I begin to scale the mountain again......

Only 6 more days I have to decide if I'm really going to start my new website Secrets of the Butcher's wife. As you can tell I've already got the name and some good info but I don't look forward to the getting started part again. I've got one year of SBI hosting and it's gotta pay for itself before that year is up. I still have to buy the blog program so I can transfer all my archives from the old blogging site- well over a years worth of posts. Wish me luck and I hope this is the way I can truly dedicate enough of my time to get my Secret's of the Butcher's Wife book together and ready for publication.
"When the student is ready the teacher will appear"

also

"The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure".

just pray that I'll I'll be able to manage my time well and make this all work!
blessings all.
joan of ark

Jimmy Fincher Saga

Well Marta I admit it. I'm really enjoying the Jimmy Fincher Saga. I'm already on book 3 The Tower of Air and thought I'd better do a little reporting. Stephen King look out! This series will be a really cool movie one of these days! It's so hard to find good books for boys to read and now lo and behold, there's a whole series of them. I'm hoping the 11 yr old will get hooked on these instead of Hank the Cow Dog. Mr. Dashner has a very pleasing writing style that can be enjoyed by ages 9 on up to adult so basically any literate that are young of heart. I"m very much looking forward to reading the complete works of James Dashner if I can just keep the kids away from them until I've completed my new quest!
blessings,
joan of ark

Did I do it right for the free book????

http://jamesdashner.com/ Ok there's the web address and here's the blog address
http://jamesdashner.blogspot.com Here's the deal be the first of 30 to post to the blog about James Dashner's new book and get a free one.

Also he has a great books for kids as I found out today from our writer's group. I've got a stack to read so will let you know after Sunday what I think. Highly recommended.
blesssings,
Joan of Ark

Checking prices.....

I didnt' realize how time consuming it would be to come up with a weeks worth of recipes, menus and a shopping list. Now I gotta figure out how to upload the charts to the website. I already made 3? trips to the store today I think.....boy it's been a long day and I'm just gonna check in later as the keys are becoming blurry or is it just my ffffingers are going to sleeeeep. nite all.
joan o f ark

just ck it out at http://www.all-about-meat.com in the freebie section.

Mrs. Survival found me

Check my referring sites and found a fun one, mrssurvival.com. I really do like preparedness as you can tell from my pen name Joan of Ark:) I better, as we published Ark Essentials the newsletter from 1991-2000. I've got loads of old newsletter articles that I need to archive and probably turn into a website and/or book one of these days......
blessings all,
joan of ark

Cruel and unusual punishment.......

Ever since kindergarten has started my 5 yr old has been getting even more creative in his search to drive me crazy. Today he and little sis filled the bathroom sink with water and had a water party, sloughing, drenching the laundry hamper, etc. Once caught and vanquished from the scene of the crime he proceeded to dump water into his shoes. Time to get "cruel" and creative in my punishment, he was forced to stand at the door of the bathroom while little sister got the job I'd intended for him. She received a cut up milk jug to scoop water and it was her job to dump the water into the toilet. It was the worst thing I could have made him do. Stand and watch his sister have fun cleaning up.

It could've been me......

Saturday we planned on going to the water park in Rexburg but one of the little kids was sick. We decided to stay home, get some movies and do some fun activities instead. On the way out of the store, a man stopped me and asked about the wreck. I guess there had been 3 ambulances called and all traffic had been diverted to back roads instead of the freeway. My heart kind of skipped a beat. If I hadn't been getting movies there's a very high likelihood that I could've been headed to Rexburg right about the time of the accident, with my family. I really feel like we were divinely delayed and protected. It really makes you think. What does God have planned for me? Gotta go help with math homework.
blesssing to all,
joan of ark

Friend to Boot Strap Marketers strikes again.

Too fun. I've had about 4 invites to Daniel Levis's teleconference tomorrow. JP Maroney, Steve Manning, and Daniel have all sent me info, some more than once. It's on how to grown your online customer lists 4 to 7 times faster! After the great response we've had this week I don't know how much faster I can handle! Actually we just got backed up confirming e-zine subscriptions because of the Labor Day holiday weekend.

