Update on the new website and book.

We are still working on figuring out the paid website and trying to finishing the Housekeeping and Organizing book.

It's taking a lot longer than we had thought. We have had major computer problems, set backs, sickness etc.

I think we are going to put the Housekeeping book on the paid site and in e-book form before print form. That way we can get enough money together first so we don't have to take out another loan for printing costs.

I'm not sure how much longer it will be but I just wanted to let everyone know that we are still working on it.

Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

Little Known Facts

I thought everyone would like to know some things about me. Just kind of a get to know you type of fun post.

After high school I went to be an exchange student to Sweeden. I spent the summer in Germany and Holland with friends and then was going to go to college in Sweden with no plans to come back to the States. My CFS relapsed so I had to come home early. I've also been to Switzerland, Austria and Germany when I was 14.

I LOVE Gnomes! I am sure they exist somewhere! :-)

I have always wanted to own an herb farm. (Still hope to someday!) Gardening is my true passion!

English was my worst subject in school and I hated writing! Sometimes my spelling is so bad it takes me 10 minutes to go through words until the spell check finally knows what I'm saying!

I wanted 6 kids before I had them! Wanted 4 after the first two were born and now that #3 is here I'm sure he's trying to kill us! LOL (He sure is cute though!)

I grew up here but I hate Kansas. The people are nice but the weather is horrible! I consider myself a missionary from Colorado. :-) Besides, it's too hot for me to garden here.

All my kids have J middle names and they are all named after family members.

I prefer to be called Tawra Jean or TJ but most people just call me Tawra.

Mike and I were married 6 months after we met.

I am about as Type A as they get! But..... I have learned to just "let it go" for a lot of things!

What I think should be a must read (other than the Bible) Boundaries by Cloud and Townsend.

My Mom and Dad are divorced but Dad lives in Ohio. I love him but haven't seen in years. (yes, there are "issues" he)

I have one brother and yes, we are close. Never, wanted any sisters. That may explain that fact that I always had to be the "Queen" when playing English Royalty imaginary games with my cousins. :-)

My favorite place on Earth. Estes Park, Colorado.

I love to bake AND eat it!

Even though I am working a Housekeeping book with mom I am "housekeeping challenged"! I have had to train myself to keep things picked up.


That's just a few. I will post more another time.
Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

Thanks for the advice.

I really appreciate everyone helping me out with David's chewing habit. I don't think he has low iron but I got some vitamins and started giving them to him just in case. They have a small amount of iron in them and I will have him tested as soon as we get the medical coverage going. (see below)

I also found him a teething ring and he just loves it! I am pretty sure it's just a habit since I have the same problem.



Now..........

How do you get them to go poop? He is potty trained, still wets the bed, but is trained during the day. He just refuses to poop in the toilet. I don't think it ever hurt since he only went twice when we started potty training last Sept and was very excited when he did. He will go in his diaper either during nap or at night so he doesn't have to go in the toilet.

I have let him sleep in his underwear for nap and just wet the bed for the last 4 days. He has pooped since then. We keep putting him on the toilet and he just won't go.

Any suggestions? :-)

Thanks again for taking the time to help!

Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

He did it again!

We were able to find health insurance. We were denied the first time because I have CFS and FM. This time we went through the corporation. Since we are incorporated now they can't deny us. The problem was we thought it was going to be $1500 a month! That was 2/3 of our income!

Well, the guy got back to us this week and it is going to be $389 for Mike and I with a $2500 hospital deductible. We can handle that. There is a program through the state where you can pay lower prices that we are going to put the kids on until we get an income coming in from the business. Then it will be another $400-$500 to add the kids when we add them to ours.

The good thing is that we will have prescription coverage which we didn't have before. We are on $400 worth of prescriptions a month which we have been getting from Canada and samples from the doc.

I am so glad! Even though Mike has been working hard on the website and finishing up his video project we have had major computer problems, sickness etc. and sales have been way down. We were thinking of just waiting on Mike and I for a while but kept seeing things about making sure you have health coverage so I thought maybe God was telling us to go ahead and do it and he will send the money. With me being sick and the "you never know what could happen factor" I think it's a wise choice.

Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

Kids Chores

My kids are always supposed to clean their room. The problem is, their definition of clean and mine are two different things. They do it so so but every couple of months it would get out of control and I would go in and do some deep cleaning. (Like clear out all their "cleaning" under the bed and put it in it's right spot! LOL)

Well, I get so tired of seeing the mess and I know that I could close the door but I hate having doors closed during the day. We have so little light in this house as it is that I don't want to cut out more.

I finally figured out a system to teach them to clean their room.

I wrote it down. Duh!

