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Frugal Friday Link up--5 Uses for Sugar

Good Friday to all...and today is Good Friday!

It's been a good week. We've been using foods from the freezer and cabinets for our meals. We splurged Tuesday evening and ate at church for family fun bingo night. There were free rootbeer floats.
We are preparing for Easter dinner. Steve bought a huge ham awhile back when they were on sale for $1 a pound. We are delegating the other foods for the meal to other family members. I bought a couple bags of candy on sale and using a coupon. My oldest daughter will provide most of the other candy to stuff the plastic eggs.
I do look forward to a great family day in celebration of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus.

I've been gifted with a LOT of nylon netting. I'm working at getting it all cut and made in to dish scrubbies. Also, I am working away at getting all my coupons cut and in order. I really must stop allowing myself to get behind in this. I can't save if I don't know there is a coupon, or if I do know, I can't find it!

Today I am sharing 5 uses for sugar from the 99 Cent Solutions book:

1. Scrub on a healthy glow. Mix 1/4 cup olive oil with 1/4 cup granulated sugar and use it like soap in the shower. Scrub your arms, legs, shoulders, and gently your face. Rinse well, pat dry, and moisturize. Feel like you just came out of a salon or just returned from a beach vacation. (This same mix will also safely scrub oil or paint off your hands.)

2. Get rid of roaches. Instead of using toxic chemicals (especially if you have children or pets in the house), mix half sugar and half baking soda and scatter this in corners and behind cabinets. This is non-toxic, but poison to the roaches. The sugar will attract them to eat it, and the baking soda will kill them. Repeat until the roaches are gone.

3.Cure a chile burn. The chemical that burns in chiles is capsaicin, which bods to the pain receptors in your tongue. All the cold water in the world isn't going to fix it. Next time the food is too spicy hot for you, take a spoonful of sugar and eat it instead. Sugar breaks the bonds right away.

4. Keep cheese fresher. Put a few sugar cubes in the sealed bag of hard cheese. The sugar helps prevent mold from forming. This also works with cake or a loaf of pumpkin bread. Just add a few sugar cubes to the container and it will take moist for days longer.

5. Prevent killer worms in your garden. A 250 sq. ft. garden takes a 5 lb bag of sugar. Spread the sugar over the soil in the spring while preparing the ground. This will prevent the nematode worms from ever getting started in your garden. Nematode worms are microscopic parasites that attack roots, destroying the plants and all your hard work.

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Squidoo Hopping--Linking Zazzle

Good Thursday to all!  Today I want to talk about linking zazzle into our lenses.
If you were following my blog posts a few months ago, you would have seen where I asked how others were highlighting one of their zazzle products at a time.  Zazzle doesn't allow you to right click and save images.
I wanted to make a lens highlighting the postage I had created.  The answers that I got was to print screen, then edit that down to just the stamp.  That is what I did, then linked the photo to my product.

Thanks to Virginia's updating challenge, I learned that there is a link button under the product picture.  When you click that you set up the code and put that into the html box in the text module or guestbook module etc.  Is this new??  I'm thinking it has to be pretty new, or other webmasters would have told me to do this when I was asking way back when.

I have completely re-done my zazzle postage lens (which I will link up in the linky) as well as I am having a blast searching zazzle for products related to each lens and adding that to the guestbook.

I would have had no idea at all that doing so automatically puts in our associate code, so if someone sees that design and loves it----and clicks over from the image that we receive a referral fee---even if it's not our own product.

Quoting from Virginia's lens "Zazzle products - Don't put them in the Zazzle module, as that doesn't pay directly to the lensmaster. If you are a Zazzle affiliate, you can paste in their link and html into text modules. This is how I illustrate quite a few of my lenses. It benefits the Zazzle artist when something sells, and I get a referral fee (on Zazzle)."   If you haven't already, please check out Virginia's lens Easy Updates for Squidoo Lenses.   I now have a whole list of things I can do to update lenses!  Thanks so much to Virginia for putting this lens together. 

