This past week was a doozy for us, dh has been working really late hours (until nearly midnight a couple of those nights), oldest ds has also been working quite late - in fact the managers at the restaurant decided he was ready to "Close" for them. Needless to say, I was less than impressed with having to stay up until nearly 2 in the morning just to make sure he was home safe and sound before I could crash (quite literally!) in bed.

For those of you that don't know me well, I spend A LOT (understatement!) of time at the computer working- either on my websites (I actually have 27 sites that I maintain!) plus I handle all of the office/bookwork/accounting for a construction business. In doing so, I've (very slowly) updated my office little by little, building my own computer system, adding a monitor here and there, etc.

Well, I was frustrated by the lack of organization of my screens and desktop area, so I decided to "build" my own workstation the other day.

I found a piece of plywood section that my husband left in the garage and cut 2 pieces the exact measurements of each of my monitors. Then carefully spray painted them black so they would match the screens when they are off and not be too distracting to the eye. Once they were dry I not so carefully mounted the hardware onto the back of each of them so they would line up with the multiple monitor displays. I say not so carefully because after getting the first one together it wouldn't line up perfectly and I was getting annoying until I realized that the back of the monitor juts out 1/2" to allow for mounting, so I took them all apart again and added an additional spacer board to the back to mount the hardware to.

Problem solved, well, almost. See the problem was it didn't seem like one of the screws was down far enough and having Just screwed it in I thought I'd run my thumb over the top of it to see if it was "flush" enough. Haha, joke was on me, because my blonde brain apparently forgot for a second about that very basic thing called FRICTION and the heat it generates. Well, suffice it to say, I burned an interesting pattern into the tip of my thumb:

Dumb, dumb, dumb. Which reminds me, did you know that you can apply a freshly cut onion to a minor burn to IMMEDIATELY alleviate pain and prevent blistering?



So anyways... after getting everything mounted I screwed on hardware for a clipboard, added some hibiscus flowers to match the design painted on my accent wall and voila, instant organized desktop. (Ignore my vitamin bottles and my racing grannies, the WTF stamp, the therapy ball, etc.. these are just things I've accumulated to amuse myself on days when I don't feel like working- afterall, I don't have co-workers to gossip with or aggravate.

After all that, I decided that I probably ought to get outside and get some yard work and managed to get a couple acres mowed, the chicken coop cleaned out, limed and the nesting boxes filled with straw. I didn't realize that I'd forgotten to collect eggs the day before, but we ended up with 82 eggs yesterday. I REALLY need to find a few more egg recipes to share!! We have one bird that often lays double yolkers but the other day we actually got a Triple Yolk out of her.



I wish I had more time to spend in the garden these days, but time seems to be one of those things that I have so very little of lately. What's new in your neck of the woods?

The garden is coming along nicely, although I didn't take the time to companion plant as much as I'd hoped to. This might actually bite me in the butt later in the season as the bugs hit, but for now, it seems to be working okay.

Here's what I planted this year:

Pumpkins all along the back (outside row).
Eggplant middle center along fenceline back row
Radishes all along the front (fenceline row)
Marigolds all around the entire garden, this helps keep the rabbits out.
Row 1: Jalapeno & Cayenne Peppers, At the End: Zucchini
Row 2: Crookneck Summer Squash, Zucchini, Okra
Row 3: Cucumbers and Sunflowers - great companions in the garden
Row 4: Tomatoes, Bell Peppers, Marigolds, - again, great companions
Row 5: Tomatoes, Bell Peppers, Marigolds- Carrots, radishes, beets
I left a walk path between all the rows and along the sides and also planted morning glories and carrots along the sides.

The garden should be weed free with the fabric I used over the mounds and of course is self-watering too. Here's my DIY sprinkler layout here. This is our Main garden, we still have a few plants down in back of the house under the trees too. I planted later this year than I should have so I won't have fresh peas until fall (can't plant again until August!).

What are you planting this year?

:voodoodoll:Yet another sicko hits the streets and attacks innocent people. It's amazing how SPINELESS some people are in life. I'm not against bringing back PUBLIC Hangings, just sayin'.

