I'm a Flickr fan in terms of where I post my online photos for friends and family but I started out at Shutterfly years ago.

I have to give Shutterfly credit for their new feature products especially their collage photos. They have collage backdrops all set up for you just to pop in your photos and have a great finished product. Think of all those times you paid for overpriced sports team photo packages. Now just take a photo of your kid and the team, upload them to Shutterfly and put them in the design you pick. You can do them up to poster size!

The one up top is the first one I did a few weeks ago. Hayley's swimming had an amazing season so we decided to go bigger with a 16 x 20 backdrop and then added in photos of her, the team and special moments. It took me 10 minutes and was $20, shipping included. It looks amazing and other team parents who see it keep asking how to do it for their child.

Another cool find, check out shabbyprincess.typepad.com for their monthly free background for your computer. You download the zip file, open in your graphics editor, add in your photos and voila, you have an amazing background.

Welcome! The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,583 groups with 5,698,000 members across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them's good people). Membership is free.

We always find ourselves drowning in junk at our house. Kids accumulate toys, clothes and other stuff at an astounding rate. Even when I get super motivated to de-clutter, sadly I'm often tossing out stuff that isn't completely broken or unusable. I just want it gone and my house clean!

I'm trying something different this round of cleaning - freecycle. Before I toss the items, I'm just tossing them in a box or bag and making a post on my local freecycle list about them. Since you aren't selling them, you don't need to do all the things to make the item look better online. Just post a few lines about the item, condition and where you are. If someone drops you an email saying they want it, you just set up a time or place to get it. I'm not fond of people in my house that I don't know so we just leave stuff on our porch.

So far we've given away Hayley's old duck bathroom items, some old games of hers, an old rug and tomorrow our sectional from the living room. Some of these things we were going to pay to have someone haul away! We saved money and gave someone else something with some use left plus we are keeping things out of landfills. Everyone wins!

While most of what I'm doing is moving junk from our house, I've posted my first note today about something Hayley asked for to play with - some bongos. Who knows if she'll really ever use them but I'm fine with getting her them if I'm getting it for free.

Of course, charity and goodwill are great options as well but freecycle gives you another option for used things, one with some reciprocal benefits!

My daughter got 10 of 20 words right on her last spelling test. Of course, that's also 10 of 20 words wrong. Either way we had to do something to help her absorb the words quicker. The regular methods just don't work for her in the time frame of getting the words on Monday and passing a test on them Friday.

All kids learn differently so I'm shaking things up. My newest idea is we are writing a song for each week to help her absorb them in a different way as well as pick up the word as a vocabulary word, which the school seems to stress far less (don't let me get started on that!

This week is homophones:

S O L E is the bottom of my foot
S O U L is my eternal soul

P A W S is what my puppies have
P A U S E is what the DVR can do for me

S E N T is what I did with the mail
S C E N T is smelly to me
C E N T is one simple penny

B E A R lives out in the woods
B A R E means naked I will be!

C H O R D is musical to me
C O R D plugs into my TV

S E R I A L means part of a series
C E R E A L for breakfast it will be

D Y E D is what we did to our shirts
D I E D means you have bit the dirt

R E I G N is how long the King rules
R A I N gets me soaking wet

M I S T feels great on a hot day
M I S S E D means you didn't hit the ball

We've switched to a different soccer team this year. When we signed up, it did say that they get a white jersey this year but no ball like they did when she was little and playing in this league. Fine, I didn't think anything of it and we certainly have about five balls here.

It turns out that the kids who played last year got red jerseys though, meaning they have white and red jerseys. The first three games of this season guess what color our kids wear - RED. How can you assign children to wear a jersey you didn't give them? How can you justify it by saying they were given last year when we weren't in this league last year.

When she was younger, they got the white or red jersey but also the other color in a t-shirt. You only got the new items if you were new to the team, that's logical and it wouldn't be cost effective to issue real jersey stuff each season. But you do have to give child the items you expect them to wear in a game to represent your team. And then I realized they didn't give her shorts either - which they all got last year.

Are you telling me it is really fair to make my child wear just a red shirt we find lying around? She won't match her teammates and we don't even have red shirts (our favorite collegiate team has a rival that wears red, so we have almost no red in this house). These kids moved up an age level and moved from 6v6 to 8v8 - there are new kids on every team in the league!

I emailed the league and their entire response was that we could come to their offices - about 20 minutes away - and BUY a red jersey for $18. WHAT? I've asked a friend with a bigger growing daughter to see if she has an old red jersey we can borrow.

At this point, there is a decent chance on Saturday that most of my daughter's teammates will be all dressed to match in their red jersey and league shorts but a few of the kids will look like random semi-matching stragglers in red tshirts and plain black shorts.

JCPenney's Pepper Pink Twin Quilt

I just got my daughter new quilts for her bunkbeds as a surprise. I was looking at the girl ones and I realized she's not a young girl anymore. The girlie stuff was cute but seemed like it didn't have enough flair for her.

She's a tweener now so I went up to the teen section - AHHHH, that's so scary!!! I found something I loved that still had pink in it and definitely had a younger look but has some funky style. But it has black in it, which she's going to love but reminds me she is getting older. So I sucked it up and bought her two of them for the bunk beds, the pillow shams and those neckrolls with the black fringe. I hope she likes them!

And for my husband who reads this - they were on sale and I had a 20% overall coupon!

This school year is my son's last year in preschool. I am hoping he can be accepted to first grade next school year. Though I am nervous that he doesn't take reading very seriously. He can write but reading aloud what he wrote, he doesn't do too much.

There are times I even doubt if he knows really what he is writing. Or maybe he is one of those kids who gets more confident in writing stuff than verbally speak out loud.

Homeworks are another thing. I think it is best to be able to stick to a schedule. Like homework should be done before dinner. Then later he can watch a bit of cartoons on tv. Not later than 9 pm is my ideal bed time on school nights.

Still, I feel am not doing enough supervision. Well I am really trying my best to put more attention to the study habits, and establishing a routine. These days there are just too much distraction - tv is number one think.

We'll see. Hopefully, he can get the hang of it this early. But sometimes it isn't easy falling into a strict study hours at home.

This is one of those stories that will tug at your heartstrings. It is a great reminder that there are wonderful people out there trying to do amazing things for children who have already been through too much.

Read A Family Again, if Only for a Week, a story about a camp that brings together siblings separated by foster, adoption or home placements.