I Dream of Home Ownership

I have the dream of someday owning a home. I would love to have a place to call my own where I don’t have to worry about a landlord or anyone coming in to do filter changes and smoke alarm checks. I would also like to not have people right on top of me all the time as I do in my apartment. I like my neighbors for the most part, but I feel that I can’t have my windows open without neighbors or a child talking to us through the windows.  I feel like I constantly have to speak to people even when I am trying to watch TV or Noah and I are doing his homework. It is really a distraction to him because he doesn’t want to be rude.  Sometimes he gets upset because the neighbor boy can be very mean to Noah.  I would love to have my own house where I can just veg out and be in peace.

  

It is after all The American Dream to own your own home. I feel as though I am throwing away my money each month because I have nothing to show at the end of the time here.  I also know that owning a home is great for your credit.  It also gives you something to hold on to.  I would love to find my dream house and just live there for forever. I would love to not have to move anymore. I hate moving, I would have to find the perfect house for my family and the perfect location.  I would definitely need to get a mortgage to achieve home ownership.  I have seen houses that need some work; I wouldn’t be opposed to owning a house that needs work if I could get a 203k Loan and a great handy man. I would get really frustrated trying to fix it up myself.  It would probably be quite comical actually, but would not end well at all.  Another option I could consider is a bank owned home. People sometimes live over their means and have really nice homes and it becomes property of the bank.  I think that’s called homepath. They even give you money to fix it up if you need to. Either way I would need a handy man.  I would definitely want a two story home with at least 3 bedrooms, a nice big kitchen, and a big deck.  I would want it to be in a nice area or neighborhood.  I would definitely have a hot tub and a grill on my deck that overlooks a good sized yard.

Tell me about your dream home. I would love to know what yours would be like.

An Awesome Mudwalk Find!

We like to go on beach walks and pier walks. When the tide is really low, we go on mud walks. Mud walks are great for shelling. We all collect shells as I am sure you know. Well, my mom found a dead seastar recently.  She brought it home to show us and to dry out.  We have some small starfish but nothing like this. I bought a really cool starfish in The Bahamas, but my mom found this. We had put it in the bathtub for the time being. It was beautiful. It was completely perfect when it came inside.  I noticed that the tips of its legs were falling off. I thought that Noah was messing with it.  It was no longer whole but it was still really cool.

Several hours later, we touched it and its legs started moving a little. We weren’t sure if it was a reflex or something. We have a rule in our house that we don’t keep anything that is alive, or has a creature living in it, even if it is really cool. So, the seastar was put back in the water. Not before I took a few pictures though. It was kind of sad because it was such a rare find.  Noah even cried because he wanted to keep it. I explained why and he understood. It is one of the coolest things we have found to date.

Win Your Way by Shop Your Way Sweepstakes

 Do you like to shop? You should join Shop Your Way.  You are going to shop for these things anyways so it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that with the Shop Your Way App you can earn points that you can redeem for prizes.   I am sure you are wondering what kinds of things you can buy, well all kinds of things from clothes to lawn mowers. I looked up my favorite perfume and I saw that I could get 520 points for just buying it. I tend to shop at stores or online at places that have a rewards program. I love when companies reward their customers. It is nice to know that they really appreciate our business.  The best thing about this is, it’s an app. Honestly, I have trouble with remembering store reward cards, or they get lost when I need them.  At one time, I had 8 cards to one grocery store, because I kept forgetting them, but I never forget my phone. So I am so excited about Shop Your Way.  

Shop Your Way also has another program called Win Your Way, where you can win extra points to get to those rewards faster or even prizes, by entering sweepstakes. If you want to earn more points you can enter the Win Your Way Sweepstakes

About Win Your Way:

Win Your Way is an app that is part of the ShopYourWay social shopping platform.

Members will find a constant stream of new and unique sweepstakes with prizes

including: ShopYourWay Rewards points, trips to locations around the country, jewelry,

clothing, appliances, tools, and gadgets.

It is so easy to enter; all you do is perform simple tasks,  I entered the Local to you Sweepstakes, all you do is follow your local store so you never miss out on a sale or event again. You can win 5,000 points!

 I want to enter the Family Finds Sweepstakes by writing  four short reviews for items I already own and that my family loves. You can win 25,000 points. 

These are only a couple of the many great sweepstakes and the odds are looking good right now so go enter and win!

