MoneySavingMom's new book on budgeting

I soooo want to get my hands on this book.

Hoping I earn enough amazon dollars to justify buying it... ;)

Goals for 2012

Since we did fairly well with the loosely set goals we had last year, I wanted to see how much more I could accomplish in 2012 by being focused and intentional.

I was inspired by Money Saving Mom's post on her yearly goals, and used her printable templates as a springboard for my own. Last night over Subway sandwiches before Church, my husband and I finalized the breakdown of our yearly goals into monthly ones.

While some of it may seem ambitious (considering there's a newborn on the way and we're limited to one income), I will be happy if I end up achieving more than I did last year, even if everything doesn't get crossed off the list. Having said that, here's this year's goals:


2012 Goals

 Faith:

Practice individual, daily devotions
Commit to prayer/devotions together as a couple
Commit to more regular church attendence
Give to church and charity of choice on a monthly basis

 Family / Marriage:

Finish nursery for Zeke before he's born
Continue monthly date nights after his arrival
Try different traditions to establish as a family
Eat dinner at the table at least 2x a week

 Finances:

Bring student loan down to $**** and transfer to interest free credit card
Increase emergency savings to $****
Start (me) blogging/amazon sales to earn an extra $100-200 /mo. for debt/savings
Read blogs/books on finances regularly for inspiration
Continue couponing, menu planing, and stockpiling deals when possible

 House:

Have at least one room insulated by end of year
Have roof repaired
Install gutters by summer
Clear out brush in yard/Clean out shed
Create ventilation for bathroom and paint ceiling

 Health:

Study nutrition and implement one new change a month
Cook from scratch more and eat less processed foods
Practice yoga and walking as a family

 Simplicity:

Declutter the whole house, room by room. Sell or donate unneeded items.
Create methods for storing and organizing items around house.
Regularly read blogs on minimalism/simplicity for new ideas
Strive to stay on top of chores often put off: dishes, laundry, etc *insert red face here*

I might post weekly goals too for accountability, but haven't decided yet if I'll do so. However, here's to a productive 2012! (it's gonna take me a month to get used to saying '12 and not '11....)

 

Yesterday's progress

While I didn't finish everything on my list, I was able to get a fair amount accomplished. Only thing that probably kept me from doing so was running out of printer ink and having a 3 hour nap (I blame the baby for waking me up at 5am) that afternoon. Overall I'm pretty happy with it and will try to finish the rest today.

Review of yesterday's list:

• Clean off couch (sad thing about having the living room be the first room upon entry is that the couch becomes a snare for dumping stuff).
• Iron 2 shirts from pile (huge pile, but I have decided to finish 2 a day until it's done).
• Clean microwave.
• Wash dishes.
• Bake 2 loafs of banana bread for the last of Christmas gifts.
• Hang awards/degrees on walls.
• Work on organizing nursery.
• Work on thank you notes for baby shower gifts
• Finish thank you notes for Christmas gifts
• Fill in birthdays for next year on calendar
• Print birth plan for doctor appointment next week
• Make cookies for last day at work.
• Make grocery list and print coupons
• Wash, dry and fold one load of laundry
• Finish writing new year goals with husband

So today in addition to the items not yet crossed off, I need to run to Walgreens to get my printer ink refilled and put my leftover flour from baking into sealed containers to prevent any bug infestation. And I need to figure out some fingerfood to make for the New Years party we're attending tomorrow. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Anticipation for the new year

I know it has been another fall off the blogging bandwagon yet again. But since the baby is coming in almost seven (!) weeks, I figure there'll never be a "good" time to start back up again, so I may as well just jump back in and not worry about frequency right away.

This weekend is my last one working which means I'll have a lot of free time to accomplish and finish things I've wanted/needed to do. I'm back into making a new to-do list for each day and have decided to set goals (not resolutions) for the new year with my husband. We've done really well with most of the goals we loosely set the past year so it's time to hit the gear and aim for more internationalism.

So I'm thinking of setting six major goals for different categories and then breaking those down into monthly/weekly action steps. It should be much easier that way to stay motivated and track progress made.

I doubt anyone is reading this at this point, but for the extra (imaginary) accountability I'm posting my list for today and reporting back later how many I was able to finish:

• Clean off couch (sad thing about having the living room be the first room upon entry is that the couch becomes a snare for dumping stuff).
• Iron 2 shirts from pile (huge pile, but I have decided to finish 2 a day until it's done).
• Clean microwave.
• Wash dishes.
• Bake 2 loafs of banana bread for the last of Christmas gifts.
• Hang awards/degrees on walls.
• Work on organizing nursery.
• Work on thank you notes for baby shower gifts
• Finish thank you notes for Christmas gifts
• Fill in birthdays for next year on calendar
• Print birth plan for doctor appointment next week
• Make cookies for last day at work.
• Make grocery list and print coupons
• Wash, dry and fold one load of laundry
• Finish writing new year goals with husband

And that's all folks, but I'll definitely feel like super woman if I can finish all those tasks today. Cannot believe there's only two days left in this year--time to end it with as few loose strings as possible! :) 

The Plight of the Homeless

Does seeing a homeless person begging for money make you squirm in your car seat? When I did a quick Wal-mart run earlier this week, there was a brunette woman with a stray dog; she had a sign that  said "out of work. hungry. every little bit helps."

