Gather Little by Little

Photo by: My wife

First and foremost, Happy Mother’s day to all of Mom’s out there. I sincerely hope you have a wonderful day and that your children and significant others show their appreciation for everything that you do and have done! If not…well, take a few days off and I’ll bet they will real quick ;-)

Wow, it’s been a month since I’ve published a “gathering” post. My apologies to all of my fellow personal finance bloggers for not providing any “link love” over the past few weeks. While “gathering”, “roundup”, “link love” posts look simple, as my fellow pf bloggers will testify too they take a great deal of time. Writing them is fairly easy, but time consuming. What takes the most time is reading all of the articles! As you can see from my blogroll I read well over 30 blogs each week. That’s a lot of reading!

Between my Empty Cabin Media work (which has been far more than I anticipated, but no complaints!) and writing on Gather Little by Little I honestly have just not had time to read! The good news is that I’ve been slowly adjustment my schedule and setting aside some dedicated time for specific activities, so I hope things are leveling out a little. Stew has also been a great help here on Gather Little by Little and has really added to the overall quality as well. I’m really glad to have him. Not only is he a good friend, but he’s a great writer too and I think we compliment each other well. We both hope you think so too.

We’ve also been busy working outside on our home here in the mountains quite a bit. The house hadn’t been lived in for a while when we bought it, so we’ve had lots of landscaping and cleanup work to do. We also created a fairly large vegetable garden up above our house (the link will show you the pics). We finally planted it yesterday after waiting for the frosts to stop and then waiting for the past few weeks or rain to finally dry up. You can see some pics over on my flickr site. Check out the “critter” one of my boys found in our pond too…yes that’s my wife holding it!

Important Stuff:

• I was really bummed over the past few months as the Carnival of Money Stories went inactive. Fortunately Adam from Your Money Relationship took the initiative to start it back up and create a new website for it. He also honored me by asking me to host the inaugural edition which debuts tomorrow!  If you haven’t submitted your article yet, you have until 5:00pm tonight.
• Today is the last day to enter my You Need a Budget Pro giveaway. All you have to do is head over to my announcement article and add a comment. Yep, it’s that easy. The giveaway is open until 5:00pm today when I’ll close the comments. I’ll announce the winner tomorrow afternoon!
• I need your feedback! I posted an article asking for your feedback on Gather Little by Little and only received a few replies. To those that did, you should have received a personal reply from me thanking you for your feedback. If you didn’t reply, I’d really appreciate it if you would. I really want to make Gather Little by Little the best it can be and need your feedback to do that.
• Shawna, a friend I’ve made through blogging lost her job this week. Make sure you head over to her blog, Two Working Parents and offer your support. Please keep her and her family in your prayers. Visiting her blog isn’t just worth it for the great posts she writes, but her 2 kiddos are cute as all get out too!

The Gathering

Here are my favorite articles this week:

• As Seen on TV – Does It Work? – We’ve never tried any of these, but seriously thought about it a few times. Have you?
• Ask the M-Network: Mommy Track or No?
• Alternative Income is a Form of Insurance – This is exactly how I look it.
• Drastically Reduce Your Expenses Starting Today. – I’ll be writing an article in the next week or so on exactly the same topic. We’ve decided to drastically reduce ours so we can begin really socking it to our remaining debt.
• Adopt These Four Mindsets To Break Free From Debt
• Shrimp & Grits — with an Italian Flair! – Can’t WAIT to try this out this week. Might even make it for Mother’s day tonight for my wife.
• 7 Smart Money Saving Breakfast Ideas – This is something I’m going to start doing. I think a large portion of our grocery bill is boxed breakfast items. So much so, I should probably buy stock in Pop-Tarts!
• 14 Quick Ways To Raise Cash
• How to Haggle: More Tips on Haggling – I LOVE to haggle. Just pretend it’s a game…after all, it really is.