Affordable Invitations for your event

It seems like there is always a good reason for a celebration! We're just through Christmas and New Years and now Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Straight on from that we're headed into weddings and graduations! If you've got birthdays or other events going on as well, costs can start to add up!

Beautiful invitations to your events don't have to cost a fortune. Wedding-Needs.com offers a variety of price points and designs to meet any budget. Planning weddings or other important celebrations is often time-consuming, but this site makes it easy to select and personalize invitations without ever needing to leave the house! Plus, their processing time is ridiculously fast! Most invitations ship within 24 to 48 hours after your order is processed.

They have a fabulous selection of invitations. Elegant and inexpensive cards are available for weddings, showers, birthdays and other once-in-a-lifetime events. I particularly love their Naturally Ever After(tm) line, which is made from recycled paper and perfect for the eco-friendly party planner!

If you are planning a wedding or know someone who is, I invite you to pass along this piece of DGMommy's advice: The wedding is but one day of your life, the marriage is for a lifetime. Keep your focus the marriage and the rest will fall into place.


*** This post was brought to you by my friends at www.wedding-needs.com

The Age of No

Do your children treat you like their maid-servant? I swear mine do. At least the girls, but they're teaching their little brother a few tricks already. When you ask them to do something, do they just tell you, "No," and go right back to what they're doing? Or if not, they throw themselves down as if the world has fallen into pieces around them and they'll never recover from the tragedy of being told it's time to get ready for bed?!

My apologies for the run-on sentence. Perhaps I was not at all meant for motherhood, but it's too late now. They won't be going back where they came from anytime soon. The womb is closed! Therefore, we have to soldier on together. Papa, the 3 children and me.

Apparently around the age of 6, the "No" word comes back (remember that 2-year-old 'no' stage?) as a favorite. Children at this age also work on perfecting the art of ignoring their parents. This is a stage that tries a parent's patience, but it is compounded when there are younger siblings around. Remember when your sweet, little baby modeled you? Now the younger children prefer to model the elder sibling.

I can handle one child ignoring me, telling me no or even throwing a tantrum. What causes the steam to rise in my head until it feels that it may literally burst off and fly off into space is when I have three children defying me. They join forces and suddenly there is "Team No-To-Mommy" in the room.

I despise yelling at my children. But in these moments I don't know what else to do and out comes the shout. When I've regained my cool (and they've done what they were told to out of fear of their crazed, shouting mommy), I have shouters remorse. Then I wonder if I'm the worst mom in the world. Then I agree to shirk all of my duties and have coffee with my friend (who has two daughters exactly the same ages as mine). Then I feel better.

How do you handle being told "no" by your children? What discipline do you enforce? Tell me about it or feel free to link to your best post about it!

Blogger Morals - What would you do?

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New Year, Clean House

Happy New Year! It's too early for spring cleaning, but I'm in the mood to vacuum! But what I'd really love is to have someone do the vacuuming for me. I love the name of this company that offers maid service in Washington, D.C.: Maid to Please. Doesn't that name just give you a good feeling?

Back in the day, before we opened our own business, I used to have housekeeping service occasionally. When you're busy having babies it helps to hire out! I thought I was really busy when I had one baby and I was pregnant. I was, for certain, tired! Pregnancy fatigue is killer. Now I'm a busier mom of three (including 1 rambunctious toddler!), retail business owner and freelance writer (about to start another business!). Needless to say, my house could use a good clean.

When one of you kind readers sends me a gift certificate to have my house cleaned, keep in mind what I'm looking for:

A cleaning service with flexibility. Some of us can afford the luxury of weekly housekeeping, some monthly and for some quarterly is enough.

A bonded service. I want to feel comfortable that nothing is leaving my house when my housekeepers do.

A service whose employees feel comfortable cleaning when I'm at home, with a kid or two! Many companies prefer you leave a key with them, but that's not happening with me. Since I work from home half of the time and always have a 2-year-old monkey running around, they need to be able to work around me.

So there you have it! What I want in maid service or housekeeping. For now, however, I'll just deal with a bit of dust and keep working on cleaning myself skinny!

*** Disclosure: I may be compensated for this post, but not enough to cover a cleaning, so go ahead and click above left to donate ;)

Are you the only you out there?

Ever wonder if there is anyone out there pretending to be you? Or just borrowing “you” for a while to suit their needs? Then, on they go to the next unsuspecting individual. Sadly, for the honest majority, this is the way some people live their lives.

Over the Christmas shopping season a huge, unknown charge showed up on my Visa debit card. This was not a good time for credit card fraud and it got me thinking about identity theft. One of my daughters often gets mail for car loans, auto-insurance and other things a 5-year-old clearly doesn't need. So, I started looking into getting some protection. IdentityHawk is a leader in identity theft protection.

There are many companies out there offering their services, but what I like about Identity Hawk is that their protection is comprehensive. Instead of paying one company for credit report monitoring and another for identity theft protection, I can get both in one. Plus, they offer identity theft insurance, so if it does happen to you, you won't experience a huge financial loss on top of the emotional one.

Fortunately, my bank rocks and within a few days I had a new card and the fraudulent charges were reversed. I feel very fortunate and grateful for that. Yet, I'm still wondering if there is someone out there using my little girl's name and identity to live a life that doesn't quite belong to them. It's time for me to find out.

*** I may be compensated for this post, but all opinions and experiences noted are mine and true.