We recently adopted a pretty little grey kitty cat... and shortly thereafter, she surprised us with 5 adorable little ones. One of them, sadly, did not make it through the first night, so we've been entirely too protective of the remaining 4; So you can imagine my extreme distress when I went out to see how momma and babies were coming along and discovered that one of the babies was missing. Mind you, they're 9 days old at this point and barely have their little eyes open, so mobility really isn't much of an option for them.

Momma cat seemed oblivious to her missing kitten and I searched the yard, the garage, the barn and even watched the skies for any hawks that may have taken a chance and grabbed her. Nothing, nada. After forcing the entire family to play detective and search for several hours, we concluded that something must have lugged the baby off in the middle of the night. However, the next day I spotted our gray momma cat attempting to lug one of her babies across the back patio. Did I mention she's almost completely Blind?

After dropping him half a dozen times on his little head, she finally changed her mind, picked him back up and dragged his little butt back to her kitty house, safely with the other 2 kittens still inside. I started to get hopeful, I mean, the fool cat just played basketball with her kitten across the patio, maybe, just maybe she moved the other kitten and something didn't eat him after all! So I again searched and searched and still nothing. 8 hours later, ds gets home from school and heads upstairs in the garage for something, he comes running downstairs, face flushed, eyes wild, the kitten is in the Wall of the garage.

I'm thinking, oh Yuck- a few months ago the house suddenly took on a horrifying smell in the kitchen, I cleaned the fridge out- found Nothing, scrubbed the floors- despite the fact that they were already cleaned and still found nothing. We checked under the house to see if something had crawled under there and died and NOTHING. Then, we decided to change some cupboards which required us to move the refrigerator & freezer and discovered that a mouse had attempted to squeeze into an electrical outlet that didn't have a cover on it- and managed to electrocute itself, Hence the horrible smell of rotting flesh that I could not find! I digress, back to the kitten... so immediately I'm thinking, oh yuck, the poor thing died, it's 85F out and he can smell it upstairs... but NO!

It's still alive, in the walls, literally Screaming for it's (not overly bright) momma! We removed some panels and dug him out of the wall and we're happy to say, he's doing very well, albeit a bit "needy" and rightfully "clingy".

Do you watch the News? :didimiss:

I go in spurts, listening in the morning to the same ol' same ol' - North Korea is going to bomb us/ Nuclear war is impending, shootings here, stabbings there, tornadoes widespread here, hurricane there, allergy season WORST in history, Flu outbreak Most severe in Decades, blah blah freaking blah. Every year it's the same thing, over and over. This is the worst, most severe, terrabilist (I know that's NOT a real word) ever . . .

:mornincoffee: Then it occurs to me that I've become completely desensitized to their daily rhetoric. 9x's out of 10 the media blows things so far out of proportion that I barely believe Anything I see or hear on the news any longer. My kids, unfortunately, have not been completely desensitized to the daily dose of BS that blares on the tv & radio and our youngest is full of questions about Korea & the very real possibility of Nuclear War and Fallout. I find him searching websites, reading articles from various other countries newspapers/websites, etc in order to get a complete picture of what is really happening.

Do you watch the news? How much of it do you "believe" and does it change how you shop, live your daily lives, etc?

I have to admit, I did get extra seeds this year and avoided varieties of hyrbid seeds that may or not create "dead" seeds. I want to be able to harvest the seeds from this years fruits/veggies to plant next season- because quite frankly, I don't want to rely on whether or not I can buy them downtown.

Which brings me to another question... do Hybrid/ genetically engineered foods bother you? I have to say that I don't particularly care for them. For most of the foods that I choose to eat, I do so for a reason. I like fresh corn (& the cornsilk) which is great for a number of conditions, but if it's been genetically modified- how do we know that those beneficial elements are still in it? At what point does their "genetically engineered" stop being Real food and become little more than zombie munchies... after all, do you really know which nutrients they've bred OUT of the food you're eating?! Are you willing to take their word for it??

Do you wish that the Government would Label these so-called Zombie foods and if they did, would it change how & what you purchase?

