When I first hear about Wyzant, I couldn’t figure out why I would need a tutor for anything. My kids do fine in school and so far I have been able to help them with their homework (of course, the oldest is only in 5th grade!). But the more that I looked at the site, the more that I realized that the word “tutor” is a lot broader than I thought.

As I was working on my Indianapolis tutoring site, I started really looking at everything that the Wyzant tutors have to offer. First of all, the tutors are local. However, you have choices about whether you want the tutoring done in-person or online depending upon how it fits your schedule. Second, the subject area options are amazing! “Tutoring” can include the traditional math, science, and foreign languages but also can include piano, voice, college test prep, typing, and even volleyball! Pretty much anything you want to learn, you can find a tutor on Wyzant.

I’ve been checking out some voice teachers for one of my daughters and am anxious to see the results. One of the great things about Wyzant is that you can get a discount by going through their site and prepaying. Have you tried out their system? What do you think?

Earlier this year I wrote an Ancestry.com review and explained why I love it so much. If you were on the fence or want to look up just a few things for fun, this week is a great week. Ancestry.com is running a special where you can get free access to all of the immigration and travel records on Ancestry.com. You can search the indices and images of new and updated U.S. immigration records as well as selected international immigration records from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Australia, Canada, Germany, Sweden and Mexico.

It’s incredibly cool to go in and just start looking up people who you know might be in there. Visit Ancestry.com for more information. The free access ends on September 5.

Last Saturday I took my two daughters (ages 8 and 10) to see the new Smurfs Movie. I had been looking forward to it since I saw the previews last summer. I was always a Smurf fan as a kid and was excited at the thought that my kids might be Smurf fans, too.

The movie was a combination of live action and CGI. The premise of the story was that Gargamel had chased the Smurfs to New York, where they were hiding out with a pregnant couple. As usual, Gargamel was after the Smurfs because he wanted to capture their “essence” for his magic. Neil Patrick Harris played the husband and the counselor from Glee (whose name I never remember) played his wife.

Although there were a lot of Smurfs in the movie, the main characters included the most popular–Smurfette, Clumsy, Grouchy and Papa Smurf. They did throw in a lot of others in almost cameo-type roles (my favorite was “Narrator Smurf.”)

The story was simple and there were just enough jokes that appealed to the adults to take the movie from simply “nostalgic” to “enjoyable.” For kids, there was enough animation, adventure, and music to hold their attention. There was even a little bit of Smurf lore and trivia thrown in for “educational” purposes.

Everyone in my family enjoyed the movie, and I have a feeling that it will be added to our DVD collection this holiday season. My kids are even asking for Smurf shirts to wear to school. Who am I to say “no”? I may end up getting one for myself!

Ticket seller Goldstar is running a special today only where you can buy Regal Movie Tickets at a discounted rate. The Regal Entertainment Group Premier Movie Tickets are good for any movie at any time, including new releases, primetime, and weekends. The tickets can be used at any Regal Cinemas. United Artists Theatres, or Edwards Theatres nationwide.

Movie tickets usually range from about $9-11 depending on your location. You can get a 4-pack of these tickets TODAY ONLY for only $7.50 for each ticket. Buy them for yourself or put them aside as gifts because they never expire. They make great gifts for teachers, babysitters, etc.

Visit Goldstar and find the Regal Movie Ticket deal along with any other deals in your area. I’ve seen everything from museums to theatre tickets listed and some of them are even free (look for the COMP TICKETS in the event listing).

Is there a difference between “finding tutors online” and “finding online tutors“? Yes! The former means looking on the Internet to find tutors in your hometown. The latter means looking specifically for tutors who will working across the Internet.

Why is this important? Although both can be beneficial, people learn in different ways. Some students may need a person sitting next to them guiding them through their studies. Other students just need someone to answer their questions and it can be via email, Skype, or even instant messaging.

No matter the type of tutor that you are looking for, Wyzant Tutoring is a great place to search. You can put in your location and the type of tutoring you are seeking. Wyzant then shows you available tutors that meet your specifications. You contact the tutors and negotiate with them through Wyzant’s email system.

However you find your tutors, be sure that you are clear up front about the objectives for the student and perform checks every now and again to make sure that the objectives are being met.

If you are like me and live in an area where you don’t have any family, you probably have the same problem that I have finding babysitters. Summer is coming and most of us are looking for a little extra help with the kids at home all day.

Did you know that you can use Sittercity to help you? Whether you are looking for a full-time nanny, a part-time nanny, or even just an occasional sitter, you can view caregivers in your area, post what you are looking for, collect applications, and even perform background checks.

Sittercity has been around for over 10 years and is one of the most well-known names in its industry. They have some great tools for helping you find the best sitters and nannies for your family. It’s really a full-scale operation that goes beyond just job postings.

