I saw this on the Today Show yesterday. Actually, my husband called me from the other room to tell me what was on. He knew I would be interested in seeing the segment being a blogging mom and trying to make money from it.

Ann asked if it is possible to for moms to make money from blogging. I can attest that you can make money from your blogs but I also agree with the comment that it takes time to start generating income from your blogs. There are not quick and easy way, but the possibilities are definitely there.

Me, I only started thinking about making money from my blogs about a year ago. Whenever I tried balancing our budget, I noticed that we were always about $300-500 short. So I started considering getting a part time job but I hated to not be home in the evenings. With me working outside the home and the girls at school, the evening is really the only time we have to catch up and reconnect with each other. Then I started noticing how more and more moms were talking about how they were making money from their blogs so I decided to try out some of the ideas they were sharing. Was I surprised to find out some of those tips actually work! The rest, as they say, is history.

Well, not quite yet. I’m still learning the ropes and I can’t put as much time into blogging as I would like, but I’m getting there. And yes, my budget deficit? Blogging got that covered

There were some great information on the segment. Watch the video below.

I was going to share this with you yesterday on Valentine’s Day but as usual, life interfered with my blogging schedule. So I greet you a belated Happy Valentine’s Day and hope that you had a great day.

Yesterday was a day like any other at our house, nothing special really. My daughter Jade and I got out of the house at 7:30 a.m. to attend an exploration day at the school she is applying to. We didn’t get home until 4 in the afternoon so that didn’t give me much time to fix anything special and we were too tired to go anywhere. We ended up spending the rest of the day at home. I cooked a little bit of something for everyone: sinigang pork, Chinese noodles with beef & vegetables and, for The Clone, spaghetti. We ate well and that was enough celebration for us. Like my daughter says all the time, “you should show you love someone everyday not just on Valentine’s Day”.

I am blessed to have a beautiful loving family and doubly blessed to also have great friends who love each other like family. That’s how it is with my online family. We have been together for four years (I joined the group when I first started blogging) and we have shared with each other and supported each other through weddings, graduations, funerals, births, and all the other milestones in life. A few of us have met each other but many of us have never met in person. Not having ever met each other has not prevented us from feeling as close to each other as families though. We’ve had our disagreements and we’ve had our bonding moments. We’ve gotten mad at each other and we’ve made up. We’ve laughed until we cried and cried until we had to laugh. Through it all, we’ve gotten to be better friends and better family. One of my online sisters, Mec, made the following video to celebrate the love among the Berks.

These are my online berks, visit their blogs and you’ll see just how apt Mec’s video is.

We are a mix of a little bit of this and that, but like our halo-halo, it works together somehow and it’s refreshing.

Valentines Day is coming up, I know. But as my eleven years old daughter grumpily commented the other day, “Valentine’s Day is over rated.” (I wonder where she heard that from?) So I asked, well don’t you want at least a cake on Valentine’s Day? She said, “Well yeah, just don’t make it heart shaped or put any hearts on it. Who wants to be eating a heart anyway!”

She reminded me also that February is Black History month and that this year is even more special to celebrate because we have a black president for the first time and now that can be added on to the history. She is right!

I was glad to see the announcement on the Mommy Daddy Blog that Home Depot is running a campaign to end on February 28th where they will donate 5% of the value of any MLK “Dream” gift card purchased. Proceeds will go to the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta for the purpose of creating a permanent exhibition home for the collection of 10,000 documents written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

To celebrate this, the Mommy Daddy Blog is giving away a $50 Home Depot gift card. Visit their website for details on how you can win, and make sure you say hi to Jayden!

It’s still coat weather where we are. When you look outside, the trees are bare and the ground is brown. Just a few weeks ago, our backyard was covered in snow. The snow is gone now, it didn’t last long, but everything still looks dead back there. You’d think it’s too soon to start thinking of spring, but really, the way time has been rolling by lately, it will be here before you know it. I’m already thinking up ideas on what to plant and how to plant it. I’ve even started buying up seeds. in a couple of weeks, we can probably start our seedlings already.

There’s an idea I’ve been toying with but I don’t know how well of a reception it will receive from my husband who really is the one who does all the gardening. I’m just the idea person. Now I’ve always been a no fuss kind of person. I’ve never had much need or talent for ornamentation. That’s why I never could relate to people who are obsessive about verdant lawns and manicured gardens. Sure, it’s fine if you live in a palace like Versailles, but if I only have a small plot of land to do what I want with, I would rather plant something I can eat than something for others to admire. That’s why our front lawn had never interested me. Up until now that is…

I was thinking, what if we expand our vegetable garden to the front yard? Watch the video below. Some people are already doing it!

So what do you think? It would certainly increase the amount of food we can produce! It wold also add more visual interest and variety rather than just plain ol’ green grass. That’s my thinking!