Making Money

So a while back I posted about saving money. This time it will be about making some money.

Stay-at-Home-Mommy here and I like trying to contribute to our monthly income in any way that I can. Either through budgeting as low as I can with our groceries while using coupons, or through sites that pay me to take surveys and shop online. I also downloaded an awesome app for my phone that gives me points with every receipt that I submit. Get enough points and you can cash in for real money.

First up, Ebates. I know you have all heard of it and are probably wondering if it's a scam. I can tell you it is not a scam, but they don't always give cash back, it all depends on if your purchases qualify for the program. I shop Amazon a lot and not everything I buy gives me cash back, but every little bit helps and I haven't made a ton with this program yet, but that's ok. Here is my referral link to sign up, we both get a little bonus I believe, it's free and easy:

http://www.ebates.com/rf.do?referrerid=p%2FjhTYBwSY9siiSf3IJ3qQ%3D%3D&eeid=28187

I also make a little money taking surveys online. There are only 2 sites that I do this through and I would only recommend them, and not signing up with any other company. I haven't researched any others enough to recommend them. The first site that I use is Vindale. It is a great survey site and there are a lot of opportunities to make a little money. You can cash out with them once you have earned $30. I've been with them for almost 2 months and have earned a little over $20. The more surveys you take that you are qualified for, the faster you make money. I'm sure if you worked at it and tried to take a couple surveys per day you could earn $30 in no time. If you would like to sign up, I get a little bonus from this, the link is here:

http://tryvindale.com/VigiZUX1

The other survey site that I trust is Inboxdollars. They have lots of opportunites to earn money along with some games you could play, videos you can watch, or emails to click. You don't have to sign up for any of the email offers, just click on the link and you earn some money. Pretty easy stuff. Also, for every survey you are not qualified for you get a "spin" which can be used to earn money or "sweeps" which can be used for entries into their drawings they hold monthly, weekly and daily. My referral link to sign up with them is:
 http://www.inboxdollars.com/?r=ref25844091&s=7 

I think I get a small bonus for every person that signs up as well. 

There are other survey sites you can go to through Inboxdollars and Vindale, but once again, I have not checked them out enough to know if they aren't scams. These 2 sites are legitimate and safe.

The final thing I have been using to help make a little money is an app on my phone called Receipt Hog. It's free to download and pretty easy to use. Just take pictures of your receipts, doesn't have to be from the grocery store, and submit and earn coins that can be used towards Paypal or Amazon rewards. I haven't been using it for very long, but the more receipts you submit, the faster you gain coins.

That's is what I use to make a little extra money. I usually try to qualify for one survey per site per day, but it doesn't always happen and it's not a big deal if I don't take a survey that day. I just go at my own pace and watch my payout grow. Hopefully these can help you and your family make a little extra money that can go towards Christmas or paying off debt.

Remodeling Saga Part 3

Well we finally got some flooring down. Thank goodness, because I was getting really sick of walking on the  nasty concrete. It was quite the adventure putting the flooring down, and we might have even had time to purchase molding/trim if we hadn't FUBAR'ed it all up to begin with.

To start, T took a long weekend from work so that we could try to get our bedroom finished. We had purchased all of the flooring materials a couple of weeks prior so we could be ready to do everything without having to run into town for forgotten material. Unfortunately we had also been talked into buying some stuff that the guy at Home Depot swore we would need for the best possible outcome on our floor. Being new to this whole flooring thing we went along with it and bought what we needed for the room.

The day came to put this liquid underlayment down (it was like quick set concrete). T started pouring out buckets of this stuff and trying to smooth it out before it set and hardened...ha! It became this massive uneven blob on our floor that no amount of smoothing and troweling could level out. Our floor looked and felt worse now than it did before. We both made the decision to say "Screw this" and started chipping it up off the floor. Sadly it came up off the floor faster and easier than it was to put it down. We had wasted an entire day with this stuff and we were no further on our floor. In fact, we were farther behind than when we started because now we had to make sure we got it all up, vacuum again, and scrub again. By the end of that day we were both sore and tired and grumpy and blaming ourselves for having poured that stuff out. Oh well, lesson learned on that part.

The next day, neither one of us was moving very fast. I felt like my legs were ripping to shreds every time I moved. I really understand what people talk about when they mention they had "leg day" now. T finally drank enough coffee to get him going and he began the slow task of putting down the flooring.

T putting in the last piece!

In total it took 2 days to put all of the flooring down, but it looks and feels nice and I can't wait to get the carpet ripped up in the hallway and living room and to put this same type of flooring in there. By the end of the weekend we were both more exhausted than when we started and it took the last bit of energy to put our bed back together that night. I sincerely hope that when we go to do the molding and trim, it won't be such a big ordeal as the flooring was and we won't mess it up. I told T that we always have at least one big oops per project and we will hope this was it.

