Froodee

Living. Blogging.

How To Save Money When Grocery Shopping

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Shopping for groceries is one of the things my family looks forward to every weekend. We usually go grocery shopping at one of those really big supermarkets that have everything from sugar to televisions to sofa sets.

Aside from being able to go out for a change, the kids get to experience firsthand how it feels to manage a household. Sure, they’re just pre-school aged. But grown-up things like grocery shopping can fascinate them. Besides, they enjoy looking at the produce, especially the seafoods section (the squid, fishies and shrimp) and the fruits section.

Grocery shopping is also one of those times when your ability to budget is tested. You can come up with a list and yet go overboard with your budget because of impulse buying, or buying stuff you don’t really need.

Lifespy has these tips on how to save on grocery bills.

  • Shop alone (without kids).
  • Shop when full.
  • Familiarize yourself with your grocery store’s layout (expensive items are found eye-level).
  • Do not let those big-size packages fool you.
  • Stay away from the prepared food section.
  • Try out those store brands and generic products.
  • Buy meat in bulk and freeze. Be sure to separate them in individual portions first.
  • Learn to prepare food from scratch.

Being stingy can sometimes take out the enjoyment in shopping. But if you’re out to save money, then it’s good to keep these tips in mind.

Working from Home: Your Home Office Setup

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If you’re like me, you would be quite averse to the usual corporate setup. I used to work the corporate grind, getting up early in the morning to drive or take a cab, bus or train to the office miles away, work for eight or more hours, and then go home at night feeling tired and weary.

Work is great and the people are okay, too, except for my disdain with office politics. But it’s the travel time that usually leaves me exhausted each day. Imaging wasting your time in hours of travel just to get from point A to point B, and back to point A again. Sure, traveling could be fun. But if it’s an everyday adventure in traffic, fighting for space on the subway or the parking lot, it’s not as exciting and leisurely anymore.

So I decided to quit and start working from home full-time. I started out as a freelance blogger, and then moved on to full-time network blogging. I now help manage Splashpress Media, the company that owns Froodee. All this I do from home, or anywhere with a decent Internet connection.

Running a telecommute setup or a home office can be as simple or it can be as complicated as you want it to be. For starters, you would need a decent broadband connection and a computer, and you’re good to go. I started out with a very slow pre-owned laptop that I used to use at work. Thankfully it had WiFi, so I set-up our home DSL connection with a wireless router so I can work from anywhere.

I then bought a brand new PC laptop, and then a used Mac PowerBook. Having separate machines help me work on more things at a time.

But then I didn’t have a dedicated spot at home to work in, so I usually just used the dining table as my desk, clearing up the space when we needed to eat already.

Thankfully, a few months after I started working from home, my wife and I decided to move to a bigger place. So I was able to have an entire room as my home office. I didn’t have a dedicated desk yet, but I was able to convert our old dining table (a small-sized one) for the meantime.

Then I built up on my home office assets one by one. I bought a desk, then an armchair (that swivels and reclines!), then I replaced my big old Powerbook with an ultraportable (for when I need to work out of home).

My latest additions are a pre-owned Mac Mini and a large widescreen LCD, which now serves as my main work machine.

The Samsung SyncMaster 940BW

Working from home can be fun. But because you don’t get to enjoy office-bought equipment, supplies and services, you would have to shell out for these on your own. As for me, I can proudly say that since I started to run my office on my own, I’ve tripled and even quadrupled my income from the corporate world. So even if I had to shell out for my own expenses, I still net more (and still own the stuff).

Next: Pros and cons of running a home office, and Telecommuting in a wireless world.

Emma Watson / Hermione Granger: Role Models for the Youth

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There’s too much news recently about several female celebrities who have gone over the edge, such as Paris Hilton (who has reportedly done a copmlete 180-degree turn from living wild), Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan–all of whom we’ve been featuring here on Froodee, and who probably deserve their own main categories in the sidebar!

Here’s a breath of fresh air from yet another celebrity that the youth today are looking up to. Emma Watson played Hermione Granger in the five Harry Potter films so far, and is slated to reprise her role in the two remaining film installments. From a People article, she says there are too many stupid girls in the media!

“There are too many stupid girls in the media,” Watson, 17, tells Parade magazine in this weekend’s issue. “Hermione’s not scared to be clever. I think sometimes really smart girls dumb themselves down a bit, and that’s bad.”

