4GB Digital MP3 Player Giveaway - Christmas on The Lounge

Posted on December 13, 2009
Filed Under FREEBIES | Leave a Comment

I have just entered into The Homeschool Lounge’s Christmas Giveaway!

It is for a 4gb MP3 player!!!!!!!

You can too - here is the link The Homeschool Lounge Giveaway

Things To Do Before You Die!

Posted on May 17, 2009
Filed Under Your Faith, Your Purpose | Leave a Comment

We all need to have a list of things we need to do before we die! I have only just realised this recently.

Time is just so short and it is so easy to spend it on absolutely nothing worthwhile.

Well, yesterday I totally surprised myself - I managed to cross off a couple of “Things to do before you die”

1. I watched my younger sister’s netball game - wow I have a new respect for her fitness level - I became so tired just watching those girls run around the court. It is a good thing to spend a bit of time encouraging someone doing their thing.

2. At this same netball game , the referees asked me to score the last two quarters of the day. I was so apprehensive , I was worried that I wouldn’t score correctly.After I had done it, I felt so good - for the rest of the day I kept saying - “I scored a netball game!”

3. I was due to go to a 30th birthday party last night - we all had to wear a flash dress. Well, I thought - why not get my nails done? So my sister and I went (after the netball game) to the mall. The nail technician suggested that we get nail art as something special. I just giggled all through the nail art session - it was so wild. I have never had my nails half painted black with gold sparkles and diamonds before!

These three “things before you die” may seem to you to be so insignificant but to me this was a very different way to spend my Saturday - chuck the TV away and start doing something new today! It just changes your attitude towards what you can do. Confidence Building 101!

Until Next Time
Keep Connecting with God!

Dining on a Dime Book Giveaway

Posted on April 15, 2009
Filed Under FREEBIES, Organisation | 3 Comments

Living on a Dime is having a giveaway!!!

I have just received an email from Tawra from Living on a Dime about a crazy sale they are having. Here’s what she said:

We are going to be having a 50% off sale on all our books and 63% off if you buy 3 you get one free. (yes, this is just barely above our cost but it’s not worth having books sit around :-)

Here is the link to check it out:Mothers Day Crazy Book Sale

She has given me one ebook to give away to one of my blog readers - this is the giveaway lowdown

Dining On A Dime - e-Book
Eat Better and Spend Less with Real Food for Real People!
Dining On A Dime Cookbook - Money Saving Recipes, Grandma’s Home Cooking

Save $10,000 a year on food?

Without cutting coupons! Unbelievable? Read Tawra Jean Kellam and Jill Cooper’s advice in their e-book: Dining on a Dime (formerly Not Just Beans) and find out that it really is possible.

Tawra has told her story to millions of listeners and readers on the radio, on the web and in women’s magazines (including Woman’s Day and Woman’s World) and now she’s put her best tips and tricks into a 476 page e-book. Using these tips and suggestions, Tawra shows how anyone can tighten his or her food budget.

Dining on a Dime is packed with over 1,200 money saving recipes and tips, kids tips and snack ideas, gift baskets, menus, food storage directions, Cleaning Cents and Pretty for Pennies. The recipes are easy to cook with ingredients that you probably already have in your pantry. To make shopping easy and economical, Tawra has also included a pantry list and a shopping list.

This is worth $19.95 and 481 pages!!!!!!!!! - you could be the lucky reader who will get this for free!!!!

Here is how you can be in to win:

I am a speaker at New Zealand’s H.E.A.R.T retreat this year and my topic is “Avoiding Burnout” I would love to hear your ideas on how you avoid burnout as a wife, mum, homeschooling mum etc.

Just leave a comment with your avoiding burnout advice and the suggestion that appeals to me will win the “Dining on a Dime” ebook. You will have until 20th April to post your ideas.
Good Luck!

Rachel

Six Steps to Successful Personal Change

Posted on April 7, 2009
Filed Under Your Faith, Your Purpose | Leave a Comment

I came across a short article from John C. Maxwell about change. I am going through a lot of change right now. It can sometimes be quite disconcerting. My changes are all external changes that are happening to me ,but John Maxwell was talking about internal changes and gave 6 steps towards how to change.

We sometimes wish that our lives were a little different - well this short list of steps shows us clearly where we start and that we can change our lives - we are the only one responsible for our own life and we can change it.

