Alex's Self Taught Gymnastics

This kid is amazing. He hasn't had a gymnastics class and he's been doing this kind of stuff all week. Sorry about the bad words in the song, it was on the radio... and it's a cool song.. sorry.

First Day of School

Here are a few photos of the first day of school for Alex... and Hanna (she went to preschool). But she's alreay a preschool drop out she doesn't like Kids Park because they don't have her sit at a desk. That's ok, Kids park is hardly a preschool. That was my fault. But she does start "real" preschool on this coming Monday.

Hanna's Recital

Hannalora's recital was last week and it was SO MUCH FUN! I love having a girly girl! She got to do a little solo as tinkerbell. She runs across the stage a few times and the other Disney Princesses pick her up. She loved being the star! She loves ballet. She loves make-up. She loves glitter. She loves costumes. She loves flowers. This was her perfect day. I love to see her that happy. Thanks to Cheleyne for helping her and hooking her up with all the right connections to experience this perfect day!

Yeah, California passed a Budget!

I am so glad our jacked up state passed a buget today. I know the cuts were painful but I gotta hand it to the Republicans that would not allow the tax increases. In this state, it's all about the CUTS! But, there is even more work to be done. Let's hack a bunch off welfare. We saw first hand how flawed this system is. It's set up for people to join for life. Not temporary help as it was in our case. I'd like to see a community volunteer government subsidsed thing for the poor. Less red tape. More results. Oh and lets fix the health care dibacle and do something huge about the immigration problems. Or, what about bigger prison cuts? Lets let all the pot smokers run free, we can't afford to lock up these guys! Nor would we want to, they are hilarious.

There have been big cuts to education. I hear a lot of parents in the area that are outraged about the cuts to education. I personally would not have cut education. But, I'm ok, I can deal with it. C'mon peeps, it's not money that makes a child educated. It's really important to have: a safe school, a decent teacher, involved parents, healthy family meals, avalible parents, and maybe a few books, pencils, papers. It's not that complicated really. Music and sports are good but, hello.... we can do those cheaper. Volunteer anyone? Problem? Ohhhh, I see people have no time. Well, I have a solution for that but I won't go into it. If the teacher child ratio goes up then my parent involvement will go up. Or even if the Folsom landscaping budget gets cut then my community landscaping volunteering time goes up. You get the point.

I understand, that when you are addicted to spending money (you don't have) it's hard to have it taken away. But we'll survive. No big woop. The bottom line is, YOU CAN'T SPEND MONEY you don't have. If you are spending too much you either raise taxes or cut stuff. I'm all for cutting stuff. Th truth is, you can live in the woods and not die... and it would be pretty much FREE. It's true. Money complicates everything... if you let it.

I love this, The plan for our country getting money

On the news...

I was on tv this Sunday. It was on our local morning news show here is the link: http://www.sacramentoqigong.com/ I'm in the background in the black. cool eh?

cool Websites!

These are a few cool sites that I found from stumble.com (A site that finds you cool sites according to your interest, "stumbling" is like looking through a magazine... it's fun)

This is a guy that uses coins to make furniture.
http://www.johnnyswing.com/
Along the same lines...penny tiled floors.. I'm getting ideas. Hmmm, might be a cool backplash.

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/tile-stone-countertops/penny-tile-floor-at-the-standard-hotel-notcotcom-088953

Great T-Shirts
http://www.localcelebrity.com/products/womens/funny_t-shirts/



Cool Laptop sleeves
http://www.funkytrend.com/unique-and-cool-laptop-sleeve/

Go See the Movie 'Food Inc.'

Justin and I went to see 'Food Inc' at The Crest. It's eye an opening documentary about where our food comes from. You'll see how the government is enabling unhealthy foods to be mass marketed and sold all while protecting select business at the expense of your health and honest farmers. The worst part is seeing the UGLY Truth about how we treat animals. I hope you will see it! We've changed our eating habits with this new awareness. You will want to too!
http://www.foodincmovie.com/
Knowledge is power!

Go to www.thecrest.com and go see the movie. It's a fun date night too. :)

Dillon Beach...Good Times!

We had a great time at Dillon Beach last weekend. We went with the Cobabes. Here are a few pictures.

Ok, well this freak thing happened today... my keywords for photoslidescanner.com (photo slide scanner) bring me to no.1 in yahoo and no.8 in google!!! I wasn't expecting THAT! Holy cow. It gets 4400 google searches a month. ok, now I see there might be hope for my little store. I feel like I havn't done much for SEO either. This is great. ...now if only I could get a sale. Check out my site if you ever want to scan those old negatives or slides and turn them into a digital photo. http://www.photoslidescanner.com

This is the best website!

Check out this site too. They email you to nag you to do stuff that you need to do.

http://www.hassleme.co.uk/

My New Business!

Hi guys, I've been working hard on my new website. It's not totally finished but it will be soon. My next step is to optimise it for search engine placement. My mentors think I can get one of google's top 5 spots! We'll see. Check it out, http://www.photoslidescanner.com/

Baby Jo Jo !!!!

We even got her to smile!

We also went to NY.
Here is Hanna with Oma.

Hana's Ponies Die Today

Oh no, Alex buried Hanna's ponies today! Rainbow Dash liked drugs too much I guess. And Vanila died tragically doing karate flips. It's a good thing he showed their spirits living on. Should I be impressed by my son or disturbed. I'm glad he has an understanding of the after life though. :)

Funny Picture

Alex wanted a picture of himself looking tough. Look at his reflection in the mirror though, haha tighty whitey dinosaur undies!

