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Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto

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Enjoy reading? Join Booksfree and have book rentals delivered to your home

March 22, 2007 by Tricia

Pretty much everyone has heard of Netflix right? Well, what if there was a company that offered a similar service, but for books and audiotapes? Good news! There is a service that offers book lovers on-line book rentals.

The service is called Booksfree, and it offers it’s members a wide selection of books and audio tapes. They have everything from the latest best sellers to the classics. Members can select from over 88,000 audio and paperback titles, fiction and non-fiction, from over 35,200 authors.

Books are expensive to purchase, and we all have busy lives and sometimes don’t have time to visit the local library to take out new books to read. Why not start a membership with Booksfree and have the audio tapes or books that you’d like to read shipped to you free of charge?

Booksfree offers several membership plans. You could have anywhere from two to 12 books shipped to you at once for as little as $8.49 to $34.99 per month. All membership plans include free shipping both ways, unlimited rentals, no due dates, and of course no late fees.

When you sign up for a membership you can create a list of titles that you’d like to rent and they’ll automatically ship the number of titles that your membership allows you to rent. The remaining titles on your list will be shipped in a future order. Return your titles in the pre-paid shipping envelope and your next title choices will be sent to you. It’s that easy.

A Booksfree membership would be great for an avid reader, a family or even as a gift for a relative. Perhaps you have an older relative that can’t get out as much as they used to, maybe a Booksfree membership would make an ideal gift?

At this time this service is only available to residents of the United States and it’s territories. I’m hopeful that the service will be available to Canadians and perhaps other countries sometime in the near future.





Filed Under: Great Reading, Hobbies, Home and Lifestyle, Recreation, Services, Shopping Tagged With: book rental, booksfree, convenient, free return shipping, free shipping, Gift Idea, low membership price, membership, save time, savings, shipping

Act of revenge?

March 21, 2007 by Tricia

Wordless Wednesday

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Don’t you just love this photo?

My sister had two German Sheppard – German Sheppard/ Doberman mix dogs when I used to live with her. A long long time ago …

I remember one day when my sisters husband was going to drive us to work, and then go off duck hunting – he decided not to take the dogs with him. He didn’t hunt often, but when he did, he usually did bring the dogs.

He had decided not to bring them along that day because one of the dogs liked to make a game of things. Every time my brother in law would take a shot, the dog would jump out of the bushes and try to catch the expelled cartridge. Naturally the ducks or geese would see the dog jump out (and I suppose hear the shot too) and scatter. Needless to say my brother in law wasn’t a very successful hunter when he’d bring the dogs.

The dogs knew that my brother in law was going out hunting. They’d watched him pack up his gear. When we left, we put the dogs in the basement for the day.

I think I got home first that evening. I went downstairs to rescue the dogs as soon as I got home so that they could go outside for a while.

Much to my surprise the basement was a mess – somewhat like you see above, but with lots of clothes scattered about too.

The two dogs had taken revenge on my brother in law. They had ripped up some of his clean laundry that had been either folded or hung in the basement to drip dry, and they’d attacked some of his books and other belongings. My sister and I both had clothing and other items that we owned in the basement, but the dogs hadn’t touched anything of ours. Only my brother in laws things were damaged.

Smart dogs huh? They knew who they were mad at and exactly how to get back at him too!

Filed Under: Entertainment, Family, Humor, Pets and animals, Recreation, Wordless Wednesday Tagged With: brother in law, cartridge, Doberman, dog, dogs, duck, Geese, german sheppard, hunt, hunting, revenge, shell, shredded, shredded clothes, shredded papers

The Dinner

March 17, 2007 by Tricia

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This weeks Theme is Drink

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Two weeks ago my brother came to Toronto for a convention. For once, he was going to be in town for more than a day or two. He was actually here for five full days! His wife decided to come along for the trip too. She works for my brothers company, but I guess being the bosses wife must have some benefits. She was relaxing while my brother worked the convention.

On the Saturday night almost all of my siblings and a good portion of their kids got together for a nice dinner in a downtown Toronto restaurant. There were eleven us at the table.

The photo above is of me and my family holding our drinks high and giving a cheer. I didn’t take the photo, one of my nephews did. I’m sitting near the end of the left side of the table. You see way at the end of the table? Two sets of hands holding wine glasses up? The first hand is mine, and the second is my sister-in-laws.

I know, you don’t see much of me on this site, but I do give you little bits and pieces here and there don’t I?

Did you notice the glass of Guinness in my nieces boyfriends hand? Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

This last photo is one of my brother, from Vancouver, in the forefront, and my husband behind him.

Say Cheese!

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Filed Under: Entertainment, Family, Home and Lifestyle, Photo Hunters, Photography, Recreation, Socializing Tagged With: brother, Canada, dinner, Downtown, Family, husband, Nephew, Niece, restaurant, Saturday, Scavenger hunt, sister, Toronto, visit

Quality furniture collections at Greatpricedfurniture.com

March 16, 2007 by Tricia

I was visiting GreatPricedfurniture.com and spent a few minutes looking over their site and the furnishings that they sell.

