http://www.livingonadime.com/
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My 6 year old daughter has been showing signs of FM for about 9 months now.

I have both CFS and FM and I do believe that at least CFS is genetic. My mom, brother and I came down with CFS but the exchange students who were living with us didn’t. Mom and my brother don’t have FM.

Anyway, she has been very tired, falling asleep just after taking an hour nap.

Always “taking a little rest” as she calls it and just comes in after playing just for a few minutes.

Very sensitive to heat. It’s been cool the last couple of days after horrid heat and she is doing so much better!

Today I was giving her a love pat on the buns and accidentally missed and got her lower back. She about went through the roof with pain and I barely tapped her.
Every time I would help her up to help me bake she would would yell, “mom your hurting me!” when I would pick her up under the arms.

That got me to thinking because the very same places almost puts me in tears when it gets bumped or hit.

I then tested all the trigger points and some that weren’t. (I didn’t tell her that was what I was doing.)Every trigger point she said hurt and the others didn’t.

When she first started getting really tired about 9 months ago I took her to the doc and they did a bunch of blood work. They tested for anemia and diabetes and a couple of other things.

He just said “it’s a growing spurt” I said I’ve never heard of kids having a 9 month growing spurt he said “yeah it happens all the time”. (I’m really starting to dislike doctors)

She loves to be active but when we go on family bike rides she has to “rest” every couple of blocks.

She has also had these horrible dark circles under her eyes since she was 1 1/2. I have taken her to many doctors countless times trying to get it figured out. They kept telling me was just allergies. The problem was she was doing this in the winter when there weren’t any allergies and when she is on allergy meds. According to her tests she is just allergic to grass and maple trees, all summer things. I think they are from not sleeping well.

They took out her tonsils and adenoids and it did help some but not much.

It does make me sad. I know it’s not life or death but I know how hard it is to be worn out all the time and want to do things but you just can’t get your body to do it. I hate to have to see her go through that.

On the up side, I have it too so I will be able to fight for her with the docs and the school etc. since I totally understand and know not to give up until I find some cooperative people to help.

Tawra

http://www.livingonadime.com/

http://www.LivingOnADime.com/

We still have some $4 Not Just Beans left. Makes great gifts order them today!
http://www.livingonadime.com/ordering.htm#discount
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At Walmart they had huge cantaloupes for $1.47 each and they were actually ripe!
They tasted so good. I remembered that in one of the frozen fruit mixes I had purchased that they had cantaloupe in it. I decided to try it myself.

I cut it into pieces and froze it on a silpat on a cookie sheet in the freezer. It worked great! I had Mike go get me 5 more and I may have him get me at least 5 more tomorrow. I love cantaloupe but it’s so expensive and it usually is so hard that it tastes like rocks here!

I will be able to maintain my diet better if I have some decent fruit to eat! Tawra

http://www.LivingOnADime.com/

www.LivingOnADime.com

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I knew this to some extent before but as we are working on this organizing book I realize that you aren’t going to be able to save any significant amount of money until you get yourself organized. How can you save money if you can’t ever find anything, are always buying doubles and have a general sense of depression from the state of your house. It’s hard to feel motivated to save when you come home to a mess.

Trust me know! I’m was not born organized. My dad’s side of the family are horrible hoarders. I am not exaggerating when I say they are just like those people you see on TV with these unbelievable houses. My aunt had a refrigerator box in her bedroom for 3 YEARS with poopy diapers, papers for who knows how long and it was full! That was in the middle of the floor with boxes surrounding their bed to the ceiling. (They fell down once on top of my other aunt and uncle when they were visiting while they were sleeping.)There was barely a path to walk through. She has 12 kids now and lives in a 1500 sq. ft. house.

The rest of my dad’s siblings are just as bad and my dad is worse.

I do not come by being organized naturally!

I didn’t realize how much this really mattered. Once you can find things easily then you can know what you have and what you need. You can also wait to find things at yard sales and thrift stores because you know exactly what you are looking for.

If your house is a mess then start by putting up 10 things before lunch and 10 things before dinner.

You could put up 20 by lunch but either way this will help get you started on your way.

I would start in an area that is driving you nuts like a countertop and work on it until it’s done. It really won’t take as long as you think! (About 3 minutes, I’ve timed it!

Tawra

www.LivingOnADime.com

www.LivingOnADime.com

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A tip about shoes.

I have about 6 pairs of shoes so mine are just on a shelf but they do fall down now and then and get mixed up.

