Many years ago a nifty little device came out called the Crock Pot. You could cut up a bunch of veggies, meat, and spices, dump them in the pot, and it did all the hard work. You came home at the end of the day and Presto you had a nice hearty meal. Add a salad and some bread/rolls and you were set.

As I visit numerous on line boards and web groups/forums I see more and more people mentioning how they made their meal in the crock pot. I am happy to see it is making a comeback. With all the press which the obesity crisis and how bad we all eat is getting, it gives me hope for many Americans. Now we just have to worry about how to get the rest of them to eat healthier.

I am so tired of hearing from people they don t have the time for home cooked meals. I work, I have the kids, yada, yada, yada. Everyone has some kind of excuse. However, if you ask these same people if they saw Survivor, Amazing Race or any number of other reality shows, they can recite the show from beginning to end. Well, how about using your hands for something other than stuffing your face while you are watching television. Cut up some meat and vegetables. If you really don t have the time it will take to cook up the meat (anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes depending on the meat and how you like it) then buy pre-cooked meat.

If you take time each night you can cut up enough veggies and meat for meals all week. For lunch make it the night before. Buy yogurt on sale and take it to work. Or do what I did for years, I made my sandwich the night before. One slice of bread with chicken, turkey, tuna, egg salad with a piece of fruit. Not only will you eat better but you will save money too!

Breakfast, get up 15-30 minutes early and take the time for a glass of juice with a multi-vitamin and a bowl of cereal, oatmeal, eggs, etc. Be calorie conscious with the cereal, stay away from those high in sugar and calories. However, remember eating a good breakfast is of utmost importance. Research has shown that this is the most important meal of the day. It is the meal that is going to give you the energy to get through the day!

So start eating healthier today, you no longer have any excuses!

Copyright 2005, DeFiore Enterprises

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Can anybody tell me what is so important about the next four weeks?
Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties do not count as valid answers.
Instead, you are given a few last opportunities to get your 2003
finances in order to minimize the tax bill you’ll pay next April.

We all know about mortgage deductions, and charity giving being
deductible and a few other things like that. We also know about the
standard deduction, home business expenses and other stuff that you
can learn from software programs like Turbo Tax (not an endorsement).
But what about the lesser known deductions – medical savings, and
others that I am not going to get into because I am not a tax expert.
I do know who to recommend you go to talk to: a financial planner.

Preferably a Certified Financial Planner.

Okay; here’s a short test – all True or False answers.

1. T or F Financial planners are the same as stockbrokers

2. T or F Financial planners are primarily investment advisers

3. T or F Rich people are the only ones who can afford financial
planners

4. T or F Financial planners aren’t worth the money you have to pay

5. T or F You should only work with fee-only planners

6. T or F You can develop your own financial plan

Tally up your totals. How’d you do? If you have more than 5 False
marks you’re doing great. Anything less, read on and learn what you
can about how to improve your year end financial planning.

1. False – the Financial Planning Association notes that a
stockbroker, insurance agent, and other financial sales personnel
have the function of selling financial products. These days just
about anybody can hang out a shingle claiming to be a financial
planner.

A good planner’s job is to help you identify your financial goals
and working with you to develop a plan to reach those goals.

2. False – investment advice is just one part of what a planner
does. Financial planners are supposed to look at your entire
financial picture – debt, taxes, retirement, savings, estate planning
and insurance.

3. False – an increasing number of planners are working with modest-
income clients. Go to www.fpanet.org to look for a financial planner.

4. False – sometimes you get what you pay for. A planner is an
objective third-party who can help you budget better, reduce taxes,
or even prevent a costly financial catastrophe.

5. False – with a caution. Fee-only planners can cost $100 an hour
and so can be prohibitively expensive. If you have a planner who also
sells financial products, beware of high-pressure tactics. Financial
planning won’t help you if the planner pressures you into buying
products you can’t really afford or aren’t what you need.

6. False – with a caution. This depends on what kind of person you
are. If you are good at planning your financial future you won’t need
a financial planner. If, however, you are like most people you don’t
have the time or inclination to figure out how best to use your money
then you really should consider hiring a financial planner.

