Since I never do posts on blogging, I thought I’d do one on what I’ve learned in my first year of trying to make Mommies Home.net a success. Here goes nothing…

To start off with, the first month or so of Mommies Home.net was rough. I could track traffic count on one hand, it was rather rough. But I didn’t care about traffic or anything of the sort, just started it so I wouldn’t be bored at home and to see if I could make a little money.

I had a buddy of mine, found her site on the internet, who ran a Mom Money blog. Turned out her husband worked with my husband (small world). She was making good money, so I tried to do as much of what she was doing as possible. It started to work, little by little. Sadly she decided to sell her blog, which then tanked horribly (I should have bought the silly thing, that would have been great!). Anyhow, if you’re out in cyberspace Kristy, thank you for helping me as much as you did.

I got in with all the social networks, but honestly liked Entrecard the best. They brought the most traffic and my subscriber base started to rise, now at around 50. My alexa increased as did my technorati. My google traffic has steadily increased, making me quite happy.

But here’s some things I’ve learned:

1. People are going to get offended or take offense by what you post on your blog. Just deal with it and move on! I have a mom blog and I remember one post where I talked about feeding my kids vegetables and this guy came back saying I was a horrible mother and couldn’t believe I was allowed to keep my children. Ya, so just let it roll off your back.

2. People steal. Ya, it sucks. I’ve had people post the same articles as me within a day of my posts, people who suddenly have the same or eerily similar logos, stuff like that. Whatever, I’m flattered, not happy, but flattered. It’s all copyrighted buddies…

3. If you take a break, so will your money. I do rely on this money as a way to supplement some other money we SHOULD be getting every month but don’t. Seriously, our family needs it and this is how I get it. If I take a day off it’s like taking a day off of work, and I don’t get paid for vacation days.

4. Blogging is sometimes harder than it seems. I’m on this computer at 6 am, while the kiddo takes a nap during the day and at 8 pm every night. I check my e-mail all the time and always have the laptop up and running. It’s only a few hours a day, but sometimes I miss taking a shower or watching TV. It’s easy to let it slide.

5. Read other blogs. I’ve found some wonderful sites that I read daily, these people are to be commended because I’m fairly picky with how I spend my free time (usually because I don’t have any). I always check out sites of whoever comments, that’s how I usually end up subscribing to their blogs.

6. Technology sometimes sucks. We host everything and do everything, as my husband is an IT god. I know, I’m blessed. But honestly, if our cable goes down, so do all of our sites, and readers aren’t to forgiving. It is what it is, but we’re no google:-)

Anyhow, in the past year I’ve learned a ton and call myself a professional blogger because that’s how I make my money. I make it off surveys, pay per clicks and advertising, but writing is what I end up enjoying the most.

Here’s to another great year!!

These, paired with the end of any of the political surveys around, seem to have increased all of my surveys overall, not just from Lightspeed Panel. As I usually say, I love Lightspeed because they payout via PayPal and I get paid the quickest through them.

Others that are doing fairly well are Opinion Outpost and My Survey. You can check all the ones I use out on my Surveys That Pay page!

We’ve also watched our neighbors home, which also has the ADT home security system. They had it set up with an alarm to go off in their basement if there was water leaking. Sure enough, water ended up leaking while they were on vacation, we (and ADT) were alerted in enough time so no damage was done to their basement. These are just a few things to consider for a home security system. Do you have one? Let me know!

They ended up having the ceremony with the kindergarteners and all of first grade, which my daughter didn’t think was too cool. Then all they did was call out all of the award winners names, all at once, and the kids stood up then sat down. Big let down to me, the expectant mom with a video camera in the corner. So many kids were called I couldn’t even film my daughters big smile. I wasn’t expecting them all to get Pinewood derby trophies or something, just give the kids a few seconds to have a moment all their own.

She didn’t know the difference, it was just me trying to live vicariously through her! But still, they could have tried something a little different for the kiddos.

This fruit from west Africa is becoming a big hit with dieters. Instead of getting on something like Leptovox, people are just popping one of these fruits and then slamming salads that end up tasting like doughnuts.

This could be good and bad, as I can see what a danger being hooked to the sugar taste is. I’m a sugar freak with this pregnancy and I swear a diet coke will set me off. If everything tasted like sugar, I just may never stop eating!

So with an hour and a half of sleep, I took him in and it looks like he has an ear infection. Poor little guy. Anyhow, we got the medicine and I guess we are on the road to recovery. Should take a few days for his sleeping to return to normal.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be trying to deck the halls. I’m late at doing this, honestly I usually start on November 1st. I guess this whole “I’m pregnant” thing throws me out of whack. But today it was a seasonal 40 degrees outside, instead of the record breaking 80 degrees we had a few days ago, so my zest for getting into all things holiday got revived…

I’ve been toying with the idea of having a Christmas party as well, or at least a Christmas type dinner. Our neighbors had us over for a little get together last year, and it was actually very nice. We just had some appetizers, like mini quiches, cheese and crackers, some homemade candy, things like that. It was actually very nice. Something like that would be nice.

But honestly I’d love to go caroling. A caroling Christmas party would be so much fun (probably for me, not so much for the rest of my family!). I just have such warm feelings toward Christmas carolers (I know, I’m weird), but I think everyone will be in need or some holiday cheer this year and that kind of party would be great. We could play some cool holiday party games and I’d be even better.

Anyhow, I’m set for the Christmas spirit to fill me. I was listening to that Band Aide’s song “Do They Know It’s Christmas” today and I started bawling, so either I’m set for Christmas or my hormones are way out of control!

