My mornings begin at 6am when my iPod alarm goes off. I then wrestle with the idea of snoozing for a few minutes – then come to the realization that there is too much to do to sleep any longer.

I stumble out of bed and head for the fridge. After I take a couple of sips of Diet Coke, I put some frozen biscuits into the oven. I check my email and contemplate checking Facebook but then decide that will take too much time.

I gather my clothes and iron the girl’s clothes for school. By this time the biscuits are usually done – so I get them out of the oven and begin the task of waking the girl. Usually by this time the husband is stirring – or at least his first alarm has awakened him. I finish getting dressed and pack everyone’s lunch. To save time, I have already placed the day’s snacks in each tote.

This morning – we had the added chore of taking the dog to the vet. At 6am, the dog is no where to be found. After a short drive around the neighborhood – still no dog. Finally she shows up around 7am – still plenty of time before we have to leave. I bring her in so that we don’t lose her again. She does help to wake the girl – so she is making my morning a little easier. It is the least she can do for the worry she caused me by not being at home at 6am.

We get the girl dressed, lunches packed, and everyone loaded into the car by 7:20am. We drop the girl off at school, then the dog at the vet, and finally me at work by 8:20am. It is amazing that it doesn’t matter how early or late we leave the house, I arrive at work at 8:15-8:20am.

We are still adjusting to this new routine as the girl has only been going to school for one week. My husband joked this morning that I did more before he got up this morning than he did all day. A slight exaggeration indeed but the sentiment is appreciated.

Our life happens in our living room. It is where we watch television, play board games, do computer work, eat, and sometimes sleep. The living room is our gathering place that has many functions and is in desperate need of lighting.

Our current lighting structure consists of an overhead light and a lamp. We really need more, indirect lighting. Some wall sconces like these Kichler bath lighting would be a good choice. Even though these are for a bath, it would give off soft lighting in certain areas of the living room. This would be a nice choice for lighting around the computer desk since it is in a dark corner.

Our living room is also connected to our kitchen/dining room area – so replacing our kitchen lighting just seems to make sense, too. This will make the rooms flow better. Kichler Lighting is a style I really like and would work well with our home decor. It would be nice to have a uniform look instead of what we have now.

Since we are daydreaming about lighting, since I planted a flower garden in the spring, I have been wanting to add lighting to it. The Kichler Outdoor Lighting gives me a lot of good ideas. We have a path that needs to be well lit since we use it a lot at night. I would love lighting there and a couple of spotlights on plants that are not dying. Unfortunately, there are only a few of those as the blistering summer heat has claimed a lot of my beautiful flowers.

It will probably be a few months before we do anything with our lighting. There are just too many other small projects before we take care of it – but it is never too early to start window – or in this case web – shopping.

This week of spring cleaning has been an indoor and outdoor affair. Sadly the cleaning has been mostly outdoors, but at least you can see progress. It does have me inspired to add more curb appeal to our home. A small patio would be great for grilling and for hanging out. These small upgrades remind me that any improvements we do to our current home will help us when we sell it.

While we are not in the market to buy a new home, I can’t help but to check out house prices. It gives me an idea of what homes are currently on the market and their prices. Plus it is good research to learn what homes sell for in our community. That will be important information later when we are selling our home.

Home improvement projects add to the value of a home. Outdoor living space is very important to us and to many people. Making small improvements like adding a flower bed or a few trees can transform a plain backyard into something special. Our outside decorations are sparse and many are recycled. Old lumber and cinder blocks can make flower pot benches. Ceramics work well for lawn accents. It saves us money while also reusing items.

Now that I have been working in the yard, I am not so scared of new build homes that have very little outdoor character. In fact, working with a blank slate might be a fun, exciting project. It is an option that I never would have considered before developing an interest in gardening. There is just something very rewarding about adding your own curb appeal to your home. Not only can your family enjoy it, but it is an investment that you can bank on when it is time to sell your home.

I am the first to admit that I know very little about investing. It is something that I eventually would like to do with some of our money. It seems our money is spent before we know it, and there is nothing to show for it. At least with an investment, we could see growth with it. That’s better than the money just being gone.

My husband has a great story about his mom picking stocks. It was in the early 1980s when his dad was thinking about investing. My husband’s mom thought IBM might be a good choice. IBM wasn’t necessarily a cheap stock, but home computers were just beginning to emerge. It would have been a good time to get in with technology stocks. Too bad my father-in-law didn’t invest in IBM.

Since I love the Internet, I am interested in exploring online stock investing. The options for buying stock used to be so limiting. The Internet has really made it possible for more buying avenues. There are many online brokerage resources that can help you buy stocks. With all the many tools available, it is easy to find good performing stocks and hopefully make good investments.

Online stock investing is definitely something I want to explore in the near future. It is also a good idea to diversify where you put your money. For us, it will be a good step in the right direction just to put our money somewhere instead of spending it. We are at a point where we need to plan for the future. Investing is one subject that we need to seriously consider.

As a teenager, you could not have paid me enough to carry a purse. Now I have one with me at all times. I also believe that it is important to have several purses. That way you always have a purse to fit the occasion.

My latest purse is a small, simple black purse that I bought for a wedding. A mini purse is the perfect size for a wedding. Zappos has a selection of these smaller bags. You only need to carry a few essentials with you. Also I love to switch purses for special occasions. If only for a few hours, I have a neat and clean purse.

