone down to the pool for a nice refreshing swim.

This year we are going to go to the movies on Sunday and then to a barbeque on Monday. It’s a great way to catch up with friends. The barbeque is potluck style. We’re bringing my famous potato salad. The secret is to have one whole hard boiled egg for every potato you use. I never liked potato salad growing up until I had this recipe. Now I bring the potato salad to most every potluck we go to in the summer.

What do you like to do for long weekends? Do you go somewhere to get away from everything? Or, do you like to take it easy and everything at a slow and leisurely pace around home?

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Designing My Dream Home For a Friend

One of my good friends is going to be retiring in the next year. She’s moving to Florida. Her and her husband are trying to decide if they want to buy a home or have one designed specifically for them. They looked up Boca Raton Architects and found a variety of places willing to work with them to make the choices that will be best for them.

It must be really exciting to design your own home. I know if I ever got to design my own home I would have a huge kitchen with space for every appliance I would need. Lots of cupboard space and storage throughout the home.  I hate not having everything have a place of it’s own. Of course I would want a large walk in closet for all of my clothes and shoes. A deluxe bathroom with walk in shower and over-sized, whirlpool bath tub would also be on the list. I would also want a place to entertain in the backyard. I love the new homes with almost a full kitchen built right in the back yard. I wouldn’t go too crazy but I would for sure want a grill, sink, and some type of refrigerator, along with nice counter tops for food preparation.

I’ll have to call Nancy and ask if she needs any help thinking of what she would like to have in her home. I bet I could help her come up with a few luxuries or necessities that she and her husband would love to have in their new home. When it’s finished I’m sure I’ll want to visit all of the time.

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Heading Out for Errands

This morning I just seem to be dragging. I hope I’m not getting sick. Usually I am awake and up making coffee by 7:00 am and ready to go out the door by 8:30am. For some reason I just can’t get myself in gear. Here it is almost 11:00 am and I’m still home looking for my car keys. Well, I guess the rest of the day will just fly by since its already half over!

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Time for the Girl Scout Cookies

samoas
I ordered my Girl Scout cookies a long time ago. I’m pretty sure they said I would have my cookies delivered around Valentine’s Day. I’m really looking forward to getting the cookies. This year I ordered by Thin Mints and Samoas. I actually found a recipe online for a similar Samoa cookie. If my cookies don’t come soon I might be tempted to make up a batch of the copycat Samoa cookies.

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How I Plan to Save Money This Year

This year I really need to work on saving some money.   I started using a new website to track all of my spending.  It shows me exactly where all of our money is going.  I was a little shocked to see how much money we really spend going out to eat or on fast food.  I’m setting a budget for everything.  I know we can’t cut everything off cold turkey so I’m going to have us do a step down method for our spending habits.

Right now we spend about $500 a month of groceries.  I would like to get that down closer to $300 or less but I know we need to work towards that.  To start I’m setting  a budget of $400 a month or roughly $100 a week on groceries.  I think we can manage to cut back by $25 a week to start with easily, especially if I really work to use up what we have in our pantry.  The following month I’ll move it to $75 a week.  If we do really well with that I might even be able to move it down a little further but I’m not going to go crazy.

We’re taking a closer look at television and cable services along with movie rentals.  We purchased a few pay per view movies on demand this month.  This is really silly considering we pay almost $20 a month for Netflix, we just need to send back our current DVD  to get the next one on our list.  My husband and I are thinking about turning off our cable television because just about everything we watch is available online and we do have Netflix.  We pay about $100 a month for cable so that’s more money we could save every month.

I know groceries and entertainment aren’t the only way we can save but at least it’s a start.  I was able to easily identify these ways to save and will do some digging into other ways to save that I might not be soo obvious to me.

 

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Protective Phone Case Saves the Day

Clumsy has got to be my middle name with a big capital C.  I drop everything and run into things all of the time.  

I can’t even count the times I say ouch in one day.  I was coming down the stairs this morning and dropped my phone.  It fell down all of the stairs and beat me to the bottom.  I’m sure it would have been dead if it were not in the fancy, protective, silicone case I got for it.

I’m sooo grateful I spent the extra money on that case.  If I didn’t have it I bet I would be at the store right now paying to replace my phone.

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Honesty is the Best Policy

Today I went out to run a few errands. I stopped off at the bank to deposit a few checks. I always check the amount of a check before I put it in the ATM. For some crazy reason when the check was scanned, the machine read it as being worth ten more dollars than what I thought I was depositing.

I thought it was really strange, so I pressed the button for the machine to return the check. I glanced at the amount again – I was right about the amount and the machine was wrong – and resubmitted it. This time it read the check correctly.  

I’ve always said that honesty is the best policy. I’d hate to steal ten dollars from someone do I quickly fixed the situation.

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Extra Five Pounds

Between my injured leg and all of the  holiday goodies I had over the past two months I’ve put on a good five extra pounds.   I usually exercise more self control with all of the goodies.  This year I just couldn’t help myself.  I baked ten different types of cookies myself.  This doesn’t even include the twenty five different types of cookies we had present at our new annual cookie exchange.

I know tons  of people put on extra weight during this time of year.  Most of them make a new years resolution to lose weight.   I will of course loose the weight but I’m thinking maybe next year I’ll see if I can drop a few extra pounds before Halloween. That way Once the holidays are over with I’ll be right back where I started. Haha!  I know it’s probably not the best way to look at it but it’s still a bit funny to think about.