Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Blogger Spotlight: Stop the Ride! & 100 Acre Wood

Wednesday, June 6th, 2007

I am so pleased to share an interview with one of my favorite blogging mommas. I have enjoyed reading her blogs for quite some time now and it gives me great pleasure to introduce her to all of you. If you haven’t read some of Stephanie’s work before, you are missing out! She has inspired me so much in the art of stretching a buck. Stephanie has a way of introducing new ideas for savings to her readers, and actually practices what she preaches. She seems to constantly challenge herself and her readers on ways they can save their family money. I hope that you will stop by Stephanie’s corner of the internet and show her some love today! She is a great friend and an incredible mother. In addition to that, she is a talented blogger that can offer you valuable information in learning how to make your dollars scream with mercy.

Please tell me a little bit about your blogs and how long you have been blogging for?

I have two blogs, Adventures in the 100 Acre Wood is my personal blog. It is what I do since I don’t scrap book, keep a journal or keep up the baby books. Stop the Ride! is where I blog about simple & frugal living & debt reduction.

I started 100 Acre Wood in Feb ’06 and Stop the Ride in Aug ’06.

Do your friends and family know about your blog or are you leading a secret blogging life?

I started blogging to keep in touch with family and friends, so yes, they know about it. In fact, many of my family members also blog.

What do you feel you have gained through your blogging?

There really are so many things. We had just moved out of state when I started blogging. It became a source for adult contact for me, and a community of sorts. I found so many interesting people. Many who see the world very differently than I do. You don’t get that in the real world as easily. It has increased my understanding of different groups a lot, but has also shown me that we really have a lot in common. We often want the same things from life, but see different paths to them.

What is your favorite feature on your blog right now?

The Make It From Scratch carnival at Stop the Ride! I love seeing all the different ideas, and the interaction of the people who participate. It does take a bit a of time to put together, but I really enjoy it!

What are you doing when you are not blogging? What do you treat yourself with?
Thinking about blogging. 🙂 This time of year you’d find me in the garden or perhaps on a foraging walk. A treat is any time I get alone. The biggest treat I’ve had lately was attending a retreat with the women from our old church. Tim kept all four kids!

What are some your favorite blogs?
Besides Motherload? The ones I’ve been reading the longest (except family ones) are:
Frugal Upstate
Butterfly Mama
Homesteading Neophyte
Scribbit

Do you experience writer’s block? Do you have a cure for it?
I more often have more ideas than I have time for. Since 100 Acre Wood is more like a journal I really don’t have writers block there. I just post when something interesting is happening; a lot!

Sometimes I get stuck for ideas for Stop the Ride! A couple things that seem to help me: First I keep a list of ideas written down. Some weeks I’m overflowing with ideas, almost never with time. The ones I don’t get posted I write down. Just a title or a few words to jog my memory when I want to write about it.

The other thing I do is stop, take some deep breaths, or even walk away from the computer for a bit. I think about what I’ve done the last few days. That is usually enough to give me an idea and get me going again.

What is your favorite thing to write about?
It is hard to choose, but I guess I’d say saving money, especially with food. I consider it a challenge to try to save, and it is a thrill to do it and then post about it.

Please share with me your favorite entry and tell me why it is your favorite?
Even tougher!

100 Acre Wood – Life Languages Live
This is one of my earliest posts. I just love the story and how it shows my kids’ personalities. Funny as I reread this tonight I thought where is Vivian in the story. Oh, she wasn’t even born yet. Seems impossible.

Stop the Ride!- A Stretched Chicken
I challenged myself to see how many meals I could make from one whole chicken. I had a lot of fun with these posts. There were four posts in the series. This is the last one. It links to the others.

**Would you like to be highlighted here in our blogger spotlight? Please email me at amy@momadvice.com and let me know! I am looking forward to doing a variety of interviews and getting to know our blogging community better!**

Posted in Blogging | 2 Comments »

Blogger Spotlight: Home Ec 101

Monday, May 14th, 2007

Inspired by my recent interview with the folks over at Shakadoo, I thought it would be great fun to feature some of my very favorite bloggers. If you don’t get an email from me and really want to be featured here, please email me at amy@momadvice.com and I will send you some questions.

