I’m sure it’s all over the news everywhere, California has 800+ fires that were started by lighting.  I live in Northern California and the is air thick with smoke, we haven’t been able to see the sun since Saturday.  Last night when it cooled off we opened our front door to let the cool night air in and the air that blew in the house set off the smoke detector!  We ended up having to shut the door.

All this smoky air is doing a number on my already dried out nose.  My nose got so dried out, cracked and bleeding that on Tuesday out of desperation, I went to the feed store and bought bag balm - the stuff they put on the teets of dairy cows and shoved some of that up my nose.  It worked like a charm!  (I’m not a doctor so if you use bag balm use it at your own risk.)

I’ve been super busy on Monday we went and dropped off two of my girls at 4-H camp.  I’ve been down to just two kids this week, my house is extremely quiet and I’m not liking it one bit.  I really miss the girls.  Tomorrow my husband and I are picking them up and I can’t wait to hear all about camp.

My husband has been working from home all this week.  His cell phone is basically his job.  While I LOVE having him home 24/7 I’m also missing the time I used to have alone.  I guess I want it all - him home and my time alone.  Maybe this is what happens after 13 years of marriage?

I got another website/store up and running.  I’m hoping to build another in the next week or so and then submit them both to directories and search engines at the same time.  Including this blog I have 4 sites up and running and about 20 more I’d like to get going, it’s just a matter of finding the time.  So far my online earnings total about $70 and all if it was from completing surveys.

A niche website that I built and launched about two weeks ago was taking forever for Google to cache.  I’m new to all this webmaster stuff and really don’t know what I’m doing.  I’ve taken some time to  submit that particular website to a bunch of Web Directories and search engines.  Last night I Googled the web site’s keywords and to my HUGE surprise it not only showed up on Google but it was the first listing!

I have a popshops store on that site, I’m mostly using merchants from commision junction.  Popshops allows a website owner to set up stores easily, using multiple merchants.  If you have a website and want to set up a store I high recommend popshops - it’s free!

I have two of my daughters graduating next week. The oldest from high school and my 2nd oldest from 6th grade. I’m thinking we’re going to be having people drop by the house even though I haven’t officially invited anyone. My house is clean right now but my porch is a mess. My free ranging chickens love to hang out on the porch and do what chickens do - poop and they poop a lot!

My goals for this weekend:
1. Clean off porch. Completed
2. Declutter livingroom and kitchen areas.
3. Finish planting vegetable garden. I still need to plant my cucumbers, swiss chard and zucchini.
4. Finish cleaning up and planting flower pots. Completed
5. Get 3 more websites up and going. Got 1 up and running, working on others.

On Tuesday I got the pink slip to my husband’s truck! What a wonderful feeling it is to know that we actually own the truck. It was funny I was talking to my husband and asked him how it felt to drive a paid for vehicle. He said, “Why don’t you take the kids to school in it and find out for yourself?” This truck is a big jacked up Ford F350 crew cab dually with a flat bed dump, the truck is 8′ wide at the rear tires. I’d need an empty parking lot just to do a U-turn. About 12 years ago he had a similar truck and I had to drive it to school because my other vehicle had a dead battery. I was so embarrassed, I was running over curbs left and right.

Wordpress makes this blog possible and so easy. I was wanting a non-blog feel to my new site. I first tried Joomla (it’s free and works for both windows based computers and MACs) but I just couldn’t understand what was going on. At first is seemed so simple to use and then I did something wrong and all my pages except for the front page weren’t stylized any more and I never could fix the problem. I finally stumbled upon rapidweaver for a MAC that makes building a site so easy. The software is fairly inexpensive and free to try.

My site isn’t fancy or anything but I literally threw it together this weekend. I still need to fix a bunch of stuff, add links, two pages need content added and I also need to place some more google adsense or other ads. I’m also going to try and make it look more “fun” and not so stiff looking. It’s a work in progress.

Don’t laugh at what my site’s content (I’ve taken down the link) is about, ha ha, it’s hard not too. According to GTrend’s wordtracker the key words get about 15,000 hits a day that’s 5,475,000 searches a year! Hard to believe isn’t it?

If anyone wants to check it out, be sure to tell me what you think. I’d LOVE to hear your thoughts.

Now I’m going to start working on my next site!