PPP | Permission to Peruse

Donate a car

February 10th, 2008 at 2:10 pm / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

Do you have a car sitting around waiting to be donated? Check out this car donation site. Car Angel (www.carangel.com) is a non-profit company that uses car and other donations to make movies for children and teens that help instill positive values. They have already given away over 2.4 million videos. They handle all the hard work of scheduling and towing the vehicle and you can use it as a tax deduction. Here is a clip from their movie Donkey Ollie Christmas in Heaven Special.

Popularity: unranked [?]

No Comments

Wedding Gifts

February 10th, 2008 at 1:07 pm / Amy Bennett / 2 Comments »

I’m not great at wedding presents. Honestly, usually I forget to bring one. I’m decent at bridal showers, but not wedding presents. But it looks as like with my cousin’s coming up I’m going to have to figure something out especially since I probably won’t be attending any showers. In the movie 27 dresses I saw, she mentioned always getting couples memberships to wine of the month clubs but I’m guessing that wouldn’t go over so well with my conservative cousin or me for that matter. I’m guessing they’ll be registered at Target and I’ll do the normal towels in a bag.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Comments (2)

The ring

January 20th, 2008 at 9:22 pm / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

So it’s 2008. Just in case you didn’t know. Seriously though, you may not know that ten years ago this August Scott and I have been married ten years. TEN YEARS. Oh my. We’ve just been talking this weekend about how we need to plan our weekend getaway. We’re such slackers, it should have been done months ago.

More than that though, I’m looking forward to the possibility of a new diamond. My original wedding ring was sautered together and ever since I had Lexi, it breaks my finger out and I can’t wear them. So a few months ago you may (or probably not) remember I bought some cheap rings at the Big K to wear in the meantime. The gold is real in both but the diamond is of course CZ. I’m hoping we get to do some shopping for some real wedding rings before our anniversary and I can do away with the Big K stand ins and enjoy some real bling.

Popularity: unranked [?]

No Comments

Memory Upgrade

January 20th, 2008 at 9:14 pm / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

Scott is all the time complaining about this computer I have. He says it’s slow almost every time he gets on it. I have a Gateway 2.8 GHz and I’m just realizing it only has 1GB of memory. While he says that’s all his Dell laptop has, I still think that could be the culprit. I run many more programs at once on here and I really need to go buy some IBM memory and get the system up to at least 2GB. That’s what I have on my work laptop and it serves me well.

Popularity: unranked [?]

No Comments

Grey Poupon

January 20th, 2008 at 9:10 pm / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

Recently I was sent two types of Grey Poupon to try and give an honest review. But Grey Poupon has been out for a long time. Who doesn’t remember their commercial..”Excuse me, sir, but do you happen to have any Grey Poupon?” The ad obviously worked because I still remember it to this day. But honestly, I’ve never been a fan. I’m not a huge mustard fan to begin with though so I’m a little biased.

But they have two new mustards out, Harvest Coarse Ground and Hearty Spicy Brown. My husband loves mustard and couldn’t wait to tear into the jar. He was quick to say I should try it and he usually can guess what I’d like. And I’m into spicy things so I gave the Hearty Spicy Brown a try. And I was pleasantly surprised. The mustard was not tangy at all. It had a little kick to it. Not spicy but not the same original taste. It got a thumbs up from me.

With that under my belt, I wasn’t nearly as hesitant in trying the Harvest Coarse Ground. And while the taste was ok, I wasn’t too fond of the texture. When it says coarse, it means it.

One out of two isn’t bad for a mustard-hater though.

Their site also offers recipes including all kinds of different things from crab dip to mac & cheese.

Popularity: unranked [?]

No Comments

Salon Grafix Dry Shampoo

January 18th, 2008 at 4:12 pm / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

I remember one time I think when I was either a teenager or in my early twenties and I didn’t want to or didn’t have time to wash my hair before I went somewhere. And I had heard somewhere to put baby powder on it to "soak up the grease". And I actually did it. And it sort of worked. It was a little gray at the roots but hey, it wasn’t greasy! But fast forward to my late, um, late twenties and many mornings that I take the girls to preschool I don’t get ready before I take them, time slips to quickly and then I don’t get ready before I pick them up. And I’m left with a bad case of bed head. And I don’t mean the cool hair products.

Someone at Salon Grafix must have seen me in the line at preschool and had pity on me as they’ve created this dry shampoo line. Just spray a color-matched powder in your hair (it’s not white!) and it leaves your hair clean and shiny without any residue. Hmm, I think I’ll have to try it as anything is better than the gray ponytail look.

Popularity: unranked [?]

No Comments

Get Paid Per Impression!

January 15th, 2008 at 4:27 pm / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

Lately I feel like I work in some sort of ad job. Google adwords and adsense, linkshare, kontera, payperpost, blah, blah, blah. That’s all I’ve stared at for weeks, well, months now. I started with this site and then have really tried to pull out all the stops with my OTH site. What I quickly realized is I wanted something per impression and not always relying on readers to click on ads.

Enter a possible solutions: Net Audio Ads. This company lets an ad play when users first enter your site and that’s it. No blinking and possibly provocative ads filling up your screen and you get paid for every visit. Lovely!

Popularity: unranked [?]