I was so excited when my favorite blogging gal, Miss Ivy, emailed me to request an interview. She is one of my absolute favorite bloggers. I love her tongue in cheek humor and fun writing style that she offers to her readers. Until I did this interview, I actually didn’t realize that I had been reading all of her blogs and never realized that they all were written by her. What talent! I don’t know how in the heck she does it, as I struggle to keep up with my little corner over here.

In this interview, Ivy shares the scoop on Home Ec 101. If you haven’t visited this blog, go TODAY! Run over there! It is an awesome blog and I love the fifties feel to it. It shares all the tips you wish your momma taught you (or she did teach you and you just didn’t listen!)

Tell me a little bit about your blog and how you came to the decision to begin blogging?

I originally started blogging on LiveJournal on the auspicious date of April 22, 2003. I just started blogging on LJ because all my friends were, and I wanted to be one of the cool kids. I started reading NashvilleIsTalking.com in May of 2005 and started up my blog at blogspot shortly thereafter. After fits and starts, I got really involved during the time of Katrina, and have been blogging my tushie off both personally and professionally ever since.

I’m currently blogging in 5 different places- my personal blog, the badbadivy experience; the mommy blog, Love Shak, Baby; the gardening blog, ShakYard; the home improvement/DIY blog, Curbly; and the crowning glory of my personal achievement, Home-Ec 101.
Home-Ec 101 is an advice-style blog that takes a sassy look at the ins and outs of housework. My partner Heather and I cover cooking, cleaning, pet problems, and any other random question that comes our way.

I see you work with another blogger on this blog? Do you live close to each other or are just cyber buddies that decided to pool your talents?

Heather and I are women of many talents, but it’s just the two of us blogging at Home-Ec 101. Heather and I met on an AOL message board while we were both pregnant with our three year olds. I was talking to a mutual friend in an IM about how I thought one of the women posting on the message board was totally faking her pregnancy, and the mutual friend told me I needed to meet Heather, because she thought the same thing. I IMed Heather the next time I saw her online and we’ve been best pals ever since.Heather lives in South Carolina and I live in Tennessee. Heather and I are each other’s Motel 6 when we’re in each other’s area.(Heather says like Motel 6, but without the bugs) Who needs room service when you have friends to crash with?

Do your friends and family know about your blog or are you living a double life?

Most of my friends are bloggers, so they know all about my blogging activities. My family knows about my blogging, but they don’t tend to read, which is great- I can talk about them as badly as I would like. Of course, when I do start talking badly about them is the instant they get a wild hair and decide to read my blog, so it’s a double-edged sword.

What are your favorite things to do when you are not blogging?

I enjoy reading about blogging, reading other bloggers, hanging out with bloggers, planning blogger parties and playing video games. Sadly, there aren’t any video games about blogging.

Since you ladies give out so many tips, what is your favorite tip that you have shared and what makes it your favorite?

I love the post I wrote about doing things imperfectly. It’s really easy to get caught up in the vast details of life and end up doing nothing because we want to get things right.

What do you want people to come away with when they read your blog?

If people read our blog and come away with some tiny piece of information they didn’t know before, we’re happy. If people do that *and* are entertained at the same time, we’re deliriously happy.

Who are your idols?

This is going to sound random, but Oprah Winfrey and Willie Nelson are my heroes. Oprah because she is a strong woman who has overcome many odds to come out on top, and Willie Nelson because he makes absolutely no apologies for being who he is. Plus, I love his music, and I’m not a big fan of country music.

How do you separate your blogging life from your real life?

I really don’t. Nashville has a really cohesive blogging community, so most of my local friends bloggers. This makes my life tend to revolve around blogging. Honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Posted in Blogging | 2 Comments »

Be back next week….

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007

Our family has been on a much needed vacation this week, so I will be taking a break this week from the Aldi blog. If you are looking for meal ideas for this week, please visit our archives by clicking on the Menu Planner link to the left. It will pull up all of my past entries to use for meal planning this week.

Thank you all for your invaluable feedback! I am looking forward to picking things back up next week!

Posted in Announcements | 1 Comment »

Repost: Iron Chef Moms Challenge

Friday, March 9th, 2007

ironchef.jpg

Meredith, over at Like Merchant Ships, emailed me to tell me how much she has enjoyed my new blog. For her though, Aldi Supermarket is a bit of a hike and she believes that she can do just as well by buying the loss leaders at her local grocery stores and planning her menu around the sale options. She decided to offer up a friendly challenge and see who could save the most money, an Aldi Shopper or a Sales Shopper. I told her I was up for the challenge and am excited to see how well we both can do.
The game will begin this Monday and I will be posting my meals each day, but include a daily total for the day versus the weekly totals that I normally do. I will also include some tips for shopping on that particular day, as part of the challenge. Meredith will also be doing the same thing on her blog and I will include a link to her entry too.