I had two colors of the same type of dress shoe. I was forever trying to figure out each Sunday which was which. It took me almost more time to figure out the shoes and make sure I had two the same color then it did to figure out what to wear!

This was a “duh” moment but I got a permanent marker and on the inside sole of each set wrote “Black” or “Blue”. Now all I have to do is glance down and I see right away which two go together.

Tawra

We still have some $4 Not Just Beans left!! Order yours before they’re gone!

http://www.livingonadime.com/ordering.htm
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I have been wanting some new curtains in my dining room/living room. The ones I have are ok but they are a floral print that matches but is different from the floral wallpaper. (did that make sense?

I am trying to streamline everything so it has a cleaner look. It doesn’t look bad but just a little sprucing up would be nice.

I found some drapes at the DAV for $4.98. They are a beige tab top drape. The color looks nice but it kind of sticks out like a sore thumb next to the dark green floral wallpaper.

I am going to try and tea dye them and see if a darker shade will blend in better.

If you haven’t ever tea dyed it is very easy. Just get a bunch of tea bags. I used about 30 or 40 for the 2 drapes. Steep them in some water until you have a VERY strong tea mixture. Then just soak your material in it until you get the desired shade. I like the darker look so I usually leave it overnight.

Crafters also do this on materials to give it an antique or shabby chic look.

This is a very inexpensive way for me to get some new drapes. I saved myself around $30.

Tawra

http://www.LivingOnADime.com/

David has been potty training the last 3 weeks. He’s got the potty part down but not the poop part yet. Well, he doesn’t want to go and so he has been holding it in but screaming the entire time because he doesn’t want to poop on the floor or in his underwear.

He has also been super fussy and whining. He is screaming about everything and literally every minute he is screaming about something else. The sound is like listening to someone scrapping their fingernails on a chalk board all day long.

Now he has decided to hate bugs. Yesterday a moth was in the car and he went nuts! I mean he was just hysterical. I pulled over on the highway and didn’t realize we were on a bridge. I had 6 inches from the edge to try and get him out and then I had to fight to get him out! I got him out and praying that he wouldn’t jerk and hurl himself over the edge of the bridge or that a semi would run into us!

After I realized that he didn’t have a bee stinging him or something I tried putting him in the car and he was literally kicking and screaming so hard that I had to hold him down (in a 6 inch gap in the door)to get him in the car seat. Then he was fighting so hard he got a “rug burn” from the seatbelt. He hasn’t thrown tantrums (yet so this was not normal for him!

I finally got to mom’s house and it took him 15 minutes before he would calm down.

I was just shaking. After we got home he started again thinking there was a moth in the house.

Today he had to go poop again so was screaming about that and then he saw two bugs on the wall and was screaming again. He is just screaming and screaming. I got the bugs killed and then a fly came and started buzzing him and he started again. He kept doing this every 5 minutes. He would not stop screaming.

It has been something like this everyday for the last 4 weeks. I feel like I am on the verge of just collapsing. (I wonder why I can’t get the next book done? The noise is just about to drive me insane. I can’t do anything. I can’t work on the computer, I can’t read, I can’t get any housework done, I can’t sit outside cause it’s over 100, I can’t do anything so I am going crazy just sitting with this 2 year old hanging on me on all day and the other two kids saying “mom” every minute. (That’s not an exaggeration, I timed it one day!) I do get a about 1 hour when he is taking a nap but I have to do orders then and honestly it’s not enough time to calm my nerves.

I am literally shaking by the time Mike gets home from work everyday. Most mornings I am shaking by 8:30 or 9:00 A.M.!! It’s no wonder I’m not feeling well.

Anyway, I say all that to say my hubby is great.
Every night he has helped me pick up so the house is in good order (It’s only the 400sq. ft. of kitchen and living room but still it helps to have it orderly) Well today I was at the end of my rope. Even though I felt like I was going to collapse, I took the older two to Karate because I just couldn’t stay home one minute longer. When I got back he had vacuumed the entire house and picked everything up and the kitchen was spotless! He has also been so good about helping me but I just had to brag!

If you want your husband to help out, ask- don’t nag. Be specific and ask nice (can you vacuum please?) Then when they do help out don’t correct the way they do it. Just let them do it their way. It really doesn’t matter how it’s done, just that it’s done!

Tawra

We are getting low on stock but we still have some $4 Not Just Beans left!!! This would a very inexpensive Christmas present!!

