Surveys and Mystery Shopping

I've talked about this with a few people recently and I realized that maybe some of you are interested. For the past few years I've been taken surveys online and doing some mystery shopping when I had the time. I've joined LOTS of groups but now participate in only a few as I've weeded out the best ones. I don't buy those claims about making thousands of dollars from home, but I earn enough for a gift certificate or two a year and about $100 in my free time...not to mention all the product tests I get!

So, if you're at all interested, here are my recommendations and advice.

1. Surveyspot

This site is the best for getting paid outright. You receive email invitations for surveys that tell you outright how long it's expected to take and how much you will earn for completing it (usually 3-5 bucks per survey). There are a few catches: not all surveys are paid, though you know that upfront. You usually have to complete a few for free before you get paid invites, but trust me, i really do get paid from this site. You have to qualify for a survey to complete the whole thing, so if they're doing a survey on smokers and you answer "no" to first question of "do you currently smoke?" than you won't qualify and you won't get paid. Also, it takes a few weeks for the survey to show up in your account, and another month before you receive your requested check. Not for people in need of fast cash! Still, I consistently receive 3-5 paid survey invitations a week.

2. Synovate (if you want to join this one, let me know and I'll email you an invitation)

This is the best for product tests. Surveys are not paid, but you earn points for completing them which can then be redeemed for cash. For me, the occasional checks are just a perk, I really belong to this for the products. In the past year I have received a TON to evaluate: toilet paper, Nyquil, shaving cream, shampoo, mouse, gel, toothpaste, fruit juice, skin care, face wash, soap, candy, deodorant....an added bonus: the companies that invest in product testing aren't the Kroger kind--this is nice Neutrogena and Pantene stuff!

3. Certified Marketing (mystery shopping)

I see ads all the time, but I know this one is legit. You have to actually fill out information and fax in paperwork, but it has some great opportunities if you have the time (I haven't since I had Scotty). Mostly what I did was mystery shops at stores like Abercrombie and Hollister because I can pass for a teenager, but the movie jobs are amazing! They pay you to record which previews were shown before a film or count patrons at a specific showtime. I got paid to spend a day watching The Nativity Story when it came out to count patrons, and I also got reimbursed for two adult tickets for each showtime so Eric and I had a date that actually PAID us :o)

4. MyPoints (only if you get bored at home or shop online a lot)

This one I don't really recommend unless you shop online a lot or have lots of time on your hands. You earn points for clicking on ads (I click through 20 ads about once a week) and eventually redeem those points for gift cards. I don't shop online often, so I never spend money through this but it does take time. I spend a few minutes a week doing this to earn probably two $25 cards to Chili's a year. If you work a regular job your time is probably better spent there, but if you're a stay at home mom with a few random minutes a week, this might be a good perk for you. Let me know if you want an invite to this one (you get points for referring people and accepting an invitation).

My words of advice
1. NEVER pay to sign up for any survey club, group, site or shopping. They'll pay you if they're worth anything!
2. Use e-mail filtering or a separate email account because all survey invites and shopping assignments are sent through email.
3. You probably have to do some surveys that don't pay in order to qualify for those that do. In the beginning, I did almost all surveys that were sent. Now, I simply delete the ones that don't include a dollar sign in the subject line.

Tagged...

Ok Sam, here we go: 5 things (sorry I never did the picture one--i don't have any pics on my computer from more than a year ago...)

5 Things I was doing 10 years ago: let's see, i was fourteen, and a freshman in high school?
1. competitive gymnastics! last i checked i could still do a backflip but it's been a few years...
2. october means the AZ state fair; my mom and I used to always bake and create things and enter them in the fair...$5 per blue ribbon adds up! (and my mom paid my entry fees so it easy money for me!)
3. orchestra. i begged my mom to buy my violin for years and then only played for four years--just ran out of time! sorry mom!
4. the school musical "Damn Yankees" where i played a host of random characters, including the world's smallest and least mannish looking baseball player you can imagine
5. hoping to be taller than 5' when i grew up! i didn't break that mark until sophomore year.

5 Things on my "To Do" list today:
1. get fingerprints for my AZ background check so I can complete my teacher certification process! (didn't happen, boo BYU!)
2. clean the house
3. take Scotty for a walk
4. make yummy/healthy dinner out of random food found in cupboards
5. go to the BYU women's soccer game with the fam

5 Snacks i love (i only get to pick five?!)
1. junior mints
2. peanut m&m's
3. ice cream, especially anything that has more than three words in the title and contains fudge and or marshmallows
4. grapes. (gotta have something healthy!)
5. chips and salsa, but i'm a weeny about hot and spicy, so i dip my chip in just a little bit for the flavor instead of scooping a bunch of salsa into my mouth

5 Things i would do if I were a millionaire
1. buy our little cottage, tear the thing down, and make it NICE!
2. pay for my school loans outright
3. take a year off to travel (and get Eric off the North American Continent!)
4. buy a beautiful grand piano and set up a recording studio in my house
5. have a house with doors and closets!

5 Places i've lived
1. the avenues in salt lake (as a baby!)
2. ohio
3. arizona
4. BYU dorms
5. our cozy cottage by the library

5 Jobs i've had
1. piano teacher (from 8th grade to senior year--anyone in Provo interested in lessons?)
2. movie theater usher/ticket taker. yeah. great perks though!
3. cold stone creamery--i also got to decorate ice cream cakes
4. chemistry instructor (yay!) and graduate student (...)
5. MOM! best mom ever!

I tag my mom (the other best mom ever ;o), Janae, Martha Harmon (thanks for finally updating your blog!), and my old roomie Liz. Have fun!

Halloween Antics

Ok, so it's not Halloween yet, but we had a group party tonight and the pictures are too funny not to share! The kids were so cute in their little costumes--I only wish I had gotten a picture of everyone...

This cuddly (but sad) lioness is our next door neighbor Callie. The pumpkin girls also live on the same block.

Instead of cute and cuddly, we opted for the shrunken skeleton. And yes, it glows in the dark! Rad, I know.

As for me...well, I took my parents up on their suggestion.

What do you think?

I tried to get Eric to dress as Obama but he didn't go for it. At least he was the donut eating race champion! No pictures of that hilarity and I had my hands in pumpkin guts at the time.

There were also some totally awesome pumpkins. This was my favorite, but I was also partial to Matt's temple pumpkin and I made the Cheshire Cat one....

Happy Halloween!

Happy Mole Day!

So the chemist in me comes out: it's mole day! A mole is essentially a really really big number, and a convenient way of counting atoms (which after all are really really small). Since a mole is 6.022 x 10^23, Mole Day starts at 6:02 am on October 23rd.


How big is a mole? I'm glad you asked!

• If there were a mole of rice grains, all the land area in the whole world would be covered with rice to a depth of about 75 meters.
• One mole of rice grains is more grains than all the grain that has been grown since the beginning of time.
• A mole of marshmallows would cover the United States to a depth of 600 miles
• A mole of hockey pucks would be equal to the mass of the Moon.

• Assuming that each human being has 60 trillion body cells (6.0 x 10¹³) and the Earth's population is 6 billion (6 x 10⁹), the total number of living human body cells on the Earth at the present time is 3.6 x 10²³or a little over half of a mole.
• If one mole of pennies were divided up among the Earth's population, each person would receive 1 x 10¹⁴ pennies. Personal spending at the rate of one million dollars a day would use up each persons wealth in about three thousand years. Life would not be comfortable because the surface of the Earth would be covered in copper coins to a depth of at least 400 meters.
• If you had a mole of pennies and wanted to buy kite string at the rate of a million dollars per inch, you would get your money's worth. After stretching your string around the Earth one million times, and to the Moon and back twenty-five times, you would have enough string left over to sell back at a dollar an inch (a decided loss) to gain enough money to buy every man, woman and child in the US a $50,000 automobile and enough gasoline to run it at 55 mph for a year. After those purchases, you would still have enough money left over to give every man, woman, and child in the whole world about $5000.

Basis for calculations:

Earth's circumference = 25,000 miles
Distance to moon = 240,000 miles
Cost of gasoline = $2.50 per gallon
Gasoline mileage = 20 miles per gallon
U.S. population = 220,000,000
World population = 6,000,000,000

Another chemistry funny:

My Hood-lums

I love these boys.

You are all amazing...

So I just had a thought reading through everyone's blogs--I have some amazing friends! I can't help but smile at pictures of your cute kids and glimpses of your "ordinary" lives...thanks for letting me share it all with you. Right now I have friends rock climbing in Thailand and serving in the Peace Corp in Bulgaria. Some friends are amazing photographers (ahem, Mel and Alisa, ahem) and gourmet chefs, AMAZING seamstresses (have you checked the Millar's blog recently? holy cow!) creative scrapbookers, graduate students of all types (woo, go Sarah!) and overall fantastic friends and mothers (all of you!). I am so excited for those of you who just had babies (Misty, April, Kayla, Ashley, Shay, Lachelle...) and those of you who are expecting (Sarah, Mimi, Cali, Mamie, Kamis, more I don't know about yet?) I miss the people who have moved on with their lives, finished school, who have real jobs and are buying houses (yay Liz!), and I am grateful for all of my mommy friends in Provo who let me stop by unannounced to visit. What a wonderful group of people you all are! Thanks for brightening my life :o)

As you can tell, I'm full of sunshine today. Interesting, because I left Eric behind in Provo (and forgot my cell phone charger so I'm incommunicado!) and Scotty woke me up at 5:30am, but it's wonderful to look back over the last year and see how much has changed. Scotty has gotten so big, I've learned a lot about being a mom, and best of all, I feel a million times better than I did this time last year. It seems like the pregnancy hormones have finally regulated (though still with a little help from medication) and it is wonderful to be my happy, optimistic and energetic self again!

P.S. Scotty snuck into nursery today and never looked back...they said he was great and I haven't had so much time to myself in years! Can hardly wait four more months till he is "legal."

A moment of silence...

This blog will now observe a moment of silence for the travesty that occurred Thursday night.









Tomorrow is another day, and BYU football lives on in our lives and hearts.

Marriage

Who would have guessed that "marriage" would be the big issue for our generation? So much antagonism about proposition 8 in California...people argue about equal rights, civil rights movements, and justice. I only argue for one thing: morality. I think we as a country have gotten so concerned about making people "equal" that we have forgotten about what is right.

Most of you reading this agree with me about the sanctity of preserving marriage between a man and woman. What most of you DON'T know, however, is how I came to feel that way. In high school, I had two best friends. One was (and is) a faithful Baptist girl who taught me a lot about tolerance and love for all people. We've had many great conversations about religion and life in general :o) For the most part, we agree on nearly everything, despite supposed differences in religion. My other best friend told me the week before I left for BYU my freshman year that he had a 38 year-old boyfriend the entire summer in Costa Rica. Part of me was surprised that he had decided he was bisexual--people had always wondered but he had always only been interested in girls. Still, when he decided otherwise, he was still my friend and I still wanted him to be happy. I still do. My initial reaction to "gay marriage" as a freshman in college was that if they wanted a committed relationship, who were the rest of us to stop them?

Over the next few years I realized several things:

One, my friend, who always wanted a steady relationship, seems to have little interest in that at the moment. Even when in a relationship he finds himself wandering, and in general he believes an "open relationship" works best for him. From personal experience, I don't think that would be very conducive to a happy marriage.

Two, I am married, and I value that relationship above anything else in the world. My marriage means something--it is committed, it is loving, it is eternal. When I said "yes" to Eric, I said "no" to everyone else, no matter the circumstances. I agreed to put him before myself and to love and support him in everything. I made my family the most important thing in my life and the focus of all my efforts. The idea of divorce, or prenuptial agreements, or cheating would never cross my mind--marriage is a sign of devotion without escape clauses. ,

Three, I value my rights as a parent to teach my children correct principles. Honesty, integrity, industry, compassion, and tolerance rank high on my list of family values. Yes, I want my children to recognize that while people may look or act differently, we are all children of the same God and of infinite worth to Him. I also want my children to recognize that there is a right and wrong in this world. God has given us commandments to protect us from harm, from guilt, from remorse, and from sin. Only by living as He asks can we truly be happy, no matter what others may say. Such laws are eternal--they were not instituted by government and they cannot be undone.

I have no qualms about same sex couples receiving equal rights as it pertains to tax breaks or legal issues. In my mind, legalizing and supporting marriage between same-sex couples does more than this, however; it implies God's acceptance. What most concerns me about this issue is the effect it will have on my children. If same-sex marriage is legalized, children will be taught in schools that having a mom and a dad is the same as having two moms, or two dads. While legally that may be the case, children are too young to understand the ethical and moral differences. In California, 18 children from a charter school opted to attend a school sanctioned field-trip to their teacher's lesbian wedding ceremony. The interim school director argued that because the union was legal, she had no qualms about supporting the outing, and was willing to put her job on the line for the issue. Six year-olds like their teacher, and want her to be happy, so they go to her wedding and see her looking beautiful and so happy--so it must be ok, right?

A family in Massachusetts explains what happened to their family after same-sex marriage was legalized in their state: their five year-old brought home a book about a child being raised by two dads. When they protested, the parents of the kindergartener were informed that because it was legal in the state of Massachusetts, the school could present any information without requiring parental notification. I'm not trying to be a fear-monger or anything like that, I simply want some reassurance that as a parent I will still have the right to teach my children MY values, and at a time when I see fit. Personally, I believe 5 and 6 year-olds do not need a lesson on homosexuality. Let's stick to tying their shoes and learning to read and write.

What many of you may also not know, is that in addition to proposition 8 in California, two other states have a constitutional amendment recognizing marriage only between a man and woman on the ballot: Florida and Arizona. Laws already exist in both states protecting marriage, but the recent court decision in California has led supporters to support a constitutional amendment. California voters passed a law with the same wording, but the law was overturned by a single vote majority in the courts as "unconstitutional." The same thing just happened in Connecticut a few days ago. Senators in California, Florida, and Arizona have worked hard to put this amendment on the ballot for the public vote, and without it, any laws are sure to be eventually struck down by the courts.


AZ Proposition 102: "Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state." As an Arizona resident, I voice my support for the protection of marriage for what it means to me and to my children. I hope you will take the time to consider all sides of the issue and make your own decision. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wrote this article, entitled "The Divine Institution of Marriage", that answered a lot of my questions. Yes, I may seem intolerant. I may seem uneducated. But in my mind, I can only do what I feel is right.

Creativity...

So, Pres. Uchtdorf a few weeks ago encouraged us to create something everyday. So far, I think the Larsen family is doing great today!

1. It's freezing cold in Provo. FREEZING. (and yes, we're going to the football game, but no, we're not taking Scotty). So Eric has created central heating in our cozy little cottage. We have our space heater on in scotty's room (where he is peacefully napping), and our heater on...and to spread the heat, we have candles. Lots and lots of candles. Actually, you'd be surprised how much just lighting a candle can help warm up a room! But yes, we are being careful because of the fire danger. There are currently two regular candles and 7 tea lights lit on our glass table....

our house also smells really nice :o)

2. Scotty and I took an adventure to the park on Wednesday to enjoy the wonderful weather. He made lots of friends, with both the other kids and their parents. Everytime I turned around someone different was holding him, or helping him up the slide, or throwing mulch around with him.... so I created this cute little photo collage:

Exciting Things!

My brother Andrew and his wife Misty had their baby, Max Zachariah Gould, on Monday, October 6, 2008, at 6:48 pm. Misty went all natural and apparently did FABULOUS and is feeling great already without pain killers! You're a stronger woman than i am, sis! ;o) Max gets the prize of biggest baby so far at 8 lb 2 oz.
Isn't he cute? And those CHEEKS! apparently, misty and adien also had them as newborns.
Can't wait to meet him next week when Scotty and I fly to phoenix for some family time and a little vacation.

My brother and his sons! I love you all!
Also, super-mom:

In other exciting but not quite as miraculous news, Scotty's pictures and online! I get a photo cd with all of the images, but here are just a few of the photographer's favorites.


(see http://lindsayjanebylindsay.blogspot.com/ and http://lindsayjanebymegan.blogspot.com/ for more cute Scotty shots!)

General Conference!

As most of you know, we are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka the Mormons) and this weekend was our general conference! Twice a year, members all over the world gather to hear messages of hope and inspiration from the leaders of the church. All in all, we hear 8 hours of sermons and hymns in a two-day period (10 hours for the guys!). I really appreciated the many mentions of finding peace and joy despite hard times or worries :o) I'll post my favorite quotes over the next few weeks.

The men of the church gather for a special session Saturday night, so we always have a girls night while the guys are otherwise occupied. This year, Eric's family drove out for the weekend and it was wonderful to see them! So sad it was only two days...Eric's mom Leanne is practically a saint, and she spent some quality time with Scotty so I could have a little break. You are wonderful, mom! Eric's sister Bekah and her best friend Andrea (who's practically part of the family) came over for some girl time. We watched episodes of the Office and gave each other pedicures. I also kicked some major bum playing Ticket to Ride.
Scotty didn't want to miss out either, though I refrained from painting his toenails because I was pretty sure Eric wouldn't be a fan. He actually climbed into the foot spa with Andrea all on his own. He even tried to take a bath or two...

The weather went from 80 and sunny to bitter cold rain this weekend, and it's been dripping non-stop since Friday night. Still, the drastic change from summer to winter makes for some great fall colors!
We took a drive up to Sundance to enjoy the view (yes, as in the "Sundance film festival"--the resort is like 20 minutes from our house just up Provo Canyon).Gorgeous, huh? This is probably the only thing I'll miss about Provo except for the people and the public library.

P.S. Baby Max--you can come out now! your room decorations are done!

BYU football....

notice the lack of exclamation points in this post. i won't even dignify this game with comment. (and group--thanks for the party--we just shouldn't have left after the third quarter because that's when it all went downhill!)

BYU 34 USU 14

Conference Weekand Updates!

I don't know about all of you, but I am excited for conference this weekend! I'm also a little hesitant about hours and hours of keeping Scotty entertained but quiet....sacrament meeting is hard enough! At least I'll have company :o)

Speaking of company, Eric's family is coming in town tomorrow! They haven't seen Scotty since the beginning of the summer so it'll be a blast for our little monkey to get some good grandma/grandpa time. If only they got to visit more often...*hint, hint*

In other random news, we got pictures taken of Scotty yesterday from these wonderful photographers...they should be up by next Wednesday so i'll let you know so those of you who think he's as cute as I do can admire :o) Also, for those of you looking for a fun blog update, I found this adorable websites that provides free templates:


Um, any other news? My parents picked up their puppy yesterday and she is adorable!They decided to name her Timbre (pronounced Tamber--really, she even looked it up in the dictionary!) Pictures and video are on her blog, Jeanni's Jingles, under my family link. Can't wait to meet her in a few weeks!

P.S. Scotty has learned how to blow kisses and now flirts even more with random strangers...hanging out at the duck pond today passing students were taking pictures of him on the cell phones ;o)