So in the last four weeks of this year you need to sit down and
decide what financial moves you can do to best help yourself. If this
requires the use of a planner, don’t hesitate to contact one. At the
very least, sit down for an hour with all your paperwork in line and
see if they have any suggestions as what you can do. With the power
of the Internet behind you there is little reason why you can’t
improve your financial situation in this remaining time if you just
know what to do.

Roger Sorensen

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In times of trauma, children need caregivers to be pro-active. Recommended in the aftermath of trauma is therapeutic parenting-a tall order for those of us who are also affected and are stressed to our limits. How do we figure out what to do?

One thing we might all do is create Lifebooks, using this presentation as a guide. Lifebook creation employs strategies similar to those used in therapy, including

- narrative work, through shaping the fabric of a factual yet understandable account

- the imposition of safety and stability through devising a key ritual and,

- focus on the child, through spending quality time that is memorialized forever.

Children love their stories they love to hear them and read them again and again.

To start:

1. Announce the Lifebook Project

a) Tell your child that you have decided to make a book that s all about him or her!

2. Make a Date with Your Child

a) Take a trip together to a crafts shop or an office supplies store. (Remember, this is about focused time for you and your child.) Get a 3-ring binder and page protectors, or a traditional photo album and insert-able pages-whichever your child prefers.

3. Basics

a) A Lifebook focuses on the child s experience. Start with a Title Page, and ask your child to select a favorite photo and help decorate that page.

b) Call the book All About Me. Suggest to your son or daughter that s/he have a page of Favorites, a School page, a Best Friends page, a Pet page, a Family page, one for Things I Like To Do, and a Favorite Foods page.

c) Move on to current events. Ask your child what s/he knows about the current disaster or tragedy. Notice what is shared, but don t push. Correct any misinformation. (One 6 year old living in Ohio was worried about a big wave coming). See if s/he wants to draw a picture, then let your child choose whether this drawing is included in the book.

d) Add a page on Safety.For a younger child (aged 4-7), list all the people who are working hard to keep him or her safe. For a school-aged child or pre-teen, write down your safety plan. Reassure your child that s/he is safe.

e) Go back in time to when s/he was born. Select baby pictures together. Ask other family members to share some funny or memorable stories. Add favorite family times, fun distractions, and the like.

f) Continue the book chronologically. You can use grades in school or places lived as focus points. Include important events as defined by the child.

g) Finish with a page about the future: a to-do list of family activities, or a brief essay on what s/he wants to be when s/he s grown up.

4. Write up Some of These Stories on Your Computer

a) Take lots of notes and create some typed pages. Pretend to be interviewing your child.

5. Make Copies of the Lifebook

a) Your child s Lifebook will almost certainly become worn with use and attention. Make color copies and put a second copy in a safe place.

Copyright ©2005 Beth O Malley. Written by Beth O Malley, M.Ed., author of Lifebooks: Creating a Treasure for the Adopted Child.

-To learn more about Lifebooks, visit www.adoptionlifebooks.com. To learn about children, trauma, and disaster, visit preparerespondrecover.org, www.nasponline.org, or www.childtraumaacademy.com.

Beth O Malley M.Ed is an adoptive Mom and social worker. She finds families for children in foster care and helps them better understand their lives.

The Dr. Seuss classic, “Cat in the Hat” was first published in 1957, but judging by the 2003 movie rendition that grossed more than $100 million at the U.S. box office, it is still a popular story. As with all of Dr. Seuss books, the book has poetic rhyme, characters with unusual names, and stories that capture the attention of its reader. Of all of the Dr. Seuss books that exist, “Cat in the Hat” is by far the most popular. The story is basically about two children who are left at home with nothing to do because it is raining outside. The Cat in the Hat arrives and provides an afternoon of wild chaos that has intentions of fun, but falls just short of destruction. In good children story fashion, at the end of the story order is restored and all ends well.

Unlike the children in the Cat in the Hat, children today can occupy their time playing video games and surfing the Internet if they are forced to play indoors due to inclement weather. While images of mayhem may swim around your head when considering a Cat in the Hat party, it can help you lure them from the electronic devices and turn out to be great fun for you and your children.