Order today!
http://www.livingonadime.com/ordering.htm#discount
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Toddler bed for $2.50

I found a toddler bed at a yard sale for $5. The mattress had a sheet on it. I took it to my friends house down the street until I could clear out the car from my other finds and get it home. She called me later and said “did you look at that mattress?” I knew better but of course I didn’t.

It was horrible!! It was just shredded. I could have wrapped it in plastic if I needed to but I was going to look for another one until I needed to use it.

I went to another garage sale and found another bed with a nice mattress 3 weeks later and the bed was sturdier. They took $7.50 for it. I figured $12.50 wasn’t too bad for a toddler bed with mattress and 2 sheets. (one from the first bed and this one had a sheet too)

I decided to put the 1st bed in the penny saver paper for $10. The ads are free for stuff under $100.

I sold it for $10 so I ended up just paying $2.50 for a toddler bed. I will probably be able to sell it after I’m done for $10 or $15 too!

I think I am going to go into the toddler bed business. I have probably had 10 calls on that thing in 2 days. I see them all the time at garage sales. Maybe I should stock up and sell them! LOL

Tawra

www.LivingOnADime.com

Most people know our story about paying off 20K in 5 years on 22K annual income. Since then we have had more debt and paid it off/are still paying it off. Here is the rest of the story.

We had our house on the market for 3 years while living in Idaho (from Sept. 1996-Jan. 2001). Mike was working 100 miles from home. He got laid off in Oct. 1999. In Dec. 1999 despite being laid off we paid off the last of the original $20,000 debt we owed.

He looked for a job until April 2000. He couldn’t find one and we couldn’t sell our house. We finally decided to leave and move to Manhattan, Kansas to be closer to my brother 2 ½ hours away in Wichita. We had to just abandon our house and hope that it would sell eventually. (Mom was still living in Idaho and she was trying to sell her house also) Until it sold we had to pay $400 a month for it when we didn’t even live in it. We had to pay for our moving expenses from Idaho which was $2,500 and included deposits for our rental and misc. expenses like that.

We had 2 kids, 1 year old and 2 year old at that point.

We had two house payments then: $400 for our house in Idaho and $500 rent in Kansas. Mike made $9.00 an hour. So, of the $1500 we got a month almost 3/4 was for house payments. We had $600 left for everything else. We did get some WIC for 9 months and put the kids on state medical for a few months but didn’t get any other assistance.

Our house finally sold in 2000 for $12,000 less than we paid for it. We had to write a check to the people who bought it for $8,000. To say it made us sick to our stomachs is an understatement! When mom sold hers she lost $25,000, so it could have been worse.

We survived for a year on $1500 a month and then $1700 a month until Mike got a better paying job in April 2001 at a TV station in Wichita, KS. He was getting $28,000 year then. We were praying very hard that we would be able to find a house to buy so we wouldn’t have to rent again. The 2 rentals that we had from April 2000-April 2001 were horrid! It was so incredibly stressful living in houses that the landlords didn’t take care of that it wasn’t even close to being funny. Our family was also very sick from the mold growing under the crawl spaces in these houses too. In one house, a six inch baseboard fell off the living room wall and the back side was covered edge to edge with black mold.

God was so good. We found a 2 bedroom house in Wichita that was recently remodeled. It was even the exact colors that I wanted on the outside!! It’s funny because God really does give us the desires of our hearts! We didn’t have a down payment and we had $10,500 in debt so we had no clue how we were going to buy it. We soon found out that they had just come out with a new program that helped people get a home for 0% down and roll closing costs into the loan. We were so excited to have our own place again! Moving expenses from Manhattan to Wichita $1,000.

Over the next 2 years, several other large expenses occurred that we didn’t have cash for.

Mike wasn’t sure he wanted to stay in the video business any more so he went through career counseling. $1,200
Our washer and fridge both died in that house. $1,000
Both of the cars needed major repair work in one year. $2,500
When baby #3 was coming along we bought another house and the fridge died in it. $900.00

We got all that paid off ($17,000) in August of 2003 then in Dec. 2003 one of our cars bit the dust!
We were right back in debt again. We bought a used Taurus station wagon on Ebay for $6,000. We had major medical bills after our 3rd child was born in 2003 for $3,000, because he had food allergies that went undiagnosed for a year. We were paying about $300 a month on prescriptions. If it wasn’t for Canada we would have had to pay over $800 here!

We also had to pay cash for all our prescriptions (Thank the Good Lord for Canadian drugs because our insurance doesn’t have prescription coverage.

