Perhaps I expected too much from this book or maybe I thought it really did contain some “secret” that few others knew. But it didn’t. It was a ho hum book. All the information in the book can be easily found on the Internet, most of it on the ProBlogger blog.

I actually felt like this was one of those $29.99 ebooks you buy off of the Internet and find yourself thinking “I already know this stuff, where is the “secret”. I’m not saying it was totally worthless. Not at all. If you’re new to the Internet and blogging, then this book would be helpful. However, if you’ve been around a while and know what a blog is, know how to drive traffic to a website and know what Social Networks are, then you pretty much have the knowledge that is given in the ProBlogger book.

The ProBlogger book covers the basics such as choosing a niche, starting a blog, setting the blog up and making the blog grow. It also talks ways to get traffic, social-media, marketing, monetization of your blog, link baiting and what type of post you should be making to satisfy your readers. Pretty simple stuff.

The ProBlogger book has 10 Chapters. The Chapter headings include:

1. Blogging For Money
2. Niche Blogging
3. Setting Up Your Blog
4. Blog Writing
5. Blog Income and Earning Strategies
6. Buying and Selling Blogs
7. Blog Networks
8. Blog Promotion and Marketing
9. Secrets of Successful Blogs
10. Creating Something Worthwhile

As you can see, pretty basic stuff. I would have liked to see them go into more details on many of the subjects but they didn’t. This book seems to be aimed at the beginner and just lightly touches many of the subjects. For example, in Chapter 1, Blogging For Money, there is a section title “How Much Could You Earn”.  This section does’t really give a range of what a blogger could expect to make. It’s full of generalizations such as

Although there are some bloggers like Darren and I do make a full time living from blogging, and there are bloggers who make way more than eithe of us do, there are many more bloggers who use their income to subsidize gadget purchases or as a way to offset some Internet cost.

Ummm, yeah…could you be a little more detailed? Of course, if you’re familiar with some of the articles about Darren and his ProBlogger blog, you know he makes over $100,000 per year blogging. Likely it’s way more than that now.

The exerpt above just gives you a feeling for the way the rest of the book reads. Basic, kinda boring and full of generalizations.

On the plus side, it is an easy and quick read. It’s not hard to understand. I think even your Grandma or Aunt could read this book and start a blog. This may be just the book for them!

So is the ProBlogger book worth the $16.49 asking price? Yeah probably, especially if you’ve never started a blog or have any idea of how to start one and make some money out of it.

Will you wake up one morning to a 6 figure income from blogging? If the ProBlogger book was the only one you read, I doubt you’d make 6 figures any time soon.

I think we all know that the title, “ProBlogger: Secrets to Blogging Your Way To A Six Figure Income” was designed to catch the reader’s wallet more so than to offer anything but basic advice on blogging.

To summarize this ProBlogger Book Review, if you’re new to blogging and have no idea how to start, this book may be for you. It will help you get started and answer many of your questions. If you’re a more advanced blogger, this book is just good bathroom material while you’re taking care of business. Not much in the way of substance, advanced tips or strategies. If you’re in the latter boat, save your money.

So for this Mothers Day, I’ve decided on a little history lesson.

How Mother’s Day Started In The Ancient Times

The practice of honoring of motherhood is rooted in antiquity, and past traditional often had strong symbolic and religious overtones. Adoration was bestowed upon female deities or the Church. It has only been the last several centuries that honoring motherhood has become popular for the individual women.

One of the earliest recorded instances of honoring mothers was in ancient Egypt, where people held an annual festival to honor the goddess Isis. She was thought of as the mother of the Pharaohs.

In ancient Greece it was the Goddess Rhea who was thought to be the mother to the major deities. The Goddess Rhea was celebrated with a festival that took place around the time of the vernal equinox.

In ancient Rome and Asia Minor the Phrygian goddess Cybele, or Magna Mater (great mother), who stems from Rhea, was honored with a celebration between March 15-22 each year.