1. When you change your thinking you change your beliefs.

2. When you change your beliefs you change your expectations.

3. When you change your expectations you change your attitude.

4. When you change your attitude you change your behavior.

5. When you change your behavior you change your performance.

6. When you change your performance, you change your life!

It all starts with our thinking!

Let’s change our thoughts today towards what we what to see our lives become.

Rachel

Turning Typing Mistakes into Liquid Gold

Posted on April 2, 2009
Filed Under Fellow Writers, Your Purpose | Leave a Comment

Anyone who has ever used a typewriter has experienced the frustration of hitting the wrong key. Depending on which year you made this mistake, you had very few choices as to what you could do after making the mistake.

For most of the typewriter’s existence, if it was an important piece of paper you were typing you had no choice but to throw away the one with the mistake and start over again.

This was very time consuming. For some, it was impossible to actually type a whole page worth of characters and not make a mistake. This meant many people couldn’t use the typewriter…at least not until someone could solve this problem.

A Valuable Solution

In 1954, an executive secretary, Bette Graham, decided that there was a better way. Her mother was an artist and Bette decided to use tempura paint to cover up her typing mistakes.

Soon, others in the office saw what she was doing and wanted some of this magical liquid Bette called “Mistake Out.”

The demand for it grew and she started making it at home. Her son and his friends would bottle it up.

In 1958 an office magazine ran an article about “Liquid Paper” which resulted in over 500 orders. This grew to over 5,000 bottles per week by 1962.

By 1975 she moved the headquarters of Liquid Paper from San Antonio to Dallas. Three years later she sold her company, Liquid Paper, to Gillette for $48 million.

Bette’s Acres of Diamonds was sitting in her mom’s painting supplies. She turned an irritation with typing mistakes into a multi-million dollar fortune.

Other Solutions

Over the years this same problem has led to many other solutions:

* Typing training (teach people how to not make mistakes)
* Typing tests (screen out the bad typists)
* Erasable paper
* Erasable ink
* Ink remover
* Cover-up sheets - looked like white carbon paper
* Different keyboard layout like the Dvorak keyboard
* Correcting typewriters
* Type ahead buffers with built in dictionaries
* Dedicated word processors like the Wangwriter
* Word processing software like Wordstar, Word Perfect and Microsoft Word
* Voice dictation software like Dragon Speak

Each of these solutions is someone else’s Acres of Diamonds. There can be more than one successful solution to a problem.

Finding Your Own Acres of Diamonds

Ask yourself a series of questions:

What problems are you facing that others face?

Which of those problems would people be willing to pay money for a solution?

What possible solutions are there for that problem?

Which solution seems like the right one for you to pursue first?

What are your next action steps?

You don’t have to have a degree, a special background, previous experience or certification to come up with a great solution to a persistent problem. You just have to decide you want to find a solution and take action. The power of intention and persistence will yield great rewards.

About the Author

Dan Swanson is an Internet marketing consultant, who systematically increases qualified traffic and improves conversions of visitors to customers for client’s websites. For more information on his Internet marketing consulting services visit http://www.iq2.com. For more Acres of Diamonds success stories, visit http://www.AcresOfDiamonds.net.

Get Wisdom!

Posted on February 23, 2009
Filed Under Your Faith, Your Purpose | 1 Comment

I have just had a revelation this morning - my middle son found a verse in Proverbs in our Bible time. It was Proverbs 3 v 19 :

The Lord by skilful and godly wisdom has founded the earth…

This really struck me between the eyes! Wisdom is what created the earth. The kids and I started thinking about what is inside the earth - iron, gold , silver, metal, diamonds, precious gem stones etc.

Wow! Wisdom created all these precious and valuable things. I am sure that there is more to discover that hasn’t already been revealed inside the earth. All through the book of Proverbs the writer is trying to get the reader to value Wisdom - to get Wisdom.

I sure what Wisdom if it has the ability to create diamonds! don’t you?

Writing to Inspire
Rachel

Character Training your Kids Part One

Posted on January 27, 2009
Filed Under Home Schooling, Your Family | 1 Comment

The most important education is Character Training. What is the point of having a highly intelligent adult if their personality or character is corrupt or grating on everyone else? It is better to spend the time on gently guiding our children into God’s paths and His wisdom in dealing with life’s issues than to feed them lots of facts and figures.

