A Very Close friend of mine Cara From The Household Helper is raising money for a great cause.  Please read below to see what Cara has to say.

March of Dimes

The March of Dimes champions the needs of moms and babies in our community and across the nation. The money raised for March for Babies event will support lifesaving research, services, education and advocacy that help babies get a healthy start.

A Cause Near and Dear To My Heart

My son Joey was born 12 weeks premature due to a placental abruption, a result of preeclampsia. He weighed just 2 pounds 9 ounces and was only 14 inches long (see picture in the left sidebar). While in the NICU, one of the nurses passed on some literature from The March of Dimes. From that day on, I knew I would champion this organization anyway I could.

Make A Donation - Win Some Goodies!

Joey and I are participating in The March for Babies this month (formerly known as Walk America). If you would like to sponsor us, just click on Joey’s picture in the left sidebar or click here to visit our fundraising page. All sponsors will be eligible for a random drawing to win some lovely goodies from my fellow WAHM Community.

List of Prizes and Sponsors

A premium make your own stuffed animal kit donated by Annette from CrittersWhoCare.com, an organization dedicated to show children love by sharing cuddly friends!

$15 Gift certificate from Penny for Simply Fun products–games, puzzles, puppets and more. Penny’s site is www.pennyschoenke.simplyfun.com.

$25 Gift Certificate from www.CarasCafe.com.

Choice of one ebook from www.TheHouseholdhelper.com

$20 Tupperware gift certificate from Netta D’Andrea

A year long membership to www.wigglegigglelearn.com

A copy of www.FullTimeWahm.com

eBook of choice from www.JustAddSweat.com

eBook of choice from www.PartybyMom.com

A 3 month subscription to www.DineWithoutWhine.com

A subscription to www.MenuPlanningCentral.com

A Summer Fun Tote Bag filled with summer getaway related accessories such as towels, sun glasses, flip flops, and water bottle from www.AboveAllTravel.com

This is a random drawing - the amount of the donation DOES NOT effect your chances of winning. The drawing will be held Monday, April 28th. Winners will be notified via email.

Special Thanks to www.JalapenoDesigns.com for hooking our team up with t-shirts!

Many parents find communicating with their teen hard. Here at Real life Solutions we like to offer tips, tricks and just some good old fashion support. With our teens today so many parents are always talking about how hard it is to communicate with their teenagers so we created this FREE 4 page report titled “Talk the Talk: Communicating With Your Teens.”

Here is your free download…. Talk The Talk: Communicating with your teens.

We all need a little support when it comes to talking to our teenagers and this is just that little bit of support that may help you and your teenager communicate on a whole new level.

Please Let us know what you think..

Last week we posted a great contest asking for suggestions for a “tag line” that would be used for Real Life Guidance. We received TONS of great suggestions and honestly, Tricia and I had a hard time choosing a winner.  Check out all of the entries here.

Well, as hard as it was to do, we had to choose a winner and the winner and the winning tag line is……..

Real Moms … Real Guidance … Really Easy

This suggest came from Tiffany of NatureMomsBlog.  For her winning suggestion,Tiffany will receive:

1. A button on this site for a full month

2. A free report of her choice from www.reallifeguidance.com  

3. $5 Cold Hard Cash into her paypal account

We’d like to thank ALL of you for participating! Your suggestions were greatly appreciate and keep your eyes peeled out for more fun contests like this!

Note: Tiffany - Contrats and please email me at at info@reallifesolutions.net as soon as you can

Having a schedule is a fundamental part of time management. You can imagine your schedule as a road-map. It provides important information about where you are going and how you can get there.

Without it, you may take a wrong turn somewhere and find yourself lost. Once someone is lost, it may take some time before they get back on track, and they usually arrive to their destination a bit later than they would have liked.

When you have a schedule, you can look at it and see what you need to do each day. You’ll know if you are on track, and if you aren’t, what you need to do to get back on course.

How To Make a Schedule

One of the first things to do when making a schedule is to write down all the things you have to do on a piece of paper. Some people keep separate work and family schedules, and if you decide that would work best for you, you can divvy those tasks up later. For now, simply write out everything that needs to be done on a monthly, weekly, and daily basis.

Once you have everything written out and in front of you, it’s time to start sorting between the common themes. You can do this by assigning a highlighter color to each theme (such as family, work, daily, monthly, weekly) or by taking out another piece of paper and writing those columns on it, and rewriting all the tasks into the appropriate column.