Food For thought, over and out.

One thing that I've learned over the years, I would NOT make a good politician! I am just not very good at explaining things in a diplomatic manner, although I always endeavor to. Case in point, on occasion we have members share tips and ideas through the "Articles" tab. But an "Article", for all inclusive purposes, must be a minimum of 400 words and contain a photograph, etc. Otherwise, it's not really an article, but a tip, that is best placed in the forum in whatever category it happens to fit in. I've had members submit tips as articles and I don't know a way of explaining it without making them feel reprimanded. I've tried just sending a short sweet note, a "heads up, here's where you can find your tip”, but I worry (almost excessively) that I've offended them or hurt their feelings. Seriously!

I also have to worry about Copyright concerns, because you wouldn't believe the number of people that copy and paste articles and think that they're simply "sharing" them, but aren't aware they're actually violating Federal Laws and can get the site they're "Sharing" to shut down! Recently a member shared a great article & photos, which were hot linked to another site. Hotlinking, if you aren't familiar, is when you link to a photo that hosted on someone elses server. This too, is illegal. Essentially, it's stealing their bandwidth- they're paying for you to see and enjoy the photo, but they're not benefiting from it in any way.

We generally disallow any kind of hotlinking (even linking that has been done with permission of the original site). Here's the issue with linking even with permission- down the road, if that site closes, those links break and the photos are no longer available, breaking the page. Or, worse, the domain is transferred to someone else and they decide to replace those photos with something that's Not So Nice... like Porn. Don't laugh, it happens, more frequently that you would think.

There are a few other issues to consider ...

SEO - Which is Search Engine Optimization- when a site reshares the same exact article in the same words, major search engines consider it "Scraped" which is a hit against BOTH sites- the Site hosting and the site copying. The Duplicate content is penalized and the pages that are duplicated end up not be indexed or getting blacklisted, if too much duplicate content is found. All search engines have regular algorithm updates which determine how/where/when a sites pages show up in their indexing. Duplicate content is punished so severely during these updates it can virtually wipe a site out of the search engine all together for months at a time.

How does that directly affect you?

When you're searching for something in particular, that link will no longer display to you, even if it's the most relevant link to your search. SEO is a serious beast and even sites like Budget101.com that have been on the web for 12-15 years take a big hit if they don't follow proper SEO procedures. Last year when Google unleashed their "Panda" Update it impacted 1.3% of ALL Queries. To a website guest, that doesn't sound like much, but that update Literally wiped thousands of websites off the grid altogether. If a sites pages are not indexed by search engines, the site becomes virtually obscure and impossible to find.

I have yet to figure out the best way to explain how/why we moderate certain areas of the site to meet all of the guidelines without managing to overwhelm or dishearten our members/guests. We love that you share content; it's what makes the site such a great resource and I don't want to discourage anyone from sharing their own ideas/thoughts, recipes and photos.

It doesn't stop there either, there are other Algorithm changes that bloggers and publishers need to be aware of, such as Googles Penguin update that occurred last year. This one had a massive effect and decreased site rankings that had too many unnatural links. Their goal was to crack down on link exchanges and low quality link farms, link directories, etc. What did that update mean to you? Well, it changed how we list/share freebies and coupons on the site. In order to make sure we don't get penalized for each external link to the freebies we find, we make sure each and every freebie has a description BEFORE the Link. You may have noticed that if you post too short of a message in the freebie or coupon forum, you receive an error message. This is Why.

It's kind of funny sometimes because I've met people and they say, "oh you just find freebies" or "Oh, you take pictures of food, how nice", but there really is a LOT of figuring, planning and forethought that goes into every aspect of the sites to make them run, I just haven't figured out a great way to explain it so I don't frustrate anyone!

Have you ever been moderated and wondered to yourself (or aloud) "What's his/her problem anyway??!" ?

I'm a little bummed to have discovered that Amazon.com is punishing websites and bloggers for sharing free eBooks (thank you Bethaliz!) They've implemented a new 80/20 rule... which essentially states that any amazon affiliate whose ID shows up on 20,000 or more free kindle book purchases (or total of PAID eBooks are less than 1 in 4) will lose their entire Amazon Affiliate income for the month. No questions asked or answered.

