From the Frogpond

I am a Bzz Agent and every so often Bzz shares some neat sites with us. Check out the sites I like by clicking on the badge above. I have found some pretty awesome places and some not-so-good ones too.

Or you can check out individual ones:

I am big on environmental causes so this one is my favorite!
Visit Mokugift - The Cool Gift
(Quoted from the Bzz Agent site description)
Mokugift lets you plant a tree for a friend.
Most trees absorb 26 lbs of carbon dioxide every year, and a single tree will also absorb about one ton of carbon dioxide over the course of its lifetime. A tree produces enough clean air for a family of four on an going basis.
How It Works
Planting a tree for a friend on mokugift is like sending an ecard. When your friend opens the animated e-card, a real tree gets planted. Along side the tree, your friends will receive your witty gift message, inside joke, or best wishes. Your friend can display the tree on facebook and other popular sites.
mokugift trees are planted where they help our planets the most, in these 12 countries:
Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Mali, Senegal, Zambia, India, Philippines, and Hati
Trees planted in these tropical regions help the planet the most because they absorb the most carbon dioxide
mokugift partners with organizations that educate locals about environmental planting methods that grow nutritious fruits and crops. Avoiding toxic chemicals helps these people live healthy lives and ensures that their land can be passed on to the next generation with pride. This pride ensures that they will not sell out to corporations that will deforest and deplete the land.


Visit Moshi Monsters
Moshi Monsters is a site for kids. Kids get to start by choosing a monster, color and then they can name him/her. Once they get started (and after parents approve) they can take care of their monster- feeding it and giving it love. Monsters react to the way they are treated. Children earn Rox, or points, for playing educational games and Rox are used to care for monsters. This site is great for parents and kids alike! I signed my son up and he is excited to get started here.


What They Play is a site for parents about video games. Parents can learn what is going on in the video games that their children are playing- the violence, nudity, profanity and anything else you may be concerned about. You can search for games by game system, age range, popularity, genre and more. It looks like a pretty helpful site when trying to determine which games are age-appropriate. Of course, you could always just use the game's rating to decide but this site provides an in-depth reason for WHY the games are rated the way they are.

Chelsy's Heroes- helping the military and their families.

I have started helping a fund raiser called Chelsy's Heroes. Their goal is to raise money to send care packages to military serving overseas. They also try to help families here at home that are struggling financially. It is a great cause! The site is http://www.chelsysheroes.com/ and I have created my own little fund raising site for them here: www.freewebs.com/hero-helper-shop where you can shop, register for websites and more, and everything you do helps. Some sites give a percentage of the sales and others give a flat rate for registering or making a purchase. And all of it goes to Chelsy's Heroes!

Right now I am struggling with trying to get any traffic to the site, let alone raising any money. I use some traffic exchanges but they haven't been effective. I belong to a few social sites where I have let my friends know about it but they don't seem interested either. Many sites don't allow advertising. Know of a place where I can advertise this for free I would love to hear about it!!



*Just a thought...if you have a loved one overseas then go to the site and let them know and they will add them to the list of recipients! I haven't gone over that portion of the site much so I am not aware of any criteria or anything but it is worth checking out!

Poor, Party of 5 (about me)

I am a 26 year old mom of 3 kids that range in age from 7-under 1.  I love to talk about their lives and the stuff that we like to do.  We live with their father, my boyfriend. We are not married...I don't really have an excuse for that but things work the way they are.  We have a sign on the molding above our dining room entrance that says, "We may not have it all together but together we have it all."  And it is SO true!

We are a party of 5 on a crappy income. Hence the POOR.

I have been spending a few years trying to figure out how to supplement our income and have a goal of making enough money to never have to feel the need to go back to work. Even better would be to figure out a way for us both to stay at home full time.

I do it all, try it all, or so it seems. I blog, do GPT sites, surveys.  It also seems that with my cluttered mind I can never stick to just one thing and end up never doing really well with anything I do.  I try though, and the more time that passes the more I realize how much we NEED to do this in addition to WANTING to do it.  

Maybe my ideas will help out others. Maybe your ideas will help us! We'd love to hear them!

Read on to see how we manage.