Here are the rules of the game:

I will purchase everything from Aldi Supermarket.

Meredith will be doing a freestyle menu with no coupons and only using the grocery sales current from that week. She will not be using any items from her stockpile, only items purchased that week.

A daily breakdown will be given each day. The breakdown will include the menu, recipe, and cost breakdown.

The menu will serve four people. In larger recipes, we will be adjusting the cost to estimate a four person meal, or split the cost if one meal actually will be used in two different ways.

The menu will include a main dish and sides. Desserts and drinks will not be included in this challenge.

Staple ingredients under a ½ cup are “negligible,” for example in the case of flour, sugar, salt or pepper. Otherwise, these will be figured in as price per ounce and multiplied by the number of ounces used.

There will be a wrap-up at the end of the week and you, as readers, can feel free to critique our strategies, or offer up some of your own strategies.

Just for the record, I do want to say that this is just a fun and friendly competition. The idea behind it is not to see who will do better than the other, but more to share techniques for two different ways to shop. Both of these options do not require any coupon cutting and will show you ways that you can plan affordable meals for your family using two other types of techniques.

We are both very excited to be doing this contest and our families are excited to be eating so well this week.

Thanks to Meredith for posing such a great challenge! I hope that it will be as much fun for you as it is for us!

Posted in Announcements | No Comments »

Introducing the Aldi Queen Blog

Sunday, February 25th, 2007

We have been hard at work over here and finally have our new Aldi blog up and rolling. Please share it with your friends and loved ones! I hope that some of my faithful blogging friends could share this information in their corner of the bloggy world. It would mean a lot to me if everyone could spread the word about this new addition. I really hope that it is beneficial to many families!

On our new blog, I will be posting recipes utilizing ingredients that can be purchased at Aldi Supermarket. If you do not have an Aldi Supermarket, you can still prepare all of the recipes just purchase them at your own local grocery store.

Each day I will try to post a recipe for all of you! The blog is set up like a cookbook- main dishes, appetizers, chicken, pork, beef, pasta, snacks, etc.. As I add new recipes, new categories will be added too. This should make finding a dish for dinner easier!

I will be including some pictures too of the things we eat. I am no food photographer, but I will do my best to make things look presentable.

I hope you enjoy the addition to the site. If you have a recipe that you would like to share, please just email it to me at amy@momadvice.com.

Thank you all for your continued support and enthusiasm about what I am doing. I don’t know what I would do without all of you!

Please note, if you hover the categories above, you will see that Blog has now been made plural and you can choose which of my two (for now!) blogs you are interested in reading.
Any suggestions are always welcome!

Sincerely,

Amy Allen Clark
“the Aldi Queen”

Tags:
Posted in Aldi, Announcements | 6 Comments »

Hi, My Name is Aldi Queen

Thursday, February 22nd, 2007

Any fan of our website, MomAdvice.com, knows that I am obsessed with Aldi Supermarket. My site contains menu planners and information on the store and I never expected the response that we received from these planners. We received thousands and thousands of hits a month searching for this type of information. It was one of those times were I felt like I hit a nail square on the head and I was actually onto something.

The menu planners were very extensive though and took forever to post. There had to be an easier way than posting twenty pages of planners on our site. That is when I came up with the idea to create an online cookbook where you could actually glimpse into the kitchen of an Aldi chef. A cook who prefers the goodness of homecooked foods, but understands the necessity for a budget in a single income family.

Unlike my other blog, The Motherload, I will not be sharing any tips in this dose of bloggy goodness. This will simply be recipes and nutritional information on dishes you can throw together for your family utilizing only Aldi ingredients. I make my disclaimer now that I am not a professional chef or a professional food photographer. If the recipes do not appeal to you, please don’t voice criticism and just hold out for a recipe that will work well for your family.

The only ingredients that I am including that may not be available at Aldi is yeast and basic dried seasonings. Yeast will be an essential part of cooking and can be picked up at any store (most affordably at your warehouse store). While yeast is available around the holiday season at Aldi, it is not available year-round, thus you may need to purchase that one at another store. Dried herbs will be included, as I feel most cooks have those already within their pantry.

