Killing Two Birds

Hello everyone!

Can you believe it's almost Friday? And after the gorgeous weather we had here last weekend, it was SNOWING this morning!!!

I just had a few thoughts to share with you about how I effectively kill two birds with one stone when I'm shopping:

1) I LOVE the Box Tops for Education program!

When you're using coupons, you're getting great deals on brand name products, but it's as easy as grabbing the scissors to take it one step further! Each Box Top that you collect is worth 10 cents to the school of your choice (and they add up FAST!). If you have no children, or if your children are still too young for school, just drop these off at your local elementary, middle, or high school - they will be glad to get them! For a list of participating products, click here

2) Another good way to avoid throwing away any extra benefits of buying branded goods is to participate in Campbell's Labels for Education program. Just from browsing the 2 web sites, I don't think the payout on this program is nearly as good as the payout on the Box Tops program BUT any little bit helps when you're talking about education! A complete list of products (and point values) is listed here.


3) Finally, as most of you know, Harris Teeter is my absolute favorite couponing venue, and they have their own program that supports education called Together in Education. This program allows you to link your VIC card with the school of your choice and the rewards that you earn will be automatically distributed to that store.

There are many, many other ways that you can support schools or charities when you're doing your shopping!!! The point I'm trying to make is that if you are diligent and creative with how you spend your money, then you should be dedicated to the very end to squeeze as much value as you can on your purchases!

I hope that you all have a great night and a fantastic weekend! I may even have a guest blogger next week - my wonderful husband!


All my love,

Ready, set, go!

Hi everyone,

I hope that your Monday was a great one! I was very productive today! After waiting through the move and then for my internet to get turned on at the rental house, I finally am making great strides towards becoming a small business owner! I didn't know before doing it for the Holiday Inn Express that I was so passionate about marketing, but I'm glad that I found what it is in life that I truly enjoy doing. I love meeting new people. I love helping people get what they want from an experience in a hotel or a restaurant. And I love staying on the cutting edge of all new technologies!!!

Yesterday I designed the logo for my company:



The colors are simple and I really liked the font because it seemed to play well off of the pineapple (which, if you don't know, is the international symbol of hospitality). I like this banner-style logo the best, but I had to modify it a little to "square" it up for my Twitter and Facebook avatars:



Considering that I am by no means a professional graphic designer and that I was only using Microsoft Publisher, I think they turned out rather well! BTW, I'm beta-testing Office 2010 right now, and I like it a LOT. It's a lot like Office 2007 with the tabs and etc., but the programs seem to be more anticipatory of what you may be trying to do and there are more shortcuts available on the documents you are working with.

Today I created a Facebook fan page for my new business. I also printed the articles of organization for becoming a limited liability company and applied for a federal EIN. Tomorrow, I hope to file my papers at the county courthouse and after that, I hope to obtain lots of new business!!! (If you know anyone that is in need of my services, please give me a referral - I'm hypothesizing that 95% of my work will probably come from people who know somebody else that is in need.)

Thank you so much for the support you've already given me on this venture and I look forward to keeping you posted via this blog and on Facebook, Twitter, and my future web site!

Have a great evening!

All my love,

Quick Poll

Hey everyone,

Hope that your week is going well! We FINALLY have internet here today, so I will be picking up where I left off with coupon tips and etc. in the near future!

In the meantime, here is a quick poll:

***POLL REMOVED***

I'm just looking for input or any other spectacular ideas that may pop into your head when you think about what I'll be doing!

Have a great day (I'm going couponing in a few minutes!!!)!

All my love,

We Have Arrived

We have spent almost a week in our new house now and things are finally starting to fall into place that make it feel more like our "home." I've been trying to get through as many boxes per day as I can, but there's also a priority factor that comes into play: first, make sure the kids aren't causing any harm to themselves or each other (or anything valuable in their path) and THEN I can go hunt for the most important boxes in the garage. We were in such a hurry to move that we stopped labeling boxes about 1/4 of the way through, so it's a big treasure hunt to dig around and see what you can find. My biggest prize today was Katelyn's Computer Cool School. She almost cried when I took it out of the box and then she ran upstairs as fast as she could to plug it in and play it. I haven't been the only one this week that's felt the pain of no internet; Katelyn's had a rough time as well! A lot of our favorite learning activities are online and we've had to do a lot of improvisation to our preschool time this week.

Hy the way, here are some of our favorite web sites (which I also have shared on WilmingtonMommies):

Letter of the week

Enchanted Learning

Fun Shine Express

Successful Homeschooling

Learning Planet

No Time for Flash Cards

First School

PBS Kids <--Especially on the Island - that's an interactive site that requires a parent to log in so that it can keep tabs on your child's progress. You can see a report card that shows your child's strengths:



Then your child is redirected to an area where they can play learning games to earn tickets (which can be exchanged for prizes such as printable coloring sheets, Sesame Street videos, or things to decorate their virtual treehouse with). Playing all of the different games successfully in a level will unlock a more difficult level. So far, Katelyn seems to be really taken to this particular learn/earn/reward style. She's also caught on to reading SO MUCH in the past few weeks. We're trying to teach a combination of a lot of basic phonics with some whole-word reading as well. She enjoys playing with her chalkboard a lot, and we're introducing both reading skills and simple addition via that medium.