In other news from me----The 3 lenses that I did the update challenge with are all up in tier 3!  I've not done any more updating to them, but will.  I still have several things from her suggestions that can be done.
I've been updating lenses here and there.  As I update each one, I am getting that page into my alphabetized notebook.
I started building a new lens last night.  It got to be 1:30 in the morning and I still had several things to put in.  I did go ahead and publish it even though I know I shouldn't have unfinished.  I do hope to finish it today, although this is a busy day away from home for me (including my daughter being interviewed for the newspaper with the youth that went to England.)    Hey! speaking of England and zazzle, I have been working some on making some of her photos from England into products.  I have several more photos to get put into zazzle and then to make them into several different products.  But, using one of the codes here in my lens, I'm sharing one of the products I made:
 

Double Decker Bus Puzzle by marsha32
See other jigsaw puzzles

I could spend all day in nothing but squidoo with all the building and updating that I want to do! I do hope to see many of you link up this week :) Thanks so much for following along.

WIP Wednesday--Time To Get Back to Work

I'm kind of ashamed to say that I have not sat behind my sewing machine since March 19, the day before my daughter left for England.

My biggest WIP since has been working on re-organizing the house.  I have a long way to go on that, but things are getting back to where they belong instead of shoved here and there.

Here is the picture of the scrappy quilt top that I am done with for sewing club at church.  I didn't make it to get it posted for TGIFF.  We should meet for sewing club next Tuesday and I plan on working on what I can to finish the quilt. 

 For the Granny a Day Challenge, this is actually done through day 97--April 6, 2012.  I just thought I needed to finish up a row.    My plan from here on out is to share every 2 weeks on the progress instead of weekly.  This way there will be much more to notice on progress.

Finally for this week's post, I am starting on a new WIP.  My daughter came over and brought me 3 huge pieces of netting for me to make scrubbies.  It's time to get it cut and get to working on making those scrubbies!  I already had some other colors bought and nothing started.  Wish me luck in the cutting venture.  I have already started working on it since taking this photos of piles on netting.

I am linking up with the following blogs:
 

Homeschool Journal--More Pictures from England!

It still feels like a whirlwind since picking Jasmine up at the airport last Wednesday evening.  The public school here was still on spring break.  We didn't have any intention of getting back to book work anyway.  She was full of stories to tell us of her adventures and things she learned.  She still thinks of something each day  :)

I need to do some figuring in her time book.  How many hours per day of history do I want to count?  She tells me lots because they were go go go go from the time they got up in the morning until they went to bed at night.   I'm thinking 7 hours per day will be good.  I will also be adding PE time to the books for all the walking that they did.

Today I am sharing a few of the 139 photos she took with my camera while away.  I hope you enjoy them.

 

April Earnings Goal

I have wasted 2 hours this evening attempting to post this over on gather.  I decided to post it to my blog instead  :)


I never got around to sharing my February earnings and had planned on sharing February along with March's earnings.  I'm not going to go into detail about either month, but feel free to ask if you would like to know.

If you remember in January I had my best month for earning in a very long time with a total of $313.31 earned for the month.  This included $50 pay for cleaning my church.
Well, I'm sad to report that February and March earnings combined was only $258.70.   wow...that's sad!  This includes $80 for cleaning my church.

There are a a couple of reasons---one being that my life has been chaos with things going on, lots that took me away from home and away from the computer.  Two being that my computer is suffering with issues of the pop-unders and slowness.

My goal this month is to either redeem or receive pay every single day of the month.  If I have tracked it as a redemption and get paid, I don't plan to count the day that I receive it, but will if that becomes necessary to meet my goal of daily.  I will also being counting any days that I get an order through my etsy store, half.com, etc in on the goal as well.

I am starting out here on April 1 with a redemption of $3.20 paypal with easyhits4U.

Wish me luck!

Frugal Friday Link Up---4 Uses for Spices

As many of you know, my daughter, Jasmine is now home from England. Amazingly enough she came home with over half the money my husband and I sent with her for spending money. She was helped a bit by some giving her money spending money at the airport. She converted that to Euros before using the Visa gift card.
She's kind of been on a spending spree with her card since being home though. It's been mostly for the family though and not for herself. We are struggling financially (don't ask--hubby needs a money counselor!) so she took us out to eat at Arby's as well as bought some groceries. Hopefully we can squeak out some money from today's paycheck for groceries. I've been working at getting my coupons cut and in to my binder. Something I've not done for about 6 weeks. I have my work cut out for me once again. I can't save though if I don't know what I have, or if I know there is a coupon out, I can't find it!

