Should You Start An Online Home Business?

The thought of working at home can be filled with both excitement and anxiety. While it may be exhilarating to think that you can say "goodbye" to your boss, the day-to-day expenses such as petrol and school fees can be scary to think about giving up a steady paycheck.

In the past, women did not have many options when it came to starting their own business. The most popular choices were direct sales, home daycare, and so forth. If a woman took specialised classes, she would be able to do medical transcription from home, but the training did take time and money to complete. If a woman wanted to earn money fast, she was out of luck on that choice.

Thankfully, times have changed. New advances in technology have enabled people to quickly and easily start businesses from home. By using the internet to receive and turn in work, find clients and advertise their services, women can truly work from the comfort of their own homes.

Click here to find out how my friend, a work at home mom earns SGD3,000 during her confinement:

In today's world, women have many, many choices available to them when it comes to choosing a home business. The following guide will go over several of the most popular.

In the past, women only dreamed of finding ways to start their own home based business. Thanks to the internet, women really can accomplish this dream.

Starting a home based business not only brings in extra money, it can help you feel good about yourself, as well as set a positive example for your children.

They will see you as a successful "mini mogul", even if your income is a far cry from Bill Gates' or Donald Trump's.

A home based business can also help alleviate the boredom and depression that being cooped up inside the house brings on.

There are so many benefits to starting a home based business, the question isn't "should you start one"? it's "which one should you start"?

It will take some hard work and determination, but if you set your mind to it, you will be able to reach your goals.

Start your own Online Business today.

Homemade gingerbread man cookies recipe

As promised, please find the recipe below. Got the recipe from internet but I have modified it slightly and personally tested it!

Ingredients

125g unsalted butter (slightly thawed at room temperature)
60g brown sugar
90 g unsulfured mollasses or golden syrup (can get from certain supermarket or baking shop)
1 egg
300 g all purpose flour + 2 tbsp ground ginger powder + 1 tbsp ground cinnamon powder + 1 tsp soda bicarbonate (mix together & sifted) (A)

1. Preheat oven at 180 degree celsius
2. Beat butter, sugar and syrup till light and creamy
3. Add egg
4. Add (A) into the butter mixture and knead 2 minutes
5. Take out and shape into a flat dough
6. Cling wrap the dough / put the dough in a zipper bag and refrigerate for 1 hour/overnight
7. Take out and put dough in between 2 pieces of greaseproof paper and roll into desired thickness
8. Cut into gingerbread man shape and transfer onto baking tray
   
9. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until slightly brown

Icing

1 big egg (white only)
280g icing sugar (sifted)
Assorted food colouring

1. Beat egg white with a fork until foamy
2. Add icing sugar in gradually
3. Beat till icing stand in soft peaks
4. Divide into bowls and mix with food colouring
5. Pipe using disposable paper piping bags or made the piping bag from greaseproof paper

The above recipe made about 24 cookies (depending on cookies cutter size). Mine is about 8cm.

Happy baking!

Gingerbread man cookies

Christmas is approaching soon and we "experiment" baking our first batch our gingerbread man cookies last weekend.

Both girls had a ball of time playing with the flour and dough and messing up my whole kitchen. Time to make the dough was 30 minutes (excluding the baking time & time to decorate the cookies) and I took one hour to clean up both girls and the kitchen!!! Flour were stuck to their hair, face and hand and everywhere too! Eeew.....

Anyway, we had a great time and the cookies turned out to be quite nice and yummy! Love it. Will share the recipe in another post.

Both girls playing with the flour and dough

Star shape cookies cutter from Ikea

Anney holding the mini rolling pin

Werney "massaging" the dough

Before baking the cookies

Decorated the cookies with icing, jelly bean and smarties

Werney's heart shape cookie for mommy

Another batch of cookies

Colourful rice on gingerbread man

Hand-in-hand gingerbread man

Flower cookies made by Werney

We also packed the cookies into individual plastic bag and tied with ribbon. Look nice right?

Gave the first batch of our cookies to my family members and in-laws too!

