My name is Marie Coltrain. I am a cosmetologist who decided to become an associate of Meltology because of its cutting edge technology.

This business allows me to sell spa treatment to clients that are not able to afford a visit to the salon. It also works great for use in spa party events.

Working this business has allowed me the opportunity to have a girls night out 2 or more time a week. The difference it has made in my life is that I have been able to afford a few extra pleasures I was not able to before.

In the future I would like to add highly motivative people to my team and hold weekly training meetings.

Clients can go to http://marie.meltology.com/ for more information or sign up to become an associate. They can also visit my website: www.Immanuelscb.com for other products and services I have to offer.

Subscribe here to be sure you don’t miss any of my updates at Hall of Fame Moms.  This feature is part of a summer series on Work-at-home or Self-employed Women. This series will hopefully help other women (whether they are stay at home moms or not) get some ideas about what kind of business opportunities are available to them.

*This is the 10th week out of 13 Saturdays. Thank you to my dear husband who helps me every week with this series.

The moon, the sun, and the earth…3 simple things we see everyday tell us a lot about God.

A picture in the heavens.

• The Moon… all banged up, craters and all…represents us, dead in our sins with no light of our own.

• The Sun… absolutely necessary for life to survive on our planet, gives us warmth and light… represents Jesus Christ, the ONLY begotten Son of God – the light of the world.

• The Earth  is the World. The World… represents the things of this life that pull us away from a relationship with God, such as…materialism, the pride of life, and lust of the flesh.

When Jesus was crucified, he was no longer on this planet to give his light.  But he told believers this…

Matthew 5:16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Ok, so the Sun goes down, and out comes the moon… or is it us.

We don’t shine on our own.  We reflect the light of Jesus for the world to see.  We are just a dead rock without Jesus, but we are very beautiful in God’s eyes.  But when you take a very close look at us, we can appear to be very ugly.  God says that all of our righteousness is like a filthy rag, which means on our best day, we fall short of God’s glory.  We live in a day where it seems like the world is sleeping when it comes to Christianity.  But we do know one thing, even when night is at its very darkest, the Sun will be appearing soon.

…”Surely I come quickly“...”Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” Revelation 22:20

Are you ready?

You’ll find the previous 9 posts in this series here. Would you like to get HallofFameMoms delivered by email or RSS? Subscribe here, its free.

Today I decided to prepare to do some shopping. Not a whole lot but some. I saw some of my favorite brands (Ronzoni Smart-taste pasta and Coffee-Mate creamer) were on sale at my local grocery store and I went online to see if I could find some coupons to save even more. And guess what? I did! I found several coupons to print out. I saved $4.50 just with those few coupons…partly because I shopped at Giant Eagle and they double my coupons up to .99cents (becomes $1.98).

You can find coupons online for more than just food though. I’ve saved lots! of money using coupons.

I was just introduced to a website new to me called Savings.com. They list coupon codes for a variety of brands and have added a “Get Advice” section where you can ask a question and get an answer from someone in the community.

One thing in particular that I appreciated about www.savings.com was the information and the ease of use.  I decided to play-around a bit and clicked on the “Stores” tab looked down the list of stores and picked the Wet Seal and clicked on it. I immediately was taken to the list of savings available for them. You can easily click on whats “popular” or the “free shipping” links and someone took the time to share a description about Wet Seal and what you could expect when you shop them via Savings.com. I also did some browsing and found an impressive offer from Reebok for 30% off  AND free shipping. I was tempted to buy some shoes

Personally, I use online coupons for food and occasionally for clothing or shoes.  Places I’ve shopped online would include Dell, The Children’s Place, Ebay, Amazon and Snapfish…just to name a few.

What about you? Do you take advantage of coupon savings available online?

I’ve never heard of this, maybe you haven’t either. Maybe thats because this isn’t availabe in the USA.  However, American families who travel in the following countries or stay there for any length of time may want to look into this.

If you are in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Channel Islands or the Isle of Man then you can buy this. Other versions are coming soon for France, Germany, Spain and other European countries.