If you are interested in signing up, they have a coupon through June 30, 2011 that will allow you to save 15% on your membership. You can sign up monthly, quarterly, or annually–it’s your choice. Click here to use coupon code 15JUNE by the end of this month and see if SitterCity will work for you.

We have all been through times when we would love to entertain our family and friends, but we feel that money is just too tight to splurge on a party, or feel that we simply can’t make time to plan. Then that big event comes along, a milestone birthday or graduation, that you feel is too special to let slip by without a celebration. Don’t worry! It is entirely possible to have a great party without completely emptying your pockets and stressing over the planning. All you need to do is employ these important money and time saving tips.

Set a budget

This is an integral first step to any party. If you think “I’ll just spend as little as possible” it becomes way too easy to sneak in extra expenditures or spend beyond your means. Decide on an appropriate number, stick to it, and track your spending.

Have a theme

This isn’t strictly necessary, of course, but I find that by thinking of a particular theme, especially with children’s parties, the decorating is much more organized. Say your child loves Elmo – thinking of the character, you now know that you have red, white and yellow to work with. As a centerpiece, you can dig out that old fish tank and fill it with water and have a toy goldfish named Dorothy. You can make strawberry sandwiches cut like Elmo, you have your birthday cake idea, and you can think of Sesame Street games. Suddenly your creativity is running rampant!

Use email invites

Mailed invitations are a lovely party touch, but if you’re trying to save money and time, this can be the first thing to go. Websites such as Evite are free, and they make sending invitations as quick and easy as possible. You can send a party invitation to dozens of people with a quick click of a mouse, then easily track all of your RSVP responses.

Shop the internet

Walking up and down the aisles of a party supply store can be fun. But this is definitely not a way to save either time or money. For party supplies such as plates, napkins, cutlery, and decorations, try shopping online. You can find great prices and package deals that will be delivered straight to your door (great if you are having a themed party.) Gone are my days of going to four different places to find all my party supplies.

Be okay with not matching

When the day of the party arrives, you may realize that you’re 3 plates short. Don’t run out to buy another package of matching plates. If you have a few plain white paper plates in the back of your pantry, dig these out, then place them at the bottom of the stack underneath the cute, colorful plates that match your theme. No one will mind, trust me.

Do your own prep work – and ask for help

Pre-made relish trays, wrap sandwiches, and fruit trays score very high marks when it comes to convenience. However, the price of store-bought party trays is much higher compared to what you would spend for the raw materials. Take the time to wash and cut produce yourself. Actually, this is where you enlist that friend or family member who offers to help. While you decorate your living room, they will be doing the veggie chopping.

Serve starches

Simple, starchy foods tend to be easy to prepare and are filling for your guests. Think pasta and potatoes. You can make a huge bowl of pasta salad with spiral noodles, Italian salad dressing, black olives, and cherry tomatoes with almost no effort and little cost. Similarly, potatoes are super cheap, and it takes few additional ingredients to make a potato salad. Bread and rice are good dollar stretchers, too, and just one bag of popcorn kernels can make mountains of air-popped popcorn.

Make it BYOB

Alcohol is a huge money gobbler. If you wish to have alcohol available, limit it to a small selection of beer and wine. Otherwise, make it a BYOB. This is also an easy way to ensure that everyone has a beverage that they like, and you don’t end up in the kitchen mixing drinks for the entire duration of the party. You can stick to offering pitchers of inexpensive beverages such as punch, iced tea, and lemonade, and allow people to serve themselves.

Clean Up Tricks

The best way to ease your cleanup is to actually take come preventative measures before your party begins. Make sure that you have more than one trash can, and that you keep it in a highly visible place. If your trash can usually lives under the kitchen sink, temporarily give it a new highly visible home. If you are using plastic cups or people will be bringing glass bottles, it’s also a good idea to have some recycling bins handy. A few large trash cans labeled with “glass” and “plastic” signs can also do the trick.

For your restroom, place a stack of anti-bacterial wipes on your bathroom sink. If they’re there, people tend to clean up after themselves. Clorox even makes a nice selection of wipes in pretty containers to fit your powder room décor. Similarly, place a stack of disposable paper hand towels on your sink instead of your cotton towels. Guests are much more likely to use the disposable towels to clean up drips on the sink, and it’s more sanitary than having 20 people wipe their hands on the same damp towel.

Send Leftovers Home with Guests

Don’t want to take the time to clean up and put away food leftovers after the party? Send them home with your guests. Before the conclusion of the party, hand out doggie bags, or Chinese take-out style containers (which you can find online) and encourage people to fill them before leaving. This works great after a party with a large buffet or a potluck.

The last time saving tip – dim the lights and put on a smile before your party. Dim lights will hide any dust that’s hanging out on your furniture, and your bright smile is sure to be the very first thing that your guests notice! Remember, parties are meant to be fun and non-stressful. So employ these time and money saving tips, then relax as you enjoy your celebration.