Now that you have all of your tasks sorted out, try to give a time estimate to each one. You may even want to time yourself for a week or two on these tasks, as you may be very surprised at how long some things take.

For instance, you may think it only takes 45 minutes to go to the grocery store, but in reality it could take an hour and 15 minutes. You may think it only takes 15 minutes to run up to the school and pick up the kids, but may find it actually takes 25 minutes.

In many cases, people underestimate the time it takes to do things, and this is one of the reasons they think they aren’t getting enough done. By timing yourself, you will get a visual picture of your time. When you see how long it really takes to accomplish your regular tasks, you will be able to see how many things you can fit into a normal day. You won’t constantly be trying to push yourself to do more.

Once you have written down your tasks and estimated the time it takes to accomplish them, you can start planning your schedule. Some people like to have a daily schedule that is very organized with certain tasks assigned to certain times and others prefer to keep a weekly schedule that is more flexible.

For more in depth tips for time management, Click here!.

Keeping a neat, tidy, organized home isn’t always easy when you have children. You want to create a clutter free oasis of calm; they want to take over the house with their legos. So who wins?

Well, with a little thought and careful planning you both can win. Here are some easy tips you can use to have an organized home and create the peaceful yet child friendly home you’ve been dreaming of.  Before starting you should make a plan of what needs to be done. Go through each room and identify what room needs extra storage, what type of storage, etc. You should then invest in a few storage and space saving solutions.   Read the rest of this great article here!

Aurelia

Parenting has got to be the most rewarding and most stressful job in the world.

Have you seen the “Cheaper by the Dozen” Movie (the 2003 version)?  Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt play the parents of 12 kids.  There is definitely lots of stress and chaos in their fictional family.  The Movie makes a great point though.  We need to enjoy our kids and laugh at some of the stuff that happens around the house.  So what if your youngest turned your living room wall into a canvas.  In the bigger scheme of things having to paint a wall really isn’t so bad.  And on the bright side, you’ll get to rag on him or her for years to come (smile).  My point is, a lot of these parenting mayhems can be turned into fun memories instead of stressful moments.  It’s all in how we look at the situation.   Make a choice today to enjoy your kids.

Visit the free resources below:

10 Tips to Happier Parenting http://www.reallifesolutions.net/family/happy-parenting.html

Free Positive Parenting tips and information. http://reallifesolutions.net/family/parenting.html

Meal planning and bulk cooking are both wonderful techniques you can utilize and modify to fit your families needs. The idea behind this is simple. The principle is that you cook and or prepare your meals ahead of time and then preserve them by either freezing or fridgerating them. Also, meal planning you can cook one large meal and get 2-3 other meals out of it!

The key here is to make every meal you cook count! When you are going to prepare a family favorite, double, triple, even quadruple the recipe if it will keep in the freezer.

Sounds wonderful doesn’t it? Why not give yourself a much-needed break — cook ahead today so you can relax tomorrow!

Real the full, easy to follow article Here

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Related Resources
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Healthy Menu Mailer : Your very own personal pssistants that plan the meals and make out the grocery list for you while you’re spending time with your family! You will get delicious, healthy meal ideas by e-mail each week!

With each Healthy Menu Mailer you will get…

1. 7 healthy dinner recipes your family will love.
2. a grocery list to go along with it.
3. a personal note from us to encourage you.
4. access to our breakfast, lunch, side dish, dessert and snack recipes
5. access to our members only forum to meet other like minded moms, exchange ideas and recipes and of course we will be there to help you along the way as well.

Your 1st week is FREE

Here’s to a less stressed and healthier meal time!

Aurelia Williams
Click here for Real Life Solutions.

In a search for happiness, many people look for it in other people and not within ourselves. Many people feel that things like money, a better job, better relationships..etc will make them happy. In reality, to find true contentment you must look inside yourself and learn to be your own best friend. That means you have to trust, love, and care for yourself just as you do the people you consider to be close to you.

Following are steps that you can incorporate into your life that will help you to feel more empowered and happy about yourself!

* Begin to lift yourself up, not put yourself down. If you don’t like something about yourself, work to change it. If you can’t change it, simply accept it. Don’t beat up on yourself with negative self-talk. You’re not likely to change for the better when you fill yourself with negative thoughts.