I was proofreading this organizing and cleaning book by this lady I know (my mom :-), and she told a story about how her son did fine when he had a chore list but then when he was a teenager she didn't do the list any longer. She just figured he knew what to do. When she finally started the list again, she didn't have to fight him doing his chores.

I wrote a very specific list of how I wanted their room cleaned. I also put labels on some of the containers that things go in.
Ex.
Elly's Coloring Books
Elly's Crayons
Elly's Reading Books
Elly's Make-up

Bj's Electrical
Bj's Coloring Books
Bj's Crayons
Bj's Reading Books


For the cleaning list I put:

put up pj's
make bed
hang up clothes
pick up trash
laundry
pick up books
pick up coloring
pick up dolls
pick up electrical
pick up knex



That way they can look at each thing and see exactly what needs to be done. We have been doing this for 2 weeks now and it's working very well. They have to do their list in the morning before they eat or do anything else.

Tawra

Advice Please

I know I've been asking for advice a lot lately but we need some ideas and I knew I could count on my faithful readers to help me come up with something.

My 2 1/2 year old is chewing on everything. He is a very oral child, literally! LOL. He first started sucking on his pillow at night. Then it turned into chewing and he literally chewed up half the pillow! After it sewing it several times and him chewing it up again we took that pillow away and now he's working on another one.

He chewed BJ headphone cord in 1/2, started chewing on his clothes, LOVES gum and last night he was watching the kids play a game on the computer and started chewing on the mouse pad! Mike was there and said "here chew on my finger instead", just joking around, and he started chewing on his finger!

The funny thing is he doesn't suck his thumb and hasn't had a pacifier since he was 4 months old.

He gets it from me. I sucked my thumb for years, chewed my nails until they were raw until I was 19 and if you give me a pen you might as well forget it because the end will gone before you know it! (Drives Michael nuts! He hid pens from me when were first married so he could use some pens that weren't chewed on! LOL)

I do better now. I do realize now that is part of my weight problem. When I stopped biting my fingernails, I started eating instead.

My dad is the way same. I remember he used to go around chewing on rubber piano tubing all the time, non-stop. (My folks used to make player pianos and piano parts).

Anyway, I know it's genetic. Any suggestions of what I could give him to chew on but that he won't choke. I hate to give him a pacifier at 2 1/2. I got a teething ring today but I don't think it's going to go over very well. It's kind of hard and he likes things that are soft and pliable.

I think this is more than just teething for him because he's been doing it for 6 or 8 months now.

I would appreciate ANY advice you could give me!
Tawra

www.LivingOnADime.com

Ask.

I know I'm repeating myself but always ask!

My grocery store marks their milk down to $1 a gallon. When I find it, I stock up and fill the freezer. Well, I always knew that if I went on Monday's it would be marked down but when I went other days, some times it would and some times it wouldn't.

The dairy guy happened to be restocking when I was there last Monday so I asked him when they mark it down. He said on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings and the other days it's afternoons! He told me that he marks it down at 7a.m. on Monday and Friday but he's not sure what time the Wednesday morning person gets it done. He said if I wanted to be sure and get it then to come on Monday and Friday mornings. He also said that they mark it down when it's a week left until the expiration date! That's a lot of time left!

It's defiantly worth a trip down there to stock up the freezer and now I know for sure when to go! Even if I didn't have a freezer it would pay to plan my grocery shopping on those days.

Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

Mom's great find.

My brother decided to wait until after Valentine's Day to get my SIL some flowers. He just couldn't bring himself to pay $40 for 12 roses! Mom went to the grocery store the morning after and they were putting all their arrangements on sale for $2 each!!!

What a deal! She spent $8 and got her a mini rose bush in a really cute bucket, 3 rose arrangments for SIL and herself in equalling 24 roses and an arrangement of carnations for me. They are all so pretty! Yes, it was a splurge but worth it to have fresh flowers all over the house!

Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

House Advice

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions on our house.
We do have a CO detector and it hasn't ever gone off. We can't find any trace of mold anywhere. Not on the window seals, walls, in the crawl space, no where. The downstairs bathroom does sell moldy so I am thinking it must be hiding under the shower if it's there. Mike looked on all 3 walls (one is open to the utility room) and couldn' see any on the inside of the walls.

We lived in one rental house that had horrible mold. When we took off the base molding it was black under it! It was bad!
Anyway.......

We are about to go crazy trying to figure it out. I was down doing and "extra good" cleaning of the kids room and my nose started getting stuffy about 15 minutes after I was in there. I know there is something going on, we just can't figure out what.

The kids have a 4 inch ledge in their room around the wall. We all sleep in the basement. It's a bi-level and the basement is half above and half below ground. I tried taking off the molding to see if there was any leakage from the foundation but it was sealed off so I couldn't see in. We may just cut a hole in the drywall next to get a peek.

I just wanted to update everyone where we are with this.

Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

Our Valentine's Day.

We had a nice Valentine's Day. We started with breakfast with pink pancakes. I was going for red but couldn't get enough food coloring in to make them that bright. I put the batter in a cleaned out mustard bottle and poured the batter out in the shape of hearts. The kids got a kick out of that.

I cut their pb&j's for their lunches with a cookie cutter in the shape of a heart and put a little Valentine card in there for them.

After school they came home to an I Love You balloon ($1 from the dollar store), a box of chocolates ($1), a super cute snowman doll (.30) and a bookmark ( $3) .

Mom came over and gave them a cute Valentine's she made with more candy. She took two white paper heart doilies and put a ribbon through them. Then she put a cute face on the front with some decorations. She filled them with candy and I Love You note.

For the family she got us a box of gummy bears. We all LOVE gummies around here! She got them after Christmas but to hide the Christmas label she cut out a heart and decorated it. Then she glued on top of the Christmas label. I thought that was pretty clever!

Mike bought me 18 multi colored roses at Aldis for $8. They are gorgeous! I had to put them in a vase myself but for the $40 + savings that was fine with me. I don't need any more vases anyway. With the savings Mike and I went out to lunch for a nice lunch for two. ($20) That way we didn't have to get a sitter (David was at Mom's Day Out) and lunch is about 1/2 what the dinner prices are.

I had a really nice dinner planned with sloppy joes cut in heart shapes, red Kool Aid, red applesauce, jello, a yummy heart shaped chocolate dessert and veggies but the kids had their ice cream social at school plus Valentine's party so they were sick of eating and so were Mike and I from our lunch. We ended up not eating any dinner but that was fine with me, we can eat it tonight.

I just thought I would share our Valentine's Day.

Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

Phone Companies.

Here is a tip from one of our readers.
Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com


I'm not trying to advertise here, and I don't work for Vonage, but my brother switched to Vonage (cable) phone service and I could not tell a difference (but we don't speak very often by phone). He apparently has been on it for a long time, has had no problems, was able to transfer his phone number to his new house. He says he has no issues with it whatsoever. All you have to do is to have cable tv service in your house and keep that bill current for it to operate.

For me, cable tv (basic service) is already installed and a necessity with (4) kids and (2) adults at home. Vonage's rates would save me $55.mo over my local service. I currently have an $80 phone bill for services and unlimited long distance (plus free local time too). The drop in my bill would be significant (to $25/mo.). They also offer a $16 plan for people who can live with 500 minutes of service at home. 9-1-1 works perfectly with it too.

Vonage isn't everywhere yet, but it is widely spread and you're hearing more ads for it in the pop media. I can't switch to it today, because it takes up to 2 weeks to get it changed over and I don't want any snags in calls coming to my house with my husband looking for work. When he finds his next job, though, that is the first thing I am going to do! Ironically, we'll save more money when he is making more money!

Check it out: www.vonage.com

Shana

Sick Houses

We think our house is making us sick. Does anyone know how to go about getting an enviromental test done for your house?

I know the companies that try to sell the air cleaners will find something for sure, but from what I understand the home test kits aren't that great. Anyone had to deal with this or have any suggestions?

We have lived here 3 years and we are just constantly sick. The first night we stayed we woke up the next morning and no one could breathe. We thought it was because the lady who sold it to us had 10 cats. We didn't know it when we bought it or we wouldn't have purchased it. She hid it well! Anyway, that day we had a company come out and clean all the vents and it helped some, but not as much as we expected.

We were sleeping upstairs at that time, but now that everyone is down in the basement we can't breathe again.

We have only 2 bedrooms with carpet. Everything else in the house is hardwood or tile.
The a/c broke and was cleaned out when we first moved in. There was mold on a liner that was removed but other than that we haven't been able to see it anywhere else. We have looked inside the ducts in various places, between the floors and in the crawl space behind a stand up shower in the basement and found no sign of mold.

Any suggestions on what we should do? We haven't tried to do anything because we hated this house the minute we moved in and were trying to move but finances prevented it. We would still like to move but it looks like it will be a year or two before we can.

Help!
Tawra
editor@livingonadime.com

Why I'm frugal.

I had another nasty email a couple of weeks ago from a lady asking how I could make my kids wear used clothes. That it's depriving them of expecting more and trying to have higher goals than wearing used clothes from the thrift store. She said I was setting a bad example for them and shouldn't set such low standards.

All those types of emails go straight into the deleted box, but it got me thinking and I wanted to share my thoughts on why we are frugal.

Actually we really have set high standards. It's not a matter of how cheap I can get it but how wisely can I spend the money that God has given us. I just bought a new Land's End coat for BJ at the thrift store for $6.98. It would have cost me $65 in the store. Why should I pay almost $60 more for the same product when I could use that money for something else?