The first character issue that I encountered with my oldest son was an extremely negative attitude. If someone said “yes”, he said “no” and vice versa. It seemed like he was determined to go through life miserable and making everyone else miserable.

After much prayer God showed me the cause of my son’s negative attitude. It was a lack of confidence in his own abilities. He didn’t want to try new things because he didn’t think that he would be any good - he thought that he was a big failure at everything.

So little things like learning how to tie his shoelaces to playing sports to attending a homeschool field trip seemed to be too hard for him to attempt.

Well, now that I could pinpoint what the issue was I had to sit down and work out a solution. I tried to praise him and encourage him but it didn’t seem to be very effective. I prayed some more and asked for God’s answer to our issue. God is so faithful , He showed me exactly what I had to do to help my son build up confidence inside.

My words weren’t being effective but God said that His Word is always effective. His Words work and they are alive. He showed me last year that His Words create something out of nothing. His Words - Light Be created light!. Jesus’ words to the fig tree caused it to die. His words to the rough waves and sea, calmed them.

So my job was to inject God’s words about my sons abilities into his heart. His faith in God and himself had to be built up. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God (Romans 10:17). So I had to find God’s Words on confidence.

My son was 10 at the time so he was able to understand the things that I was to interject into his life. I wanted him to own these words for himself. So I encouraged him to do a bit of research and discover what the word confidence & courage means. Then I showed him how to look up God’s Word for verses on confidence. He came up with the following:
Proverbs 14:26
Ephesians 3:12
Hebrews 4:16
1 Corinthians 16:13
2 Timothy 1:7

I picked out two verses that suited my son and our situation and personlised them. Then at the end of everyday when I was tucking him into bed , he would read out his personlised verses.

Proverbs 14:26 In the fear of the LORD I have strong confidence and I will have a refuge”
1 Cor 16:13 I am watchful. I stand firm in the faith. I act like a man. I am strong”

The result was awesome! The Word of God sent forth always accomplishes that for which God has purposed it to accomplish. My son grew in confidence that year.

The answer to whatever character issue that you are facing is to be found in the Word. I highly encourage you to spend time in prayer asking God to reveal to you the perfect Word for your child.

“The Missing Link” Contest

Posted on November 20, 2008
Filed Under FREEBIES, Home Schooling | Leave a Comment

There is a contest over at Learning at His Feet Blog this week. You can have a chance to win the fiction book called “The Missing Link”
is the first of The Truth Seekers Mystery four book series published by Media Angels, Inc. It was written by Christina and Felice Gerwitz, a homeschooling daughter and mom duo. I received a letter from Felice with the book and loved this excerpt from it:

“My then homeschooled daughter, Christina, at 14 said she wanted to write a mystery novel. I explained, “We don’t know how to write novels” and she said, “That’s okay, Mom! We’re homeschoolers, we can learn how.” (Well, how could I say no?)”

The Gerwitz’ wanted to help children stand up for their faith, so they wrote a book with good role models that are not only Christian, but homeschooled kids. These children are along for a wild adventure in The Missing Link: Found, helping out their uncle with his archaeological dig. It is believed that the Missing Link has been discovered which would be compelling evidence for the theory of evolution. This book is full of interesting tidbits and factoids and is written from a Creationist view.

I have been wanting to read this book for ages - it sounds awesome!

Chance to win a little ebook on…

Posted on November 14, 2008
Filed Under FREEBIES, Your Health | Leave a Comment

……Staying Trim Over The Holiday Season.

This is a pdf report on how to stay trim over the upcoming holiday season. It is packed full of great advice to keep sane in the food department.

Here’s what you have to do to gain this ebook - just leave a comment on how you stay trim, what motivates you to lose weight or keep healthy. Have you got any great ideas for looking great and staying healthy over the Christmas season?

Hear from you soon! (leave your email address so I can contact you with the freebie)

rachellarkinsig.jpg

Productive Free Time List

Posted on September 10, 2008
Filed Under Home Schooling | Leave a Comment

DISCOVERING YOUR CHILD’S PASSION

When we pulled our oldest boy out of school, the words “Mum I’m bored” was heard frequently in our home. He had only one year of state schooling and was already infected with the boredom disease. Schooling seemed to have taken away his ability to have ideas and plugged up his creativity. He wasn’t able to stop, relax and enjoy spending hours on a project or hobby. I guess the school routine didn’t allow for periods of thinking and ideas and tinkering time. Boys need tinkering time!