Mother’s Day In the Modern Ages

In the 1600s, a church decree in England broadened the celebration of Lent (which celebrated the place where they were baptized, their home Church) to include humanly mothers, giving this day the name “Mothering Day.”

For this day, servants and trade workers were allowed to travel to their hometowns to visit family where their Mother was the guest of honor. The Mom’s were given delicacies such as cakes and flowers and special gifts. They also received a visit from their beloved and distant children. (I wonder if the Children back then called their Mom’s?)

The first North American Mother’s Day was started by a lady named Julia Ward Howe in 1870. Julia Howe was so distraught by the death and carnage that she saw during the Civil War that she called on mother’s to come together and protest what she saw as the futility of their sons killing the sons of other mothers. She called for an international Mother’s Day celebrating peace and motherhood.

In 1885 a lady by the name of Mary Towles Sasseen wrote stories and poems for students to recite on her mother’s birthday. (Mary Towles was a school teacher in Henderson Kentucky) She called the April 20th observance, “Mother’s Day Celebration,” and invited the mothers of the students to attend.

To reunite families that had been divided between the Union and Confederate sides of the Civil War, a group led by Anna Reeves Jarvis held a Mother’s Friendship Day, an adaptation of Julia Howe’s holiday. After Anna R. Jarvis died, her daughter Anna Marie Jarvis campaigned for the creation of an official Mother’s Day in remembrance of her mother and in honor of peace. Her request was honored, and on May 10, 1908, the first official Mother’s Day celebration took place at Andrew’s Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia, and a church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

By 1909, parts of Canada and Mexico and 46 states were holding Mother’s Day services. Anna Jarvis quit working and devoted herself full time to the creation of Mother’s Day, endlessly petitioning state governments, business leaders, and other institutions and organizations. She finally convinced the World’s Sunday School Association to back her, a key influence over congress. In 1912, West Virginia became the first state to officially recognize Mother’s Day, and in 1914, Woodrow Wilson signed it into national observance, declaring the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

So there you have it. A brief history of Mothers Day and how it came about. Now we need a “stay at home Mom day!”

The thought of cooking a month’s worth of meals in one or two days kinda scared me! Heck, I have trouble thinking up something different from day to day it seems! Cooking your food for a month in advance can also keep you within budget. This comes in handy when you need to buy gas just to make it to the store!

How many of you have resorted to picking up fast food meals simply because you were too tired to prepare a meal or you didn’t have time to run to town to pick up an ingrediant or two for your favorite recipe?

Tips For Cooking Meals Once A Month

Here are some important tips to keep in mind if you’re considering once a month cooking as a way of life for your family.

• Planning your meals is the most important thing you need to do. You will need to set aside a day (or two) for the cooking when nothing else is on the calendar. It is simply too difficult to see to all the details if you are planning your cooking event around car pools, soccer games, or dance practices. You need a full day that will be relatively uninterrupted. It’s very difficult to remain focused with a house full of screaming kids or the phone ringing off the wall. Once the kiddo’s get older, look for ways to enlist their help with any cutting, chopping, slicing, dicing, or peeling that may need to be done.
• You should also create a thorough menu followed by a list of each and every ingredient you will need. Don’t try and go shopping on the same day you plan on cooking. Make out your grocery list in advance and check it twice. Take you time at the grocery store so that you’re not likely to rush through the shopping trip and forget something. Bring your menu and your list and get everything you need in one trip whenever possible. You can also save money by planning your meals for the month according to the sales circulars and coupons you have for the week in order to stretch your budget a little further.
• Next, make sure that you have all the supplies, dishes, and containers you need to prepare and store the meals you’ve prepared properly. You should also make sure that the recipes you are using for your once a month cooking marathon are recipes that freeze well. It is even better if you have recipes that double well so that you can get twice the results from the same effort.
• Keep your Kitchen and food preparation area clean. Folding card tables are great for storing things out of the way and freeing up valuable counter space for preparing and assembling the foods that will be prepared. Clean cooking and assembling spaces also help eliminate the potential of food contamination.
• Put all your Kitchen appliances to work. They’re there to make your life easier, use them. Don’t limit all cooking to the oven. Find dishes that freeze well and can be prepared in the crock pot or on the range top.

