Category: Featured

Five Ways to Save… On Halloween Décor & Family Fun

Oct. 02 Featured, Halloween, Holiday, Home & Garden no comments

Guest post by Stephanie Nelson, CouponMom.com

1. Don’t go overboard. Halloween is now reported to be the 2nd most expensive holiday of the year, right behind Christmas. . It is easy to go overboard on spending if you like to decorate your house or yard with plenty of Halloween decorations. One way to save a lot of money is to skip the expensive décor and make your own decorations.

2. Carve a pumpkin. The easiest decoration that is also fun for kids is carving a pumpkin together. For just a few dollars, you can create a memorable annual tradition with your child and decorate your front porch or window at the same time. Save the seeds and find a recipe for roasted pumpkin seeds, as well. Read more →

Motivate Kids by Teaching Them ‘Life is a Business’

Sep. 17 Featured, Parenting no comments

Non-Profit Founder Offers Tips for Raising Kids to Succeed

Welfare may seem like a charitable measure for struggling families. But it’s a self-perpetuating trap when it becomes the only way of life parents know how to teach their children, who then know nothing else to teach their own children, says Virgil Brannon, founder of the non-profit I Am Vision Inc.

“Living on entitlements becomes a way of life for recipients when it’s handed down from one generation to the next because the family loses any tools it might have once had to forge a life based on self-discipline, achievement and challenging,” says Brannon, author of Democratic Coma (www.DemocraticComa.com). Read more →

5 Reasons Why Dogs Make Great Reading Partners For Children

Sep. 06 Featured, For Kids, Parenting no comments

 Studies Track Improvements in Grade School Language Studies

It turns out dogs are not only good for our health; finding missing people; and helping disabled people live independent lives – they’re good for kids’ report cards, too!

Canines have been found to improve the immune system and reduce blood pressure, among other health benefits. They help rescuers and law officers, blind people and those with limited use of their hands and arms. Now we have another reason to celebrate man’s best friend.  

“Dogs not only help children learn to read, they help children learn to love reading,” says Michael Amiri, coauthor with his wife, Linda, of the children’s book, Shellie, the Magical dog (www.shelliethemagicaldog.com). “And that’s true of for children with and without learning disabilities.” Read more →

Creator of ‘Halloween’ Film Franchise Discusses Why We Love Horror

Sep. 06 Entertainment, Featured no comments

 Before Jason, Freddy & Other Genre Staples, Producer Relied on ‘Theater of the Mind’

Why do we pay to watch scary movies?

Irwin Yablans, creator of the “Halloween” films that forever changed the genre, says the answer’s easy.

“When done right, a horror movie evokes an involuntary response involving fear, excitement, repulsion and fascination,” says Yablans, (www.irwinyablans.com),
author of the new memoir, The Man Who Created Halloween. In it, he details his rise as a successful independent producer, sales chief for Paramount Pictures and head of Orion Pictures. His masked creepster Michael Myers, who debuted in 1978, spawned a wave of iconic horror characters, and a new way to do business in Hollywood. Read more →

New Studies Show Odds Stacked Against Working Moms

Sep. 06 Featured, Parenting, Savings no comments

Yesterday, the results of a Gallup, Inc. poll showed that just 27 percent of the world’s workers are employed full-time, with the figure in North America slightly higher (41 percent). According to the Wall Street Journal:

In unveiling the new metric, Gallup chairman Jim Clifton described the effort as a way to count the number of “good jobs” around the world. “In what is perhaps the world’s most pressing problem today, of the 5 billion people age 15 or older, 3 billion want a good job, but there are only 1.2 billion of them to go around,” he wrote. Existing data “lump the lousy jobs together with the good ones. … Do you think Guatemala’s unemployment rate is really 4%? Or that Iran’s is 15%? Our data suggest the real unemployment rates are much, much higher.” Read more →