Here’s another helpful article from Sandra on getting ready for the holidays. If you love these tips, be sure to pick up her Holiday Entertaining guide too.

It’s the second week of November already! Yikes! Where has this year gone to?

If you’re like many women, you’re beginning to feel a little panic as you look at the calendar and realize there are only a few weeks until Thanksgiving and then a few more until Christmas! Anxiety comes as your mind reviews the many tasks (and few hours) that lie ahead. More apprehension settles in if you’re concerned about having enough money to do all the things you’d like, and still be able to keep up with the bills!

Well, don’t panic! I’m a practical person who operates well with lists, so grab a pen and paper and let’s make a plan.

*First, write the dates on your calendar of every event, program, party and family gathering you expect to attend. If you plan to bring food or gifts, write those down too.
*Write in when your bills are due, and promise to pay them on time.
*Determine your holiday budget and promise not to go one penny over it.
*Make a list of who you will give gifts to, and what you’d like to give them.
*Plan your menus now.
*Do as much grocery shopping now as you can. Cook and bake ahead as much as you can. It’s not too early to start!
*Buy or make as many gifts ahead as you can, get them wrapped, labeled and hidden.
*Buy, make, write or print out any Christmas cards you want to send.
*As soon as Thanksgiving is over, go through your Christmas decorations to purge, add or revive
*Get my new e-book to help you with all the details
*Remember to keep things simple
*Plan now to enjoy the holidays!

Be sure to pick up your copy of Stress Free Holiday Entertaining for some tips to help you breeze through the Holidays and enjoy your family and friends!

As the weather gets colder in the month of November it is time to put away falls fashions and think about your home. When the weather gets cold, heating your home accounts for the most amount of money spent on energy bills. Here are some tips to make sure your house stays warm, while still staying on budget.

1.) Seal leaks around windows and doors. If you can prevent cold air from coming into your home, it will greatly reduce your energy bill. Go through your home and check to see if air can get into your home from cracks or leaks around windows and doors. If you can feel a draft, fill these leaks with caulk from your local hardware store. Also make sure to put weather-stripping along the door frame. Another cheap way to save on heating is to cover windows with shrink wrap. It may not look great but it is sure cheaper than getting new windows!

2.) Let the sun work its magic. The sun is the most basic form of heat. Leave your blinds open when it is sunny, and close them when it gets dark. This allows your home to absorb the heat from the sun. It sounds miniscule but every bit helps when it comes to your energy bill.

3.) Turn down the Thermostat. You do not have to turn the thermostat down all the time, but think about when you would not notice if your home was a few degrees cooler. Turn your thermostat down 5 degrees while you are away, or if you are sleeping. With your flannels on and large winter quilt you will never know the difference. This can save 12% of your cost and at least 100 dollars.

4.) Close the door! Close off doors that are seldom used or not used at all. (Just for the cold weather) Seal off doors with blankets or plastic wrap. This will help keep the warm air inside of your home.

5.) Don’t get too cozy by the fire. A night in front of the fireplace is nice—if you want to pay more for heating. Do not use your fireplace to “help” heat your home or as any heating source. Although it feels warm when you’re sitting directly in front of it, it lets out more heat then gives off. When the fireplace duct is opened all the hot air you paid for goes out the chimney!

Replace furnace filters. Spend a little extra money to change your furnace filter once a month. This will make your furnace run more efficiently.

It’s the dream of many working moms or moms who are faced with the need to go back to work and leave their little ones behind. If you’ve wondered what it takes to be a Full Time WAHM (work at home mom), this email includes a resource to help you in that very direction.

Let’s be clear, working from home takes careful planning, discipline and energy. When you work outside the home, it’s easy to separate work and family life. When you bring the two together, chaos can erupt and there can be a big learning curve to getting it right.

But you can beat that learning curve!

One way to do it is to learn from other moms who have been there, done that. Luckily Just Add Sweat’s “Full Time WAHM Success Blueprint” brings you the success stories of 22 full time work at home moms…and hey, I’m one of those moms.

You’ll learn exactly how they make money, the top 3 techniques they use to grow their business, their biggest mistakes (so you can avoid them!) and what finally brought them to a full time income.

Learn about these 22 amazing ladies and get your copy here.

Not only will they inspire you, but they’ll give you the practical advice you need to become a Full Time WAHM.