It's so pretty!

Until next time in the Remodeling Saga!

Yard Sale Finale

So I had my yard sale last weekend. It went really well in fact. And I learned a couple of things from putting one on by myself.

1. Make sure you know some basic Spanish:
Down here a lot of the people are straight out of Mexico and don't speak a lick of English, so I was silently thanking my high school Spanish teachers while I wheeled and dealed prices with all of the people. There were also a lot of people mingling around that were bi-lingual and helped me out with translations when I became really stuck.

2. Have everything set up AT LEAST 30 minutes before your sale:
My mistake was I was almost done, literally unpacking the last box, 10 minutes prior to my sale officially starting and I got hammered with about 30 people all at once. Now I know for next time, to wake up even earlier and set a slightly later start time. This yard sale I woke up at 5 am and my yard sale started at 7:30 am.

3. Have enough tables:
I needed at least one more good sized table in order to not have so much stuff spilling over onto the ground and I was having to use the big huge blue totes flipped over as make shift tables. Surprisingly though, once the first couple of rushes went through I was able to get most everything up onto the tables that I had, so that was a bonus of being super busy all of a sudden.

4. Haggle, haggle, haggle:
I am so glad that my family is really into yard sales and that they would make me haggle for what I wanted to buy, because it came in handy. I also just wanted to make sure I could get rid of as much stuff as possible, that's the whole point of a yard sale!

5. Have some help:
Unfortunately I didn't have a ton of help. My husband helped set up and would come take over when I needed a bathroom break or to feed the baby. It would have been really nice to have had at least one extra person to help set up and man the tables, but we managed just fine with the small yard sale we had.

I had put a goal for myself to make at least $200 from this sale. When all was said and done at the end of the day I had made $215.50! A little over my goal and I was very happy (and tired) to have reached it. The most surprising thing about my sale is that the baby clothes I had for sale hardly sold at all. Yard sales and thrift stores are some of the best places to find baby clothes and items because they aren't in bad shape and some are even brand new. I'm taking the remainder of what didn't sell to the thrift store so it is out of my house for good and it will be nice to have a little extra space in our shed and house, at least for a minute! I would have taken a pretty picture of my yard sale all set up and ready to go, but as I said earlier, that didn't happen and after the first initial rush, I gave up trying to attempt a picture.

Yard Sale Part 1

I decided to hold a yard sale this year. All I can think is what was I thinking?! Also, where did all of this crap come from?

Having moved multiple times in the past several years, 4 times in 4 years, we have accrued a lot of "stuff". With each move, I have tried to weed out by either throwing stuff out or donating, but for some reason it is like a pair of rabbits, and multiplies way faster than I can deal with. The sad thing is that half of our "stuff" is still in Oregon. If we ever get moved back up there I can tell you I will probably be holding another huge yard sale for clearing out all of junk up there.

With having 3 kids now, I am amazed at how much "stuff" they have. I know that my husband and I don't buy many toys for them, and if we do its little hot wheel cars. Small being key. And NOT noisy! The kids have so many toys that they don't even know what to do with all of it. I try to go through some of them when the kids go to bed, but its hard because by that time I'm usually ready for bed also! I have made a small pile of toys. My thinking is that I take out a couple of toys every few days, they won't notice anything missing at all. If you don't have kids, than you won't understand, but those little buggers KNOW what toys they have and will sometimes ask for a toy that broke or got thrown out over a year ago because they want to play with it RIGHT NOW! I play stupid. Seems to be working so far.

One thing I have found helpful with getting ready for this yard sale is that I have started early getting stuff cleaned out and organized and priced, like over a month ago started. That's half the battle right? The only crummy part is that I don't really have many friends and family around that could help me set up, but I'll just force my husband into slave labor...hehe! We have already gone through everything in the house that needed to be re-organized and cleaned out. Still amazed at the amount of stuff that I found we don't need or use anymore. This weekend we will try to tackle the shed and get it cleaned, because it needs it done and try to get rid of the stuff that we don't need or want anymore out of there. Not to mention evicting all of the spiders, scorpions, and cockroaches out of the shed. I just hope that I make enough money to make this endeavor worth my time and energy.

The ultimate goal of this whole yard sale thing is to make enough money to help pay off some debt. Mostly hospital bills from when L was born. Did you know they charge over $20 per pill of ibuprofen?! If I had known that I would have snuck in my own pills. Crazy stuff. I'm just glad I didn't actually have her at the hospital, otherwise the bills probably would have been 3x as high as they are now, even with insurance. The one bill I still haven't gotten is the ambulance ride. Hoping that I met our deductible with everything else that I won't have to pay. Wishful thinking right?!