Werney's 5th Birthday Party

We celebrated Werney's 5th Birthday at McDonalds @ Bandar Utama Drive Thru' early this month. It was a belated birthday party due to Werney and Anney's hospitalisation in mid-October 2009. The doctor has advised that both need to stay away from crowd for at least 10 days post-hospitalisation to avoid a recurrence or transmitting the virus to others.

Well, I was too busy (or maybe to lazy?) to plan any party and took the easy way out of calling McDonalds. McDonalds BU has a dedicated personnel in charge of planning and organising birthday party for kids. It fact, it was quite interesting as the theme is Arty & Crafty Birthday Party. I ordered the Happy Meals for the kids and the McValue Meal for adults. We have about 30 adults and 15 kids in total, comprising mainly family members and some closed friends. Werney also invited a few of her school mates for the party.

The birthday cake was from Tracey at www.specialcakes.net. This year, I got Werney a Barbie Mermaid cake and she was crazy over it. I also ordered some helium balloons for the kids and a big princess balloon for Werney.

Everyone at the party had a great time and the best part was - no cleaning work for mommy after the party! Anney was crazy over the slides at McDonalds and had easily done 40 rounds of going up and down the slides! Yeah, this is my super active baby.

Werney also received a princess pencil case from Barbara & Ashley earlier during our weekly Yamaha JMC class. What a small world right? I got to know Barbara from the Yamaha class and she was the one that told me she recognised Werney from our first lesson at Yamaha. Thanks Barbara & Ashley for the lovely pencil case. Werney loves all things princess and Barbie now.

Maclaren stroller recall

Do you own one of the highly popular Maclaren stroller?

The US Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) has issued a statement to recall 1,000,000 of Maclaren strollers sold in US between 1999 to November 2009 due to report of cases where fingertips were amputated as the stroller poses laceration hazards to children when unfolding/folding the stroller. According to CPSC & Maclaren, the faults were due to the stroller's hinge mechanism. Consumer are advised to stop using the strollers immediately and to contact Maclaren to receive a free repair kit.

There were at least 12 cases of such accidents reported to date. The affected models include Volo, Triumph, Quest Sport, Quest Mod, Techno XT, Techno XLR, Twin Triumph, Twin Techno and Easy Traveller. Most of these models are available in Malaysia and currently being sold in major baby stores and online stores.

From the CPSC website, the above Maclaren strollers were made in China. I am not sure where the MacLaren strollers sold in Malaysia were made but probably from China too.

If you own one of this Maclaren stroller, quickly contact the local store or the Maclaren distributor to check whether the repair kit is available in Malaysia before any untoward incident happen to you or your child!

The Sun Motor Hunt 2009 - did we had fun?

Of course the answer is YES plus a few "arguments" of whether to turn left or turn right. There were also a few incidents where the driver asked the navigator what is the next tulip, after that, then.....asking like 5 tulips ahead! *Scratch head*!

Overall, it was a tiring day (have to wake up at 5 am on a Sunday morning) but a fruitful & fun day. We secured a place at 91th (with a score of 72 points), over a total of 292 cars! Phew....it was that many cars for this year hunt! This is our first public hunt and I think we did okay for a first timer. What did we got from the hunt?............. 4 Samsung DVD players!!! Thank you Samsung! Well, the sponsors were really generous and each winning team walked home with 4 items - no need to share and each participant got one prize!

The hunt was dividend into the following:-

Leg 1 - Part 1 (10 questions)
Leg 1 - Part 2 (10 questions)
Leg 2 - 16 questions
4 treasures questions

We did not do well in Leg 1 & 2 but we managed to get 3 out of the 4 treasures requested by the organiser. We didn't manage to get the last treasure, which is a Milo canned drink with the word Grab & Go printed on the can. When I told Werney about it, her reply was "Milo only, so easy, I know the answer?!" (I bet she was also thinking why mommy so silly one, so easy also don't know).

Anyway, this round we managed to keep our time within the stipulated 6 hours, with 3 extra minutes to spare! We also managed to squeeze in 10 minutes for McDonalds' lunch to charge our laptop battery! Well, lunch is provided free by McDonalds as one of the main sponsor!

