iMommies

Here’s your chance to contribute your writings for a book-in-the-making.  Stace Stevens is writing a book on behind-the-scenes hotel stories, and the interesting things that happen in hotels (pretty broad topic!), and is specifically looking for people who have (now, or in the past) worked for a hotel in any capacity. 

Each chapter will be dedicated to a different hotel department, depicting stories of wild guests, the things guests do, pranks, Bridezillas, secret rendezous, housekeeping nightmares, security issues, sneaky employees, catering events gone wrong, conventions gone wild, kitchen mishaps, scary things and just about anything you want to write about. Stace, who already has a publisher, will even correct the grammar and spelling - all they need is your story (with all personal and hotel names omitted). 

If interested in submitting your story, include the city and state where the hotel is located, and email to hotelstories@comcast.net.  Each entry will receive a reply, and authors of all published contributions will receive $50-$100, plus a matching contribution to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.  If you need further information, call Stace Stevens directly at 719-331-6103.

If you have a small business or nonprofit organization, you may benefit from the Xerox FreeColorPrinters program.  If you print between 2,000 and 4,000 pages per month and have at least one employee, you’ll very likely be eligible to receive the Phaser 8560 printer (it can be returned at any time, but after 3 years it’s yours to keep with no further obligations), along with free service and support.  In exchange, you must be willing to send in the monthly usage reports (done right from the printer) and purchase all of your ink supplies from Xerox (for the first 3 years). 

This could be a great program for many small businesses, but make sure you have all of the details first.  There are fees associated with not printing at least 2,000 pages per month, or failing to submit the monthly usage reports.  The ink prices are higher than a standard home printer, but go much further than the home printer cartridges too, so if your organization is operating on one of these low-volume printers, you should definitely look into this program.  The estimated cost of printing is $0.01 to $0.10 per page (black & white vs. color), which is definitely not a bad price.  The time savings could be advantageous as well, turning out as many as 30 color prints per minute.

ArkALMIGHTY offers a free website for each church to coordinate services within their congregation.  Members can post a need for assistance, and other members can view and volunteer in areas they choose.  If you don’t already have an online volunteer scheduling service in your church, you might start out with ArkALMIGHTY.  In addition to helping out members, it promotes congregational support, and allows members to develop relationships with others that they might not have known about otherwise.   

If you have a need outside of your church, within your circle of family and friends, Lotsa Helping Hands is a really helpful site for coordinating volunteer services.

If you teach a young Sunday School class, or participate in a Christmas Stocking program for underprivileged children, you can order up to 48 free Donkey Ollie DVDs (others available upon request).    The Adventures of Donkey Ollie movies tell the stories of Jesus through the eyes of a donkey and other lovable animals (very cute!).

The distribution of these free movies is funded by CarAngel, and their objective is to place free copies in EVERY Sunday School, Preschool, and Library.  Order for your class today, or check with your child’s teacher to see if they’ve already ordered.

I mentioned we had a garage sale Saturday, but we tried something new for the leftovers.  We donate to CCA (local Christians in Community Action organization) several times a year, and write off the itemized donations when filing our tax return.  Our local donation center does not itemize our donations for us - instead they give us a small receipt with some basic categories of items checked off.  This can be a huge headache during tax season to try and remember what was donated (and frankly, it scares me to not have the exact list).

Saturday afternoon, I sat down with a notebook and wrote down each item that was being taken to the donation center.  It was all laid out in front of me from the garage sale, so was easy to do.

When we dropped off our donation, we had the center sign our list and then stapled that list to the receipt they gave us, and filed both away in our Tax Prep folder.  Next year, when we need to itemize this year’s donations (using It’s Deductible software), we’ll just refer to the already organized paperwork.

For those of you who ordered a lemonade stand from Sunkist and have not yet received it, thought I’d share a picture of ours after it was put together.

The Business Plan:  Wyatt sold 3 oz. Dixie cups of lemonade for $0.25, gave each customer a Starburst, and chose to donate proceeds to the National MS Society.

Marketing:  We had a garage sale the same day, and Wyatt’s stand was set up at the edge of the driveway so that potential customers would see him easily.  Some customers came directly to him, and others he approached with a salesman’s pitch - something different every time, but very convincing! 

Revenue and Expenses:  Total lemonade sales for the day (8am-1pm) amounted to $9.50.  We donated $4.00 for lemons and Starbursts, and labor cost was $0.15 (only a 2-year old sister would work for this kind of money).  He’s keeping $4.15 to purchase lemons and candy for another day of business, so his total donation from Saturday is $5.20.


If you did not order the lemonade stand from Sunkist and would like to do so, click here.

The stand came with a lemon peeler, plastic juicer, and recipes for different varieties of lemonade.  Sunkist’s site also has printable signs and sales worksheets.

You don’t have to spend all day clipping coupons to save just a little money at the grocery store.  CutOutHunger.com has teamed up with major grocery stores in all 50 states to coordinate outstanding coupon circulars with store sales to achieve maximum savings.   Even if you don’t purchase the Sunday newspaper or receive the coupon inserts, sign up with SmartSource (one of the coupon insert providers) to have coupons emailed to you weekly.  Most stores that accept internet coupons also allow photocopied coupons (perhaps because they can’t tell the difference).

You can receive several items free each week, and many more items at HUGE discounts.  I stocked up on Betty Crocker potatoes last month, because at $0.10 per box, the deal was too good to pass up.  If you don’t have time to mess with coupon clipping, but have no issues with saving money on groceries…CutOutHunger.com is perfect!  While you’re at the store, pick up a couple of free or discounted items to donate to charity.

(There are other sites that offer this service, but most charge a monthly fee…CutOutHunger.com is a completely free website…as is SmartSource.com)

For many of us, the thought of saying good-bye to our husbands as they’re deployed is incomprehensible, but for so many others, it’s reality.  I won’t pretend to understand the heartbreak…and a little entertainment kit certainly isn’t going to make it better, BUT…this kit offered by Wal-Mart and Sesame Street was created to help families (children and parents) cope during a stressful time. 

For those of you who know families in the military, please forward this on.  For those of you who are actually members of a military family…May God protect you and your loved ones, and bless you richly for your noble contributions and selfless sacrifices.

Have a stack of CDs or DVDs that are just taking up space? Schedule a shipment with CashforCDs.com and they’ll not only pay you cash for your disks, but they’ll also pay the postage…AND provide the mailing materials!

Enter in the title of each disk, and the site will calculate exactly how much you’ll earn for your music and movie collections!

This seems very simple, and perhaps slightly insignificant, but imagine the results if everyone in your hometown took 3 minutes out of their week to help someone less fortunate…

Just jot down a few sentences about a moment of sharing in your life, and Country Crock (yes, the “tub-o-butter” company) will donate one meal to someone in need.