We we do with our rainy days!

Alex and I worked many long hours creating this dinosaur statue. We had so much fun, first we made a background in photoshop. Alex told me the pictures to find and we combined them and created a cool collage of photos. Then we made the "bones" out of paper clips, then we sculpted the clay into the dinosaur, then we baked it, and painted it. Then we took toothpick tips and carefully glued the teeth on. The googly eyes make him less scary. Justin said he looks a little like "Corkey".... I'm not sure what he means by that... ok maybe I do, but he just looks a little special that's all.

$100 Ebay... Results are in!

Hi I'm back with my $100 ebay results. So I spent $115 on ebay inventory. MY gross sales were $514!
- $58 aprox. Ebay and paypal fees
-$115 Initial investment

Want to learn everything you need to know to be a powerseller?

Click Here!

Take home pay: $341
So here is what I bought:
Yellow Coach Purse $20
Cole Haan Purse $25
Sz 12 Banana Republic Dress $5
Sz 8 Banana Republic Dress $5
Polka Dot Jessica McClintock Dress $5
Black Jessica McClintock Dress $5
White Kleen Dress $5
Red Speechless Dress $5
Black Rampage Dress$5
Teal/Black Adrianna Papell Dress $5
Red Boutique Dress $5
Brown/Pink Jessica McClintock Dress $5
Gray Beaded Adrianna Papell Dress $5
Velvet Cache Dress $5
Banana Republic Dress $5
Black beaded dress $5

Total spent: $115
(This was a good day for ebay shopping)

Yellow Coach Purse $20 (Sold $81.00)
Cole Haan Purse $25 (Sold $99.00)
Sz 12 Banana Republic Dress $5 (SOLD $44.99)
Sz 8 Banana Republic Dress $5 (SOLD $44.99)
Polka Dot Jessica McClintock Dress $5 (SOLD $29.99)
Black Jessica McClintock Dress $5 (SOLD $19.99)
White Kleen Dress $5 (SOLD $18.99)
Red Speechless Dress $5 (SOLD $19.99)
Black Rampage Dress $5 (SOLD $14.99)
Teal/Black Adrianna Papell Dress $5 (SOLD $60)
Red Boutique Dress $5 ($29.99)
Brown/Pink Jessica McClintock Dress $5 (Still for sale)
Gray Beaded Adrianna Papell Dress $5 (Still for sale)
Velvet Cache Dress $5 (Still for sale)
Banana Republic Dress $5 (SOLD $29.99)
Black Beaded Dress $5 (SOLD $19.99)

No bad for 16 items! You can do it too!

How I turned $100 Bucks into Hundreds more!

About a week ago an anonymous person gave us a wonderful gift. It was a jar packed with mostly quarters! Here is a photo:

The next day Hannalora and I took the jar to Raleys to put it in the coin counting machine. We got $108 bucks out of that!





Our family was so grateful for this person's generosity that we came up with a plan to double, tripple or even quadruple that cash!

So, I took the cash to my favorite store to buy some ebay inventory. We had an amazing shopping day! We ended up with this spread:

So here is what we got:

Yellow Coach Purse $20

Cole Haan Purse $25

Sz 12 Banana Republic Dress $5

Sz 8 Banana Republic Dress $5

Polka Dot Jessica McClintock Dress $5

Black Jessica McClintock Dress $5

White Kleen Dress $5

Red Speechless Dress $5

Black Rampage Dress$5

Teal/Black Adrianna Papell Dress $5

Red Boutique Dress $5

Brown/Pink Jessica McClintock Dress $5

Gray Beaded Adrianna Papell Dress $5

Velvet Cache Dress $5

Banana Republic Dress $5

Total spent: $110

(This was a good day for ebay shopping)

I have everything listed on ebay as such:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=200298057082

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=120362392806&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=120362392854&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=120362392880&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=120362392902&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=120362397589&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=120362397618&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=120362397639&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=120362415969&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=120362415991&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=200298057171&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=120362416013&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=200298057150&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT
I didn't list the white Kleen dress yet. (I'll wait until spring)

The Coach purse is my most searched item so I can start a very low starting bid because it will get a lot more exposure this way and I am betting it will reach a higher sold price because of that. Here it is: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=120362420424&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT

The Cole Haan purse is also a great item to sell on ebay but there is less of this brand on ebay so I don't think I need the extra exposure of starting the bid price low. So I took a healthy start price. Here it is: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=200298060657&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT

A lot people ask me how we are surviving with 5 months of a job loss and ebay is the answer! I don't make anything near what Justin used to make but it's enough money to scrape through from month to month without getting into debt.

Here are some great finds I found at the GoodWill later that day:
(80's mini prom dresses do great) http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=120360989217&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT , http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=120362377482&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT

I expect to sell about 80% of my items for the asking prices on the buy it now items. There is often about 20% that I have to discount. We'll see. I have no idea what the two purses will end at but I'm hoping to get maybe, $70 on the Coach and $115 on the Cole Haan. It could be more or less but this is just a wild and slightly scientific guess.

If my dresses sell at the asking prices I will get $390. So with dresses + purses, I expect to get about $575 for total sold. Ebay and paypal fees will be about $60

Initial investment $110

So total profit is $405 (That almost quadruples the gift we got!)

I'll post an update in 30 days. Most of it should be sold by then. I really wanted to share this not to brag but to show people what I do and how you can do it too. And I also hope whomever gave us that money knows we tried to be smart with it. It's wasn't squandered. If anyone reading this wants to sell on ebay and has any questions on how to do it, I'm happy to teach you. Just let me know!