Likening certain aspects of her personality to Hermione’s, Watson says, “I’m a bit of a feminist. I’m very competitive and challenging.”

Maybe she was referring to the three celebs cited above.

Seriously, though, I think the stupidity–using Ms. Watson’s own words–of celebrities has been sensationalized by the media who, in my opinion, have too much coverage of such “news.” Controversy leads to hits and pageviews, after all. And that leads to advertising revenue.

But I think media also has the responsibility to cast light on the more positive aspects of celebrity. There are a handful of celebrities out there that exude a respectable, mature and responsible persona, whom the rest of us–especially kids and the youth–can look up to as role models.

As for the Harry Potter books and films, I haven’t been much of a fan (not as much as I was a fan of Tolkien’s books and Peter Jackson’s Lord films), but I find myself lately being interested, because July is HP month after all: the fifth film and the last book are set to be released later this month, and are eagerly being anticipated around the world. Of course, I’m intrigued with how it will end.

Jamie Lee Curtis on Parental Guidance

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We’ve had fairly adequate coverage of the recent Paris Hilton goes to jail saga. The skinny: Paris Hilton violates probation, is sent to jail, is let out under house arrest instead, and is ordered back to jail. I know it’s only a 45-day sentence (commutable to 23, with good behavior), but prison/jail changes a man, they say. Or in this case, perhaps, a woman.

Frankly, jail is one place I wouldn’t want my children to get into, ever. When Paris Hilton was ordered back into jail, though, she pleaded with her mother to help her. And surely, her mum and dad felt bad about her having to endure this. But come to think of it, Ms. Hilton is being jailed so she can face the consequences of her actions. In short, she is responsible for her current predicament. And guess what, her parents are–to some extent–also responsible.

This is what Jamie Lee Curtis says, in a recent commentary on the Huffington Post.

What we need to do is look long and hard at our part in all this. Where did our children get the message that the rules don’t apply to them? And where did we, the Mothers, get the message that if we abdicate our responsibilities as Mothers, the Universe will do our job for us? And it does, but without any of the love and tenderness and compassion that we could have given, along with the lessons.

Ms. Curtis says our children have turned omnipotent, “running amok or sitting amok as they watch TV and play electronic games and shop on eBay.” It’s an epidemic, she says. The basic message: parents may not be doing enough to educate children and teach them right from wrong.

This is especially worse, when three of the more popular young celebrities today–Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, and Paris Hilton–whom the youth might tend to idolize, are turning into miscreants.

Now it’s just the cold hard facts of a jail cell or the emptiness of a rehab room.

Being a parent myself–to significantly younger kids–I’m hoping that through the years I do a good job at building up their character to be mature, responsible individuals who do know right from wrong. It’s a changing world we’re living in, and unfortunately, our kids are increasingly being exposed to media–including celebrities and known personalities–in a moral decline.

Maybe we can change this by focusing on how to make new media more morals-friendly.

Thoughts on Community Blogging

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Blogging has been defined many times, many ways. It’s mostly about personal publishing, and most would agree. A person starts a blog, and he or she writes about his/her interests, daily musings, and would usually link to interesting things elsewhere. Some would move on to write about more non-personal items, treating their blogs like magazine or newspaper columns of some sort. Some even move on to blogging for income. I should know, I blog for a living, myself.

But in most of these cases, blogging is done as a one-man (or one-woman) thing. When the SplashPress team conceptualized Froodee, our first thought was to bring blogging to a higher level. Sure, team blogs are also quite abundant, and I’ve been part of team blogs since I started problogging (there’s the Blog Herald, for instance, but I also started out with other team blogs like Pinoy.tech.blog, Forever Geek, and Blogging Pro. But here on Froodee, we prefer to call ourselves a community blog.

We are a community of like-minded people with different interests. Froodee is not a niche blog, as you may have noticed. Our topics are varied–these include entertainment, business, family life, science, healtyh, leisure, and even science. Each one of the contributors has his or her own interests and passions, and we give them the opportunity to share their thoughts on these. We are like-minded in that we love writing about our passions, and sharing our thoughts with the rest of the world through blogs.

And then of course, a community will not be complete without the participation of you, our dear readers. So please feel free to leave a comment and be part of the discussion. You’re always welcome to share your thoughts. Hey, soon enough we’ll be welcoming guest bloggers, too.

Froodee has been online for just a couple of weeks now, and we can expect a formal launch/announcement soon!