If things got a little out of hand last year, here are some tips from Sandra for keeping the budget under control this Christmas…

Paying for the Holidays

In my book and in a previous blog, I mentioned the importance of establishing your Holiday budget. This has always been important, but with this year’s economy, I can’t emphasize this enough!

In an unstable economy, it is dangerous and foolish to acquire debt. Especially now we should be managing our incomes as carefully as we can, and we should be saving for emergencies.

If these things concern you, or if you spent too much money on Christmas last year and don’t want that burden hanging over your head again next year, now is the time to change that!

*Plan where and how you’ll celebrate the Holidays
*Determine to pay your November, December and January bills on time.
*Make your menus and grocery lists.
*Make your gift lists.
*Be realistic with how many people you can bless.
*Be realistic as to how much you’ll spend on each gift.
*Announce to your family and friends any changes you’re making this year.
*NEVER go into debt for gifts!

Be thoughtful and get creative with your gift-giving:

*Shop for bargains.
*Shop e-bay and other on-line discount places.
*Try making some of your own gifts.
*Give coupons for gifts of your time or talents.
*Remember, and teach your children the true meaning of Christmas.
*Practice selflessness, and stop selfishness.

Thanksgiving should be a great time of reflecting on the many things we have to be thankful for!

Christmas should be a beautiful time of remembering the gift God gave us, His Son, Jesus Christ.

New Year’s should be a fun time of recalling triumphs of last year, and making plans for the new year.

These should be happy, peaceful times, not stressful or dreaded. The burden of debt is a real joy-stealer. Decide now not to let debt rob you of your Holiday joy!

Be sure to pick up your copy of Stress Free Holiday Entertaining for some tips to help you breeze through the Holidays and enjoy your family and friends!

So what’s your day like? If it’s anything like mine, it’s always rush, rush, rush and there are more things to do in a day than there is possibly time for. Then dinnertime rolls around and you think, “Oh no…what are we going to have?”

The drive-thru is tempting. It’s fast and easy, but it’s also expensive and downright unhealthy. And although it’s a nice treat once in a while, we can’t do this every single day…or at least we shouldn’t.

And here’s the thing. Mealtime IS important. It’s not only important for adequate nutrition, but it allows our families to bond, is good for our children’s development and allows us to keep up-to-date on what’s happening in our their lives.

In fact, there are studies that show having frequent meals together is one of the biggest factors of vocabulary development in young children. And for older kids, it can actually help reduce the risk of smoking, drinking alcohol and other things we’d really like our kids to stay away from.

But still, what do you do? Deciding to get the family together for dinners every day is often easier said than done. But there is help out there…thank goodness!

Make dinnertime easier, more enjoyable, healthier and save plenty of money with a unique menu planning service called “Dine Without Whine”. You receive a weekly menu with your kid-approved dinners planned for you and a categorized grocery shopping list to make it easy to zoom through the store. It even includes brunch ideas for the weekend and 2 weekly desert recipes.

Take all the guesswork out of your weekly meal planning and grocery shopping by signing up. Everything is delivered directly to your email inbox each and every week. Just print and go!

You can try the first week for only 1 cent…or choose a 3, 6, 12 or lifetime option to save tons of money on your membership.

Forget the stress of getting dinner together and enjoy your time with your family instead.

Go to Dine Without Whine: Click Here

(To republish this content, join the affiliate program)

…for the state of California, that is. Apparently ole CA needs a loan. I heard on the radio that they typically ask for loans each year (is this normal?) but due to the credit lines drying up they are asking for a nice chunk, 7B to be exact, of change to tide them over.

The money is suppose to go for day-to-day operations like the highway patrol and such. That’s pretty scary to think that a loan would have to be made just for day-to-day operations. Ironically it’s CA that initially benefited and probably has ultimately suffered from the whole “buy em’ cheap, fix ‘em up, sell ‘em fast” philosophy behind the housing boom.

I have watched closely shows like Flip that House, Sell this House, Property Ladder, and a cagillion other shows like that on t.v…these newer episodes are quite different from the days when the market could still handle the escalating home prices. Now nearly every show ends with “John and Trish took a gamble and their house is still on the market 5 months and counting”

So, hopefully Arnie will get his loan and his state can stay afloat for another fiscal year; meanwhile, the rest of the world can hope that the “flipping” profession has a revival.

