The New Homemaker Newsletter for July 20, 2007

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Dear Readers,

Here in Oregon summer has skidded to a stop! Not only has it been raining, but some animal (we think it was a raccoon) fell into the girls' pool and popped the support ring! We're pretty sure we can repair it, and it IS raining, but still. The girls have lived in that thing. Think happy thoughts for the patch kit.

Are you waiting for Harry Potter on Saturday? I am! I finally succumbed and pre-ordered from Amazon, so the book will be thumping onto my porch guaranteed on the release day.

As long as I was at Amazon, I took a step some of you have been pushing me towards for some time. I got a USB microphone that will plug directly into the computer. Yep, I'm gonna start podcasting (that's what I spent all those Blog Tour Amazon gift certificates on). I'll be doing some stuff with Ellen the Organizer very probably, and I'm hoping to record some classic (public domain) children's stories and discussing them with Josie. I think our first one will be "Five Little Peppers and How They Grew," which I loved as a little girl and I think no one reads now. If you have ideas or suggestions for either stories or podcast topics you'd like to hear, email me.

In this newsletter: All about social bookmarking, the 20% off everything coupon continues, and the regular roundup.

From the Hacker Housewife: Social Bookmarks

If you've spent any time at TNH lately, you may have noticed at the bottom of posts there's a line that says:

Bookmark/Search this post with:

...and then a bunch of weird links like delicious, stumble upon, sk*rt and digg.

What are these mysterious links? And why should you care?

Those links are to social bookmarking sites. Social bookmarking is a way to share your bookmarks with others. It also allows you to keep your bookmarks in a central location, accessible from any device with a web browser. You can keep your links private, share them with a network of friends, or share them with the world.

For example, I share my bookmarks with the world. You can see my latest links on delicious on the front page of TNH. I used to keep a weblinks module on TNH to do this, but it never worked right. It's so much easier to do it via delicious!

It's very, very easy to get lost at social bookmarking sites--lost in a good way. Stumble Upon, for instance, allows you to randomly "stumble upon" sites in a particular topic with a click. You can then give the site a thumbs up or thumbs down if you've put their toolbar on your browser. The female-focused sk*rt works like digg. But while digg is geared towards technology and guy stuff, sk*rt is geared toward women's issues. If you see a story you like on sk*rt's pages, you can vote for the story and move it up the rankings. The neatest thing about social bookmark sites is that you often see stories and pages you might never be aware of otherwise.

Now you can join the fun! If you join delicious (which is free) and tag things with "newhomemaker," your links will now show up on the home page and in the left hand sidebar!

And one other thing. If you bookmark TNH stories on del.icio.us (don't tag TNH stories "newhomemaker," please) and rate them up at places like stumble upon and sk*rt, it helps TNH. I appreciate it when you do that, so very much.

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This Week's Coupon: 20% off EVERYTHING IN THE STORE!

From now until the end of July, you can:

• Discover How to Use Your Crockpot to Make Tasty, Nutritious Meals While You Work, Play--Or Sleep!
• Help Your Child Cope with ADHD
• Learn How to Make Gift Baskets at Home
• Turn Your Craft into Cash
• Help Your Teenager Lose Weight

...and much, much more, for 20% off!

Use coupon code "julysale" to get 20% off all the great ebooks and software at the TNH Shop.

This coupon is good till 7/31/07.

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The Regular Roundup:

Latest Article

Beat Insomnia Now

leep can be an elusive thing. Experience a couple nights of tossing and turning in bed, and it's all too tempting to reach for a sleep aid. But before you do, consider that several recent studies conducted at major institutions all over the country show that, despite their ordinary nature, simple behavioral strategies--like going to bed at the same time every night and avoiding afternoon naps--really do work. What's more, over-the-counter sleep medications can leave you feeling sluggish the next day, and "there’s very little evidence that these sleep aids actually result in significant sleep," says Mark Mahowald, M.D., director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Minneapolis.

What about prescription sleep drugs? For acute, short-term insomnia--such as that brought on by a stressful event, like a death in the family--experts say these medications can help. "In fact, by treating acute short-term insomnia [with prescription sleep aids] when it first occurs, we can actually prevent the development of long-term insomnia," says Dr. Mahowald. But for the occasional sleepless night, consider the following 10 tips. You may find they help you get to sleep just as well as popping a pill!

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