I am a big fan of free things.  Everything from free samples, to a free month of Internet gets me pretty excited and makes me want to find even more free things.  Call it a disease, but I just can’t get the notion of free things out of my head.

Imagine my surprise when I was setting up my first website that there was such a thing as free hosting!  My jaw just about dropped to the floor and I found myself signing up to the free service that I found.

But it didn’t stop there.  Site after site that I created, I found new free hosting accounts for them.  Before I knew it, I had a little website empire that was completely hosted for free.  Not only did this mean that every dollar coming in was pretty much mine, but with the low expenses I had, I could create more and more of these sites.

Free is my favorite word!

I have been looking recently for some bouncy castles for sale. We have a huge yard and there is nothing that my kids love more than bouncy castles. I spend a lot of money paying for them to play on the one at the park on our block and I thought it would be a good idea to buy one for the yard. I knew that it would save us money in the long run.

A friend of mine told me about a company that rents out inflatable slides and she suggested that I contact them to see if they would be willing to give me information about purchasing some equipment. I talked to the manager of the company, but he would not give me the information that I was looking for. I don’t blame him, as he probably thought that I wanted to go into competition with him.

I eventually found one online and my kids use it every day. The best part is that I don’t have to take them out everyday.

I was hit by a drunk driver several years ago and I had to find out the hard way how the auto insurance companies work.

The accident was in no way my fault but I was hurt, though nothing was broken. If you don’t know what soft tissue damage is, I suggest you do some research. It is a very real thing!

My car insurance company only covered a small amount of expenses and according to Kansas law that was all they had to do since the other driver had insurance. However, it took years before the other insurance company would settle or finally go to trial.

In the end, the trial didn’t not go well for me due to the thing we were and were not allowed to use in court which was completely unfair if you ask me. I also got another insurance company after looking at many other auto insurance quotes.

From my experience, there is nothing worse than getting behind on your bills.  Sure, one month happens once in awhile, but when you get a number of months behind, you might find yourself in a real pickle.

Now, that is exactly what happened to me.  You see, I became really sick and ended up missing six weeks of work while I was in the hospital.  Unfortunately for me, the company that I work for does not have any type of compensation for hospital stays, so the loss of income was a big blow for me.

To make things worse, I was not at home to contact the companies that were looking to be paid, and before I knew it, I found myself in collections.

There was going to be no way for me to catch up on the bills, so I looked into bill consolidation loans as my way out of my problem.  Now, I am just about caught up, and I have learned that I should keep some savings around in case something like this happens again.

Out of all the baby gifts I received, the one that I could not live without, would be the battery powered swing that I got form my sister. That swing basically saved me from mental insanity during those first three months filled with crying and colic.

I would put the baby in the swing and I would try to grab a fifteen minute nap on the chesterfield. To most people, fifteen minutes may seem like no time at all, but to me, those fifteen minutes were what I looked most forward to each day.

The baby was happiest when he was in his swing and that made it the most valuable baby equipment that we owned. In fact, if I know anyone ho is expecting a baby, the best piece of advice that I can give them is to get a swing.

My husband and I are far from wealthy and we do whatever we can to support each other and our three children. The fact that we have to live from paycheck to paycheck is a sad reality, but it is also one that we know we will not escape from anytime in the near future.

For many years, I gave up a lot for my kids. I wore threadbare clothing so that they would have nice stuff for school.

One day, as a birthday present, my best friend took me to a salon for a spa pedicure. I thought that I had died and gone to heaven. The foot massage that I got was out of this world. I left that place felling like a whole new person.

Though we still do not have a lot of money to spare once all of the bills are paid, every other month, I go out and get a spa pedicure. It is the one luxury I afford myself that no one can take away from me.

Since we have been looking into a water softener system for our home, I wanted to share some of my research on what it is and how it can help.

Basically what a water softener does is filter out the hard stuff from you household water. The hard stuff in water is mineral deposits like calcium and magnesium. A water softener system looks much like a hot water tank does but is a little bit smaller. On the inside is a filter made of beads covered with sodium ions. Sounds a little bit sci-fi, huh?

Well those ions attract the mineral deposits from the water as the water flows over the beads so that the hard part of the water is left behind but the soft and clean water flows on through and gets to your pipes and through your faucets.

This prevents build up in your pipes, the tubes in your appliances and the faucets and shower heads in your home which means less repairs over time and better water flow.

I had someone try to place an order using her Blackberry several months ago. It didn’t work quite right and the order didn’t go all the way through.  I hadn’t ever though of using a phone or mobile device to order products from the Internet because I don’t use my own phone to do this.

It has had me thinking though since then and wondering if a site looks the same on a phone as it does on a computer. Are there actually mobile websites that are designed and made specially for this purpose?

Yep, there are. I still don’t know much about it but I did find some information on wap sites.
Apparently a website designed for viewing on a computer screen won’t show up the same way on a mobile device and I’m not too surprised.

Now, I’ll have to figure out if it’s worth adding this type of thing to my own regular website.

Over the past few months, money has been a little tight and my web business has suffered.  You see, I operate a site dedicated to work at home dads on the DotNetNuke platform.  Switching over to that CMS system has been a blessing for my site, with the traffic and sales that are a lot higher than my expectations.  It has been nice to see the site performing as well as it has.

But things haven’t been all rosy.  You see, over the past six months, I have had eight web hosting providers.  There have been a ton of problems with site uptime, and I have even had a couple of hosting companies just disappear.

It got to the point when I was going to pull the plug, but I tried one last DotNetNuke web hosting company, and then my luck changed.  In fact, things have never been better, and if anyone asks me what company I recommend, I recommend the one that I am using.  They just offer simply better hosting.

For the bride, looking her best at her wedding and in the wedding photos is an important thing. Maybe more important than anything else since the photos will likely last several lifetimes. I remember looking back on my grandmother’s wedding photos and thinking that she looked beautiful.
Usually the bride will hire a hair and makeup artist to do her hair and makeup to bring out the best features of the bride on the day of the wedding. Often times, the bride also provides the service to her bridesmaid as a wedding gift for the service of being in the wedding.

Many hair and makeup artists will travel to the hotel or even the wedding location to perform the service shortly before the ceremony but do usually ask for a dry run of the makeup application some days before the actual wedding in order to make sure the bride will get the look she wants.