i'm a spanish teacher; my husband is a butcher. we ain't rolling in the dough. we are not rich by any stretch of the imagination. believe me, i know that we are waaaaay better off financially than the majority of the world's population. one thing i am especially thankful for these hot hot days is the fact that we have central AC.

however, like most middle class americanos, times get tight. the girls are both going to all day preschool this year. health insurance is going up for us. i don't even have to go there on gas and grocery prices, do i?

i started this blog in january 2005 as a whim- something to keep far away friends and family appraised of current monkey situations and cuteness levels (always sky high of course.) in the process i have made soooooo many friends and "met" tons of different people. who knew there were so many other humans as cool as me or dare i say it- even cooler??

although we have never met face to face, christi is my homegirl. b4 we got all knocked up and had a million chull-dren running around we used to im each other- now we email, call, comment each other, etc. i know that eventually we will meet in person and the universe will align.

um, where was i going with this? oh yeah. the blog. i started noticing g**gle ads on folks' sites, but i investigated and found out that unless you have a site with like a billion hits a day you don't really make that much off of em. then i saw that a few blogs i read were writing reviews about websites and products as actual posts on their blogs, in between their other posts. when i investigated, i found payperpost.

the way it works is you register and submit your blog, then if you are approved, you log on and check out the different opportunities available. what this means is you can see what the advertiser wants you to review or talk about; you can go to their website and investigate and see if you think you could fulfill their requirements. they give you a minimum word count and details on what they want you to link to in your post.

i like this system bc i can accept or reject any of the post opportunities. i will never blog about anything i don't agree with, or about a website i think is shady. i can always give my true opinion.

after you write your post and submit it and it gets approved, you wait 30 days. then they check back to make sure the post is still there and if it is, you get the moolah deposited in ye olde paypal account.

a complicated process- no! super easy. and i've decided to try it as a way to buy christmas presents this year bc believe me folks, santa's budget is tighter than his belt after 10 plates of cookies.

i mentioned this to my sister and she said "you will lose your regular readers. nobody wants to read that crap. they want personal stuff."

BUUUUUUUUUTTTTTT...one of the requirements of payperpost is that you have to have a minimum number of non paid posts along with the paid ones on your blog. so in all actuality i will be doing more personal posting too.

and if you're an old friend here (or a new friend here), i'm sure you can just overlook the paid posts in between and keep on loving me, can't ya, knowing that it's for the monkeys' christmas????? who knows- if you read one now and then you might actually find out about a product you didn't know about, or a website you actually like.

and you will always, i repeat, always, get your minimum required dosage of monkeycute.





couldn't you just squeeze the heck out of these fat cheeks??



if you are interested in signing up too or just want more info, click this link:

ps i have decided to color code my posts- blue writing means a paid post, purple means a regular post. except my little movies like the one below bc i cant control the text color when i post it from the video website.


ok, that's all.