HIlbilly Housewife

Hurray! I finally found a good way to finish writing How I Feed My Family of Ten for $100 a week. I visited www.hillbillyhousewife.com and looked over her report How to Feed a Family for $45 a week and her other report How to Feed a Family for $70 a week. Both reports are for a family of 4. I guess I'm right in there for being super frugal.

Chocolate helps the zucchini go down.

We decided on muffins for breakfast this morning. I tricked our pickiest eater by adding zucchini and then cocoa powder. I even made one batch with mini marshmellows in the middle- didn't work well. They might be better after they cool. My personal favorite ones had added coconut and peanut butter too. Mr. Picky actually ate two!

The Dollar Stretcher loves us too

Hurray, our BBQ sauce article appeared on http://www.stretcher.com and the sign ups for the Meat-zine newsletter are going crazy! I just got 7 new sign ups in the last two hours! Total of new subscribers in the last two days 59?! and increasing as we speak. Usually we get some good book orders but this time they all want the free newsletter and special report. I'll have to tell them we left out lots of the tightwad tips to appeal to the general public. It's cool because our traffic average to http://www.all-about-meat.com has more than doubled. I can hardly wait to get the DVD back from the fellow who knows how to get it up on the web for us and then you can all see John and how he cuts up meat. Kinda fun to watch :)
blessings,
joan of ark

Old blog archives available until Sept 8

This is the link to my old blog that will be closed as of Sept 8th. If you can't find something on this new site yet, it might still be up at the old one.
http://butcherswife.blogsource.com/

blessings,
joan of ark

How much do I spend on groceries?

This was a question from the dollar stretcher forums ( http://wwww.stretcher.com) How much do I spend on groceries. Usually I spend $100 a week. That's why I wrote a special report called How I Feed My Family of Ten on $100 a week. It's the free bonus if you sign up for our "Meat-Zine" at http://www.all-about-meat.com. Another question was what is the most you've ever spent on groceries. I think the most I've ever spent was when we first moved and had to restock our pantry. Winco is a hour away so we took the big van and filled up 3-4 carts. I think the total was just over $500. That food lasted a long time- but our basement flooded and we lost a few cases that were on the bottom level. I'd placed everything on wood- not the cement floor but the boxes still got wet. It was weird to pick up a can of vegetables and it had no liquid left in it when you'd shake it. The water had drained out. One more reason to be careful salvaging food after a natural disaster. Even sealed cans, or ones that appear to be sealed aren't necessarily sealed.

Anybody interested in a joint venture?

Our last joint venture worked out pretty good and grossed over a thousand dollars. We let someone sell John's e-book Confessions of a Butcher- eat steak on a hamburger budget and save$$$ to the people on their mailing list. I know Amazon doesn't pay their affiliates very much so anyone who has a food site and is an Amazon affiliate is a possible contact. I'm thinking with the economy down that this might be a good gift for an employer to give to their employees. If you know of anyone who might be interested, feel free to contact us on John's meat site htttp://www.all-about-meat.com or our older site http://www.arkessentials.com

3lbs for $100

John and I started up our contest again. Whoever hits their weight loss goal first gets $100. I didn't seem to be making any progress this week and then when I weighed this morning Hurray!!! I'd lost 3 lbs. Our scale is kind of funky sometimes and you never know if the reading is accurate the first time around but multiple weighs and still down. Only 3 lbs to go. I've won the last 2 times we've done this but I just have to keep John from bringing home treats. Tomorrow the big girls wanted to make a sugary treat and he talked them into fruit salad instead. I ended up buying fruit salad fixings but I also bought melons and a pineapple so I can have a low calorie alternative. Yogurt is sure yummy. I'll just have to resist. Is it worth $100 to eat it? Nope. I even turned down a chunk of a Symphony candy bar. Is it worth $100? Nope. Any suggestions on what I should spend the money on? It's supposed to be just for me and something kind of frivolous, not clothes or something I should just be buying for myself anyways.