How does this affect Budget101.com?

In several ways... while our Amazon income isn't very lucrative to begin with, it is how we fund our Thank you gift program. We use the Gift Cards we receive from our Amazon affiliate link to purchase surprise goodies for our members.

Offering eBooks without an Affiliate Tag

I considered sharing the Free eBooks without any affiliate tag, but it was brought to my attention in the Amazon Associates forum that Amazon will be tracking websites individually and checking to see if they are sharing the free ebooks- apparently to Penalize sites regardless.

I'm really frustrated by this for several reasons:

• I personally LOVE the Free eBooks- I can't tell you how many times I've downloaded a (free) book from an author and then gone back and purchased several books from the Same Author because I loved his/her writing style & or expertise on a subject.

• It seems very unfair to me that Amazon can take away an entire Months revenue due to "too many downloads"- seriously, isn't that defeating the purpose of advertising Amazon?

• Bloggers/Publishers don't get Paid for promoting the eBook Anyway- so why penalize us for it? I say it again, we do not make ANY money at all from Amazon for promoting the free books, nor do we charge advertising to 3rd parties (like the authors!).

• The only time we'd actually make any revenue is if the person who visited the link purchased something Else at the same time. - So you click on a free ebook and then decide to buy another title from the author, or maybe that you wanted a kitchen gadget you saw on sale, etc.

At first I thought that this wouldn't affect Budget101.com- after all, we don't have that many free downloads, but guess what... I was wrong! That's only 700 eBooks per day- we have 30,000+ members with an average of 3,500 visitors at any given time. So if just a tiny percentage of those members download a free ebook or 2- We lose the revenue that funds the Thank you gift program.

Here's an even worse scenario... if you click on my affiliate link to Amazon and then download/"buy" 5 free ebooks- Even though the link was ONLY to Amazon and I didn’t promote ANY of those free ebooks, I am going to get nailed for all 5 downloads- which counts towards that 80-20 rule. Basically- they can penalize any affiliate at any time based on this new "rule" and assume that we, as publishers somehow have control of our members and guests after they click on our links!

Amazing and ignorant, all rolled into one. It seems like Big Business are losing their grip with reality lately... first the exec at Yahoo throwing Work at Home Employees to the dogs (whilst being a complete hypocrite and installing a massive office-side nursery for her own kid!) and now Amazon throwing publishers under the bus for doing what they're supposed to .. which is.. drive traffic to Amazon.

What's next I wonder.. will Bing and Google punish us for searching?

Spring rains have hit our area and although I love the warmer temperatures, I'm not looking forward to green/yellow slime allergy season! On a brighter note, we got our garden tilled up and a new automatic sprinkling system installed. I want desperately to plant already, but cannot for several reasons-

Poison Ivy/Oak/Sumac and Jasmine! - our family takes a week off each year and I don't want to take the chances of getting plastered with any of the itchies before our "vacation". Even if it's just to have family & friends visit or to camp for a couple of days, I don't want to be smothered with any kind of rash.

#2- It's pouring out and the garden area is a mudhole at the moment.

#3- I just know we're going to get hit with frost at Least one more time and I don't want to kill my seedlings.

We expanded our garden area by almost double this year. Last years drought sent prices of fresh produce soaring and quite frankly, I'm not too keen on genetically engineered foods. I'm not a fan of being a guinea pig & waiting 20 years to discover that I've obtained some odd cancer or disease due to the government playing god with our food supply. Besides, there's something very satisfying about growing and harvesting your own food.

We "Mound Garden" which apparently is quite unique in the South East (pretty common in the North East)- because I sure do get lots of "looks" from people when they go by.

In years past we've used automatic watering timers to keep the garden watered on a regular basis and while that worked for our smaller garden, we literally tripled the garden size this year. We opted to build our own, do it yourself, garden sprinkler system using a bit of pvc pipe, a few sprinkler heads and a timer.

