My Christmas List

Ha, I know it's way early and what business do I have in posting my Christmas List, but there's one particular thing that's eating away at me, I'm trying to figure out how I can beg, rob or steal (no, not really! just joking, lol) to get my hands on one. I'm thinking the days are numbered for my faithful, but old, Palm M515. The charging base seems to have a bad connection in it so sometimes it doesn't want to sync or charge the battery. Also, there's not enough space on it for the things I want to do with it (lots of ebooks for school, for example) and I'd really like one with more memory (mine only has about 15 MB, and the 1GB card that I had extra to go with my other Palm that was stolen sadly doesn't work in the m515). So I'm looking at the latest, greatest Palm offering, the T|X. Pretty snazzy with 100MB of useable space, a much faster processor, and a bigger screen area. There is some concern that not all of my programs will run on it, but I have already determined that my favorite palm database, Handyshopper, will run on it so I'm good. About the only other thing I use it for is books for school and Bible+ (guess I'd better check on that one). They are going for under $200 new/lightly used on Ebay so I need ideas of what I can do to come up with that much money (well, a little more because I'd also like a keyboard so that I can type narrations during school). Any ideas?

I make silhouettes so if anyone wants any (kids, grandkids?), I'd be happy to do some for a small (to generous) donation . Oh, and calligraphy, I've done that for pay before, maybe a saying that is special to your family, nicely penned and framed to hang in your home? I also make straw stars (Christmas ornaments), I can knit, I learned how to do stitching cards so I could make some of those to sell...

I posted an ad on Craigslist to type handwritten documents or do any other data entry needed, we'll see if I get any nibbles from that. I've also applied to a few other data entry companies, but haven't heard back from any of them yet.

I probably just need to have a yard sale, which we plan on doing in October when the weather starts to get bearable. If I could come up with something that would even just pay me an extra $50 a week, that would be great, at least it wouldn't be too long before I could get my next "baby," just having a hard time figuring out what that might be. Oh, I do have some earrings and knitting stitch markers I could sell if anyone wanted anything like that. I think they're rather pretty.

I had thought about designing and putting together homeschooling and home organization forms and selling those either as a download or as a book and I still may do that, but that would take a good bit of time so have to figure out when I'd do that.

I think I've developed a nice system for putting my Ambleside Online schedule on my Palm into Handyshopper format so that I can check off items as a I do them and I can see in detail what I'm supposed to be doing in each time slot. That makes life very easy for me. Wonder if that would be worth anything? Probably not, but hey, it might be worth a try. I'm really just brainstorming here.

Sigh :)

Let's see, is there anything else on my "Christmas List" or am I really just rabid for a new Palm?

• Um, there are some school supplies I'd like to get (Nature notebooks, a few books that I can't download for free from the web, glue, pens, colored pencils, math manipulatives, paper, ink for the printer, supplies for other handicrafts down the road, downloads of the music we need for Composer Study)...
• I would like another camera as I'm not sure how long ours will last, but for now, it's probably one of those things we'll have to save up for. At least they are coming down in price (since we bought ours 6 years ago), and we'll likely be able to afford many more megapixels when we do get another one (ours is only 3 megapixels).

Please pardon my blubbering. :)

Another use for ramen noodles

My dear hubby happened upon this lovely way of gussying up the ever budget friendly, but very basic, ramen noodles. Here's what he does:

Take 2 stalks of celery (cut in chunks), 2 carrots (peeled, cut up), 1/2 to 1 onion, and he's either used fresh asparagus on one occasion or mushrooms on a couple of others (I also made it with just celery, carrots and onion and used Buddha's Delight gluten & vege/mushroom mix and it turned out decent too). Cook these up with some salt or seasoning salt till the carrots are nice and soft. Blend everything in the blender to make a nice "gravy." Add one of those small cans (I'm guessing 8-10 oz.) of Chinese Braised Gluten or Mock Duck or some such thing (I think you can get them in the Asian section of the supermarket), mix with about 3 packages of cooked, drained, ramen noodles (minus the seasoning packets), and there you have it, a yummy meal (cheap too), and sure to please all eating.