If you are a busy mom like me, you tend to struggle come dinner time.  I know I do.  If you don’t plan ahead, you never seem to have the right ingredients and you end up ordering out (which costs so much more!).  The Month Of Meals e-book has some awesome advice to get yourself out of that rut.  This book will help you stay home every night and not spend over $200 in groceries on dinner. I love how the Month Of Meals book not only gives me dinner ideas for a month, but they also give you a shopping list.  If you stick to the list, you will walk out of the grocery store spending less.  Now, there are some things in the book that I know my family won’t eat.  Those are the nights I will substitute my own idea.  I love how this book teaches you to plan ahead.  They have print out lists for each week.  They also have a shopping list for all the other things you will need throughout the week.  The majority of the recipes are easy to make (which is right up my alley) and they require things that you should have in your house already.  I also love that some of the meals are able to be frozen, so you have some meals for later on too!  There are some great tips in here too (though I did know about the one that says don’t go to the grocery store hungry).  If you are looking for a great book to help you in the kitchen, then check out  A Month Of Meals.  There is an 8 week money back guarantee, so you have nothing to lose checking it out!  However, the book does pay for itself on your first grocery shopping trip!

I am all about saving the environment for my kids. However, I just wasn’t ready to jump on the eco-friendly shopping bags just yet.  I didn’t understand how many plastic bags I would save or how many less trip to the car would be made to carry in the groceries.

Ityse has changed me.  It has changed my life.  How, do you ask?  I will never go grocery shopping without these ever again.  Not only are these bags ecofriendly, they are also stylish.  I love that the bag the holds the bags looks just as stylish as any purse out there.  It isn’t obvious that you are saving the enviroment, and well, I like that.  This cute pouch houses 4 mesh bags and 1 black bag.

Did you know that the average family of four goes through around 1,000 bags grocery shopping over the year?  Isn’t that crazy?  Many cities are now either banning plastic bags or charging a 20 cent per bag tax.  In you live in one of the taxing cities, Ityse can easily save you $50 per year.  Best of all, these are made in the US.  Now, what was my turning point?  Look at this:

Now, this was a huge trip, so this was only half of it.  However, as you can see from the first picture, all five bags are full.  I was floored to see how much food was in those bags.  That is over half of my kitchen table.  Plus, everybody at the grocery store wanted to know where I got these bags.  They all loved them.  The girl bagging my groceries was even impressed.  She loved how the bags contoured around what she was putting in them.

I am glad to say that I am now doing my part to save the environment thanks to Ityse.

Why do I love Dragon Naturally Speaking? Let me count the ways . . . .

Ok, so the video doesn’t tell you all ways I love Dragon Naturally Speaking. However, it does show you how easy it is to use the software. Literally, all you have to do is plug in a noise canceling headset to your computer and download the software. You place your cursor where you want to type and away you go. Now, you do have to train the software to your voice. I tend to talk fast, so it had to correct for that. Plus, if you find that it is typing same wrong word, you can train it on that specific word. This isn’t rocket science to figure out (which is good because I have a tendency to NOT read the books or pdf files that comes with software).

I was able to create that video while my kids were up and playing at my feet (and you can tell when they grabbed my leg, because the video starts wobbling. You can also hear them a little too.) However, I did want to show that you can still be involved in doing other things and be able to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking. This more than triples my typing speed when I am typing and dealing with my kids (Take the Dragon NaturallySpeaking typing test if you don’t know what your typing speed is). I am actually writing this blog post using the software too. Here is the official video on how this all works:

As I stated in my video, I am finding that I can get a lot more in the little snippets of time I have during the day plus I am able to get way more done at night. I love being able to go to bed before midnight. I love being able to answer emails and do blog posts when I have Will sitting on my lap drinking from his sippy and watching cartoons. I have five blogs, so being able to write more content in less time is a huge plus for me. Plus, anyone who knows me, knows I have no problems talking. I am able to do my freelance work and reports using this also. I will be recommending this to my boss. Beside blogging, I have used it to make my daily lists of what I have to do each day plus some grocery shopping lists too! I am not the only one who thinks it is great, check out this New York Times Review.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking is really for anyone who works on a computer. If you talk faster than you type, you need this. If you want to be more efficient in your work, you need this. If you just want a new toy to play with, you DEFINITELY need this. Time is money, and the time you save from using Dragon NaturallySpeaking makes it worth every penny.