A Work at Home Mom’s Blog

I love to go camping. I never really discovered how fun it was until this past summer. Now I can’t wait until it gets warm again so I can go back.

I wish I could be a kid again and go to summer camp. That’s something I didn’t do when I was young, and really didn’t have much desire to do. But now that I have experienced the joys of spending time in the great outdoors, I wish I could do some of the organized activities that are offered in summer camp.

Maybe it’s not too late. Lonehollow, one of the fine Texas summer camps, offers programs for families as well as for children. With over 3,000 acres they have a wide variety of activities, from basketball to kayaking to horseback riding. Their cabins are air conditioned and have awesome views. It looks like a great idea for summer vacation!

Maybe in a couple of years we can load up and go. I think it would be a great experience for us as a family. And maybe when Pumpkin gets a little older we can consider sending her for the summer camp for boys and girls. No sense in Mom having all the fun, right?

I’m a big fan of Alice Seba and her Internet Based Moms website. It’s chock full of useful information for work at home parents, as well as those who are considering working from home.

She has recently started offering a free ebook about how to get started working from home. Quick Guide to Being a WAHM discusses various work at home options, and how to choose the one that’s right for you. You can download it at the link above. If you are on a quest to get started working from home, it could prove to be quite helpful.

I’ve never been the type to pay someone to do something that I could feasibly do myself. But I’ve never committed myself to tackling a huge home improvement project either. So most of the improvements that I would like made to my house have so far gone undone.

I have no shortage of home improvement ideas. I would love to paint my living room walls, put new fixtures in the bathrooms, and have more attractive carpet. One area that sorely needs work is my kitchen flooring. If I could talk Hubby into helping and get myself motivated, I believe that we could accomplish most of those things without paying an arm and a leg.

LuxuryHousingTrends.com has some great home improvement ideas on their blog. Maybe one day I can really get into beautifying my home and incorporate some of their featured products.

For those of you who haven’t discovered Firefox yet, let me just say that you are missing out on the most awesome browser ever made. End of story.

I am no stranger to all of the various browsers out there. Back in the earlier days of the Internet, I was a Netscape girl. There wasn’t really a huge difference between it and Internet Explorer, it just had a few features that I liked, so I used it. Then I was without Internet access for several years, and when I got back online with a new computer I used IE because it was there.

I did try Netscape again, but I wasn’t impressed. So I stuck with IE for a while, ignoring all of the security flaws that came with it. Then I heard about Firefox and all of the cool addons you could customize it with, and I decided to give it a try.

The first thing I fell in love with was the themes. I found a killer black and neon blue theme that I could have just stared at a blank page in and been happy. Unfortunately when I upgraded to 2.0 it would no longer work, but by that point I had found all sorts of addons that kept me hooked. Besides your run-of-the-mill toolbars, you can get addons that do just about anything you can imagine. But my favorite thing is the tabs. You don’t have to open a new window for every web page you want to view- you can put each one in a tab in the same browser window. It was hard to get used to at first, but now I just love it so very much.

If you haven’t tried Firefox for yourself, I highly recommend downloading it and giving it a try. It’s free, so you have nothing to lose.

I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at digital cameras online. I tried to look at some at Wal-Mart yesterday, but Hubby was with me. And he’s one of those guys that it is impossible to shop with, so I gave up.

I need something that is compatible with my printer dock, has optical zoom, and will take good quality videos. And I need something that is somewhat reasonably priced. I’ve found a couple that I really like, but the prices are higher than I really want to pay.

So I am still in search mode for the time being. I would like to find something before Pumpkin’s basketball season is over, so I can get some video of her in action. But that’s a few weeks away, so I’m not going to rush myself.

Web 2.0 has brought forth lots of great new things. One of my personal favorites is new ways to make money on the Internet. You can do paid blogging, be a virtual assistant, find freelancing jobs, and much more.

Don’t take my word for it, though. Check out Web Worker Daily’s 10 New Ways to Make Money Online. Some of the ideas require more technical expertise than others, but all are doable from the comfort of your home.

When we moved into the place where we currently live, there was an old, rusty basketball goal next to the end of our driveway, right next to the road. We are in a very rural area, and there’s very little traffic, but if you ask me it’s still a pretty crazy place for a basketball goal. That opinion was made even stronger when I came home yesterday to find that the wind had blown it over. Luckily it didn’t go in the road, but if it had it could have caused a wreck.

It would be nice to have a new one, especially with Pumpkin playing at school. Pro Dunk Hoops has a huge selection of basketball goals to choose from. I would like to get just a backboard and rim and put it on the outside of our storage building. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about it ending up in the road, or about Pumpkin getting in the road when practicing. Or we could put up an in-ground goal somewhere in the same area if that wouldn’t work out. That would actually be better, because some of the freestanding ones are adjustable, and that’s a must when you’ve got a little one playing. And the Pro Dunk site has some high-quality products, so she would get to use it as she grows.

Having a good basketball goal in a good location would be great for our whole family. Basketball is one of the few sports that Hubby, Pumpkin and I all enjoy, and it would be wonderful for us to all be able to play together. Maybe it would even help me drop some of those extra pounds.

It was another windy day today, the worst we’ve had in a long time. I came home today to find the yard in a mess, our basketball goal blown over, and the electricity off.

The outage was caused by a tree falling on a power line up the road. I saw it coming in, and there was a fire truck nearby. I didn’t think much about it. But later, after the power had been restored, I went to the store and heard that the tree falling on the line had caused a fire.

Things like that are what scares me about strong winds. Some friends of ours had a live power line to fall on their house a few years ago during heavy winds. Luckily it somehow did no harm.

It is still pretty windy. I’ll be glad when it’s all over with.

I haven’t been following celebrity news much lately, but there are some things that the media wants to make sure you know about even if you are living under an enormous rock. The latest on Britney Spears, for example.

It appears that she has once again checked herself into and out of rehab quicker than most people change their socks. This, following a weekend of head-shaving, tattooing, and partying. The girl does get around.

Seriously, I hate to see anyone going through such apparent emotional problems. I can’t say the past couple of weeks’ events particularly surprise me, though. I just had a feeling about Britney Spears from the time she first burst onto the scene with “Oops I Did It Again” that there was something amiss. Maybe it was a total fluke, but that feeling turned out to be dead-on.

I wish Ms. Spears the best, and hope she can get back on track. Now that she’s rid of that goof Kevin Federline, maybe there’s a ray of hope.

Marketing is nothing like it once was. When I took marketing and advertising in college, no mention whatsoever was made about online marketing. Oh no, I’m showing my age again!

Way back when, advertising was done in the newspaper, the yellow pages, magazines, on billboards, TV, and radio. Of course it still is, but more and more companies are concentrating their efforts on online marketing. And the most effective way to market online is to get good search engine placement.

It is vital to find a good search engine optimization company that won’t get your site banned. After all, if that were to happen all the money you paid them would be down the drain. Search Placement is one search engine marketing firm that guarantees not to use any techniques that will get your site banned.

Companies today cannot afford to ignore online marketing. The majority of households have the Internet and use it regularly, so it pays to be seen online.