I hope that you will enjoy this as much as our other blog. I am excited to be sharing all of my recipes with you!

Posted in Aldi, Announcements | No Comments »

The Pitfalls of Having a Website

Thursday, November 9th, 2006

I apologize that it has been so long since my last entry. We had an unfortunate incident happen this weekend that has caused me a lot of grief.

My husband had a long weekend off and we were looking forward to having some time together as a family. Usually when vacation time is taken, we are running around like crazy. This time, we had looked forward to some time together just relaxing. Unfortunately, this weekend someone hacked into our forum and sent out private messages to every single person that had registered on my site. Within a matter of minutes, inappropriate pictures had been posted to our forum and also sent out to each person’s email boxes. The message had been entitled, “Urgent Message from Admin” and said that it was from “Amy.” We began frantically disabling features on our board, removing users, and sending out a message to let users know not to open messages. It was embarrassing and mortifying for someone who tries to run a very family-friendly website especially since I try to keep such a close eye on things.

When I began the website, I wanted a safe place for people to be able to visit. I have been very diligent about maintaining our boards and our user’s privacy. I have never charged anything and have tried to even offer free advertising to our users. I have never pleaded with anyone for donations and I have tried to continually update the site with new information.

My goal has and always will be to continue these things. It was an upsetting incident that I had no control over and I felt targeted by these people who have nothing better to do than to repeatedly expose people to these types of images.

Unfortunately, we have discovered that we were not the only site that had been targeted and others who had this type of forum also experienced the same thing. Some of the images that were sent out to their users were much more graphic and they had many more registered users.

Even more disheartening was the fact that I got some of the meanest emails from people about what they received. Anyone who knows me or who visits my site would know that I would NEVER send this type of thing out. I am a Christian mother and this probably was more upsetting to me than the fact that the incident even happened. I will not go into great detail the messages I received, but they were extremely hurtful and made me question if doing a website is worth all of this.

I work on our site day and night. There is not a part of my day where I am not thinking about it, planning an article in my head, searching for information, or trying to interact with everyone on our forum. If you broke down my wages for the site, it would probably work out to be half of minimum wage. So why do I do it? Because I love the people I have met from doing it, I love the opportunities that it has provided me, and I want to be home with my children more than anything in the world. I love the fact that the site has helped me be a better mother and challenged me to live within our means. The blessings from it are great and I hate to ever complain about it because I feel so lucky…it was just a lot to swallow in one weekend.

I appreciate those of you who sent me so many kind messages and were so understanding about the situation. I deeply apologize that this happened and I hope that we can prevent future problems like this from happening. Unfortunately, that is one of the downfalls of having a website and I see why many people give up.

I am going to be working on my Freebie Friday entry so please check back tomorrow. Thank you again for being such loyal readers.

Posted in My Work | 20 Comments »

The Festival of Frugality #36

Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Festival of Frugality. Please do not dispair that your finances are in terrible shape- just visit our site & this festival for great tips on how to save money.

There were many great entries this week and I am honored to be the hostess. Be sure to visit the festival next week over at Blogging Away Debt.

Here is just the inspiration you have been looking for!

Freebies

“Free advice is worth the price.” Robert Half

No Credit Needed revisits a past entry and shares a link to free graph paper. Now I can start drawing up graphs of high chair placement in our house. For some reason there is nowhere to put this. I will have to put this freebie to use in our house. I also will graph out placement of husband, two children, and dog…

Money & Values gives you the scoop on how to see plays and concerts for free. You will have to read that blog entry to find out more about these great opportunities.

How about some free money? The Good Human shares how a bank’s system of rounding up their purchases has beefed up their savings account. They even get free money from their bank every single year. I don’t know about you, but my bank doesn’t give us crap…oh, that’s right. They fee us! Thanks Wells Fargo!

HollyRhea shares stories of her life growing up…and dumpster diving. You read that right- how about getting something for absolutely nothing, just by doing a little hunting through someone’s trash. Read her tips of the trade here.

I am also including my own blog entry on Aldi Supermarket. How about menu planners, information, and an entire price sheet for the store in one blog entry, all for free! Hope you can get some use out of this one!

