Melinda's Musings

I am part of the web team at my church and we are currently working on a web site redesign. I read an excellent article on SitePoint.com about church web design and marketing. It’s not something that is a very popular topic in the tech world, but there are thousands of churches, many of them with websites. We wanted to go for a clean, modern look and felt that our current site was getting a bit stale. After much discussion and research, we decided to go with the open source Content Management System, Joomla. It is very powerful and relatively easy to implement and use. We hope to be able to keep the content more fresh since more people will be able to easily update it from the internet and won’t need to be web developers in order to update it.

We also had to take into consideration that our church is getting ready to become multi-campus by planting a church in another location. We needed something that is easily expandable and that can handle more potential campuses in the future. We decided on a basic layout of a home page where a person can easily select which campus they would like more information on, then there will be two campus specific pages for each location. This will provide an easy way to differentiate between the two. Most of the other content will be shared between the two sites with notations of any location specific items clearly stated. If this is something that is of interest to you, stay tuned as I will be posting more articles as we go along.

Cheap seems to be the theme for this year’s Valentine’s Day celebrations. I have seen several ads for cheap flowers, candy and gifts. I was surprised to see a couple of stores (Wal-Mart and Kroger) with a dozen roses for under $20. In the past, this has been a rarity on Valentine’s Day, this is usually when stores mark up the roses because they know they will be in high demand. Stores are going great lengths to draw in reluctant shoppers. With that in mind, I have made a list of some of my favorite frugal Valentine’s Day ideas:

• Check out a romantic movie from your local library
• If you are musical, sing a romantic song to your significant other
• Write a poem for your significant other
• Buy a box of inexpensive kids valentines, write on them and leave them all over the house for your honey
• Make heart shaped cookies
• Buy some boxes of conversation hearts
• A CD or DVD that you know your significant other would enjoy
• Make dinner for your sweetie and serve it by candle light (an oldie but a goodie)
• Celebrate Valentine’s Day after the 14th when everything is on sale
• Check out your local Freecycle group for candles or movies
• Make a homemade valentine card
• Play some board games, a great way to spend quality time together

I have been trying out a new meal planning/grocery shopping plan the last couple of months and it is working really well so I thought I would share. I know all lot of people are trying to save money and be more frugal in the slow economy. I have identified 5 ways to save money at the grocery store that work really well for me and I think they can work for anyone.

1. Have a plan. The first step in being successful at frugal grocery shopping is having a plan. I have found this out the hard way, if you don’t have a plan, you can end up with a cart full of groceries, but nothing for dinner. Print out a calendar and plan out your meals. I like to plan two weeks out. I print out my Yahoo Calendar where I keep my schedule, and put meals for each night on there. That way I can plan meals with my schedule. If I have something going on in the evening, I know I need to make something quick. If it’s an evening where nothing is planned, I know I can fix something that takes longer if I like.

2. Check store ads and coupons. If you get store sale papers in the mail check them there. Many grocery stores now list their sales online and will even email them to you. My grocery store of choice, Kroger, has online ads and will let you load coupons directly to your shopper’s card from their website. Also, sort your coupons and know what you have before making your list. It’s can be annoying to get stuck behind someone in line digging for their coupons.

3. Make a list and stick to it. After you have planned out your meals, looked at the sales and coupons, make your list. Be sure to check to see what you do and don’t have before making the list. I don’t know how many times I have thought I had something in the pantry, only to get ready to make it and find that I don’t have it. When shopping, if it’s not on the list, don’t buy it. It also helps not to go shopping hungry, that way you aren’t tempted to buy every tasty looking thing you walk by.

4. Have a budget, keep track of what you are spending and use cash. In the past I have gone grocery shopping and when I got to the check out, I would cringe when I got the final total. It was too hard to keep track of what I was spending as I went, so I thought. Then I discovered Handy Shopper It is a free program that I have for my Palm Treo smartphone and it is excellent. It is also available for Pocket PC. Handy Shopper lets you keep a shopping list and also enter prices and even the aisle for each item. It has changed the way I grocery shop. You don’t have to have a fancy program to keep track though, jotting down the prices and using a calculator as you go works just as well. Also, I have found that using cash helps. If I run out of cash, I quit buying groceries. Sometimes I will put a non-essential item or two back if I’m running out of money.

