The weather is hot, and so the kids are always asking for something cold to snack on. And of course if I want them to go outside, I’d better be ready to cool them off during or after. Otherwise they won’t give me any peace to do anything else.

Not to mention how miserable they get. A drink of cold water is satisfying when you’re hot, but not nearly as fun as getting a treat.

On my budget, I don’t like to buy a lot of popsicles and such. They add up too fast. But making treats at home is really easy. All you need are some popsicle molds and ingredients for popsicles. Other treats are also easy to make.

Fruit Smoothie Popsicles

Fruit smoothies make great cold, healthy treats, but they also make great popsicles. After you’ve poured them some smoothies, pour any excess into popsicle molds. They’ll freeze up pretty quick, and are just as healthy as the original smoothie.

Smoothies are easy to make. I take some frozen fruit, apple juice, a banana, carrot or whatever else looks fresh and likely to taste good in the smoothie. You just need enough juice to keep the mixer going, which is a bit lower than the top of the frozen fruit once you’ve put it into the blender, in many cases. The more liquid you add, the more runny the smoothie. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, so don’t worry too much.

Add some honey while the blender is running. If you add it while the blender has stopped, it will solidify too quickly and may just stick to the sides of the blender, not mixing into the smoothie. A little sweetening really helps most smoothies, and I’d sooner add honey than sugar.

Fruit Juice Popsicles

You don’t have to get all fancy and make a smoothie to make homemade popsicles. You can just freeze some fruit juice in the molds. Trust me, the kids won’t mind that there aren’t chunks of real fruit in them.

Then again, fruit juice with small chunks of fresh fruit do work.

Frozen Yogurt or Pudding

Take either of these and put into popsicle molds. To save on packaging I suggest buying the larger containers of yogurt, but if you have the single serve style you can try just adding a popsicle stick to these. Just remember that’s rather a large popsicle.

Similarly, I suggest just making the pudding at home. You can use the instant mix or be really brave and mix it from scratch.

Snow Cones and Shaved Ice

These were a huge hit at my daughter’s birthday party earlier this year… bigger than the birthday cake itself.

A shave ice maker doesn’t cost all that much, nor do the flavors. We experimented with blending some frozen berries with brown sugar and water to use in place of the syrups you buy in the stores, but these are much, much harder to shave. The flavor is good, though. I’m some concerned about whether this might wear out our shave ice maker too quickly, though.

Ice Cream in a Bag

You can see the instructions for ice cream in a bag by following this link. It’s pretty simple but I will warn you that five minutes of shaking can be a very long time for children, even with ice cream as a reward.

Of course if you have an ice cream maker you can just use that. The kids find waiting for the machine to finish to be pretty exciting too, but their hands don’t get tired or cold… unless you have the old hand cranked style.

Frozen Grapes and Other Fruits

Some fruits freeze delightfully. Grapes, for example. Get a bunch, rinse them off and either remove from the stems or don’t. Once they’re frozen they’ll still come off pretty well, so you can decide how lazy you want to be with this one.

We also buy frozen berries, and the kids love them as snacks.

And you can’t forget frozen bananas! The classic way is to put them on a stick and dip them in chocolate first, but you can also slice them thinly before freezing. Just make sure the kids eat them before they melt and turn into goo.

All of these are a lot of fun for the kids, and most are pretty healthy too. Do you have any other cold summer treat ideas?

When you work at home the hard part isn’t just finding the time to work. It’s figuring out what your priorities are at a given time. Figuring out what to do can be such a huge time waster.

I’ve gotten pretty good at managing my work time. I check my email once a day unless I have a specific reason to check it more often. That one drives family members nuts since they tend to email me later in the day than I’m paying any attention to my email. But if it’s all that important, they can always call me!

I have my stats addiction under pretty good control too. No more than once daily for traffic, once weekly for most sales stats unless I’m tracking something specific.

So with all the junk out of the way, it’s often still hard to figure out what my priority is. Blog posting? EBook writing? Finding new affiliate products to promote? Article writing? Website updates?

There’s always plenty to do!

I have a basic priority list combined with a schedule for the month. Blog posting is often, but not always a priority. There are certain days I focus on article writing. And times that I leave it up to whimsy. What’s working at home if you can’t relax and do a bit of what you want?

