Earning by blogging?

I have recently run across so many blogs that seem entirely to focus on just building links and growing traffic lines inwards. And the content seems to be so thin that it hasn't bothered anybody's sense of imagination or creativeness.

Is the only idea behind such blogs to earn money by blogging? Will they get a lot of google adsense hits? Lots of traffic by just writing about something? Lots of money for minimal work? Is there a free lunch?

There are so many e-articles on the web that want the reader in the end to purchase an ebook or a downloadable document that reveals "The secret for making money by doing nothing - just update a page every now and then an you can go an a cruise to the Caribbean...". All of these ebooks sell for less than 10 dollars. And if there are enough of web users who want to pay that 10 dollars, that really is earning money for nothing.

But, have you ever read an article on a respectable magazine, such as the Newsweek or the Time magazine telling that somebody earned a huge fortune by doing nothing? I don't recall, either.

If you have means for this, please let me know. I really would like to earn money with less work :-) (I am one of those few...LOL).

Crocs for the winter

Last winter I wore the Crocs Mammoth which were pretty indispensable, just plain great in the wet Southern Finland winter (whoever thought we would have snow in Finland in the winter).

But this year Crocs have brought again new pairs to be worn for the fall and winter. My goodness, these are again almost really nice :-)
Crocs Nanook has a furry lining, it is a hairy ballerina... The black version of Nanook has a mink like lining and I bought a pair for a funeral. Actually, the brushed look of the outer part of the shoe quite disguises the fact that it is a pair rubber Crocs.


But this berry red pair of Crocs Nadia winterboots really gives me hope for a snowy winter even here in Southern Finland. I haven't made up my mind yet whether to get a pair in brown or black. I don't think I will go for a berry red pair of Crocs Nadia but this model really is nice if we get snow even for a day or two.

Crocs Ambler is probably really ment for men but my mother absolutely wanted a pair, in khaki. I guess this is a unisex Crocs model.

Spending my days spending

The humble idea of this blog was to tell about the nice things we've found and to spread a word, in a positive fashion. I just noticed that I keep thinking to myself about the things we buy and buy and buy.

We are a rather wealthy family, 3 kids, both of us are working, we have a house and two cars. Of course we spend money. Not lavishly but we spend, anyway.

I guess I am starting a monologue here about the things we buy or consider buying. Please commment! I am CERTAIN that we are not the only family who spend money and like spending it. However, we are not stupid. We are rather green, I'd say.

Our two youngest kids have used only reusable nappies, washable diapers or cloth nappies, whatever term you like to use. Our favourite has always been FuzziBunz.


Aren't they just gorgeous? I read an excellent text on reusable nappies here: http://www.lovelyadvice.com/nappies.html and it made pretty clear that it is nonsense if people say that it is time-consuming to wash diapers. We've washed a bin of dirty cloth diapers every other day and it is by no means a pile as the amount equals to three bath towels. They dry in a matter of hours and are ready to use again. And believe me, these reusable and washable diapers are far better looking than the disposable paper diapers.

We have also used a lot of organic cotton clothing, the whole family, actually. They tend to stay better looking for longer periods of time. Of course they are slightly more expensive than regular cotton but they are of better quality. Finding eCotton or organic cotton at reasonable prices is not so uncommon these days, either.

Sure, we love Crocs, too, but I'll get to that a bit later on :-)

Keeping feet warm

Ok, this product is not a real geek product, and I actually think that probably the products I will list will most likely not all be geek products, at all. This one is for pure comfort!

When I was a child, I used to get a pair of felt slippers for christmas. They kept piling up as I wasn't an eager user of them in the early years. My grandmother's relatives had a farm in Central Finland, they had sheep and apparently they sold the wool to this felt factory and got boots and slippers, or something. But that changed. I stopped getting the slippers for christmas and I started to use them. I had enought of slippers to last something like 10 years but now I had to start buying my own.

Felt slippers? What are they? They are slippers or boots made of 100% wool. They are so sympathetic! They keep my feet warm inside and the boots are absolutely the best shoes to wear in the snow! " Felt slippers and boots are made of 100% pure wool, which is the only suitable material for this kind of production. Production is based to the felting possibility of wool fibre.", says the text on the website of the Huopaliike Lahtinen, one of the few felting factories in Europe.

The factory shop of the Huopaliike Lahtinen, located in Jämsä, Central Finland, is absolutely in the middle of nowhere. Ok, that is relative. It is perhaps 10 kilometres from the main road, a nice setting of red country houses by a field. An angry dog barking in the yard makes you think that can this really be a shop where they actually welcome you. But it is. And the products are just lovely.





I got felt boots for my kids last winter and another pair of slippers for myself and my husband. When I was a kid all of the slippers and boots were just wool, nothing else but they've clearly made an "advanced enhanced" model as they now come with rubber soles, too. Great for taking the trip to the postbox or if you have slippery stairs. But I still prefer my original models, plain wool.

This lovely factory shop sells other things, too. I bought a pile of coasters which are made of felted wool cut into nice shapes: hearts, flowers, ginger breads... I put a pile of these onto the coffee table and regularly use one of them under my tea cup when watching TV in the winter. I also bought a bag of bits and pieces, felted wood for kids to be creative with. It cost next to nothing.

The felted boots and felted slippers that were really common when I was a kid have now become somewhat of a luxury item. Pretty retro, I think! (and it makes me feel so old...).

Where do the old vinyls go?

We have, my husband and I, a ton of old vinyl records, LP's. We are such people that we rarely throw things away. The records we have are just great! They represent everything that was good and bad with the 1980's and something strange also from the 1970's. You just cannot throw that kind of an amount of good memories..ehm... or just memories away.

And it would be a terrible expense to buy all those LPs in CD versions - most probably don't even exist in digital format. Or some, anyway.

But I saw a year ago or so this great innovation: USB Turntable that connects to my pc and converts my old vinyls into MP3's which I can then listen to on my iPod! Wonderful!

I haven't bought this one yet but I have done some initial research on the internet and I know that they actually are not that expensive, something like 150 euros.

Ha, I just notice that I have no intention of answering the question in the subject. I have absolutely no idea where the old vinyls actually go. Mine will stay on the shelf in our music room until they fall into pieces. Probably my grandchildren will have a funny time some day going through grandma's old things...

My goodness

I wouldn't like to describe myself as a person who only wants to wear or do trendy things. Actually, I prefer classic clothes that can be worn year in and year out and they always look good. Actually I kind of prefer luxury or designer items but only when they are really simple and classic. I'd hate to buy anything that wasn't good a year from now.

And when it comes to tech things, gadgets, I need to be the first. It a product has any kind of technology inside it, I am interested. No, I am not an engineer. NOPE. But I reeeeaaallly love tech things.

I will try to collect here things, phenomena, services and so on that **I** think are great! Maybe they are old news to you or you think that they are absolute crap but - to make myself clear - I think they are nice or funny or...quite necessary once I think of them really carefully.