DangerBear and I have always loved going out to eat, and I've never really enjoyed cooking.  Even now, with finances being tight from DangerBear's startup business, we're still going out to eat.  So when I sit down to write an article that will pay me $5, part of me thinks it's a lot of money and part of me compares it with the cost of eating out.  $5 would basically pay for the family's drinks (soda and iced tea).  Yikes.

I haven't tracked our finances in a long time; I don't know why, because it's such an obvious thing to do.  But I'm going to start up again.  Then we can get a true picture of exactly how much we're spending, and how we can save the most money.

So far I've found two websites through which I can make at least a little bit of money.  Amazon Mechanical Turk (weird name, I know) offers "HITs" or short jobs for pay.  I try to snatch up short articles to write.  Those will make me $2-4, and it only takes me 10-15 minutes.  Not too bad.

I've also joined Associated Content, where I can get paid for writing articles.  The idea is to get paid for page views of your articles, but so far I've only done assignments that also have an up-front payment (usually of only $1).

Then I also do some online surveys and stuff.  I've done that for a long time, and it's not much, but it's something. 

Over the last two days I've made about $20.  If I could make $10 a day, five days per week, that would take a huge chunk out of our grocery budget!

What I'd really like to do is sell candy or baked goods.  I'm not an expert by any means, but I think I'm a decent baker.  I also enjoy making things like chocolate covered Oreos.  Nothing too fancy.

Turns out it's a little complicated.  I don't exactly have a commercial kitchen in which to prepare these items, and that makes getting a food license a little difficult.  I'm still exploring my options.

Too bad it's the middle of winter; otherwise I could have gotten a table at a local farmer's market.

So I'm still looking around, asking questions, and generally making myself a nuisance to the state health department!

I thought that, too.  Things got a little busy and, to be honest, I had to put aside blogging for a while.  It would have been a little more polite, though, if I had mentioned that I was going on hiatus.  Hindsight and all.

But I'm back!  Still busy (aren't we all?), but I need the outlet writing provides.  One reason I put blogging on the back burner was because I felt like I really didn't have anything to share.  After all, I'm still one of the "younger women" mentioned in Titus 2.  I really don't have much to offer in the way of wisdom or deep thoughts.

Then I took a look at the blogs I read.  Yes, many of them are written by women who are further along the journey of Christian living, but some of my favorite blogs are written by other "younger women."  There's something comforting about knowing that there are others out there who are right now working to become the wise woman of Proverbs 14:1.

So all that to say, I'm back!