My first internal response is usually skeptical. How do I know you're not trying to fund alcohol or drug additions you're enslaved to? And then uncomfortable. What of the shelters that are downtown? Are there enough resources in this town, or is it not enough to go around?

A quick google search showed there are a wide variety of of estimates on how many homeless people exist in the United States. It's a hard task to do a census on homeless since they're always on the go from one place to another, and the count is affected by weather, economic times, and high turn-over rates in shelters.

In addition, it's equally hard to pinpoint a certain cause for homelessness. Often people who are poverty stricken are one paycheck away from living in the streets. When illness or loss of work opportunities strikes, the biggest bill, usually the house or apartment payment, gets postponed in favor of food and necessities, leading to foreclosure or eviction.

Other causes, according to The National Coalition for the Homeless, include addictions of different forms, domestic abuse, lack of affordable housing, lack of health insurance, mental illnesses, decline in public assistance, or a combination of several factors. Overall, a mind-boggling 100 million people are estimated to be homeless world-wide.

Interestedly, there is also a list of ways to help given, some of which I hadn't thought of.

• Smile. Avoiding eye contact with homeless people dehumanizes them. They may or may not be at fault for their situation, but still crave human connection nevertheless. 

• Donate. Shelters can use many items such as non-perishable foods, toiletries, clothes, etc. Give of any excess you may have. 

• Help. Organizations such as Habitat for Humanity and your local shelters can always use hands-on volunteers.

• Give. It may not be a wise idea to hand out cash to homeless, but some people give out gift certificates to fast food joints, bus pass tickets, paid phone cards, or keep snacks such as crackers, water, dried fruit, etc to hand out.

What are your thoughts on homelessness or what ideas do you have to help?

Here I am to Worship

A day in the life of a stay-home-housewife (hey, that rhymed!)

For folks that wonder what I do all day since I don't have a job (yet, I'm really good at landing interviews though ;-) ) I thought I'd try my hand at taking pictures and blogging about it. On a second thought, that seems really vain as that assumes you're interested in what I do. I'll just promise I don't normally do this and get on with this post. :)

Upon waking every morning:

I make the bed so I'm not tempted to crawl back in and sleep some more while my husband gets ready for work. (I puffy heart sleep). I also pack his lunch, start the coffeepot, throw one load of clothes in the washer, turn the computer on, open up blinds, but I was too sleepy to take pics of all those tasks and this is before 8 in the morning. Cut me some slack. :p

After hubby left, I started ironing the huge iron "pile" while watching Dancing With the Stars. I may not be a bon-bon eating, tv watching housewife, but I feel justified watching tv if I do something at the same time.

 Altogether I ironed seven of Mikey's shirts and one of his work pants. (There were still two more pants left in the pile, but I got really tired of ironing by that point--maybe today I'll finish)

Then, time to take out the trash and get the mail:

That done, time to plan dinner (tuna noodle casserole) and shower. 

Onto dishes, got a big pile there from cooking during the weekend:

I cheated and had hubby help with some later. My next house WILL have a dishwasher, I despise doing dishes. However, I do love those moments when we can catch up on our day and talk. Didn't do all of them, as our hunger pangs struck when the casserole was done cooking. Tis okay, I wrapped it up this morning. End result:

 Yay you can see the stove now! Everything's been windexed and lysoled too so it's all shiny and bacteria free. May as well clean off the dining table while I'm at it:

I love those flowers. I impulsively got a bouquet on sale a week earlier while grocery shopping. Now, time to put the washer load in the dryer:

As soon as the floors are re-done, I'm painting this room a sunflower yellow. I cannot wait. 

On to sweeping, dusting, vacuuming, and wiping down mirrors/glass surfaces:

Back of door is our coupons for eating out; that way we won't forget to look for deals for our monthly date nights.

Also straightened up the couch as well (hubby built this, just need to paint the box, add feet, and a padded headboard. Another project for when we have extra $.)

Spent some time posting items to sell online from this pile of items on the floor here. This is what I'm doing for now to make extra $ on Amazon. It's working well so far. 

Now onto dinner:

Chili in the crock-pot. I love using my crock-pot, there is something about taking 10 minutes in the morning to dump, err lovingly mix ingredients in a pot that really appeals to my laziness. As a bonus, I don't have to think about dinner for the rest of the day--I probably use crock-pot recipes about 3-4 times a week. Oh, and the recipe for the chili is from here. One of my favorite blogs ever. 

Now that I'm about done posting this, I need to fold the clothes, make a new menu plan (I use this free website--it's awesome) and go out to do my errands today. In case the layout was confusing, this was from yesterday (Monday) and a part of this morning. I do deep cleaning on Mondays, errands on Tuesday, yard work, kitchen and bathroom cleaning on Wednesday, a project from the ongoing project list on Thursday, and detail cleaning on Friday. Weekends are off, I just relax with my husband, make homemade pizza and watch netflix and hulu with him. It's my goal to post regularly on my blog to help us earn an additional revenue (we'll see how that works out) and it's also my hope you enjoyed this post.

Time to get in gear, this won't get done by itself:

Oh! And have a great day! ;)