Good Reading Around the Web

photo across the Ottawa River from my recent trip

Here are the carnivals in which I participated this week -

My Summer of Cancer appears in the 161st Carnival of Healing at Interesting Observations. Shamelle Perera , guest posting at Life Optimizer, wrote a good article about the 7 Winning Character Traits That Create a Lifetime of Success. Finding your passion is one of the keys to Why Some People Are More Successful Than You, posted at The Health Blog. I especially enjoyed an article by Prana Flow NZ On the Power of Paying Attention to your Words. This was a different carnival for me and a good source of interesting reading.

Talking to Your Kids About Money appears in the 177th Carnival of Personal Finance at The Sun’s Financial Diary. This week’s listings are interspersed with beautiful photographs from his recent trip to China.

On the Road to Financial Contentment appears in the 164th Carnival of Debt Reduction at The Financial Wellness Project. FWP’s section on debt reduction advice has four articles with some good debt reduction strategies. Several of the carnivals were pretty short this week, no doubt due to the trouble at the carnival blog website. Certainly made it easier to pay attention to the articles which did make it through!

Food Gifts appears in the Make it From Scratch Carnival at A Bit of Flour. There are some great recipe and craft ideas posted at this carnival. If you are looking for ideas for homemade Christmas gifts, look no further. I love this carnival!

Frugality, for me it’s still a choice, appears in the 150th Festival of Frugality at Bargain Briana. There are a lot of good articles in that carnival. A few that caught my eye are: HarvestingDollars’ article about preparing to become a one-income family. Planning is certainly the key. I was attracted to Cheap Healthy Good’s article on foods to eat when you are sick but, once I got there, I gravitated to her recipe for a winter squash lasagna. I’m going to have to give that one a try! I’ve been making my own dog food lately and Funny About Money’s post on homemade dog treats may send me in that direction as well.

Finally, don’t miss this week’s 83rd Carnival of Money Stories, which was hosted by yours truly. There were lots of good submissions to this carnival. Two that really struck me were The Digerati Life's post on “Foreclosure Alley’s Personal Stories of Financial Loss: The Aftermath of Foreclosure” and Credit Withdrawal's story on “Hiding Bills and Other Stupid Considerate Things To Do”. It 's easy to say "they were stupid, let them sink" but these personal looks into stories of well meaning but ill-conceived financial planning really tugged at my heartstrings.


Ottawa street scene

Other articles I really enjoyed around the web this week –

Sunnybrook Farm Designs posts about making shopping bags out of old t-shirts. This is such a simple idea and so great! The one problem with those reusable shopping bags is that many of them are fairly pricey. The bag shown on this site has the t-shirt design showing. If you wanted to use your kid’s t-shirts but didn’t want to make a statement about heavy metal bands, you could always make them with the design on the inside. A bunch of these would make a good gift too!

Simple Mom posted about a lovely tradition with which I was unfamiliar called The Jesse Tree. My kid is grown and gone so I’ll have to save this one for grandchildren. I did pass it along to my younger sister who has two small children at home.

I loved this post on “How Honest Communication Can Save Your Marriage”, over at Zenhabits. It was a guest post by Corey at The Simple Marriage Project. Corey reminds us that talking or not talking, we are still communicating. Corey believes that we are not talking because we don’t want to hear what our partner has to say. It’s a very thought provoking read.

Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity had a post about saving money on shipping. It’s really about getting yourself organized at the post office. A good reminder with the gift shipping season hard upon us!