Meaningful Birthdays

I try to make my kids' birthdays memorable, even if they're still so little that they may not remember. Someday they will... when they start I'll be ready for them!

Last week my daughter turned four. On her birthday evening, as I have the past four years, I composed her birthday letter. Her birthday letter is a one or two page account of the past year. I told her how much he loved watching Scooby Doo, some of the things she says often, and the fact that she learned to swim underwater this summer. I figure by the time she's an adult, a package of birthday letters will be something really cool to have.

Something else I like to do for my kids is make their birthday cakes. It takes me weeks to figure out what I'm going to do, and then usually the better part of a day executing it. I have to say that they usually don't turn out quite like I envision them, but this year Avery's cake was pretty close. We had her first real birthday party this year, and I was proud when I saw a mom or two sneak a cell phone pic of my cake. I'm also getting better with working with fondant and all my frosting tools. Trust me, the day before I was more than tempted to call Walmart for a last minute cake, but it was big and beautiful and tasted great. The party was good too, and at the end of the day yesterday I had a very happy three, er, four year old. Happy birthday to my Avery Rose.

Easy Way to Earn a Few Extra Bucks

My husband once told me about a friend of his who was committed to picking up every coin he saw. At the end of a year, he was surprised to find how much money he actually made by simply bending over and picking up change. I have the same philosophy with some of my online endeavors.

I came upon BeRuby.com a few weeks ago. It is a portal site that leads you to the sites you visit often (twitter, gmail, google). Every time you log onto beruby.com and then click on your mail icon or google icon you make a penny or so. So now, rather than clicking on my gmail icon to read my email, I click on the beruby icon, then click on my gmail icon. It takes one extra step and I can earn a penny or two when I do it. In the few weeks I've been there I've made nearly $5.

They also offer percentages back if you use some of their links to purchase things online. So, for instance, you want to send flowers to your aunt you can go through beruby and get 5% of your purchase right back. Over time, this can add up!

You can also earn a dollar for every person you have sign up UNDER you up to $5. Then you make a percentage of everything they make. So, the bigger your network, the more potential you have to make money.

So, as far as I can tell it's definitely worth trying. There's nothing to download and I haven't gotten any spam from them.

Here's my referral link.. I'd love it if you signed up and used it!

http://us.beruby.com/promocode/u8KyZU