I work in a company of approximately 175 employees. I was recently invited to assist in hosting a party for the president of the company. She was getting married and also moving into a new home that her and her fiance just purchased together. She also has a two year old son from her previous marriage. This was going to be a combination of wedding shower and a house warming party. Everyone was so excited. There was one main problem for most of the people. Nobody knew many ideas for gifts to give them. I made the suggestion of many personalized gifts. I think they make wonderful gifts and there are so many different ones offered by many companies. They also make nice keepsakes. When a person receives a gift with there name, date or picture on them, they tend to keep them forever. They are very unique and different from any other. I had a blanket made with the baby son’s name on it. It was much nicer than just a plain blanket. I also shopped around with other businesses and companies and had a coffee cup made for the mom. I had it personalized with pictures of her and her son, a lot like a collage. It was very different and she loved it and will always keep that, along with the blanket. The groom was a little bit harder to buy for. I shopped everywhere I knew of that sold personalized gifts for him, too. I wanted him to have something from me that he would hopefully want to keep a long time, too. I bought him a clock for his office in his home with pictures of him, his girlfriend and her son added to it. It was pictures of outings they had been on together, and other fun times they all spent together. He loved it. Now, every time he gets busy working in his office, they can be with him, too. I truly believe personalized gifts are the best gifts to give and people always keep them for the memories they hold.

I have an elderly neighbor who used to always go to church every Sunday. She began having a lot of health problems. One of her problems was her loss of hearing. This broke her heart. She is now almost completely deaf. She has tried many hearing aids and other hearing tools, with no success in helping her to hear. When she would go to church, she could not hear other people talk, or the sermon being preached. Finally, a friend told her that they have closed captioning on her television. She now gets to listen to more than one sermon on Sundays due to watching the closed captioning she uses on her television, which makes her much happier.

I am an assistant in different horse and animal clubs. I am on the board of directors in one of them. So many people are not aware that their horses needed different vitamins, just like people. They sell different horse supplements that horses need to keep the vitamins in their bodies, as well as how some of the supplements actually help their hair shine, keep healthy hooves and more. If more people would research the nutrition horses need that they don’t always get out of their food and hay, they would have much healthier horses.

My daughter’s school held a fund raiser to raise money to purchase new band equipment. The function they held was a carnival. They set up numerous games to play, a cake walk, bake sale and sold popcorn, soft drinks and other food items. I was in charge of operating the popcorn machines. They weren’t the extremely large ones. They were commercial medium sized ones. It was unbelievable how easy and fast they worked. After the carnival was over, the cleanup was very easy, too. Since I had extra time, I helped others clean up their areas. The fund raiser ended up making twice as much as they needed, so more music was bought and the rest of the money was shared with other departments at our school.

My sister recently found out that she was pregnant. She is so excited. This is her and her husband’s first child. She was even excited to start wearing maternity clothes. Nobody could believe that she actually wanted to wear them. Of course, most of them had already had 2 or more children, so they were tired of them. She went shopping one day to buy her some new maternity clothes and ended up buying many more than she had originally planned. She loved them! They came in so many different styles and colors. She had never really paid attention to the many different stores there were either, that sold maternity clothes. Now all she is waiting on is a little time to gain weight so she can begin wearing them.

My Mother and Father had an anniversary coming soon. It was the big important 50th Anniversary. My brothers and sisters wanted to do something special for them, but we  really weren’t sure what to do, or what my parents would like. We tried to decide if we should give them a reception, gift or pay for them to go on a trip. We set up an appointment with a travel agent to discuss luxury vacations. We decided to pay for them to go on a tip to Hawaii, since they always talked about going there. They never were able to take any big trips, due to how expensive it was to raise 4 children. We also gave them a low budget, inexpensive reception before they left. We learned that giving someone a luxury vacation, or taking one yourself, can sometimes be a one in a lifetime experience and one you’ll never forget.

My girlfriend gave me a nice USB flash drive as an early easter present this year. She knows that I love little gadgets like this and I was pretty surprised that she actually picked out a nice 4gb one. I’ve already used it to transfer some of the files from my home computer onto my work computer and vice versa. I love this little thing.

A friend of mine recently gave me a huge amount of CAT6 cable that was left over on a job that his company did. His company does alot of networking jobs and they always endup just leaving lots of cable and other random supplies at the jobs that are left over. My friend usually tries to gather up all of the left over items that he can and he either sells them or gives them to me.

Last year a close friend of mine went through the daunting task of applying for a mortgage loan. He didn’t really have any idea what to expect when he started going through the loan process, but he sure found out quick that it wasn’t anything to be taken lightly or without complete knowledge of all of the terms and conditions involved in the loan. He was trying to get the mortgage loan against his house so that he could start a small business. He asked me for my help at first, but I know absolutely nothing when it comes to loans or mortgages or much other credit and financial processes. He ended up getting the loan but I still don’t think he completely understands all of the terms associated with it. I asked him a few questions that he couldnt really give me the answers to. I really hope that he made the right choice and didn’t just jump into it after listening to the guy that he was talking to who works at the bank. I’m sure the guy would be willing to tell him whatever he wanted to hear to get him to sign the papers. I wish him luck, though. He deserves to succeed with his new business.

A while back I was going through some of the papers that I had stashed away in one of my filing cabinets and I came across the papers for my car insurance policy. I forgot how bad the terms and everything were on my car insurance. I’ve had the same car insurance for the past 9 years and I’ve paid the exact same ammount the entire time. It really seems like they should be giving me some sort of significant discount by now. I’m paying about three hundred bucks every 6 months just for liability. I don’t know anyone under the age of about 17 paying that much for liability car insurance. For that price I should be getting full coverage with a very low to moderate deductible. I haven’t had a whole heck of a lot of experience with car insurance, but I know all of our friends have cheap car insurance with the same kind of coverage that I’ve got. I’m going to give them a call tomorrow to see what’s going on. I’m going to switch insurance companies for sure if they cant offer me any kind of better terms for my car insurance. This is pretty ridiculous. I’m glad I came across the papers.