You should also make sure you are mentally prepared for your marathon cooking session. If preparing a months worth of meals in a day or two seems a mammoth task, try preparing two weeks worth of food first. You’ll soon learn that it gets easier and easier every time you do it.

Once a month cooking will give you a great feeling on those nights when the thought of cooking seems unbearable and the wallet has been stretched to its limit.

I’ll admit, it’s a cute little fuzz ball. A cute little destructive fuzz ball!

However, now the time has come to house break this little fuzz ball and he’s not taking kindly to it. I Googled “house breaking a puppy” and followed some simple advice from several websites. Nothing seemed to work until I found this site “Pomeranian Puppy Training.” Dawn has reviewed a book on house breaking a puppy so I bought it. She was right! This book helped us house break our new Pomeranian Puppy, even though he resisted, I think he “get’s it” now!

We still have to do our follow ups with the little guy, he seems to forget sometimes. Maybe it’s selective memory? I can’t thank Dawn enough for helping us out.  Without her, I’d still be going around cleaning up accidents…a lot of accidents. Actually, I started calling them “On Purposes!”

Although I’m still not crazy about a dog, or even a puppy, in the home, the Family loves “Hercules” and he has been a ball of joy…for the most part

One of the key techniques is to take them outside when they start acting like they want to go or even if they do go in the home. We found it was a pain, but eventually he got it. We’d also take our Pomeranian puppy out for walks in the mornings and evenings and this also seemed to help. He just couldn’t hold it until he got inside!

Plus, they don’t give us a discount for checking ourself out and bagging our own groceries! Call me old fashioned, but when I go grocery shopping I want to be checked out by a person who is bagging my groceries also while I’m organizing my wallet and writing a check out for the amount.

I know why these companies are doing it, so they can do away with Cashiers. These stores see their Cashiers as disposable when they should be looking at them as company reps. I can remember many times that I seeked out a certain Cashier because I knew they were friendly and knowledgeable. I can also remember a few times that I wouldn’t go back to a certain store because of rude Cashiers.

I’ve stopped going to most stores that use those self serve checkout Kiosk. Two stores that come to mind in my area are Krogers (after a certain time in the evenings) and Home Depot. I’m sorry, but if I had wanted to check my self out, I’d applied for a freakin’ job! It would be one thing if they passed the savings that came with eliminating a persons job to the consumers, but they don’t. So I choose to shop where there is a Cashier that can check me out and bag my grocieries!

Maybe we need to start a list of stores that do that!

I’ve decided to oblige them and from now on, I’ll be posting things out of the blue, for no reason at all. Things that happen to me, things that I like/don’t like…anything. It sounds like it should be fun, so sit back and enjoy.

If you want to jump in, feel free! I’d love to hear from you all. After all, isn’t that what a blog is all about? Two girls…or hundreds of girls getting together and chatting? LOL

For those not from Kansas City, on Tuesday they found the body of 18 year old Kelsey Smith, a girl that just graduated from the high school a week earlier. So sad so senseless. Kelsey was abducted from a Target parking lot after doing some routine shopping. 

Unfortunately in the world we live in we have to take every precaution and sometimes even that is not enough.  In the interest of keeping you and the ones you love aware, I share the attached.

Everyone should take 5 minutes to read this.  It may save your life or love one’s life.

Crucial

Because of recent abductions in daylight hours,refresh yourself of these things to do in an emergency situation…

This is for you, and for you to share with your wife, your children, everyone you know.

After reading these 9 crucial tips, forward them to someone you care about. It never hurts to be careful in this crazy world we live in.

1 Tip from Tae Kwon Do :

The elbow is the strongest point on your body. If you are close enough to use it, do!