Let's move on to sharing from the 99 Cent Solutions book. This week it's 4 uses for different spices. If you try these, be on the lookout at your dollar stores as most carry the spices very cheaply.

1. Discourage insects. The pungent fragrances that humans so enjoy are the same scents that make bugs scurry for cover. Keep ants and other insects out of your flour and sugar by putting a bay leaf into the container. Put apple-pie spice into a small squares of fabric and tie it tightly with a string. Hand this easy sachet in moist places such as under the sink and behind the washer to discourage silverfish.

2. Keep thermoses and storage jars fresh. Drop a whole clove into the bottom of a container that you usually store closed. This will eliminate the stale smell from it being closed. Just remember to discard the clove before filling the thermos.

3. Take care of those smelly sneakers. Crumble up a bit of dried sage into each show before putting it on. Sage is not only gently fragrant, but it actually kills the bacteria that make those shoes smell so bad. Shake out the flecks at night, and add a new leaf the next day. (This is a must try at our house!)

4. Keep your dark hair glossy. If you have black, brown, or chestnut colored hair, you can keep it glossy by using a weekly herbal tea rinse. In three cups of boiling water, steep 1 teaspoon each of dried rosemary, sage, and allspice, along with 1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves. Strain through a paper towel or a coffee filter and let it cool. Use this as your final rinse after washing your hair.

Squidoo Hopping--Updating Challenge Lenses Revealed

Good Thursday morning to all!  It's the day that I can reveal the 3 lenses that I chose to update with VAllains Updating Challenge.

I want to thank Virginia for putting the challenge out there.  For those of you who read this post each week, you know I've been in a slump for about a month or so as far as squidoo goes.  Her experiment not only prompted me to get to some updating, but I also learned some things along the way.  It's also prompted me to get to updating other lenses as well.  Two of those I am sharing in the linky below.

Here are the 3 lenses, along with starting and ending lensrank, that I chose for the experiment:

Empty Promises by Ann Rule  
Started out with a rank of 211,286, went to 77,136 after the first update, 72,789 after the second update, and has ended with a rank of 79,142 the day after the 3rd update.

Summer Sisters by Judy Blume    Started out with a rank of 222,549, went to 93,472 after the first update, 100,085 after the second update, and has ended with a rank of 105,081 the day after the 3rd update.

Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume    Started out with a rank of 241,734, went to 93,471 after the first update, 92,446 after the second update, and has ended with a rank of 92,935 the day after the 3rd update.

I'm impressed with the fact that they rise just with updates and no promoting.  Hopefully you will take the time to visit them now for a little more of a boost for me?  Thanks!  I have plenty more updates that can be done to the lenses and I intend to try to do some updating still every 3 days with these 3 until I've exhausted my list of update ideas.

That's my report for this week---I hope to see lots of you link up--keep me hopping on squidoo!

WIP Wednesday 3/28/12--Lots of Sewing!

I did lots of sewing this past week!  I finished up the last 2 walker bags for the community project with quilt guild.  I turned those in at guild Monday.  Our guild has made a total of about 60 bags and the cancer project is in awe.

I also finished up the scrappy quilt top for sewing club at church.  I plan to share a photo of it in the TGIFF post this week.  If you remember, my camera is with my daughter in England so I wasn't able to take any pictures this last week.  Actually, right now she is just under 3 hours from landing in the Houston airport, where they will catch another plane in to Wichita and be home---today!  I'm so anxious to get her home and hear all about the trip.  Only communication for 8 days has been status and pictures on the youth ministers facebook page.

My only picture this week is my progress in the Granny a Day 2012 challenge.  I am worked ahead....I can't help it!  I actually would like to finish the blanket now that I have a good start on it.  This picture is up to today, March 28, 2012---Day 88.

 If you want to see the scrappy quilt top complete, be on the look out for my Friday post.  Hopefully she's not lost my camera while she was away!  I hope she has tons of pictures from England on that memory card.

I am linking up with the following blogs: