The holidays will be here before you know it, here are a few simple ways to earn cash for little pleasures and goodies for yourself and your family. 

You won’t get rich with these money-generating ideas, but you can take the results to the bank (even if it’s only your piggy bank):
    • Sell photos to stock photo websites. Stock photography sites offer generic photos of landscapes, animals, and other nonspecific subjects to designers and publishers. Go through your travel photos or your pictures of Fluffy, Fido and great scenery, then check out sites like istockphoto.com and shutterstock.com.

• Sell your books. Go through your bookshelves. Are you hanging on to your old college textbooks? Be realistic when setting prices, are you really going to read A Tale of Two Cities ever again? You can sell books online or try a local second-hand bookshop. If you have enough books you can have a garage sale–get your bookaholic friends involved and set up your own book space in the yard.  

• Sign up for consumer focus groups. Corporations and nonprofits doing market research need opinions from regular people. Make yourself available for focus groups, and you could earn $50 to $100 or so for an hour or two of sharing your thoughts and reactions to ideas. And don’t forget those online survey’s,  MyPoints.com is one of the best, your points add up quickly and you are never added to odd lists.

Why fight over shadows?

There is a fable about a wealthy man who hired a peasant and his camel for a long trip across the desert. The rich man rode the camel while the peasant led it across the dry sands.

In the hot noonday sun, they stopped for a rest. Since there was no shade but the camel, they began arguing about who had more of a right to sit in the camel’s shadow: the peasant who owned the camel, or the rich man who had rented the camel to ride.

Their voices grew louder and louder as the argument and shouting went on. The camel began to get jittery and anxious because of the loud voices of the men. Finally, the camel became so frightened, he ran away –leaving both men stranded in the middle of the burning desert without any shade at all.

Moral of story: Don’t let yourself get so determined to be right that you lose what you’re fighting for.

Does your child have first day of school jittters? Do you?

Hopefully, you have been talking to your child about the first day of school and how exciting it will be. Well, maybe not so exciting for you as you dress your little one, holding back tears with a really big grin on your face. Not too big though, kids are smart. For most school starts in September, so you still have a couple of weeks to practice smiling and being cheerful about your baby taking that first step away from the nest.

    Here are some things you and your child can do to he lp make this transition smoother:

Two weeks before

.  Make a cute calendar with countdown days.  Any plain calendar page will do or make your own, show the daya/date and add small graphics; Smilies are fun to use. Try this site http://www.clicksmilies.com/ or check out one that is similar. When you find a site you like, print the page of smilies and let your child cut them out paste on a I’m a Big Girl/Boy calendar. Later you can keep the calendar as a keepsake.

• Start practicing with the alarm clock. Send your kids to bed at their regular school-night time, and start getting them up early. Explain that everyone needs to adjust to a new schedule.

• Practice the school bus run. Describe the bus route for your children, including where the bus goes and how long it takes to get to school. Talk about what they can do on the bus to occupy their time.

• Take a tour of the school. Make arrangements with the school, and show your children their classrooms, the cafeteria, and bathrooms.

The day before
• Lay your child’s school clothes out. With your child, select outfits for the first week so there’s no anxiety about clothes in the morning.

• Pack up the night before. Get your children’s books, lunch money, and school supplies ready to go before they go to bed.

• Send your child to school with a photo. A family photo or a reassuring note in a child’s lunch can help ease separation anxiety.

The first day
• Send a note to the teacher? This is a definate ‘maybe.’ This lets children introduce themselves to their new teacher. Talk about what they like to play and their favorite foods. Make this a short note. Remember, short note. You may want to include a picture. When your childs teacher calls him or her by name, there will be an instant bond.

• Get them on the bus. If your children will be taking the bus to school, don’t drive them the first day, wait with them for the school bus. Help them get used to the trip right away.

• Remember bus numbers. Calm children’s fears by going over the bus number and reminding them that their teachers will make sure they get on the right bus.

We all think we know what success is and how to achieve it. But sometimes we don’t know what success is until it bites us in the face and nips at our nose. Usually (because nothing is 100%) success is based on our personal goals and achievements that are uniquely our own and are shaped by our individual personalities.

   Where is your success? Examine your own ideas about success, then;

Learn to recognize your success. What will your success look like or feel like? Will you be able to recognize it when you reach it? (Trying to keep up with this one or that one is not the way to success.) When you do the best to your ability isn’t that success too? The truth is you can’t do more than you can do.

Define success in your own terms. Forget about other people and their vision of success. Think about what you value, not what others value or say you must or should do.

What do you need to do?  Identify specific things that must be achieved before you reach your own goal. Select one thing that you have already done, and two or three things you can do right now, that will bring you closer to your ultimate success. Then start working on them–today.

Are you close to success now? Take a look at what you’ve already accomplished, and compare your current situation with your position when you started working toward your goals. If you are not closer, maybe you are allowing excuses to get in the way of accomplishment.

After looking at your accomplishments are you closer to your success than you thought?

Kudos.