By wisely shopping, we are able to use the money that we saved to pay off debt or give it to charity when we feel led to give. We are able to help people when they are having money problems. I have a friend who was in an abusive marriage and had to have her husband leave fast. She was a SAHM and didn't have a job so we were able to give her some money to get her by for the week. We couldn't do that if we spent it all on the coat.

I don't have a problem with people buying new things, I just think it's best to do it wisely. here's a good example: I love Christopher Banks clothing. I have a hard time finding clothes that I like and that style is one that I love. If I had the money I probably would go and buy myself several pieces but I wouldn't go shopping every week or just buy something new unless I needed it. (BTW, God has been good and given me several CB shirts at the thrift store for $1.98 :-)

The same is true with cars. If you want to buy a new car that's fine but buying a new one every couple of years is just wasting money unless you have major changes like when your family is getting bigger.

I hear people say all the time "I wish I could help so and so, but.....(fill in the blank with whatever money problem they seem to be having at the moment) They would be able to help if they were more wise in their spending.

I personally enjoy giving, so even if we did make $60,000 a year we would still live on less just so that we could give to help others. There are so many people in need that I hate to "waste" money on things when I can get them cheaper.

BTW, as far as the kids are concerned, I think they are learning to set high standards. The other day my daughter came home from school and said how one of her schoolmates is having to raise money so his mom who has cancer can get treatment. Without batting an eye BJ (age 8) said "I will give him all of my money". He had about $50 from his birthday and allowance savings.

That is the very reason we do what we do!

Anyway, I just wanted to share our motivation as to why we want to be good stewards of our money.

Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

We've added some pictures.

We have been experimenting with pictures on the blog and we have added a few to the archived months. (Oct. Nov. and Dec.) We are going to try and get more on as we can.

Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

Roast Recipe

Thanks Roxie for sharing!
Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

Tawra,
I was rereading an article you wrote some time ago about recycling a roast. I wanted to share with you something I do that is a bit different than what you do.

I cook as large a roast as I have in the crock pot. I love how you cook yours with the onion and the mushroom soup. I have done that many times. However I do something a little different that my family really likes.

roast, an onion sliced really thin, salt and pepper and a can of onion soup. Cook on high for 6-8 hours. This is good with mashed potatoes etc. Left over roast is great the next day too. I take some left over roast, the drippings from the roast and make 'beef tips and rice' for my family. I make a flour/fat roux and add enough drippings and water to make 2 cups of liquid. When the roux is thick add the liquid to it all at once. Stir till thick. Serve over hot rice or noodles. (I love the noodles, hubby likes rice)
Another way I do this is to cook the roast with two bell peppers (cut into strips) and a couple of onions. Salt and pepper to taste. NO liquid added..cook on high for several hours. 6-8 Then shred the roast with the peppers and onions..serve on rolls with a little cheese. Delish.....

Tacky Day.

Elly had "Tacky Day" at school and it was so cute. She was one of the "tackiest". I was thinking this would be a great birthday party too!

They wore things that didn't match, backwards and inside out too! Mismatched socks and shoes added the final touches.

I just had to share and added the picture because you couldn't get the full visual without it! LOL

Tawra

Popcorn Balls and Peanut Caramel Popcorn

Popcorn Balls

40 large marshmallows
1/4 cup butter
food coloring (optional)
8 - 10 cups popped popcorn, old maids and hulls removed

Melt marshmallows and butter over low heat. Add food coloring and mix well. Pour popped corn in a large bowl. Place marshmallow mixture over popcorn while stirring. Mix well to coat all of the popped corn. Butter your hands to form the popcorn mixture into balls. Makes 8-10 popcorn balls.


Peanut Caramel Popcorn
(just like Cracker Jacks)

1 cup margarine
2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup light or dark corn syrup
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2-1 cup peanuts
6 qts. popped corn

Melt margarine in large saucepan. Stir in brown sugar, corn syrup and salt. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Boil without stirring for 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in baking soda and vanilla. Gradually pour over popped corn and peanuts. Mix until coated. Makes 6 quarts.

Medical Insuance. Ugh!

Good News:
We are going to be saving on our medical insurance premiums.

Bad News:
We were turned down for insurance because I have CFS and Fibromyaglia. Ugh!

I'm not sure why they turned us down since you can't really treat CFS and FM except with pain meds. We don't have any insurance right now since Mike quit his job. We were planning on buying it ourselves but now they won't accept us (me). We aren't sure what we are going to do. We just incorporated the business and we may be able to buy it through the corporation but it is going to be VERY expensive and now is the slowest time of the year for our business. (Real slow, I'm only shipping about 5 books a week. ;-(

We may try a few other places and see but this is certainly an interesting situation we have now. It will be cool to see how God works this out! :-)

Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com