I’ve found that the more organized I keep these things, the better I do overall in terms of production. It’s so hard many days to find enough time to work on my business that I can’t afford to waste time on figuring out what I should be doing.

Goodness. I’d forgotten how miserable shopping for maternity clothes can be. Thank goodness I have a couple of skirts that will work well for me for a while yet! My jeans, on the other hand, are tight already.

Working at home means that I can just do the unbuttoned trick, or even unzipped if that’s what it takes for comfort. It’s a definite advantage since I really don’t want to spend a lot on maternity clothing. I’m quite determined that this will be the last baby.

I hit the mall this weekend, mostly because it felt nice to get out of the house alone for once. I’m sure many of you know what I mean. Sure, my husband and I got to take a trip last weekend without kids, and it was nice, but really hurried with all the househunting and quite draining.

I have to admit, the selection looks better now, but so many department stores don’t carry any maternity clothes in their stores, just online. Out of 4 department stores in the mall, only Penneys had any in stock. Add in the fact that most maternity clothes are insanely priced, and it’s no fun at all. The Penneys clearance would have been nice if I had liked any of it. Some of the tops were just $3.97!

The lack was funny in one store where I couldn’t find a store directory. I asked an employee, and he directed me to the Junior’s department. I mean, I’ve heard that teen pregnancy can be a problem, but really!

I tried the new Secret Fit Belly jeans over at Motherhood Maternity. These aren’t badly priced, but for me they just didn’t fit right at all. Not comfortable to sit in.

I’m currently figuring on checking out what’s what at the local thrift stores… assuming I can remember to get out when they will be open. They keep short hours around here.

Target also seems to have a decent selection, at least online. I figure I can go to the store and see what fits, then checkout the online selection which is generally much larger.

I have a nice little budget for this shopping, so all I have to do now is find the clothes I want!

In a lot of areas, museums offer one free admission day a month. This is a great opportunity to get to take the kids to some pretty interesting exhibits.

In my area, for example, there are a lot of museums in Balboa Park. They have Free Tuesdays, where each of the first four Tuesdays of the month different museums have a free admission day. Some are for county residents only, while others will let anyone in free.

You can still make donations to the museums if you like, of course.

One of the big things I’ve had to be careful about with our limited income right now is grocery shopping. It’s one of those expenses I have some control over.

Grocery stores can be tricky, though. They’re full of temptations for the hungry shopper.

1. Bakery and deli smells.

Stores in my area have the bakery and deli right up front. Not only are these foods really, really tempting, they smell delightful as they bake. And then there’s the announcement over the intercom when a fresh bake of bread is ready and you can smell the loaves… mmm!

2. Temptations abound throughout.

Especially if you bring your kids shopping. I try hard to not bring them. It makes shopping more pleasant and I don’t have to say no to the candy and other treats strategically placed throughout the store and at the cash registers.

These first two are, of course, why you should never shop hungry.

3. Sales that make only a minimal difference.

Some sale items really are great prices. Other times I catch stores offering just a couple cents off and calling it a sale price. If you keep track of the prices you pay, you know if a sale is something that means it’s time to stock up or if they’re just trying to get your attention.

4. Mixes that save little or no time.

Not every mix is worth buying. You can find all kinds of recipes online to make just about anything from scratch, and especially when it comes to things like cake and pancake mixes, the time difference isn’t much, but you’ll save a lot by doing it yourself. It’s rather more challenging, of course, but good results really stand out.

You can also read the ingredient lists on those premixed spice packages and come up with your own for a lot less. Some are amazingly simple. This also gives you more control over how much salt and sugar you have in your recipes.

5. Notice product placement.

The more expensive products are most often at eye level. Cheaper is generally up high or down low. There are some exceptions to this rule, but it’s pretty easy to check out the entire section rather than just one shelf if you’re serious about finding good deals.

6. Notice the price per unit.

This can be tricky, as some stores will use different units to describe the price for different sizes of the same product. However, sometimes you can see that the smaller item is offered at a lower price per unit than the larger one… especially if you have coupons! If you can’t approximate in your head, bring a calculator and know how to use it.

7. Know if “2-for”, “3-for” and such deals really require that you buy that quantity.

There’s a store in my area that loves to do “10 for $10″ sales. Fortunately, not only do they allow mix and match, they don’t really care how many items you buy. You get the $1 per unit price anyhow.

Not all stores run these sales that way, so keep any eye on how your store does it.