So I had to come up with a way to get the thinking of ideas going, ideas of what to make and ideas of what to do. We spent the first year of our home educating journey getting to know one another again. Just enjoying reading a book, going on field trips together and getting to know our local area. Over this time several interests and passions started to emerge, it was exciting to see his mind become active and the sparkle in his eyes when we discovered something new.

He developed a love of climbing Auckland’s volcanoes. We captured our volcano discoveries on film and he gathered information as we went. It was interesting to stand back and ponder what was motivating his love of mountains. At first I thought it was the act of climbing them but he always wanted to get to the top and wasn’t really concerned with the process of the climb. I then thought that it was the mountain itself and was directing him to books on rocks and the history of volcanos but it wasn’t really any of that, he showed an interest but it wasn’t his passion it wasn’t what was driving him. His underlying motivation was…. what he saw when he got to the top of the mountain!! – the cityscape below him, the roads interlocking, the busyness of the cars, the people like ants scurrying around, the areas of industrial factories compared to the residential streets. That was what was interesting him.

From this experience (which took place over a year) he has developed his passion of cities and has moved onto road maps. At the age of six and a half he had very advanced mapping skills, owned his own copies of the Auckland street map and the road code. He would have passed the road code test if he was allowed to sit it.!

How can mum spark an interest in her child?

A start would be having a “productive free time” list. This is a list of activities that are fun and educational and may be the start of an interest or hobby for your child.

I found various “productive free time” lists on the internet where other mums had composed a list of possible productive activities for their home educated children. I sat down with my son and together we went through the lists and came up with our own. The list was printed double spaced and we cut each item into a long strip. We placed the long strips into a special box. When we had reached a point in the day when he didn’t know what to do with himself he had to pick two or three pieces of paper from the box and decide on one activity. Later on, when his decision making skills were more developed, the box was put aside and we had the printed list on the wall and he independently made a choice. The “productive free time” list had its place for a season and now we don’t seem to need it as the boys are fuelling their own passions.

The Larkin Family’s Productive Free Time List

1. Nature Walk – find some bugs
2. Build with Legos
3. Little Legos
4. K’Nex
5. Reading
6. Teddy Bears Picnic – big chest
7. Drawing
8. UNO
9. Building outside with wood
10. Climb a tree
11. Play in the sandpit
12. Make some cards
13. Write a letter to somebody
14. Collect different leaves and paste them onto paper
15. Play monopoly
16. Junior Scrabble
17. Jigsaws
18. Write on the concrete with chalk
19. Dress up
20. Crafts
21. Do gym outside
22. Do a treasure hunt
23. Tumble
24. Pick up sticks
25. Barrel of monkeys
26. Pasting – collage
27. Make your own comic book
28. Build a fort
29. Puppet play
30. Record your own radio play
31. Play dough
32. Dig tunnels outside
33. Build a parking garage and repair station for cars
34. Dictate a story into tape recorder for someone to type out
35. Build a spaceship
36. Cooking
37. Tent / cubby house out of blankets
38. Run through sprinkler
39. Press flowers
40. Pull weeds
41. Bird watching
42. Act out a play
43. Write a play
44. Invent a circus
45. Soccer
46. Throw a ball
47. Collect rocks
48. Play Frisbee
49. Make Frisbees out of plastic lids and decorate
50. Dust the lounge
51. Play dress up
52. Teddy bears picnic
53. Play store
54. Prepare a restaurant lunch/dinner with menus
55. Toy cars
56. Chase butterflies
57. Thomas trains
58. Gardening
59. Make homemade wrapping paper
60. Make bookmarks
61. Watch the clouds
62. Clean under your bed
63. Make music
64. Fold laundry
65. Sweep the driveway
66. Bike riding
67. Copy your favourite book illustration
68. Design your own game
69. Lemon juice painting
70. Hide and seek
71. Read a story to your younger brothers
72. Make up a song
73. Map of your bedroom/house/street
74. Cut pictures from magazines and write a story
75. Plan a treasure hunt
76. Make a treasure map
77. Plan an imaginary trip to the moon
78. Plan an imaginary trip around the world –where are you going
79. Sticks and mud and make birds nest
80. Make a family newsletter
81. Paper airplanes
82. Obstacle course outside
83. Read newspaper

Rachel Larkin

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