Recently, Mike tripped and fell and broke a camera borrowed from his work (in July 2005) and has to pay for a new one. $5,200. We are going to see if this could be a business expenses for his video business since he was using it to try to make a demo for the business. We were frustrated because in trying to increase our income, we ended up in greater debt. Still, we forge on!

We remembered that some lady started a web site about how she was a shopping addict and asked for help paying it off by soliciting donations from site visitors. We thought we should try that by creating a web site called www.SaveUsFromGoingCrazyTryingToPayOffMoreDebt.com. Hey, if that lady can get donations for her $50,000 shopping frenzy, surely people would feel our pain for tripping and falling with a $5000 camera while trying to keep from getting stepped on by a horse. But I digress…
We are currently working on getting those things paid off now.

Our problem hasn’t been overspending; it has been lack of income. There gets to be a point where you can’t save any more and you just have to make more money. Our family has been “under – resourced” as one of our readers put it. We are working on that part!
Anyway, that is the rest of the story.

$17,000 paid off between 2000-2003

$8,000-Loss on house sold in Idaho
$1,200- Mike counseling
$2,500- Moving Expenses to Manhattan, KS
$1,000- More moving expenses to Wichita, KS
$1,900- Washer and 2 Fridges
$2,500- Car Repairs

We paid off 17K on 28K averaged income from 00-03
2000-$16,000
2001-$26,000
2002-$38,000
2003-$34,000
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Averaged $28,500

We didn’t pay off the debt as fast the second time for several reasons.
Our medical expenses did go up around $500-$1500 depending on the year. We also had the baby on special formula that cost over $200 a month for 1 year.

When we moved from Idaho to Kansas our:
Utilities went from $75 to $200 – up $1500 a year
House payment went from $625 to $800-$900 – up $2100-$3300 a year
Food went from $125 to $250 – up $1500 a year

We also have purchased more convenience items because I have been sicker than usual for the last several years. We didn’t buy a lot of convenience stuff, but we did buy more $5 dinner take out from the grocery store and a few things for the house to “make life easier”.

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Our current debt.
This is what we have to pay off now. We are hope that we can pay it off by this time next year. The book should be making a profit by then so it seems reasonable.
$6,000- Most recent car replacement
$3,000-Extra medical bills (June 03-Jan. 05)
$5,000- Mike broke a camera that he was using from work for a personal project.

By the way, in case you’re wondering we haven’t received any income from the book business. I am only able to work a few hours a week on it and books just don’t sell themselves, unfortunately. Since our publisher made a big sale this year we hope by the end of the year to start seeing an income from it.

Anyway, that is the rest of the story.
Tawra

http://www.LivingOnADime.com/

I have been needing some new clothes. I went down one size and so nothing really fit that well. I have one pair of shorts and there’s only about 8 weeks left of summer so I hated to buy new ones.

I also needed some new shirts. All my t-shirts were stained and looking gungy and I only have a couple of “nice” shirts to go to Bible study, baby showers etc.

The same day that I got the valances and pillows for my bedroom I also found me a pair of jean shorts for .99, 3 nice t-shirts for .99 each, 2 dress shirts for $1.98, BJ a church shirt, $1.98 and Mike some pants for $1.98, Dockers even!

I was so happy to finally get some nice shirts for going out and new shirts for home. Even though I wear mostly t-shirts around the house it is still nice to have ones that aren’t stained and all messed up!

That’s one of the ways we save is to try not to buy anything brand new.

Tawra

http://www.LivingOnADime.com/

Get Not Just Beans for $4!!!! Go to http://www.livingonadime.com/ordering.htm
and check out our discount bin!!
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Here’s a few misc. tips.
Tawra

Keep a spray bottle of ammonia near the outside trash can. Spray the trash can after each rain and
it keeps the animals away.

Run your hands under cold water before pressing crispy treats in the pan. The marshmallow
won’t stick to your hands.

To easily remove burnt on food from your skillet, add a drop or two of dish soap and enough
water to cover bottom of pan, and bring to a boil on the stovetop. The skillet is much easier to
clean when cleaned immediately.

Spray plastic containers with nonstick cooking spray before pouring in tomato based sauces.
This prevents stains.

If you have problems opening jars, try using latex dishwashing gloves. They give a non slip grip
that makes opening jars easy.

Potatoes will take food stains off your fingers. Just slice and rub raw potato on the stains and
rinse with water.

To get rid of the itch from a mosquito bite, try applying soap on the area. Instant relief.