In other Dowell news, Scott is still enjoying his job very much! I haven't heard him this excited about his work in a LONG time. The only drawback is the long hours. He leaves around 5 each morning, and tonight he's working at the office with the branch manager until 11. BUT, he said he'd rather do 70 hours a week than no hours a week! :)

We have to return to Wilmington this weekend to clean and paint our house before the tenants move in next weekend. I have a Facebook acquaintance, South-Eastern Commecial Services, scheduled to come on Friday to clean the great room carpet (let's hear it for networking!) and then Saturday will be a full work day and hopefully we will be able to return to Linden on Sunday knowing that the work is all done!

I also have a lot of work to do in the coming days on the new business I'm starting. I haven't quite settled on a name yet, so suggestions are still welcome! I'm planning a social media/internet management company that will (hopefully) stay focused on hospitality. I hope to market ~5 non-competing businesses in different geographical areas via the internet. The basic services that I will provide will be akin to what I do for the Holiday Inn Express:

• Manage private and/or franchise web sites
• Manage Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Ning, etc. accounts
• Work closely with sales department to ensure that sales and marketing efforts are all on the same page
• Monitor the internet for customer comments and complaints
• Respond to communications received from customers (in the form of surveys, emails, etc.)
• Attend local business networking events
• Publish employee or client newsletters.

I would also love it if anyone wants to write a brief recommendation of my skills for the web site I will be putting up advertising my services. If you'd be interested in doing something like this, please let me know!!! This is very exciting for me (and I am TERRIFIED of failing...but I will never know if I can do it until I try); it's a great opportunity for me to keep my children out of daycare and for me to do what I love - meet other people and market brands that I love! So, wish me luck as I take this big step!

I hope that you all enjoy the rest of your week! I'll keep you posted on our lives, and please keep in touch about yours!

All my love,

From Leland to Linden

Greetings from Leland...or am I in Linden...or, hmmmmm, where AM I? I've been on the road so much this week I can't really remember anymore! Knowing that we had a lease in hand for our tenants to move in on February 20th, I hit the road on Monday morning with the girls with one mission - find a house in Fayetteville! We had looked at quite a few houses over the internet and had an appointment with a Realtor to see the most probable one (and thankfully it worked out!!!).

Here are my beautiful girls at lunch:



Here's Katelyn playing in the snow, waiting for the Realtor:



After just a quick tour of the house, we decided that this was good enough for us and we'd take it. It met all the basic needs - vacant and ready, semi-clean, affordable - and it covered some wants - fenced back yard, 1/2 acre lot, two car garage, attic storage, and the big bonus was a HUGE building outside where Scott can do his "man chores."



It's weird to be renting again and even weirder to be doing it while OWNING a house. We took this house because it was in a great school district with a pretty low rent, so that, God forbid, anything happened with our tenants in Leland, we would be ok financially. I definitely see this year as a rebuilding year for us and hopefully we can climb out of some of the debt we've accrued over the years. There should be some money leftover from Scott's severance package, and that will go against credit cards. Our tax refund will go against either credit cards or the hospital bills from Abby's birth and Scott's surgeries.

Soooo, anyway, by 5pm on Monday, I was walking out of the real estate office with keys in hand to our "new" house! We picked Scott up for dinner and then showed him the new house, and thankfully, he liked it! He stayed there that night, sleeping on the floor, and we drove back to Leland to gather some essentials for the week. On Tuesday I gathered up the girls and as much as I could pack into the van and we made our first moving trip!



Even Dixie got to come along:



We took care of some essential business yesterday, like getting the water account transferred to our names ($100 deposit because we're renting...) and hitting the local Wal-Mart for shelf liner (since it's apparent that no previous tenant has felt the need to do this and, let me just say, ewwwwwww). We spent our first night as a family in the new house last night and Abby slept just fine, but Kate woke up in the middle of the night and ended up sleeping with us for the rest of the night. Hopefully once we get her bed there it will be easier for her to sleep in her own room! She's terribly confused right now by the whole idea of moving, so we're just trying to take it one meltdown at a time...I just really don't know what else to tell her to make it all better. She wants to stay here in Leland and just doesn't understand why Daddy can't work here. Try explaining the basics of a major economic recession to a 4-year-old one time just for fun...and let me know how that goes.

So this morning we decided to return to Leland to pack more of our belongings and get everything ready for the moving truck, which comes on Saturday. After we get our belongings out of the house, it'll just be a few trips to clean and paint, and then we'll turn the keys over to the tenants and say goodbye to our house for at least a year. I get the feeling that they're responsible, family-oriented, quiet people...and I really hope I'm right. This is the biggest investment of our life and we're about to hand it over to people that we've only spoken to for a few hours. Scary stuff!

The time has come for me to say good night, but I will do my best to keep everyone posted on our move througout the process! The best way to reach me in the meantime will be on my cell phone either with a voicemail or an email, or on Twitter (@PortCityHokie).

All my love,