The good news about a Cat in the Hat party is that just about anything goes. The children can dress in their most colorful pajamas and represent Thing One and Thing Two in the story. If you have more than one child you can have Thing Three, Thing Four, and so forth. You can be the Cat in the Hat, the master of ceremony. Of course, you will have to perform tricks and perform a wicked juggling act. The children can participate in a balancing contest. The one who crosses the line first without dropping a book or other object on their head wins. Don t forget the food. Use green food coloring to create green eggs and ham.

Mrs. Party… Gail Leino takes a common sense approach to planning and organizing events, celebrations and holiday parties with unique ideas for partysupplieshut.com birthday party supplies and fun free educational party-games-etc.com party games. She explains proper etiquette and living a healthy life while also teaching organizational skills and fun facts. The Party Supplies Hut has lots of party ideas with hundreds of free coloring sheets, printable games, and free birthday party activities. Over 100 adorable partythemeshop.com Party Themes to fit your birthday celebration, holiday event, or “just because” parties is at the Party Theme Shop. Party themes include cartoon characters, sports, movie, TV shows, luau, western, holidays, and unique crazy fun theme ideas.

Bad credit…Well, the word may not be sounding enough to entice you but is no longer a problem also. Say thanks to bad credit finance. Truly made to satisfy the needs of persons having bad credit, this kind of finance helps them come out of all adversities relating to financing. Let us get in to this finance and know how this is beneficial for a bad credit holder.

First of all, bad credit finance helps a bad credit holder with a good amount of money. With this loaned amount, a bad credit holder can easily meet any of personal needs such as:

Repairing of home

Financing education of children

Going for holidays

Meeting any other personal expanses etc.

Not only the flexibility regarding utilization, bad credit financing help a bad credit holder to improve his adverse credit scored also. He/she can do it easily by repaying the loaned amount within specified time frame set by the lender himself.

But bad credit financing is not risk-free. Here you can get your desired amount of money but remember that you are probable to pay a higher rate of interest within short repayment period than a person having good credit score.

Best way to get best deals regarding bad credit financing is World Wide Web. Here you can meet innumerable lenders of your choice. Moreover you can get free loan quotes also. Once you get these loan quotes, just compare these with one another and in this way come out with the best offer existing in the market regarding bad credit financing. Add to this the time saving opportunity which you can be availed if applying for such finances though online method. And the loan lending information remains secure here.

So, it can be reasonably concluded that bad credit financing is truly the best choice for people having bad credit. With the help of such finances, they can easily overcome any kind of financial adversities and can live a stress less life.

Ben Ganon is the author of this article. He is a senior financial analyst with Cheap Finance UK as an acumen for business and loans. He writes about various finance related topics.He is working with Secured Consolidation Loans.To find Finance UK, cheapfinanceuk.co.uk/bad-credit-finance.html bad credit finanace,new car loans uk, personal finance, personal finance UK, business finance visit cheapfinanceuk.co.uk cheapfinanceuk.co.uk

There is no need to despair; someone who has gone through a bankruptcy process can easily get approved for a secured personal loan within certain period of time if able to meet certain requirements. Bankruptcy can be very stressful but finance can still be found during these hard times, you just need to know where to find it.

Requirements

Each lender has different requirements when it comes to personal loans. Due to a lack of regulation on this particular issue, lenders are free to lend to anyone and take as much risk as they want. Their only limitation is the interest rate they can charge but they usually bypass this limitation by charging additional fees and other costs.

The main requirement, as usual, is your credit score. Of course you will have a low credit score after bankruptcy. The question is, however, how low? If bankruptcy was your last delinquency, then, your credit score must have increased over some time and if there weren’t too many delinquencies before bankruptcy, perhaps you can convince lenders that bankruptcy was due to unfortunate events and not because of your poor credit behavior.

Your credit history is another important variable related to your credit score. The credit history that really matters is the months following your bankruptcy. Your credit report must show no late payments, nor missed payments and no other delinquencies whatsoever during those months. This will greatly increase your possibilities of getting finance after bankruptcy.

