Extreme budgeting, Parenting Lessons, No More Junk-Mail, Super Mario City, more

3/23/09 - By Anna Fader

In the news today: how one woman is feeding her family of four on $800 a year, the accumulated knowledge of another woman's 18 years of parenting (apparently it fits on one page), how to reduce your junk-mail footprint (just do it), how to get off the phone faster, a free way to turn your kids art into frame-able nursery art, and how Super Mario is taking over the city, in real life. Check it out.

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JANE4girls is a woman who is blogging about how she gets by on a budget of $800 a year for food for her family of 4, including eating out using coupons and other thrifty tips. She includes her recipes and all the details of how she does it.

On the NY Times Motherlode blog her son turns 18 and she reflects on what she has learned over the last 18 years of parenting from the funny, but true, "You’d better have a Plan B when you Count To Three" to the too true, "That a teenager is like something out of a horror movie — their real self is somewhere within that new and scary shell, and the trick is to keep talking to the person you know is in there. They will hear you. It just might take a few years before they acknowledge that they’ve heard."

Also from the NY Times, learn how to reduce your Junk-Mail Footprint. Come on, you know you've meant to do it a million times, how about making this the time you do it.

speaking of junk-mail, how about that other nuisance the customer service phone tree. Whether your strategy is to try to work your way through the tree or just press zero until a person comes on the line a new website, fonolo,com, has mapped the phone trees of many major customer service call centers helping you avoid major frustration and wasted time.

Have you seen these tile Super Marios that someone is placing around water pipes turing NYC into one giant video game.

Your kids' art looks great on the fridge, but one artist has come up with a way to frame it in animal silhouettes that turns your child's creations into frame-worthy kids room art. Get the free templates via Ohdeedoh.