2. Learned this from a tourist guide in New Orleans: If a robber asks for your wallet and/or purse, DO NOT HAND IT TO HIM

Toss it away from you…. chances are that he is more interested in your wallet and/or purse than you, and he will go for the wallet/purse.

RUN LIKE MAD IN THE OTHER DIRECTION!

3. If you are ever thrown into the trunk of a car, kick out the back tail lights and stick your arm out the hole and start waving like crazy.

The driver won’t see you, but everybody else will. This has saved lives.

4. Women have a tendency to get into their cars after shopping, eating, working, etc., and just sit (doing their checkbook, or making a list, etc.

DON’T DO THIS! The predator will be watching you, and this is the perfect opportunity for him to get in on the passenger side, put a gun to your head, and tell you where to go.

AS SOON AS YOU GET INTO YOUR CAR, LOCK THE DOORS AND LEAVE.

a. If someone is in the car with a gun to your head DO NOT DRIVE OFF, repeat: DO NOT DRIVE OFF!

Instead gun the engine and speed into anything, wrecking the car. Your Air Bag will save you. If the person is in the back seat they will get the worst of it .  Note: People who have their seat belt on in cars with air bags die every day in crashes….and the back seat is the safest place to be in case of a crash…so I know this “tip” is bogus.

As soon as the car crashes bail out and run. It is better than having them find your body in a remote location.

5 A few notes about getting into your car in a parking lot, or parking garage:

A.) Be aware: look around you, look into your car, at the passenger side floor, and in the back seat

B) If you are parked next to a big van, enter your car from the passenger door . Most serial killers attack their victims by pulling them into their vans while the women are attempting to get into their cars.

C) Look at the car parked on the driver’s side of your vehicle, and the passenger side. If a male is sitting alone in the seat nearest your car, you may want to walk back into the mall, or work, and get a guard/policeman to walk you back out.

IT IS ALWAYS BETTER TO BE SAFE THAN SORRY. (And better paranoid than dead.)

6. ALWAYS take the elevator instead of the stairs. 

(Stairwells are horrible places to be alone and the perfect crime spot. This is especially true at NIGHT!)

7. If the predator has a gun and you are not under his control, ALWAYS RUN!

The predator will only hit you (a running target) 4 in 100 times; And even then, it most likely WILL NOT be a vital organ.

RUN, Preferably in a zig -zag pattern!

8. As women, we are always trying to be sympathetic:

STOP! It may get you raped, or killed. Ted Bundy, the serial killer, was a good-looking, well educated man, who ALWAYS played on the sympathies of unsuspecting women. He walked with a cane, or a limp, and often asked “for help” into his vehicle or with his vehicle, which is when he abducted his next victim.

9. Another Safety Point:

Someone just told me that her friend heard a crying baby on her porch the night before last, and she called the police because it was late and she thought it was weird.

The police told her “Whatever you do, DO NOT open the door.” The lady then said that it sounded like the baby had crawled near a window, and she was worried that it would crawl to the street and get run over. The policeman said, “We already have a unit on the way, whatever you do, DO NOT open the door.” He told her that they think a serial killer has a baby’s cry recorded and uses it to coax women out of their homes thinking that someone dropped off a baby He said they have not verified it, but have had several calls by women saying that they hear baby’s cries outside their doors when they’re home alone at night.

Please pass this on and DO NOT open the door for a crying baby —-

This e-mail should probably be taken seriously because the Crying Baby theory was mentioned on America ‘s Most Wanted this past Saturday when they profiled the serial killer in Louisiana

I’d like you to forward this to all the women you know. It may save a life. A candle is not dimmed by lighting another candle. I was going to send this to the ladies only, but guys, if you love your mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, etc., you may want to pass it onto them, as well. Send this to any woman you know that may need to be reminded that the world we live in has a lot of crazies in it and it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Everyone should take 5 minutes to read this.  It may save your life or a loved one’s life.