An everyday purse should be as large as you need it. My current purse is large enough to hold my wallet, checkbook, phone, Zune, and at least three Capri Suns – the drink of choice of my daughter. This is my first purse that is a top zip purse, but it will not be my last. I haven’t spilled the contents of my purse not once since I bought a top zip purse. While spilling my purse is not a common problem, it is something you will remember especially when shopping.

When not being used, a large purse makes for a great storage spot. A large purse like a messenger bag is great to stash yarn, scarves, gloves, and other smaller items. The bag protects it from getting dirty and makes good use of that purse just hanging in your closet.

Looking online for a purse at Zappos can give you a good idea of what the latest styles are in handbags. It is fun to be able to browse for purses without having to leave home. I can also look for new purses that will be a good fit for any occasion. How times have changed. The girl who never carried a purse is now the woman who can’t live without one or five.

Brought to you by your friends at Zappos

We have a Lysol Neutra Air automatic sprayer in our kitchen/living room. I have it set to spritz every 36 minutes. It never fails. When I walk pass the thing, it sprays. I get a nice whiff of the scent. Most of the time, it is not that bad. But when it is a new can, it is extra strong.

It makes me question where I have it located. I probably need to put it in a corner that doesn’t have any foot traffic. Right now it is located in a high-traffic area. You pass by it to go anywhere in the house. It is a great spot for the sprayer since the scent radiates everywhere. But it is very annoying to be spritzed when you walk by the sprayer. It is up high, so I don’t get totally drenched with the mist.

So my advice is that if you get one of these automatic sprayers, put it up high and some place that is not a high traffic area.

It doesn’t really surprise me that Amazon had a wedding registry. I did use of a directory when I had my daughter so excessive they would have a wedding registry. we have friends are getting married in December and I got a shower and wedding shower invitation that listed were they were registered Amazon in one of those places so I headed over to Amazon to check out what they wanted and get some ideas of what we can buy them.

I noticed that on their Amazon list, items were marked either “Like to have” or “Nice to have.” So I scanned the registry to look for the “like to have” items since that seemed to be priority for them. A lot on their list was marked “nice to have” with very few exceptions. The Wii controllers and nunchuks were marked as “like to have” and that was about it. I guess we know the priority of my geeky friends. Who needs dishes, pots or pans? That stuff is boring. Truth be known, they probably already have that stuff anyway. Anyway, it makes me happy to know that I have friends who priorities are right with mine.

I wished Amazon had been around when I got married. I registered for really traditional items like china and silverware. I’ve never eaten off my good china plates. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised that when I pass them down to my daughter that they are still wrapped in the original boxes. Maybe one day they will be put to good use.

It is really cool how today people have so many choices when it comes to registering for wedding gifts. I would have loved to asked for some video games and movies. That would have been really sweet and used a whole lot more than china.

Lately I’ve been clipping coupons again. I usually clip coupons and let them expire before I ever think of using them. Our local newspaper has recently added coupons to their Sunday newspaper. I’m actually finding coupons of products I buy.

I don’t really file my coupons in my coupon holder. I try to put them in order that they expire, so maybe I can keep up with coupons that are expiring soon and use them. To make coupon clipping more fun, I want to have a goal for the money we saved. Maybe we will go to the movies or do something else once a month. Hopefully by having a goal, I will remember to consult the coupons before making my shopping list.

For the past few weeks, our computer has been acting up. We have a bad harddrive, so I had just chalked it up to it and didn’t think too much more about it. Apparently it was more than the bad harddrive.  We got an error message about a missing .DLL file. Well, that is easy enough to fix. You just use the recovery console on your Windows disk to replace the missing file. That didn’t work and after half a day of fooling with it, we decided just to reinstall Windows.

At least we didn’t lose any files since we didn’t format the drive. But still it’s a pain because all of our programs needed to be reinstalled. This brought to my attention the importance of keeping up with your driver disks and purging the older ones that you no longer use. We built our computer five years ago. It took me a moment to remember the brand of the motherboard and video card. At least most of our disks are in a CD binder, but at least half the disks are obsolete. It’s time to have a good purging.

Our computer has been very reliable. We had a harddrive failure in 2008. That could have been the last time we opened the case because it was quite dusty in there. We bought some can air – a supply we used to always have on hand – and cleaned out the inch thick layer of dust. I think that helped more than anything to get better performance from the computer.

So, from now on we will keep a check on the inside of our computer. When we check the smoke alarm batteries with the time change, then we will also check for dust in our computer.

Ants in the house can be quite annoying. It’s hard to get rid of the suckers. Ant spray kills those on contact but does little to get rid of the ant problem. In fact, using ant spray might cause ants to start new colonies. It is satisfying to kill those jokers on contact though.

So I have a new strategy for getting rid of the ants in the house. First is to cleanup and keep it clean. If ants aren’t finding crumbs on the floor or juice boxes on the couch, then their food source will be eliminated. I’ve never been one to clean every day. I plan on cleaning my kitchen and sweeping the floors each day.

I want to control the ants in our house and yard with organic solutions. We have a daughter and cats so we really are seeking solutions that will be safe for them. I have been reading all sorts of home remedies for getting rid of ants. I will try one at a time and document my results. One tip I read reminded me of what my dad used to do. He would take scalding hot water and pour it on ant mounds. I haven’t seen an ant bed in recent memory. Our ants seem to just have small holes in the ground. It makes it harder to find their nests.

Hopefully a little bit of cleaning everyday and some organic solutions will get rid of our ant problem.