No purchase necessary. See http://bit.ly/RdfB8K for details.

This is a sponsored post with http://brandfluential.com, I am a Win Your Way blogger, though all opinions are my own.

The Birth of Social Media

Everyone is always joking about what we did before Facebook or social media. It has been a topic that is always brought up and surely due to our dependency of social media. I am a blogger so of course it is a huge part of my job. The real question is what did they do before social media? I am 31 so obviously I haven't always had social media or the Internet. So, what did people use? Sure there was regular mail and the phone but to share with everyone that would be a lot of time on the phone and many stamps. They had weekly dinners and would see people at the store or at the beauty parlor and around town, but that didn't reach everyone. I guess they spent a lot of time wondering where people were or did they?  Was there perhaps a "Facebook" before Facebook?

I often get bored and search things. I am constantly seeking to learn new things about anything I can. I have always been interested in family history and learning more about family. My grandma Rose wrote a complete family history of her dad’s family. I used to read it over and over. I loved to hear stories about my family. Family is really important to me. So, I decided to yet again Google my Grandma Rose's name, I am not sure why as there is never anything new. I ended up adding her city because there was another person who was dominating the search results.  I had found all the normal information about this person results, an article a distant relative wrote about our family history and even her obituary.  I also found something I had never seen before. A newspaper clipping that my Great Grandma wrote, thanking her children for taking care of her when she was sick. This was actually the newspaper. I kept looking through newspaper articles that I found and there were a ton about my family.  It wasn’t really news as in the traditional sense. It was like Mr. and Mrs. SoandSo had their children over for Sunday Dinner and Mrs. SoandSo is sick and was taken to the hospital and is now at home resting.  I really love those people that decided to scan in old newspapers so I could discover this really cool family history.

I thought it was really cool that I was reading about all of this. My grandma Rose always wrote things in datebooks. You could look at it and find out who called that day, who visited, who she called, what she did every day. I still like to look at them.  At first I thought, they must have no news in this town. I knew it was a really small town as I have visited them still having family living there.  I had to share this with my mom thinking how cool it was and how she would probably get a kick out of it. Then I realized, this was their Social Media. This was the way they communicated with each other in their town. This is how people in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s did it. I obviously know that newspapers have been around for forever, but now you can’t find out that your neighbor had their family over for dinner or your neighbor’s granddaughter was a finalist for the National Merit Scholarship Award.  Those are the things we would write about on Facebook or tweet on Twitter.  They didn’t have the internet so they couldn’t just send an update instantly.  If they haven’t see Thelma in a while, they couldn’t have signed on Facebook and saw that Thelma was in the hospital. They would read about it in the paper.  The news in the paper wasn’t always about crime and politics and traditional news. It was about your neighbors’ news, the people that you shared your lives with daily, your friends, that was the most important news.

 In my opinion social media has been around a lot longer than you think, it just wasn’t digitalized until recently.

Hess Toy Truck and Helicopter Review

Noah loves helicopters. I mistakenly thought he was old enough for a remote control helicopter so I got him one for his birthday. They have age limits on it for a reason. Not for small parts but because it is difficult to land. Well a month later, it broke. He was sad. I started looking for something to replace it. We saw the Hess Gas Station commercial advertising the Hess Toy Truck and helicopter. You get both the truck and the helicopter. Noah really wanted it so I was really excited when I was offered to review it. I had to remind him that it doesn't fly but the propellers move and that was fine with him.

I am impressed with how nice this toy is, normally when you think of gas station toys, it ends up being kind of junky. The toys come with Duracell batteries which is another win for us. I personally think all toys should come with batteries, good batteries that is. I am sure this has probably happened to you. You buy a toy for your child or maybe it's a gift from a loved one and you have no batteries. That is not a fun moment. Noah absolutely loves his Hess Truck and Helicopter set.  He loves to put the truck in the helicopter and fly it on rescue marine missions. My future Marine Biologist is always playing that he rescues sea life and travels to unique places. He even flew his helicopter with the truck in it to Japan.  It will bring him hours and hours of creativity and fun.

For more information please visit the Hess website.

You can purchase the Hess Truck and Helicopter set at a Hess Gas Station near you or online on the Hess Toy Website.  It’s only $26.99 which is a great deal. You can’t get two toys for that price normally.

Hess provided me with a complimentary truck and helicopter for me to review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.