The site has 20 major sections that you can easily reach by clicking on the tab of your choice at the top of each page. The sections range from customer care, to a pages listing the online stores best sellers, new arrivals, items that are on sale, to the specific furniture sections – bedroom, children’s, baby furniture, kitchen, living room, dining room, home office, and art. There’s even a section on furniture tips.

The site is well designed, but it doesn’t look like your typical online store which usually has lots of thumbnails of their products within the major sections.

On Greatpricedfurniture.com when you visit a furniture section, take for example the baby furniture section, you are greeted by a few paragraphs describing the type of furniture that the online store sells, below the initial paragraphs you’ll find thumbnail pictures that will take you into sub-sections of the baby furniture section. The sub-sections for this area range from Baby bedroom sets, to changing tables or you could view all of the furniture items at once by clicking the last thumbnail.

I think this online store might be better served to have the sub-section thumbnails either above the descriptive paragraphs for the section or perhaps running along the left or right side of the page. That’s my opinion, but I know that when I’m shopping or browsing online I like to view examples of the products sooner rather than later.

Once you get into each subsection of the site you will find thumbnail photos of the products sold in that section. Once I clicked on Baby bedroom sets I discovered a page that had a photo of each of the baby furniture sets that Greatpricedfurniture sells, and from there I could click on a model that I liked to see a larger picture, read an in depth description of the product and then go on to order the item, or items in this case, at the bottom of the page.

One thing that I really liked about this site, is that once you have picked out an item that you want to possibly purchase or get more information on, if you scroll to the bottom of the page where it lists the prices for the items and variations of each item, a pop up picture of the item comes up when you hover over the link. So if you wanted to get a particular crib, but wanted it in a different color, you could see what it would look like in the color or wood type of your choosing when you hover over the link. A+ for that idea!

The front page has a nice picture of a bedroom set, and then below it there are descriptions of each section of the site, with thumbnails of select furniture items running along the right side of the page. I like that look. On the left side of the front page, a shopper visiting the site will find that they could shop for items by furniture category, manufacturer, or by furniture collections.

It’s a great site, well organized, easy to use, and full of information about the furniture items that they sell, plus it’s easy to find information related to the online store itself as well.

I think it just needs to be brightened up a bit with photos of the items in each main section near the top of the page in order to encourage shoppers to click on the sub-sections.

As for the furniture and furniture collections? It appears that this online store carries high quality furniture items. I love the many styles and lines of furniture that I’ve seen as I’ve browsed the site. The prices are quite reasonable for the quality and craftsmanship of the furniture as well.

I’d visit this site again, and I’ve bookmarked it in case I decided to redecorate sometime in the near future which of course is always a possibility with me since I love redecorating.

If you are shopping for furniture visit Greatpricedfurniture.com, you won’t be disappointed.

Filed Under: Home and Lifestyle, Sales and Marketing, Shopping Tagged With: baby, baby furniture, children, craftmanship, design, dining room, furniture, Greatpricedfurniture.com, Home and Lifestyle, kitchen, living room, online store, prices, quality, remodeling, renovate, renovation, Shopping

Managing money when you aren’t able to work

March 15, 2007 by Tricia

It’s unfortunate that while I’ve been sick at home that I’ve had to spend a good portion of my time worrying about money. I was getting sick pay when I was first off work, and then when that ran out I was able to get medical leave pay from our provincial government but that ran out too. So for the last 8 months or so I’ve been on my own, trying to figure out how to pay our loans, home insurance and other bills.

As many of you know I have found some ways to make money on the internet but we still have to watch our spending. At least we won’t have to go in for Debt Advice thanks to the income that I’m getting from our various websites.

All of that money, what would be “extra money” to most folks, ends up going into our current accounts. We then pay our bills online using those accounts.

We never used our credit Cards much, and we use them even less these days. Still, I’m happy that we do have credit cards in case any big expenses come up.

We also re-negotiated our mortgage last summer with a broker who specializes in getting the best deals on Mortgages. We’ve been very lucky ever since we bought this house. We got it when the interest rates were at an all time low and actual ended up with 0% interest for the first 6 months! We had a variable mortgage so the rate did go up as the interest rates climbed but we never did end up paying any more than 4% interest in the first five years we owned our home. Now, since we renewed our mortgage our interest rate is a little higher, but we renewed just as the interest rates were about to go up again, so once more we lucked out and got a good deal. I think we’re paying 4.5% interest now.

All in all, considering that I’ve been stuck at home, sick, with little to no income for the last 14 going on 15 months we’ve been pretty lucky money wise. However, I do know that if I hadn’t found a way to start making some income off my websites I’d be sitting here telling you a vastly different story right now.

My Tips –

You never know when something might happen that could cause you to lose your job or have to take extended sick leave like I’ve had to do.

My advice to all is to try to set as much as 20 to 25% of your income aside in case something happens. If you don’t end up using that money it’ll make a nice retirement income someday.

Also, stay on top of your bills – don’t let them build up. Once you start to get into debt everything just seems to have that snowball effect and the situation will get worse. Trust me on this one – I’ve been there too!

Filed Under: Finance, Health Fitness and Beauty, Home and Lifestyle Tagged With: account, bank, credit cards, current accounts, deals, debt advice, home insurance, house, Internet, loans, Make Money, Money, mortgage, mortgages, off work, savings

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