No Comments

Mortgage Life Insurance

January 15th, 2008 at 2:29 pm / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

Insurance and I have a love-hate relationship. When you don’t have it, you’re always kicking yourself for not and when you do, you complain about the cost. If you want to err on the side of caution to prepare your family in case something happens, mortgage life insurance is available to calm your fears. You can take a policy out in many increments for however long your mortgage has left and if something happens, your house will be paid for.

Popularity: unranked [?]

No Comments

House not an investment?

January 15th, 2008 at 2:03 pm / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

I found this post quite interesting. I’ve never thought about the fact that a house was not an investment. I always assumed it would be ok for us to work into one of those luxury homes because it was an investment. But according to their thinkings, unless you plan to actually sell it and make money off of it, it’s not really an investment.

I’m not sure if I agree because they are saying it’s not an investment if you don’t plan to sell but if you don’t ever sell, then that means whoever inherits that benefits from it. To me, that’s investment either way. Maybe not in government, tax talk but still, I don’t think it’s a bad way to spend your money.

Popularity: unranked [?]

No Comments

Customized Printing

January 14th, 2008 at 2:40 pm / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

For me, VistaPrint has been the number one source for online printed materials including address labels for quite some time. As far back as I can remember, their site has done a great job at advertising online. The best part of VistaPrint is the free stuff they offer. You can get business cards, rubber stamps, sticky notes and more all for free.

This is great for families but if it’s any type of business, you’ll want to personalize all your paper products . They have everything a business would need including advertising products like T-shirts, magnets and pens. And if you are just starting your business, you can even create your own logo right on the site. They are very reasonably priced and you can get pretty cheap address labels that look so much better than those free ones you get in the mail from time to time. If you have a small business or an interest in customizing your family labels, they are the go-to people.

Popularity: unranked [?]

No Comments

Learning new talents

January 9th, 2008 at 11:09 pm / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

OK, so recently I’ve run into at least two people that have set random goals to learn something new. The first is a girl at my church who really wants to learn poker. So she’s been watching poker and playing poker online just to learn it. I’m not sure why she wants to except she seemed like she just really is perplexed by it and wants to know it. Then I ran into someone else that said they are practicing bowling a lot for the simple fact they are competitive and want to get better at it. I think I’m just going to throw some random billiard DVDs in people’s stocking and not be surprised when they say they’ve been wanting it.

Popularity: unranked [?]

No Comments

Oh the debt

January 9th, 2008 at 11:05 pm / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

Man, aren’t we all cringing right now about what we spent at Christmas? Well, maybe not all of us but some of us didn’t prepare too well and Christmas debt is upon us. I think that’s why they give you a tax refund at the beginning of the year so you can pay off your Christmas debt. Our bank does this Christmas club thing where you pay yourself money through the year instead of having to get a personal loan just to afford Polly Pocket. Ok, hopefully no one is getting into personal loans for Polly Pocket but I do know we have a chunk we need to pay off and I can. not. wait.

Popularity: unranked [?]

No Comments

Who gave them that anyway?

January 6th, 2008 at 10:36 pm / Amy Bennett / 1 Comment »

Sometimes the love of my children gets in the way of common sense and I let them play with something like fingernail polish. It is now on both bathroom vanities, on the kitchen floor, on my desk and surely on some clothes. I am certainly not sure why I do this but if anyone has any suggestions on getting off dried fingernail polish except to scrape it off, let me know.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Comment (1)

Suze Orman on Real Estate

January 4th, 2008 at 9:18 pm / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

I love to listen to Suze Orman. I feel like such a novice at financial matters. We don’t even have a budget we stick by. In fact, I gave up keeping up with our checkbook altogether some time last year. I keep an eye on it online and call it a day. So yeah, we’re freespenders.

I do care about our finances though and try to make good choices on our 401K, savings, mortgages and such and love to listen to any advice Suze gives. I just caught her show on tonight and she was doing a special on real estate. As we all know, right now is a buyer’s market and advises sellers to sell even below market if they have to get out of a property.

The other thing I learned tonight is our ARM on our second mortgage was probably a mistake. She advised one caller to put all of her 15K savings into the house just to get out of a 8.5% ARM into a 6.5% fixed rate. The next one she advised a couple to get a fixed loan instead of a money line for renovations on their house. I really wish we would have done a fixed second mortgage and then we wouldn’t be dealing with these ever-increasing rates. Good news though is interest rates are supposed to come down soon. Whew.

Popularity: unranked [?]

No Comments

Auctions for a Cause

January 4th, 2008 at 8:38 pm / Amy Bennett / No Comments »

Last month we received a gigantic bag of apples. Although my kids love to eat them, we still have a half a bag sitting in the kitchen. I could get all homely and make an apple pie but don’t hold your breath. So why did I buy so many? For a good cause, of course. One of the youth members were selling fruit for their high school band. Many groups rely on fundraising to meet their budgets every year. The girls’ preschool relies on fundraising through school picture money to help meet budget needs. Even our youth group uses fundraisers to help pay for students to go to camp each year. Heck, do you think the Girl Scouts sell cookies every year to make us all binge on cookie a box at a time…no way! They want to take that trip to Savannah! I kid…sort of. We really did take the trip to Savannah when I was in GS. Well, bottom line fundraising is a necessity and shoutback.com has put a new spin on it. They allow you to raise money individually or for a group cause by starting auctions. It’s like ebay but your proceeds help somebody help. How cool!