Financial Wisdom

“Money will buy you a bed, but not a good night’s sleep, a house but not a home, a companion but not a friend.” Zig Ziglar

Free The Drones shares tips on how to keep your kids from busting your budget with demands for designer clothes. I would personally introduce them to a couple of little places called Goodwill & Salvation Army and let them dig for those hot brand name items.

Debt Free offers a whole slew of money-saving tips on how to save your money. Learning to cut your own hair & line drying your clothes, are just a couple of the topics covered. Just when you think you couldn’t save enough, you find out there are even more ways to save yourself some cash. For those of you who scoff at saving money, Debt Free says it’s okay to purchase a plasma television. Bet you wanna read it now!

Frugal Wisdom from Wenchypoo’s Warehouse offers a compelling look at the poor here in the United States versus the poor in other countries. It is a long post, but eye-opening, about how the poor in various countries differs.

Nina, from QueerCents, shares on an article she read on Americans and excess. This is a great entry on how we have become conditioned to take what is offered- even when we can’t afford it or don’t need it. Great read!

Becoming & Staying Debt Free has shared an entry on how just about everyone already is a millionaire. Don’t believe him? Read his post to find out more. (Be sure to read those comments because I find those just as intriguing.)

Ask Uncle Bill answers if getting your MBA at a big name school versus a state school is worth the cash. He shares his personal experience with this situation.

< a href="http://fdbryant3.newsvine.com/_news/2006/08/20/333475-pay-off-debt-in-14-of-the-time">FDBryant shares a tip on making payments to those nasty creditors. Why not pay two times a month instead of once? Following the wise Clark Howard’s advice, you just might shave off some of that interest paid on your debts. Read more to find out how!

Cheap Living & Traveling

“Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Free Money Finance says if you want to save big, you best be moving. Take a peek at this post on the cheapest places to live and how you can make your home there.

Adventures in the 100 Acre Wood offers their experience with finding low cost shelter. This is part two in the series and Stephanie shares some conventional and unconventional ways their family has been able to afford their housing.

It’s Just Money shares some tips for how you can attend out-of-town weddings for really cheap. Read this post before planning your next trip.

Then Things shares her tip on getting the cheapest plane tickets. Another great post to check out before you head on your next vacation.

DIY (Do It Yourself)

“Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy.” Groucho Marx

Help with everything shares a list of websites and questions to ask yourself before making that purchase…you know…that one!

Frugal Homemaker Plus shares her frugal mistakes with her readers. If you have ever put something off for tomorrow and suffered a financial loss, you have experienced just what she is talking about.

Five Cent Nickel shares an experience where sometimes you have to spend money to save money. Much like the Frugal Homemaker post, putting things off for tomorrow could lead to losing some money today.

Need some new magnets for your fridge? Bling On a Shoestring shares a craft for making some beautiful magnets for little or no cost.

We’re In Debt discusses how switching your auto insurance can save you, particularly when you are being overcharged for your neighborhood. We used to live in Massachusetts and I worked as an auto insurance representative so I could definitely relate to that one!

Warning: this one is for the girls only. Have you ever noticed how much you spend on tampons or pads? Have you ever considered reusable menstrual products? You can even make these yourself. Visit Tired but happy for the scoop.

Visit The Common Room for a very frugal recipe…Curried Legumes.


Tags: ,
Posted in Announcements | No Comments »

Call for Submissions

Saturday, July 15th, 2006

I will be hosting the Carnival of Debt Reduction this week. If you would like to participate, please send your entry to me by Sunday at 5:00 PM. All posts regarding experience with debt reduction or advice on how to get out of debt are welcome. For more information, please visit Mighty Bargain Hunter to get the full scoop!

Tags:
Posted in Announcements | 1 Comment »

PF Blogger Spotlight: MomAdvice

Wednesday, June 7th, 2006

I just wanted to share the good news that I was the featured Personal Finance Blogger being showcased on Blueprint for Financial Prosperity. I got the opportunity to do a little interview with Jim and share more about our site (with hopefully some folks who haven’t heard about us). I hope you guys can take a peek since I was pretty excited to see it up. Jim’s site is great and worth your time if you are trying to save money. He is also the guy whose traveling show I look forward to the most- the amazing Festival of Frugality.

Many thanks to Jim for giving us the opportunity and welcome to those of you who happened upon our site through his interview. I am very appreciative.

Posted in Announcements | 1 Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »