If you’re deciding to have a stay-cation or even want to find some fun ideas to do during down time on your trip you might like the following:

• Canadian Living – Get Crafty: Five fast, fun (and affordable) March Break crafts
  • I really like educational so I was immediately drawn to and love the ideas under “Crafts and toys for kids: Free, fun and educational“
  • One of the things they mentioned and my kids like to do is make instruments out of anything they can find around the house. One time we performed “Iko-Iko” by Dixie Cups for a local talent show as a family using the kids sticks from their building blocks. It wasn’t perfect, but we all had fun, including the audience.
• Today’s Parent – Crafts & Fun: March Break Headquarters gives a variety of ideas (crafts, indoor/outdoor activities, sleepover survival guide, scavenger hunt, and MUCH more)
  • One of their ideas was Backyard Olympics which was similar to an activity our family came up with during the Olympic games. Our kids are young so we had fun each coming up with our own simple activities to compete in to see who got Gold, Silver, and Bronze for each activity. We competed in sit-ups, hopping, standing on one foot, walking on a balance beam (we had made a while ago from good left over wood from a sturdy shelf we were making), climb a rope … the ideas are endless and the best part is having the kids be creative to come up with the ideas themselves. This was a good way for the kids to understand a little more what the Olympics were. We all enjoyed a treat afterwards.
    
• Ehow.com provides MANY great ideas of projects/experiments that you can do yourself. We tried making Sugar Crystal Candy and are now waiting for the results. Our kids LOVE being little scientists and doing their own experiments.
• Another experiment we’ve started is something our daughter had done in her Kindergarten class and she was very excited to share with our family. We froze different colors of ice cubes (added food coloring to get different colors of water to freeze). We will put 2 different colored ice cubes in one glass of water to melt and see what new color develops. This is a fun activity, very inexpensive, not too time consuming and gives everyone something to look forward to. We froze a lot of each color to allow for more outcomes.
• One thing I want to try is Edible Play Dough. This will satisfy both of my kids desires to help with the cooking/baking and being creative. Plus it occupies their time with something new and imaginative. I think it would be fun and delicious for me too. Of course you have to make sure your children understand that this is special play dough and that you normally can’t eat play dough. Ehow.com looks like they have some good recipes. FamilyCorner.com has a list of 10 edible play dough recipes. I came across another recipe recently for a sugar cookie based edible play dough while looking for a dinner recipe (which got the idea in my head in the first place) and of course now I can’t remember where I saw it.
• I’ve also watched my sister do a fun activity with her kids, when they were small, with cornstarch and water which she called Oobleck. It’s really amazing to try! It’s a solid and a liquid at the same time. I saw my Nephew punch it and it was like hitting a wall. Then he let his hand rest on it and his hand sunk in like quick sand. It was really fun to watch and to play with. They even had a “food fight” with it, which can be a challenge to cleanup then.

Helping you cope with your/child’s energy level:

• Parents.com – 10 Ways to Get Instant Energy. One of thing you will likely face is just trying to keep up with the kids. One of the simplest ideas I saw to build our energy is to laugh which could be quite fun and imaginative to do with the kids. Take turns telling knock knock jokes or reading funny stories. I especially love to hear what jokes the little one’s come out with, which often make little to no sense, but it’s great to hear their imaginations going. This link provides a list of ideas that you can do with your kids to either participate in their activities or they can slow down a little and participate in your activity to give you a breather.
• ADDitudemag.com looks like a great magazine to help with challenges facing parents of children with ADD/learning disabilities. Here are 7 Quick Fixes for ADHD Meltdowns that could help you get past the meltdown and back to your March Break activity at hand (good for home/public meltdowns). I think these could help with any attitudes that children/we decide to have. I don’t have a child with a disability so I would love to hear how affective these “fixes” are.

These activities and helps are good for any day and don’t have to be limited to your Spring Break. I hope you have a fun filled and safe Spring Break that is also good to your budget!! Do you have any other favorite activities or helps for the March/Spring Break?

If you’ve ever wondered how CalendarBudget (or any high-quality web application) is developed, or how we add features to CalendarBudget, this blog post is for you!

CalendarBudget goes through extensive and exhaustive test cycles. Pictured here, our co-founder and quality control person (tester) Robin, is testing CalendarBudget. She uses 5 machines simultaneously which help cover testing on various browsers (IE6, 7, 8, Firefox 3.0, 3.5, 3.6, Safari 4 and Chrome). After I go through a development period, Robin’s exhaustive testing makes sure that CalendarBudget is of the highest quality. Often testing takes longer than the development of the feature — making sure it works everywhere, under many possible circumstances. I sit on the end at the empty chair and fix any problems that Robin finds, with the goal being to make CalendarBudget the highest quality, bullet-proof personal finance system available — and to find and fix any problems that would be a detriment to user-experience.

Still, occasionally, one of our users will find a problem we didn’t catch while testing. When this happens we get an email or forum post about the problem and try to make the fix as soon as possible.

Recently, I removed the 9-account limitation for Premium users, allowing any number of accounts. At the same time I upgraded the version of Dojo we use, which is the Javascript and UI widget library we use for our user interface. The test cycle for these features (currently in week 2 of testing) is the most thorough CalendarBudget has seen yet. These changes will be released to the server over the next few days once we’re sure that any problems are addressed. Many minor tweaks have been made to accommodate this upgrade, and many more small adjustments to the existing interface to improve user experience have been identified and will be updated and released incrementally over the coming weeks.

We continue through cycles like this constantly. As the product get more feature rich, testing takes even longer for each cycle. Unfortunately, since most of CalendarBudget is browser-based user experience on many different browsers, we cannot automate our testing — which makes for a long and exhausting testing cycle. When we are done however, we are confident that you, the user, are getting the best possible product — and that makes us excited about producing the best tool out there.

Once the test cycle is finished, and all the bugs are fixed, I push the updated code to the server (usually at about 3am when usage is low) and do some sanity testing to make sure nothing bad has happened during the update. Then I update the New Features Log and tweet about the change so you’ll be aware of the new features.

The next day, before starting on a new development cycle, I’ll be sure that I gather any new feature requests from the forum, emails or our own ideas and prioritize them (see our feature development list) and then start work from the next item in the list.

There you have it. I love developing this product. I love delivering a valuable service that helps and changes peoples lives for the better. Since we use CalendarBudget ourselves to manage our own finances, we are keenly aware of how the tool is used and often have great ideas of our own to improve things.

If you have ideas regarding how to improve CalendarBudget, additional features to add, or something you really wish CalendarBudget did, let us know on our forum. We’d love to hear from you and almost every request gets added to our development feature list.

This guest post is contributed by Raine Parker, who writes on the topics of online accounting degrees. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: raine.parker6@gmail.com.

Besides saving money, how can you build up enough assets and wealth to take care of yourself and family in the future? Researching different investment opportunities will help you organize your wealth-building plan so that you can get the most profit out of the money you spend now. Below are five key investments and tips that build wealth over the long-term.

• Home and property: For most Americans, buying a home is the most popular way to build wealth and create assets. Paying a mortgage isn’t like paying rent: you’re not just throwing money at the bank so that you have a roof over your head. When you shop around for a property that you plan to resell in a few years, you should look at qualities beyond the house itself: the location, neighborhood, resale prices of the homes on the same street, school district, and other factors that make the home attractive or unattractive. The more updates, maintenance, and renovations you make to the house will also add to your investment’s value.

• 401(k) (RRSP for Canadians): 401(k)s are designed for retirement, not for short-term saving or paying off debt. Ideally, you will always work for an employer who contributes to your 401(k), although the reality is that not all businesses offer these kinds of benefits. There are also ways to pad your 401(k) like depositing your year-end bonus into the account, and adding what you used to pay in social security taxes if you’ve passed the levy rate.

• Non-trendy investments: FORTUNE recommends sticking with non-trendy investments that have proven to be stable even in shaky economic times. Don’t jump on the stock market bandwagon just because a new company has buzz: do your research and invest in stocks that have a solid track record.

• Stocks: Another tip that FORTUNE suggests for building wealth is to “go heavy on stocks.” According to their proposed formula, you should subtract your age from 120 and put that percentage of your budgeted investments in stocks. The logic is that the younger you are and the more time you have to build wealth, the more likely you’re in the position to withstand risks. [Mutual funds, as opposed to individual stocks, are generally the way to go for the average investor]

• Your credit: While not everyone regards credit as something you actively pursue, it does play a role in your investments. Take care while using your credit cards and always make your monthly and, as much as possible, stay out of debt so that you can establish yourself as a responsible candidate for loans and investments.

I had an unexpected experience today.
I went shopping with my husband for a new watch for each of us or at least a new battery for his existing hanging watch which can be quite difficult to replace. We arrived at a well known department store, Walmart, when they were already open for about 2 hours, they were in the middle of their morning motivational meeting in the middle of the store. I feel that’s something that should happen behind closed doors and not in the customers faces. We felt very uncomfortable walking around, right beside them as they were chanting whatever motivational Yahoo! remarks they were saying. I have to admit, I tried hard to block it out.

We had to go ask for someone to help us, since the jewelry area had been abandoned for the meeting.
What I expected to find was some helpful clerks that could answer my questions. We asked about replacing the battery in my husbands watch. The clerk had an answer for us I wasn’t expecting. She couldn’t help us by replacing the battery for us because we could complain/sue that they broke our watch if something went wrong. She couldn’t let us use the machinery (which we’ve done in the past) to replace the battery ourselves and to replace the back of the watch tightly… again afraid we’ll hurt ourselves and complain/sue. They can sell us a watch replacement battery, but we can never get it into the watch — a policy which if every store adopted… would result in permanent dead-watch problem. She did say that Zellers (another local department store) does still make that machinery available for us to replace the battery ourselves, at which my husband suggested directly in front of her that we go there (which we did).

What has happened with the level of customer service? There are still some companies out there that go past what it is expected of them, but apparently they’re a dying breed.

In contrast about 2 years ago my husband purchased a domain name with GoDaddy.com. The next day he received a call from GoDaddy thanking him for his patronage and reviewed his package with him. They pointed out a couple of items he had included in the package that he didn’t need. They canceled those items and refunded the money. They have always been prompt in replying to any concerns we’ve ever had. That has been the best experience of customer service I’ve ever seen. He now refers all internet domain needs to GoDaddy.

Customer service, even if it ends up losing you a few dollars, STILL makes all the difference.

Have you had any really positive or negative customer service stories recently? How did that affect your ongoing relationship with that vendor?

We’ve created 2 new tutorial videos:

1. Budgeting With Categories
2. Reconciling Your Bank Account

I encourage you to take a look at them and see how you can make your budgeting experience more efficient.
To watch the videos, login to your account (or click on the demo account from the home page) and click on the toolbar Help -> Video Tutorials.

Feeling overworked? Thinking of getting a second job? Maybe you aren’t working hard enough. Have a look at what the hardest working family has to say about work.

Of course, we know its about working smarter, not harder. Comic relief is always fun. In fact, whenever someone around me shows the signs of laziness, I call them a “lazy coconut bloodclot”. Only my wife gets it – and I finally found this video to explain my weird saying.

Folks – I’ve partially updated CalendarBudget’s Feature development plan. You can see it here:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AoOIIEiYI6zsdFRuUmNkYUZMeUJveUJOY0xCYW4wN1E&hl=en

I still need to go through the forums to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I ran out of time today to do that, but this is the document/priority list I’m working from. This is a living document, so thing may be reordered, shifted/changed etc, but should give you an idea of what we’re thinking for upcoming future plans.

Its completely foreign to most companies to expose their plans in this way, but we continue to strive to have our development plans driven by your requests. If you have some ideas of thing you’d like to see added, please post in the forums, where we can have a conversation about your ideas, then they’ll be added to the development plan.

Wow, has it really been that long since my last blog post?

I’ve been learning a lot about how our brains work and how we can change our behaviors, even thought patterns through consistent effort and some specific techniques. Also, I’ve been busy writing an upcoming book on personal finance. Fun times.

Lot has been happening in the area of personal finance on the internet. There are a TON of really great PF blogs out there that I regularly read. Some of my favorites are:

http://fiscalgeek.com
http://lazymanandmoney.com
http://www.getrichslowly.org
http://iwillteachyoutoberich.com

Check them out – there are some really bright minds out there that share their experiences.

I am writing a down-to-earth book on Money Management with a friend who is a Certified Financial Planner. For part of the book, we are looking for compelling ideas, stories, etc that you would like to share with the world. To collect these ideas, I have created a survey (only 11 questions). All of your ideas that we end up using will be accredited to you in the book and to compensate you, we’ll give you a voucher to purchase the book at a significant discount.

I’d love to have your input. Click one of the links below to start the survey.

If you don’t have any children: http://calendarbudget.com/survey/index.php?sid=89316
If you have children: http://calendarbudget.com/survey/index.php?sid=66815

Consider this your good deed of the day. Sharing your ideas can help others around the world live better.

Feel free to share these survey links with friends and family. We’d like as many ideas as possible.

In a budgeting program like CalendarBudget, which tracks every transation, finding a particular one can appear to be daunting if you don’t remember when it occurred.

With CalendarBudget you can search for transactions by either the title of the entry (such as “Restaurant”) or by amount (such as “44.95″). Now maybe you don’t remember the full name of the cents part of the transaction. No problem, you can use the * symbol as a wildcard in the search term.

For example, if I had a transaction called “Dinner at restaurant” for $44.92, the following search terms will find that transaction (and possible others like it):

“44″
“44.9″
“4″
“4*.9″
“dinner”
“Dinner”
“restaurant”
“rest”
“dinner restaurant”

A lot of other combinations will find what you’re looking for, depending on what you remember. This will locate all transactions matching your search term, making finding that particular one you’re wondering about much easier and faster.

When you’ve found that elusive transaction, just click on it in the Search Results. You’ll be taken right to that month with the day bookmarked so its easy to find.

This search capability, introduced many months ago, has helped many users find the transactions they were looking for – quickly and easily. Originally the search only looked for transaction titles. When one of our users suggested we include transaction amounts in the search, we readily agreed, and thanks to that suggestion, we have a great method to locate any transaction you’ve entered into CalendarBudget.

Other suggestions are welcome in our forum.