I was in the corporate world long enough to be laid off twice. What a wonderful feeling, going from knowing where your next paycheck is coming from to hoping to God that the unemployment check arrives fast enough so you can pay your rent. With today’s economy in the toilet and continuing down the sewer line, let’s go over how to deal with it if you or your partner gets hit with the lay off…

When I got pregnant with my son, I was making bank. Hated my job mind you, but I was making hand over fist cash. BMW in my garage, anything thing I wanted in the house. My husband makes good money, but he’s still a full time student, so we are still waiting for the fruits of his labor to kick in fully. I had decided not to stay home with the kids, I mean, why would I. I have my MBA, I’m a corporate rock star (delusions of grandeur to be covered on another post), I didn’t know if I’d like staying home, but it didn’t seem like a risk I wanted to take. It was just much safer and much more profitable to work.

So I had that in my mind until I was about 7 months pregnant. At that point the motherly instinct kicked in and sobs of “I can’t leave my baby” were heard nightly in our household. So I decided to see if it would be financially feasible.

Of course it wouldn’t be, I was making a majority of the money, there was no way we could go from 3 people living on 2 generous incomes to 4 people living on 1 income. It just would never work. I was wrong.

I ran the numbers. I was a financial analyst, so I actually developed models in Excel about what would need to occur in order to be able to stay home. I worked on these models everyday, surely there had to be a way to make it work, right?

Absolutely, it would just take the desire to stay home to be larger than our desire for “things”.

So what did we have to do?

- We cut out our extracurricular activities, mainly this was karate for my husband. He was so good at it and loved it so much, but he agreed to cut it out, saving us around $300 a month.

- We downgraded cable and our phone service.

- We decreased our eating out to about once a week. Many weeks we don’t eat out at all, but we still leave a little wiggle room.

- We paid off one car. That freed up about $300 a month.

- We downgraded cars. A BMW made my little heart happy, but it sure didn’t make my wallet happy. Repairs on that bad boy were a killer, so we switched for a car that my husband could do the repairs on.

- I learned to cook. Funny, I was 30 and still couldn’t bake a potato in the microwave. So I learned to cook. From what my hubby tells me (told me a few nights ago in fact) I’ve become quite a good cook.

- I’m frugal. I try to make everything I can myself at home, from scratch if possible. It’s the cheapest and healthiest way, overall.

- I refinanced my student loans, freeing up money with the lower monthly loan payments.

- I became a professional grocery shopper. A lot of our monthly income goes towards food, so it’s my job to keep that cost down.

All in all we changed everything. I consider us wasteful before, where as now we are less wasteful with our funds.

It’s possible to stay home and live on one income, trust me, I’ve done it. When I hear people say they can’t, it just drives me nutty. As always, anyone who has any questions or wants advice on this just contact me at Mommies Home.net. I’d love to help in anyway I can!

I know I have kids and all, but there are some things that just creep me out. Funny as it may sound, germs are one. Walking into an elementary school I’m plagued with thoughts of all the kids that put their whole mouth over a water fountain, after puking for no real reason, while they scratch their eye that was sealed shut that morning and is now bright red. Kind of outlandish, I know, but in my head I’m a regular Monk (ya know, from TV).

But there is one thing that creeps me out to no end, that’s head lice. Ok, seriously, icky. Ticks are enough to make me pass out, but head lice, that one just takes the cake for me. Kids can catch it quicker than not. The little buggers lay eggs on your scalp, then eat it! Well, not really eat it, more like drink your blood. Yum, I know.

So how do you treat it? I say that because it’s about as easy to avoid as pink eye for a kid. If someone has it, it’ll make it’s way around. So a head lice treatment is usually a shampoo or lotion to put in the hair that will kill the little buggers. You also have to comb out the eggs (I know, that’s sick). Wash everything, linens and the like, soak hair accessories. You name it, it needs to be debugged.

All I can do is hope my kids don’t end up with it, honestly I think I’d have a nervous breakdown or something! Ahhhh.

I honestly haven’t even thought about potty training my son, now 19 months. I always hear that boys are harder and I have a nephew that is 4 and still doesn’t fully get it. I just figured it would occur sometime in the future.

Well my son has started to do some odd things, namely he’ll tell me when he’s ready to go poop. He’ll grab at his crotch and do a little dance, next thing you know there’s that all to familiar aroma. So now that he’s telling me, should I start training? Here’s what the experts say:

You have to look for certain signs, such as:
Signs your child may be ready (from About.com):

* Your child is staying dry for longer periods of time (often two hours or more). This indicates that her bladder capacity is increasing.
* Your child recognizes when she is in the process of urinating or voiding. If you try to potty train before this time, you’ll likely run into trouble, since your child isn’t really aware of what she’s doing and so is unable to control something she can’t understand.
* Your child is able to easily pull her pants up and down. She may not have had any reason to do so in the past, but luckily, of all the readiness factors, this skill is easily learned.
* Your child can follow simple instructions. There are many steps to using the toilet that we take for granted as adults. For example– go to the bathroom, turn on the light, pull down your pants and underwear, sit on the potty, wipe your bottom, flush the toilet, wash your hands– the list goes on, so this is a very important skill.
* Your child is able to sit and engage in an activity for several minutes without becoming distracted or irritable.
* Your child is walking and running well. Because the urge to potty is often sudden in toddlers, and because a potty isn’t always steps away, it’s important for your child to be able to make it to the toilet before an accident occurs.
* Finally, and perhaps most importantly, your child shows interest and desire. Interest in keeping dry or clean. Interest in wearing “big kid” underwear. Interest in what you’re doing when you go potty and a desire to do what you’re doing.

So out of all of those, my son does most. We bought him a potty chair and I put him on it every so often. He hasn’t done anything in there yet, but he doesn’t mind it really.

So is it too soon? Is he too young? Experts say that they are ready when they are ready, no certain age can tell. I don’t expect anything at all from trying this early. Right now it’s a chance for him to go without a diaper for a while:-)