Collateral

Since bankruptcy implies a lot of risk, the key to badcreditfinancialexperts.com/guaranteed-finance-personal-loans.html obtaining finance is to reduce that risk. One of the best ways to do so is to offer some kind of security by providing an asset as collateral. A house, apartment, a car or any other vehicle can be used to secure your loan and increase your chances of getting approved. Obviously, the asset has to be worthy enough. Its value should exceed significantly the amount of money requested.

Even though the loan will be secured, the interest rate charged will be considerably higher, this is due to the fact that collateral will only reduce the risk but the risk for the lender will still be higher. A past bankruptcy shows you’ve defaulted before and that scares lenders away. Thus, the interest rate, which is based on the risk, will be higher under these conditions than under regular conditions.

Outstanding Debt

Since not all debts are discharged after bankruptcy, your debt level will also be a variable to take into account when a lender considers to provide finance or not. If you still have outstanding loans and high amounts of debt, chances are that you won’t get approved unless you can show a steady income and provide a very valuable asset as collateral that is free from mortgages and other limitations.

Kate Ross is a professional consultant at speedybadcreditloans.com Speedybadcreditloans with fifteen years in the financial field. She helps people in the process of securing personal loans, mortgage, refinance or consolidation loans and prevents consumers from falling into financial scams.
Visit her website at speedybadcreditloans.com/financial-articles.html www.speedybadcreditloans.com/financial-articles.html and get more articles and smart tips on this and other financial issues.

Getting the right prom date is often the result of careful planning.

Girls typically work harder at getting a prom date than do boys. They seem to know intuitively how to get a prom date: planning months in advance, spending time with the right guy, and hanging out in the right group.ÿ These, the most successful methods, work best with advance planning.

Guys need to face their fears: Will you risk rejection by asking the person you are most attracted to, or play it safe by asking someone else? For you, how to get a prom date includes deciding what you want and what you are willing to risk. Then, ask-but don t wait until prom week.

If you did wait until prom week, you may still find a prom date. If you have a girlfriend or boyfriend, you should already know how to get a prom date-but you should have asked before now. The next easiest approach is to ask a good friend. After that, asking someone in a lower grade is a safe bet for guys, because junior girls often make it a top priority to go to prom with a senior. Asking someone in another school works, too, since it feels risk-free all around.
ÿ
If prom week is upon you and you are still wondering how to get a prom date, try asking your cousin, or your brother or sister. Admittedly this is a last choice, but it has a long tradition going back to the earliest of proms.

Ian Partridge lauched a website called

Bodybuilding is the sport of developing muscle fibers through the combination of weight training, increased caloric intake, and rest. Competitive bodybuilders display their physiques to a panel of judges, who assign points.

The sport is not to be confused with strongman competition or powerlifting, where emphasis is on actual physical strength, or with Olympic weightlifting, where emphasis is equally split between strength and technique.

Though superficially similar to the casual observer, the fields entail a different regimen of training, diet, and basic motivation. Bodybuilders aspire to develop and maintain an aesthetically pleasing (by bodybuilding standards) body and balanced physique. A bodybuilder’s size and shape are far more important than how much he or she can lift.

The growth and repair, however, cannot occur without the necessary building blocks. These are supplied by high quality nutrition. Bodybuilders require a very specialised diet. Generally speaking, bodybuilders require anything between 500-1000 calories (2000 to 4000 kilojoules) above their maintenance level of food energy while attempting to increase lean body mass.

A sub-maintenance level of food energy is combined with cardiovascular exercise to lose body fat in preparation for a contest. The ratios of food energy from carbohydrates, proteins, and fats vary depending on the goals of the bodybuilder.

Supplements can help muscle gain, although some are unproven and many are ineffective. Two supplements which have been proven to help bodybuilders gain and maintain size (without unhealthy side effects) are Creatine and L-Glutamine. Like all supplements, these only help if used in conjunction with a solid nutritional base and weight training program.