The entire project was relatively inexpensive, but did take a little extra preparation. Once the garden area was completely tilled and aged manure was added & tilled in, we dug trenches to run the pvc pipes. I'll add photos once the stupid rain stops long enough for me to take some!

I'm really looking forward to getting my hands in the dirt again! Are you planning a garden this year? What are you thinking of planting or what have you already planted?

I have a confession to make, I am a starchaholic... that is, I LOVE :loveshower: starchy foods... corn on the cob, potatoes (baked, boiled, mashed, steamed, grilled- you name it!), breads, cakes, croissants,bagels, pastries, pasta, rice and just about anything you can imagine made with starch/flour.

Why is this a big deal? Because they're all notoriously bad for you. Do you know how to make your own homemade paste? You just mix Flour and Water together. Now- imagine eating that and what it does to the insides of your intestines. It literally coats them with paste.

Like bread? Eating fresh rolls or biscuits with dinner coats your stomach and literally makes it nearly impossible for your body to absorb the vitamins and minerals from the other foods consumed during the same meal. Starchy foods also have a tendency to clog up the lower intestines, which in turn cause you to eat more to feel full/satisfied, thereby causing your body to absorb more fat from the large intestine. What I'm getting at here folks is that if you're trying to stick to a New Years Resolution to lose weight or get fit, you're going to have to give up starches for awhile (& then drastically cut down in the long run as well!).

As if the mere thought of that fresh hot roll turning to mushy paste in the intestine wasn't quite enough- here's another thought for you... you don't have to completely give up starches, you can minimize their effects by eating your protein first. If you're going to eat starchy foods, always eat them within an hour of exercise so they are burned off rather than stored as FAT!

It sometimes amazes me just how fast time flies by, I just can't get over how every single day seems like a fleeting moment of time. Dh threw out his back again and we've not had much sleep in the house in the last few weeks. It seems that nighttime hours are the worst for him and he just can't get comfortable no matter what he does. As for me, my days start by 5 am and often don't end before 11 pm- so by the time my head hits the pillow, I'm dead to the world. EXCEPT that I lie awake listening to hear him breathing while he's sleeping or to hear if he gets up and whether or not he needs assistance getting up and down the stairs, etc. So for the past week, the only thing I can count on is luggage under my eyes, hence the new tip on the site about how to reduce puffiness and dark circles!
We're all working on eating healthier and getting as many things accomplished around the house as possible, getting the garden ready for spring, cleaning out the garage, cleaning out cabinets & cupboards, organizing the pantry, etc etc. Wrestling season is nearly over, the States Competition was the other day and unfortunately a kid broke his neck during the tournament. He underwent surgery and has to undergo another tomorrow. It really makes me appreciate that my kids are healthy and safe. He and his family are definitely weighing heavy on our minds this weekend.

I'm behind in adding menu plans, responding to PM's and answering my emails, but then again, what else is new! The school called me the other day, youngest ds split and old wound on his knee and they were concerned because he hadn't stopped bleeding after 30 minutes. He kept telling the school nurse that it needed to be elevated, but she told him that wasn't a good idea, just sit still. They called me and for a few moments, made it sound as though the kid was going to bleed to death. I grabbed a couple of fresh eggs off the counter and brought them with me. Once I got him out of their overly concerned clutches I cracked the eggs (dumped the insides on the ground) peeled off the inner membrane, applied it over the bleeding knee and it stopped bleeding almost instantly. *Waves magic wand* Instant Painless stitches.

Once we got him home, we waited an hour or so, peeled the membrane off, washed it with peroxide, applied an herbal salve and a couple bandaids and he's all patched up. Funny how people freak out over little things.

All in all, it's been a pretty nice weekend though, we had a chance to spend some time with friends, I got in my workouts, and even managed to get a few new recipes and articles published. I swear I'll get to answering the stack of questions in my inbox, I'm really NOT ignoring anyone! Also, for those who have been watching the Free Stuff thread waiting to see the latest recipients, I got behind on those. I'll be sending them out shortly. How's everyone elses weekend going??