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Tips to Strengthen Your Marriage

So what things have we done in our marriage that you might incorporate in yours if you aren’t already doing them? Let me share some tips you might find helpful. This first one I would say is perhaps most important of all. Make Time Together a Priority In busy lives with work and family, this one gets too easily pushed aside unless we’re careful. Make time together a priority, whether it’s sitting chatting, sharing a favorite movie, playing a game, or watching your favorite sport as we did on Saturday night, after spending time with our whole family earlier in … Continue reading →

Don’t Let Others Define You

There are other benefits of living on one income. You soon learn how to have fun inexpensively, whether it’s by creating a date night at home, inviting friends over for a dinner and a game of cards or a board game. You’ll find some suggestions here. These are some of the benefits but there can be a few negatives of living on one income. One that I know some stay at home wives and mothers have found hard to deal with is the attitude of others. Sadly people tend to define others by what they do. A common question when … Continue reading →

More Inexpensive Home Decorating Ideas

Last week we looked at some inexpensive home decorating ideas. Here are some more. Use your photographs as a decoration. One way is to make a collage of photos from your family’s life. I used to have one large wall in our family room dedicated to photos of our family. Eventually it spread to two walls. You could track our family, and the various homes we’d lived in and pets we’d had, through that wall. I bought simple inexpensive frames and then rather than only put half a dozen or so photos in the allotted spots. I took the sectioned … Continue reading →

Inexpensive Home Decorating Ideas

Decorating your home is a very individual thing. When money is tight decorating becomes more of a challenge but far from impossible. Some of the things we have tried in past times were using photographs and pictures from calendars. Framing them in inexpensive frames and grouping them together as a display. Gift wrapping paper can also be used the same way. Select papers that complement each in design and color. Frame them and then arrange in a diamond pattern or some other interesting combination one wall. Stencils are another inexpensive way of brightening up a home and relatively inexpensive and … Continue reading →

Straight from High School to College?

Is it a good idea to go straight from high school to college? Many young people I know have chosen to take a year’s break and defer their college or university for a year and do one of two things. I’ll talk about one today and the other in my next education blog. Sometimes finances play a part and the parents may not have enough money to pay for college without some assistance. So some young people will work for twelve months in any job they can find to help get a little money saved towards that. I have friends … Continue reading →

The Best Investment You Can Make

One of the best investments you can make with regard to food is an upright freezer. It may not be cheap initially but over many years it will save you time and money. The freezer makes it possible to buy in bulk. If a side of beef or lamb or pork, is too much you can by a hind or a forequarter. Or you can arrange with a relative or friends to share win the cost of a side and split it between you. For years when we had family at home, we found it an inexpensive way to have … Continue reading →

Being Financially Strapped Can Be Good for a Marriage

Tough economic times don’t have to be bad for your marriage. It can actually be a positive experience. Not being flush with money we often ended up doing a lot of things we wouldn’t have thought of and things we wouldn’t have known we could do unless we tried. By the time we bought our first little house and even by the time we bought our second house after we outgrew the first, we didn’t have anything much left over for furniture and decorating, so it was a case of make do and do what we could. We scoured auctions … Continue reading →

Dealing with Difficult In-Laws (2)

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Want to find out what’s happening with Helena and Dave, and Dave’s “fun” brother, Dean? How about Claire and her intrusive mother, and Elise and Carl and the mother-in-law who just won’t hear? Read on! In the last article on Dealing with Difficult In-Laws (1), we read that Helena and Dave had a problem with Dave’s brother, Dean. Or at least Helena had a problem with Dean and his constant money borrowing. Dave seemed to think that, as it was only $50 here and there (plus the occasional bigger hit), it was all okay. Helena, as we remember, wanted to … Continue reading →