Some bodybuilders may use drugs to gain an advantage over results due to natural hypertrophy, especially in professional competitions. Although many of these substances are illegal in many countries, in professional bodybuilding the use of anabolic steroids and precursor substances such as prohormones are sometimes essential to competing in world-class competitions.

Most steroids allows the human body to be in a more anabolic state. Significant negative side-effects accompany steroid abuse, such as liver damage and negative feedback leading to a decline in the body’s own testosterone production, which can cause testicular atrophy and possible infertility.

I am one of those people that had been plagued by having been irresponsible in the past with credit that had been offered to them. After defaulting on a few loans, having made late credit card payments and a few court summons, I started to get turned down for anything I would apply for and I finally ended up with a County court Judgment for a student loan that I had taken out years earlier.

This seemed like an end to me getting any type of credit for the next six years, even though I paid the student loan back six months after the County court Judgment. After getting rejected for a mobile phone contract, I started to check with credit reference agencies about my credit profile because at that time I was thinking of buying a house.

I had grown tired of renting, as I had been renting for the last ten years and had been moving every year or so. What I found from my research was that a number of things determined how good or bad your credit will be. One of the most important is late payments on any type of credit you might have. It can be a credit card, loan, mortgage, mobile phone bill etc. and the other is how long you have been on a voting register.

After getting offered a high interest rate mortgage I decided to carry on renting and I moved to a new address. The first thing I did was register myself on the voting register at the new address and get a new land line number, that was not ex-directory. The most important thing I did was not to bring any of my previous bank accounts, credit cards, mobile phone contract to the new address. So I ended every account that I had and did give my forwarding address to any company.

As soon as my name came on the voting register at the new address, which was around 2 months, I applied for a mobile phone contract with the newest network and in the application did not mention any of my previous addresses and to my surprise I passed the credit check. I was working at that time and was getting paid into a savings account that I had opened; the savings account was with a small building society that did not do a credit check. After a few months I applied to a high street bank for a current account and to a greater surprise they not only opened an account, they gave me a visa debit card.

After paying my wages into that account for six months, I asked for a credit card and was given a credit card with a six thousand pound limit. After that I have had no problems with getting any type of credit and I recently got a mortgage from high street bank at a very good rate. The most important lesson I learned was that to never make payments late to any type of credit you have and the best way to do this is to set up direct debits.

My credit history is now fantastic and the reason for this is I never miss any payment and I am very disciplined in how much credit I apply for and use. If you are young and new to being offered credit please be sensible and don’t make the mistakes I did.

Steven Ali has started work for a loans company dealing with secured loans for people with all types of credit. personal-secured-loan.co.uk personal-secured-loan.co.uk

If you have teens, you probably already know their self-esteem is fragile. Since this age group tends to focus primarily on outward appearances, they typically measure their self-worth by how they feel they appear to others. Situations ranging from a bad haircut to failing to make the team, can create intense feelings of humiliation and embarassment.

Unfortunately, the opinions of Mom and Dad don t carry the weight they used to. The simple, reassuring words used to comfort them when they were younger, just don t cut it anymore. What, then, can parents do to promote a healthy sense of self-esteem in their teens? Christina McCann, Phd, a licensed psychologist in New York state who specializes in working with children, adolescents and families, offers the following tips:

1. Accept your child for who they are. Try not to be critical, no matter what color they dye their hair or their fashion choices.

2. Go out of your way to tell your teens what you like about them. This means telling them as often as possible.

3. Spend as much one-on-one time with them as possible.

4. Write them a letter telling them what you like and admire about them.

When teens suffer a blow to their self-esteem, they may exhibit symptoms of depression. Some of these symptoms include changes in sleep patterns, low energy, difficulty concentrating, irritability and changes in eating patterns. Dr. McCann advises that it is normal for all of us to suffer mild symptoms of depression from time to time. But if the symptoms affect your child s ability to function, or last longer than a week, a trip to the pediatrician is in order.

Karen Bianchi is the mother of 4, a freelance writer and the editor of AwesomeMomsNetwork.com AwesomeMomsNetwork.com. She can be contacted at: mailto:kbianchi@AwesomeMomsNetwork.com kbianchi@AwesomeMomsNetwork.com