Chris Molnar is a work-at-home Dad of two preschool daughters. He writes about theme parties at Themeaparty.com, and has a sneaking suspicion he’ll soon have to plan an Elmo birthday party for his youngest.

Before I decided whether I wanted to promote Ancestry.com, I wanted to really try it out myself so that I could give it an honest review. I’ve always been interested in my ancestry, but I never thought that I would have any luck tracing it. Here are just a few things that I was up against:

• No relationship with birth father
• No relationship with adopted father
• Live in a different state than my whole family
• No family records (bibles, newsclippings, etc) at my disposal
• Little chance of making it to cemeteries in other states to get information
• Family members with foreign last names that were changed

So as interested as I was in Ancestry.com, I had little hope that I would get anywhere with it. At the urging of my daughter (who was doing a genealogy project for school), I signed up for a trial account. Within 3 hours, I had traced part of my family tree back to the 1400s in Europe! How is that possible?

I started by entering the names of my parents and grandparents. I was able to call my grandmother to get just a couple more family names. As soon as I entered those, Ancestry.com started giving me “hints” of other family trees to which I might be connected or various documents that had been scanned in that might contain my relatives. As a result of following each of those hints, I was able to add generation upon generation until I found some really cool information, including that I can join the Daughters of the American Revolution through my grandmother’s family and that I am a descendant of not one but TWO famous pirate women.

In part I got lucky because I was able to tap into trees that are already on Ancestry.com. I wasn’t able to do this for every single branch of my family tree but about 80% of it between both me and my husband’s families. I was able to view original documents like the passenger manifesto of ships, census records, and military papers.

Grandmother Brainerd

I know the image to the right is hard to see in the scan (old scanner!), but it is of an elderly woman sitting next to a spinning wheel with a dog jumping up on her lap. I’ve had this picture for years in a box of old stuff and knew only the name on the back was “Grandmother Brainerd.” I didn’t even know if I was related to her or if the picture got picked up at a garage sale! Thanks to Ancestry.com, I was able to figure out that her name is Charity Brainerd, she is my 5th great grandmother, she resided in Ohio, and she lived from 1785-1878. How amazing is that?

The only real negative to Ancestry.com are that it is a monthly subscription service and that there is so much information that you can spend hours and hours in there if you have common names in your family. But at the same time it is so fascinating that you WANT to spend the time there. And the reason to continue to pay the monthly fee is that they are always adding more documents. They range from official government documents to college yearbooks. True story, we found articles about my husband’s grandmother on there from her college yearbook.

I don’t want to quote you a price because Ancestry.com has different packages and options. But you CAN get an Ancestry.com free trial. You have nothing to lose and 30 days to figure out if you will be able to find enough information to make it worth your time and money. And if you are like me, you will be wondering why you didn’t start sooner!

Each year it seems like I hear about bigger and more expensive birthday parties for kids. I have known parents to spend thousands of dollars on birthday parties for one-year-olds! That just doesn’t fit in my budget. And yet, my kids always want to do something different. Some years we have kept it inexpensive with a pizza and movie sleepover for just a few girls. Each daughter did get to have a big kindergarten party where they invited their whole class. Honestly, that was more so that I would have an opportunity to meet all of kids’ parents at the start of their schooling.

This year my older daughter begged us for a laser tag party. We played as a family for the first time a few months ago and she has talked about it ever since. When we investigated it, we found out that it would be about $150 to do the smallest group there. And that didn’t include cake or party favors!

So we asked my daughter how important it was to her. We asked her if it was important enough that the party would be her actual present and she agreed. Instead of making a “wish list,” she wanted the party.

In the end, I think it is working out well. Christmas is only a few weeks away and she will be getting gifts and clothes for that. There really wasn’t anything that she wanted for her birthday anyway. And her friends are really excited that they get to play laser tag because many of them have never been. Plus, it’s a good physical activity for the birthday party instead of just sitting around and eating cakes and sweets. Well, we will still have cake!

What’s your thought on the increasing expense of birthday parties for kids? Do you have parties at home or host them in other places? Is the lack of preparation when you have the party somewhere else enough to balance out the cost?

Both of my daughters are now doing Rocket Math at school. One is in the addition/subtraction and the other is in multiplication/division. It’s kind of like the old “timed tests” but the numbers are not exactly sequential and the kids have to get a certain number right based on how fast they can write (as determined by a timed test).

The whole thing is a little confusing to me, but I have found two great websites that help me help my kids with their Rocket Math. The first is Online Stopwatch. It’s much easier than “waiting for the second hand to get to 60″ watching my watch, and I am usually sitting at the computer in my office when they want me to test them anyway.

The second is DadsWorksheets.com. They have a section called “Spaceship Math” which is perfect for printing off extra practice sheets. They seem to coincide pretty closely with the actual Rocket Math tests that my kids are taking in school. The site also has a lot of other practice worksheets even if your kids are not doing Rocket Math. You can even print handwriting paper!

Are there other websites that you regularly use to help your kids with their homework?