Just hope we could do better next year - the prizes for the top ten team ranges from 40' LCD TV, home theatre system to digital cameras! So attractive, right?

Some pictures from the hunt to share......

Cars being flag off by Organisers & Sponsors

Our team number

Sis busy looking through the questions

Our answer sheets - all scribbled up!

Prizes for the winners

Prize no. 91

Our prizes

What does FAMILY stands for?

I received a pop quiz in an e-mail recently asking the following question.

What does FAMILY stands for?

A. Unity
B. Love
C. Caring
D. None of the above

Guess what is the answer?

?

?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?

Answer is D - None of the above.

FAMILY stands for...............

Father And Mother I Love You

Have a good day everyone!

The Sun Motor Treasure Hunt 2009

Sis#2, BIL, DH and myself will be on the road again this Sunday for The Sun Motor Hunt 2009. Known to be the mother of all hunts (in Malaysia), the treasure hunt has proven its popularity again. There are a total of 250 cars for the treasure hunt and it is our first time joining the Sun Motor Treasure Hunt.

I doubt we will win anything this round cause there are really a lot of professional treasure hunters out there. Luckily they have two categories - Master and Open category. For amateurs like us, of course we will be placed in the Open Category.

What attracted us to the Sun Motor Treasure Hunt? The fee for the hunt is definitely not cheap, it is RM400 per car for a day hunt. Well, to be honest, we are hoping to win some of the lucky draw prizes sponsored by Samsung (shh....Samsung has sponsored prizes worth RM200,000 for this year hunt!). Isn't that attractive?

In addition to that, we also received 4 goodies bag containing goodies from various sponsors (from Nescafe to cloth softener) and RM50 petrol voucher from Petronas.

Just hope we will not turn up to be the last car for the hunt!!

Barbie and the three musketeers book

I blogged earlier that Werney is crazy about the new Barbie and the three musketeers show on DVD.

Yesterday, I saw this book at the book store and couldn't resist to get her a copy of the book. They have a few variation and I got her the one for early reader.

She told me she is the one in pink gown and I just found out the girl's name is Corrinne. Well, Corrinne is the musketeer that uses a sword but Werney uses a golf club (for sword)!


Guess what is Werney's favourite phrase from the show/book?

"All of one and one for all!"

She has been repeating that phrase at home.

Personal tax reliefs

It's already November now and in another month or two, we'll be bidding farewell to year 2009. Well, what could you do before the end of year 2009? We always start the year with a resolution (or more) but for year end, I thought a little tax planning would helps to save some $$$.

The individual resident tax rate in Malaysia ranges from 0-27% (for year of assessment 2009). The tax rate will be reduced to 0%-26% from the year of assessment 2010 but it is still pretty high if we compare it to Singapore (20%) and Hong Kong (15%).

Some of the personal tax reliefs available in Malaysia are:-

1) Self - RM8,000

2) Medical expenses for parents - RM5,000

3) Wife / Husband relief - RM3,000

4) Child relief - RM1,000/child (below 18 years old)

5) Child relief - RM4,000 / child (above 18 years old and pursuing full time education in universities, colleges or similar)

6) Life insurance premium & EPF - RM6,000

7) Insurance premium for education or medical benefits - RM3,000

8) Further education in selected post graduate courses- RM5,000

9) Reading materials, both printed and electronic version (except newspaper or banned materials) - RM1,000

10) Purchase of computer - up to RM3,000 (given once in every 3 years)

11) Amount deposited into Skim Simpanan Pendidikan Nasional - RM3,000

12) Purchase of sports equipment - RM300 (but this does not includes purchase of sport attires or shoes!)

13) Complete medical examination for self/spouse/child - RM500

* Please note that the above list is not exhaustive. I've only listed out the most common tax reliefs claimed by individual tax payer!

There will also be a tax relief on broadband subscription from next year until year 2012....so remember to keep all your broadband bills next year.

Hope the above list would helps you to maximise some tax savings!