Anyways, back to the yard sale. I will post updates after I have the darn thing. Wish me luck!

Homemade Banana Bagels

Everyone in the house had been craving bagels, but with us trying to cut back on our budget by only buying the basics, store bought bagels are on the "no-no" list. So I went on my hunt over the internet and Pinterest to try and find a decent bagel recipe that I could throw everything into my bread machine and let it do all of the hard work of mixing and rising. The recipes that I found made the bagels super hard, chewy, and HEAVY. They still tasted good, but with the threat of breaking all of our teeth I decided to do an experiment with a couple of recipes mashed together to form my own version.

I'm really bad about temperature of the water, I just judge it by feel and as long as it is warmer than my hand/wrist I call it good and use that. In practice, I believe that the water is supposed to be around 105 degrees to 110 degrees, whatever the standard is for making bread. For this recipe you will need a fairly large bread machine, or at least one with a 2 lb loaf capacity because this dough rises a lot.

So you basically just add the ingredients listed in order to the machine:

1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups warm water
2 T Honey
1 T Avocado Oil (you can probably use any oil, but I prefer avocado)
2 tsp salt
4 tsp sugar
4 to 5 cups of Bread Flour (depending on how wet the dough looks after its started mixing in the bread machine, I always start with 4 and add more as needed)
1 to 2 tsp Cinnamon (I like cinnamon, so I did 2 and it tastes great!)
1 to 2 bananas (I sliced lengthwise and than cut it up into chunks from there)
2 1/4 tsp yeast

I place the bananas around the edges of the pan. It worked well for me. Also, I always make a little well in the flour for the yeast to sit, not sure if it matters, but it makes me feel better. After you have added the ingredients, turn your machine on to the dough setting and let it go!

Ready to go in the bread machine! Looks yummy already!

Once done, the dough should be fluffy and very sticky, which I would recommend turning the dough out onto a lightly floured surface so you can make your dough rings easier. Pull and roll the dough into 12-13 balls or if you like bigger bagels, 7-8 balls. Roll like you used to with play-doh to make a snake as a child. Try to get your "snake" about 8-9 inches long. Wrap around one hand making sure to have a good 1 inch plus overlap and seal the bagel up into the bagel ring shape.

It's so FLUFFY!

Let the dough rest, covered with a towel to help prevent drying out for 10 minutes. About this time you can start preheating the oven to 425 degrees and getting a pot of water set to boil. Also, highly recommend using parchment paper on the cookie sheets with a thin spray of oil to help the bagels not stick to them. Boil the bagels on each side for 15-30 seconds and than take them out to dry before placing on the cookie sheet. Make sure there is enough room in your pot of water for them to float free, like the picture below.

Boiling away!

Bake them 10 mins, than rotate the sheet around and bake another 5-10 minutes, or until golden brown on top. This amount of dough should make anywhere from 8 big bagels to 12 or 13 small to medium bagels. It's up to you how large you want them.

This batch had 13 bagels, but the kids love them fresh out of the oven after they have cooled off a bit and gobbled them up!

You could also make this same recipe with blueberries. They are so yummy and I reduced the cinnamon for the blueberry recipe to 1 tsp, but you can keep it at 2 tsp if you like the cinnamon stronger. 

And that is about it! Enjoy! 

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5 Tips for First-Time Moms

Just had my third baby in May. (You can read about that adventure here.) Needless to say, I have had, I think, a wide variety of different birthing experiences. From being induced early because of high blood pressure with my first, "Sunny-Side-Up" with my second, to not even making it out of the house with my third. The one major kind of birth I did not experience, thankfully because I've had enough surgeries, was a c-section.

I know this doesn't make me an expert on the subject, but I feel like I have some advice for new moms pregnant with their first child.

1. Sleep now, while you can!

I know this piece of advice is practically shoved down first-time moms throats, but it is a good one. With three kids now, I don't get more than 5 hours of sleep at night, and that is only if I'm lucky. One or more is usually up and not wanting to sleep. I also understand that once your pregnancy gets down to the end it is almost impossible to sleep because of being so big and uncomfortable. Insomnia seems to be the boss with a lot of pregnant women, I know I was no exception. If you can, try to catch a catnap or two during the day or week. The more sleep and rest you get the better for when you are in labor and can't sleep or rest! Don't worry about the dishes or laundry getting done, have the hubby or your significant other do them for a change. Let go of the control so you can get some rest.

2. Drink plenty of fluids

Another piece of advice that I hated because you already have to pee every 5 seconds, this will only make it worse! But trust me on this, you do not want to be dehydrated while pregnant. All kinds of bad things happen. And don't drink a lot of soda or caffeine (it only makes dehydration worse). They are tasty at the time, but your body may not like you later for it. Water is good for you and baby, just have to keep reminding yourself that you are water boarding yourself for the baby.