5. Make fewer trips. The less grocery store trips, the better. The more trips you make to the grocery store, the more money you are going to spend. How many times have you stopped just to get a gallon of milk or a couple of items and come out with a couple of bags full of stuff? Grocery stores spend a lot of money on research to figure out how to set up a store so that shoppers will be tempted to buy more. That’s why milk and other staples are located at the back of the store. If you have to walk past a lot of enticing displays, you may buy a few things on your way to get milk.

Maybe you think this sounds like a lot of work. No one said saving money would be easy, but once you get your process down, it becomes easier. I find it very helpful to have a meal plan through the week so that when my husband and I get home from work, we don’t have to worry about what to fix for dinner, we just check the menu. We also don’t have to worry about whether or not we have the ingredients on hand because we have done our grocery shopping ahead of time and have everything needed.

If you think you don’t have time for this, look at it this way. Putting a few minutes into meal planning and list making can actually save you time in the long run. You won’t have to spend time at the grocery trying to figure out what you need and making trips back and forth across the store because you forgot something. Next time you go to the grocery store, try out these tips for grocery shopping on a budget.

I think the mobile market is vastly under served by web sites. I am constantly amazed at how many web sites do not have a mobile optimized site. There are so many people using their phones to surf the web these days that one would think more sites would cater to them. A 2008 Nielsen survey reported an estimated 40 million mobile internet users in the United States alone. With the popularity of smartphones such as the iPhone, these numbers are sure to climb. The big dogs such as Google and Yahoo have very mobile friendly sites. I personally use my Treo 755p smartphone a lot and it is very frustrating to try to access sites that aren’t mobile friendly. Many times it is as simple as optimizing a few stylesheets to make a site more mobile friendly.

If you use WordPress as your blogging platform, there is a handy plugin that I ran across that makes optimizing your blog for mobile viewing a snap. The plugin is Alex King’s WordPress Mobile Edition and it is extremely easy to implement. It is slightly different from installing many plugins because you have to put a file in your themes directory and also activiate the plugin. The following directions are also included in the readme that comes with the plugin:

1. Download the plugin

2. Put the wp-mobile.php file in your wp-content/plugins directory

3. Put the wp-mobile directory in your wp-content/themes directory

4. Activate the WordPress Mobile Edition plugin within your WordPress admin plugins page

5. Presto! Your site is now mobile friendly.

The plugin basically just strips off all of the graphics and makes the blog text only. It is a very nice plugin and something any WordPress user should use. It is always annoying to me when I look at blogs on my phone and they take a long time to load. All I want to see is the text and a lot of unceccesary files load with it.

I still remember my first encounter with chai like it was yesterday. It began innocently enough; I had a new position in my company and a new manager who occasionally liked to take the team to Starbucks. Not being a coffee fan, I wasn’t sure what to order on my first trip. I decided hastily on the chai latte since that sounded safe enough. Little did I know, I was beginning a lifelong love of chai. I took that first sip and was transported. The delicious spices filled my senses and warmed my tummy, I had no idea that such a delightful beverage existed. I have since tried several different kinds of chai but my all time favorite remains the Tazo chai latte from Starbucks. It just can’t be beat.

I have tried making chai myself at home and although it is never quite as good as Starbucks, it does the trick when I have a chai attack and need some chai now. The Tazo Chai Organic Natural Spiced Black Tea Concentrate is the best but most expensive option and can be mixed with milk. It is the concentrate that Starbucks uses to make their chai lattes. Just heat and mix equal parts milk and concentrate and there you have your own homemade chai latte. I also like Stash Premium Tea, White Chai and Stash Premium Decaf Chai Spice Tea.

I try to limit myself to no more than one Starbucks chai latte a week since I don’t want to go bankrupt or gain 10 pounds. I love to say, “Tall chai latte please”. I wait in anticipation by the counter while the barista whips up the concoction and then enjoy my 180 calories of pure, spicy bliss. There must be chai in heaven.

Picture yourself driving through the parking lot at your local grocery, you see an open spot but just as you get ready to pull in, you see a cart in the spot. This has to be one of the most exasperating things on earth. It always annoys me to no end when people don’t put their shopping carts back in the little cart corral. It is one of my pet peeves. Come on people, how hard can it be? Is it any wonder a large percentage of Americans are obese when we can’t walk 20 feet to put a shopping cart away? Not to mention that the shopping carts are free to run into random cars and dent them.

Some grocery stores such as Aldi have a system that requires a quarter to get a cart out and the quarter is returned when the cart is put back. It is a very simple yet effective system. I am really surprised that more grocery stores don’t do this. Next time you are out shopping, put your shopping cart in its place!