Its a  product that promotes child internet safety by using a key-based system and 2 USB keys (one for the parent and one for the child). This is a unique product called CYBERminder and you can get age-appropriate protection keys for the following age groups: under 9 yrs of age, 9-12 yrs of age, and teenagers. This system promises that the child will only see what is appropriate for his/her age level. The parent’s get a Supervisor key which allows unrestricted internet use by the parent.

Their website says its easy…just plug in the key and the  internet security software is installed automatically. Then you plug in the chosen “protect” key for that child and they will only see their age appropriate internet sites. According to their website this system works with Windows XP,  2000, Vista and 7. I didn’t see MAC in the list. They do have a free CYBERminder toolbar you can download as well.

Sounds very simple to me. I suppose if my kids were older and had internet access when I couldn’t supervise them I might consider this type of system.  Of course, I’d have to be living  OR visiting in one of the above listed countries  as well. Right now internet security isn’t a problem for us because they are young and we can supervise them on the computer. No one has a computer in their room.

Is internet security an issue in your home? How do you protect your children – especially young teenagers  from accessing inappropriate material on the internet?  Do you think CYBERminder would be a good fit for your family? You can learn more about CYBERminder at their website SuperviseandProtect.com.

* I was asked to tell you about the CYBERminder security product for compensation,  but this review is my own.

I mentioned in a previous post {click here} that I’ve tried numerous things to earn money from home. Well, I want to share a little or a lot of what I’ve learned with each one of those things. This is my “work-at-home journey”   For some of my mom-friends who want to stay at home too I hope this series will help you find something you can do to help you reach your goal. Maybe it will just get you brainstorming your possibilities

Before the kids came…

I went from working as a Rental Control Coordinator for a national car rental company and an insurance claims company to staying home and selling Pampered Chef. I was preparing to earn money from home before I actually had children.  I got pregnant with my firstborn about 6 months after I started PC. I stopped selling PC maybe 3 mos. or so after getting pregnant. I was so SICK (nauseated). I remember trying to do a show with food and feeling so bad, it was like torture. Nothing like morning-sickness to ruin a job in the food industry

Then, because I have a Bachelor’s Degree I was able to do substitute teaching locally. This paid well-enough and kept me busy but towards the third trimester I had to stop because my blood pressure was going up and soon I had preeclampsia and eventually had to have Brendan about 6 wks early. But subbing can be a good “filler” when you’re in between jobs. I did it years prior when I was in that exact predicament before marriage.

If you have a four-year degree (even if its not in teaching) and you think you’d like to be a substitute teacher you should check with your local board of education and don’t forget about other school jurisdictions that are within a close driving distance for you.  I’ve worked for two different school districts and found the city district seemed to have more work and I think was always hiring subs.

{Side note: From my experience, and I subbed just about anything and everything between preschool and high school, special ed and arts-related- it seems that the lower elementary grades worked me harder, I actually had to teach *gasp! hehe. Middle school was possibly the worst for me when it came to dealing with the kids at that age…and high school might have been the easiest.- Just something to think about!}

So after having to quit the subbing, we moved onto more entrepreneurial types of things… I’ll begin to share in part two!

Subscribe here to get my posts in your email inbox or by RSS!

A really good camera can cost a lot of money. The best camera I ever owned was a gift in the mid 1980′s from my mom. It was a 35mm Minolta and I was proud to manually adjust the settings to “create” my photos so to speak.

That same beloved Minolta now sits in its bag along with its accessories untouched, because the digital age is here. My husband and I bought our first digital camera in 2004 just shortly before the birth of our firstborn. That is why we went digital. We needed a camera my husband could use without me having to set up. I continued to take pictures for a little while though…with my Minolta.

I recently was asked to share about LensTerminal.com, a place where you can RENT Canon and Nikon cameras and dSLR accessories. LensTerminal is in Long Island, NY but they will ship to all 50 states in the USA (no international shipping is available).

I browsed their site and found camera bodies, camera batteries, grips, chargers, tripods, monopods, gorillapods, memory cards, light meters, lenses, flashes and under water strobe lighting just to name a few things

Do you have a high tech camera? Would you consider lens rental? This could be the answer to a project you’re working on now. If you know you need special photo technology temporarily, why not rent?

*Compensated post- but review of their services and thoughts and suggestions are my own.