3. Don't over do it!

As a new mom, the excitement of setting up the nursery, washing all of the baby laundry, and sometimes even painting and remodeling the nursery can all be attributed to "nesting". This is all good for you as long as you don't try to do everything in one weekend. If you do it could come back to bite you in the ass later in the form of pre-term labor or just really bad Braxton Hicks contractions. Let other people help you! And don't do what I did with my second pregnancy and move twice! Although we didn't have a choice at the time, I sure wish I had asked for more help at the time. I hurt so bad for a week after each move. Don't be like me! If you have family or friends that have offered to help clean or set-up the nursery with you, don't hesitate to cash in on it!

4. Freezer meals=Life savers!

Who really wants to cook right after they have had a baby? Not me! I tried to prepare ahead of time, things that I could throw into the crock pot or oven really easily and that would still be really healthy and tasty for the whole family. I was lucky with my last two pregnancies that I had my mom and grandmother down from Oregon to help out so I didn't have to do too much cooking or cleaning while they were here. It helped a lot and they made sure the fridge and freezer were stocked with foods we could just throw in the microwave or oven and reheat for a quick meal. When you are in the trenches with a newborn, cooking and eating take a back seat and it's hard to get up the energy to even take a shower, let alone cook a meal for your family. So do yourself a favor and prepare some food now so you won't be starving later on.

5. Relax

The last piece of advice is to just relax. Your body knows what it's doing most of the time when it comes to pregnancy and labor so don't stress too much. Sometimes nature takes over and you don't have to worry about anything except trying to get to the hospital on time. When the contractions do start, don't fight them. The pain sucks, but try to keep in mind why you are in pain, and the prize that will await you when you are done pushing. So when you are having a contraction try to breathe deeply and slowly and relax, don't tense up. This advice really helped me with my last birth, maybe a little too well, but everything worked out for the best so no big deal.

That's it. That's my advice. It's not much, but as a new pregnant mommies are bombarded by advice all day long, so I figured I would keep my list short and to the point. Hopefully it helped, or at least gave you some ideas on how to deal with first time pregnancy, or even your second or third! I know I constantly read articles throughout all of my pregnancies and it is fun to see the different ideas other people have. Just remember, that every person is different and so is every pregnancy. What works for one may not work for another, but having extra ideas is a great start.

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The End of an Era

Now that I am going into the second month with my third baby, L, I am beginning to have a lot of mixed emotions. On one hand I am very happy to be done with being pregnant and going through labor and all of the mess and pain that comes with it. But on the other hand, I am sad because I know I won't have anymore squishy newborns to cuddle and rock to sleep and nurse.

I will be turning 30 years old this year and it is really hard to believe that I am completely done with having kids. My mind is continually battling my heart for my emotions and thoughts on this subject and it is really hard to tell who is winning some days. I love being a mom to my three babies, but it is very hard watching them grow up and become more and more independent. A part of me would love to have more babies, but a stronger part of me says "Hell no!" Thankfully, the sane part of my brain wins the argument, but the heartache of being done is still there and probably will be for awhile.

The more independent my kids become, the less they need their mommy. It is one of those horrible catch-22's where you want your child to grow up and be successful and not need you, but you also don't want them to grow up and still need you for everything. Knowing that they are able to conquer more tasks each day means that you are doing your job as a parent right, but breaks your heart in the process.

My oldest son just turned 4 years old and is finally potty training (I know he's older than normal, but what is "normal" anyway?!). Watching him grow into this little person who can do these simple tasks already is so awesome for a parent to see! I am so proud of him for the person he is becoming and yet sad that he is growing up so fast. It feels like he was L's size just yesterday, and I was a brand new mommy with no freaking clue as to what I was doing. Now I'm handling 3 kids on my own when Daddy is at work with hardly any problem and drinking lots of coffee to keep up at times!

Parents grow right along with their children and don't even know it is happening. I think we only realize how much we change after our kids hit certain milestones in their lives. It is at those times that we look around and go, "Holy crap, I taught them that! Guess I haven't screwed them up as bad as I thought!" Because, let's face it, that is one of the biggest fears a parent has with their kids. I know that it is one of mine.

The end of this era means that I, and my husband, are now moving into a new and exciting time when soon we won't have to worry about diapers, but instead sports practice or music lessons along with school and hopefully 4-H. It is exciting for us to think about, but scary at the same time. Once again, it is a an era that we are not familiar with and are just so positive that we are going to ruin something with our kids that I think we will have to remind ourselves to stop and enjoy the moment before it is lost to the next era.

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