We’ve been talking about the Santa letter business over the past few days and I’m sure you know…

If every kid loves sending letters to Santa, imagine how delighted they’d be to actually RECEIVE a letter from Santa. Of course, Santa is a very busy guy, so he needs helpers to get his letters out and thus, the growing opportunity for starting a Santa Letter Business from home.

The “Just Add Sweat Guide to Start a Santa Letter Business” offers a very good overview with handy tools to break into the business.

The package includes:

• An instantly downloadable and printable e-guide.
• 10 sample letters that you can for your business.
• Spreadsheets to help you track sales, costs and profits.
• Free printable sheets that you can add to the letters you sell.

Format:

Instant download with PDF (Adobe Acrobat Reader), .doc (Microsoft Word), .xls (Microsoft Excel). If you don’t have Microsoft Office, you can easily use Google Docs to open the files and it’s free.

Content:

The guide includes a bunch of topics including -

• How a Santa Letter Business works and what’s involved.
• Who business is suitable for and skills that will come in handy.
• Required and optional equipment and supplies.
• How to get special North Pole postmarks for your letter for added authenticity.
• Understanding and setting yourself apart from the competition.
• Pricing your product.
• Putting together letters that parents and kids will be glad to receive.
• Theme letter ideas (ex. baby’s first birthday, new home, etc.) – plus templates are included with your purchase.
• Business startup checklist.

Extra Stuff:

The guide and all the goodies actually come with lifetime updates, so anytime they update anything, you automatically get the updates without any extra charge.

Thoughts:

The guide itself already covers a decent amount of detail in getting started with the business, but the extra tools like the sample letters and spreadsheets should make it easy for anyone to get started.

Where to Buy:

Click here to visit the Just Add Sweat website and learn more

(Want to republish this review? Join the affiliate program.)

As if we aren’t bombarded enough with political ads during the Voting Season….

Now we’re making movies that, to me, look like long obnoxious political ads! The one saving grace here is that you have to PAY to go see the movie and eventually the previews of the movies will stop airing on t.v. Political ads on your t.v.? Well, we’re stuck with those for now.

I first started seeing ads for An American Carol a few weeks ago and while I chuckled at the digs at Michael Moore (yeah, really can’t stand him), after awhile I just lost interest. I understand the point behind the movie is that there are those in Hollywood who feel that a movie poking fun at Liberals would never be picked up by Hollywood producers/writers and the like because they are, fairly, mostly Liberal.

So let’s make a movie about it! The retaliation? I started seeing previews for “W”…oh Lord, here we go. The preview was filled with scenes of predictable “W” digs…”he’s slow, he’s dumb, he’s a mama’s boy, he’s a daddy’s boy, he makes monkey faces, I feel like kicking his ass.” Did I cover everything? Can’t these people think of anything NEW?

I say send them both a message and don’t see either movie.

A few days ago, we posted an article about starting your own santa letter business. So now you’ve decided to start a Santa Letter Business. You’ve got your kit, ink, stationery and some little goodies for the envelopes (If you don’t have all this ready, grab your guide to get started here).

You’re ready to start processing orders. But, before you settle down and rest, you still have some marketing to do. Even though there is a huge demand for Santa Letters this time of year, you still have to make it easy for people to find you – and get a buzz about your service.

You have three basic options for selling your letters:

Sell them on auction sites like eBay

Why not? This time of year everyone is shopping at eBay. Not only that, but they are searching for keywords like “Santa” and “Christmas” so your letter service stands a good chance of getting exposure. Of course, you’ll want to position yourself to get as many visitors as possible to your auction. You’ll also want to encourage referrals to increase sales.

Create a website where you can sell your letters year-round

This is, of course, another option for selling your Santa Letters. If this is too intimidating to you, there are easy site builder options that you can utilize that make creating a website as easy as creating a Word Document.

Sell the Letters offline via Order Forms

This a great alternative to creating a website. Create order forms and deliver them to local preschools and daycares. If you’re business-savvy you may even consider running your offer as a fundraiser to encourage the preschools to recommend the Santa Letters even more.

Each of these methods has benefits, and they don’t have to be mutually exclusive. You can do all three – set up an online store, sell on eBay, and do a fundraiser at your child’s school by sending home order forms! Why not? Have a wonderful, and profitable Holiday Season!

Author Resource – Nicole Dean is the Publisher of several e-guides online, including the Santa Letter Kit. Grab yours to learn how you can start a Santa Letter Business and make extra money this holiday season.

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