Loving These!

I just got done reading Mandy's Blog, and loved the stuff she shared today. I did not know you played guitar! That is so cool! But I have had these things that I've wanted to blog about forever, but just keep putting them off. So since I've been gone all week and haven't blogged, I thought I would share my favorites for the day as well. (Yes I'm downright stealing your blog topic Mandy!)I have been re-reading this book the last couple of days Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn. I just love it! Somethings I know I would never do, but it gets me thinking about all the things I waste. Money being one of them. It helps me start to realize, I don't need to have everything, and life would be better if we learned to conserve a little bit. This last week our landlords raised our rent $350 bucks as well. This means we are now in a position, that we begin to wonder if we are better off putting all this money into our own house rather than renting. So now begins the decisions of whether to stay or move. If we're going to be paying this much money, we might as well be renting a house rather than an apartment, or start making our own mortgage payments, or see if we can find something cheaper. Which has started me thinking about how we can start cutting back... hence the Tightwad Gazette!

I love this book! They also have another one out called Journal Revolution, but right now this is my favorite of the two. I haven't had a chance to finish reading all of Journal Revolution though. This book is all about art journals, and how to start one no matter who you are. It breaks it down so it is so easy, and gives some great prompts and ideas of how to start. I've never had an art journal, and yet I love the ones I see from other people. So this has given me a chance to actually start doing some for myself and I have been loving it. My post for this week at Your Actual, was one of the first ones I tried. (You'll have to go check it out especially because I love Mandy's post for the week! Awesome Artwork!) So if you've ever wanted to have an art journal, or your needing a jump on your creativity or needing some great prompts for layouts, art or journals go check this book out!

And this. This has to be one of my favorite things of all time! I have officially made myself Blurb's new publicity person. I am going to promote these guys like mad! I have been looking for publishing places where I could print a nice book either of my layouts, family history, art, our wedding, etc. That was the problem. Lots of things I wanted printed in books and a limited amount of money in the pocket. The cheapest I could find was books that were printed with only 20 pages, for around $30.00. And then the covers were not what I wanted. I wanted a nice printed cover that I could design. Some ranged even in the $50 - $75 range when I could design my own cover. Talk about frustrating! I decided I would never have one, until I started raking in LOTS of money, which wasn't going to be happening anytime soon.

So my cousin emailed me the link to this site, because we've been in the process of putting together a family cookbook and finding places to print. She ran across this goldmine! I can get a 7 x 7, soft cover book of 40 pages for only $13.00! I can design the whole thing anyway I WANT IT! Even the cover! They look nice, and professional. You can get get hard bound as well. They have various sizes of books, as well as cover options. If I wanted I can even up the pages to 80, and it's only $16.95. That's 4 times the amount of pages that I could get from the cheapest site I could find and for 1/2 the price! All the prices for the various books are very reasonable and super cheap compared to all the other places I've been checking out. They have a program that you download to your computer which lets you create the book. It's very easy to use. I still have not got one officially printed yet (but I am working on it). So hopefully they don't fail me there. But even then if it doesn't turn out perfect, I don't feel as ripped off paying only $13.00 instead of $30 for a smaller book.

You can order one or you can order 100's. If you order more than 10 of one book, they have discount prices. You can even set it up in a store on their site, where your family or others can come and purchase the book.

So have I convinced you yet? If not you've got to go try it out, and here in a few months I'll post my finished book and show you how the service really turned out!