* Give yourself positive rewards. When you do something that you are proud of give yourself a small reward. Try not to wait for others to praise you because you may grow resentful if the praise doesn’t come. Pat your own back, it is a great feeling that can stay with you for a long time.

* Forgive yourself. I doubt that you would keep scolding a child over and over for making a mistake so don’t do that to yourself. Give yourself the gift of forgiveness when you make a mistake. After that, work to figure out what lesson you can learn, and use it to make better choices the next time around.

* Enjoy your successes. Most people can remember all of the details of depressing, painful or even embarrassing events that happened many years ago. What if you did the same thing with all of your wins? Try to remember all of the triumphs and accomplishments that you’ve made and keep that memory with you and think about it at least once a week.

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Real Life Coaching
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I offer wonderful support, guidance, motivation, encouragement and mentoring via online instant messaging, e-mail or telephone. I coach individuals on a wide variety of topics such as how to lead a more organized life, stress and time management and also how to reach a variety of goals. If you are interested, simply visit my site and look at the Coaching Packages that are available. I also have a few short Audio’s there that you can listen to.

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Helpful Links & Resources
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Stress Relief Tips
300 Breakthrough Stress Relief Tips: A breakthrough program that relieves the symptoms of stress and eliminates the causes, actually reversing the stressful habits, attitudes and mindsets you’ve developed over the course of your life!

Here are your
5 Steps to create a better attitude

Enjoy!!

Aurelia

Natural Health Secrets - Classic natural health eBooks help people lose weight, gain energy, reduce pain, improve memory, detox, etc http://reallifesolutions.net/NaturalHealth.HTML

Get Fit While You Sit - 36 Exercises you can do almost anywhere, anytime.  A proven program for you to get a complete workout in as little as 12 minutes a day. And the most remarkable part of the whole system is that you can be sitting at your desk, in traffic, in your hotel room or at home watching TV! http://reallifesolutions.net/getfit.HTML

101 Nutritious, Delicious, Healthy Recipes At A Moment’s Notice, that are Guaranteed to Taste Great and Give You a Vitality you have only ever Dreamed about!  http://reallifesolutions.net/Recipes.HTML

Healthy Express Cookbook: 101 Fresh, Light & Quick Dinners.  If you want to serve healthy, home-cooked meals, but are too busy to spend very much time in the kitchen — this is the cookbook for you! http://reallifesolutions.net/Cookbook.HTML

Your Very Own Personal Assistants That Plan the Meals and Make out the Grocery List For You While You’re Spending Time with Your Family! You will get delicious, healthy meal ideas by e-mail each week!  With each Healthy Menu Mailer you will get… 

–>  7 healthy dinner recipes your family will love.
–>  a grocery list to go along with it. 
–>  a personal note from us to encourage you. 

–>access to our breakfast, lunch, side dish, dessert and snack recipes  access to our members only forum to meet other like minded moms, exchange ideas and recipes and of course we will be there to help you along the way as well.
Your 1st week is FREE http://www.reallifesolutions.net/menu-mailer.HTML

Hi there ladies.  Well if you know me, then  you KNOW that coming up with good “Tag Lines” really isn’t my thing

I’ve spent over 1 hr looking at a beautiful new banner that was created for me by Marie Ynami at OnlineWebHelper.Com and trying to come up with a catchy Tag Line that screams “CLICK ME” Well, quite honestly - I am coming up empty.

I’ve decided to go with Banner #1

The banner was created for Real Life Guidance and as for a Tag Line, all my brilliant mind can come up with is “Help for Busy Moms“.  Ok, so as you can see, that isn’t too brilliant.  As usual, I run to my trusty Assistant, Tricia over at timesaverva.com  and she suggested I turn this into something FUN for everyone.  She is such a smart cookie.  So here’s the deal:

I would love your suggestions for a cool, “click me” tagline to go onto my new banner. So far the banner just Says “Real Life Guidance” and I am looking for a great tagline to go beside that text.  Again the banner is for http://www.reallifeguidance.com/   I would love to see what your suggestions are.  After we  have received the suggestions, Tricia and I will  pick a winner.  The winner will then receive the following:

1. A button on this site for a full month
2. A free report of your choice from www.reallifeguidance.com  
3. $5 Cold Hard Cash into your paypal account

Not too shabby Huh?   We are taking suggestions starting now  until Sunday, April 20th at midnight then we will announce the winner on Monday Afternoon. 

Are you ready? Get Set! Go