Wordless Wednesday

Some of my favorite people....

Today I'm linking to these parties:

 

Happy 4th of July!

Photo Credit

Happy Fourth of July! Today our family will be celebrating by enjoying a soccer game as a family and then hanging around for the fireworks afterwards! They'll have all sorts of fun for the kids, so we are looking forward to a fun family day. I hope you're able to celebrate with your family today too.

Really?!?!

This is how I feel right now about the series I am reading. UGH! I'm getting so frustrated by the direction the author is taking the story, which rarely happens to me and even less with this author! If you take a little peak at the "On My Nightstand" and "Just Finished" sections on the left side of the blog you'll see TWO Karen Kingsbury books just in the last month! That's not even the half of it. In about 6 months I think I read close to 20 of her books (starting with the Baxter series and through the Take One series). I know, right, a bit obsessed with the K.K. books. My husband agrees! ;) But, in my defense they are SO good, no really, SO good!

Well as soon as she was adding to the series I had been on by doing a Bailey Flanigan series I was really excited, I'm serious--really excited. Who gets this nuts over books?!?! ;) Anyway....the first one came out this spring and yes, I had it shortly after it was released and read it (Leaving) very slowly. I don't think it's ever taken me so long to read one of her books. I do have my reasons though, and whether you'd like to hear them or not, I will tell you. 1. I knew I was going to have to wait until June 20th (Yesterday!!) for the release of the second book (Learning), so why rush it, right? 2. I was SO annoyed by the direction I could see it going. SO annoyed! Really, Karen? Really? Can't you see this is going to be a disaster?! *sigh* She did not heed my advice and the series is on the brink of disaster now.

So, why am I just now sharing my frustrations with you? First of all because I thought for sure she (Karen K.) would redeem herself after asking a question of her readers on FB about the direction she should take this particular "dilemma" (a.k.a. disaster). I was very relieved that approximately 98% of her readers agreed with me! :) Yea, I know that's usually not that hard to do!! ;) Haha! Okay, anyway, I figured, great, she got the message, "We don't like it! It'll be a total failure! Please stop this before it gets any worse! She must chose the other option! PLEASE!!!" I'm serious, everyone was desperate to see this disaster turn around.

Well, I've read reviews on the second book (because I'm obsessed and anxiously waiting for the book!) and seen the new cover. And because I haven't had a chance to go get it. Friends, she's not listening! She's messing it all up! I feel like taking the pen out of her hand and scratching it all out and starting it over. KAREN! Don't do it! I'm so disappointed, I don't even know how I'm going to get through the book. I'm sure I will, because I HAVE to know what happens, but be warned the book may hit a few walls before I finish it....just sayin'.  And up until now I was giving her the benefit of the doubt, since there are 2 more books (4 total) that she would turn it around and redeem it in the 3rd book.

Darn FB has ruined my hopes again! She just posted that she finished the 3rd book and it has the WRONG cover picture! Not cool, Karen, not cool.

Sigh, so I guess now I can only hold out hope for the fourth book to make the series right again. So bummed out right now.

Am I the only one that gets this 'involved' about fictional people?!?! Please tell me I'm not...

Happy Birthday, Little Man!

My little guy is having a birthday today. Not quite sure how we'll spend all of the day today, but I we've got a big party bash planned for the weekend. Can't wait to celebrate with him and all who love him! Like I shared before, I like to do a lot of it myself, so it'll be a busy week around here getting ready for his little gig. ;) I'll be sure to post pictures along the way of all my creations and and how the party turns out too!

On to other news, in case you haven't noticed I've been working hard on giving this blog a little makeover! ;) I've been learning a lot about blogging and would love for this little "hobby-blog" to turn into something more. I have had a lot of feedback about our story being meaningful and inspiring to a lot of people and I'd love to expand that beyond a small circle of friends. If this process (though we haven't done it perfectly) and our story can make a difference for more people, then that would be wonderful to us. The other perk is that there are advertisers willing to pay bloggers for their space on a site and that could mean a little extra income to my family. Again, a benefit we could use right now, especially with our goal to be debt free. Why am I telling you this? Because you can help me! Here's some ways you can be a part of this process:

1. If you are a regular reader, but haven't ever clicked "follow", you can do so now. You do have choices as well. You can chose to subscribe by email (posts will go directly to your inbox), or by following through google (using a variety of accounts you may have set up) or through Facebook (networked blogs). Any of these options are helpful and it'll make it easier for you to keep up with the posts as well since you'll have them come directly to you each time I post! Feel free to pass all this on to friends that may be interested too.

2. If you already follow and have been reading all along, a way you can help is by commenting on blog posts. It's so encouraging to me and creates a community around the content of the blog. Which will give us all the opportunity to share more too! So comment away! Also watch for future rewards that may come to the top commenter! ;)

3. If you are a blogger and would like to you can 'grab my button' and post it on your site. Which would be awesome and I would really appreciate it! If you do, please let me know so I can swing by your blog and give you a special thank you & show some support to you too!

4. Continue to be the support you have been! It's so awesome to share this journey with all of you. Thanks for reading and following along.

Thank you all!! Have a wonderful week. Looking forward to hearing all of your thoughts on this new adventure below. I love reading your comments!

Happy Father's Day!!

Yay! What a great day to celebrate the men in our lives. There are so many great things I could tell you about my Dad. He's a Godly man, extremely loyal and dedicated, thinks through things before committing to them, is honest and a hard worker. I've learned a lot of lessons from him and notice more and more of him in me each day. Of all the things I remember about my Dad, money wisdom was always a topic we were discussing. I've learned so many valuable financial lessons from him (and my Mom) about saving, living within your means, generosity, giving to God, staying out of debt, investing, and not letting money drive you. I'm so thankful for a Dad who was diligent in teaching us how to be good stewards of our resources.

My husband is another amazing Dad in my life! He is doing an excellent job with our kids and is instilling some of those great pieces of wisdom in them now too. He too, is a hard worker and brings a great balance of work and play to our family. He's always making decisions to better our family and take care of me and the kids. Beyond all the money 'stuff', he's all around just a fabulous Dad! He makes them a priority, has tons of fun with them and they know they are loved. They are bummed on the mornings they wake up and he's at work and do a little 'happy dance' when he comes home! ;)

Happy Father's Day to my two favorite Fathers!! :) I love you.

Just for kicks, I thought it'd be fun to share two other articles about Dads and Money today. Dave Ramsey asked his readers what advice they remember from their Dad's and some of their replies are in this article.  Then, LearnVest did a similar thing and their version can be read here.

Have a great day and enjoy spending time with your favorite father's today! :)

Things to Try

Alright! I've been coming across all kinds of great ideas lately. A blogging friend posted recently about handmade reusable snack/lunch bags and I fell in love! Luck for her, she won hers, and I was jealous! Ever since I've been wondering how I was going to get my hand on some of those!! ;) Of course, I could just buy them and there are ALL kinds online. But then I started adding it all up and if I'm going to use them regularly, I'd be spending quite a little bit of cash on them. So then I started looking into making them. It can't be that hard, right?! ;) My husband thinks I'm crazy for just considering the idea. Which means, I'll probably end up caving and buying at least a few. But there are SO many to cute styles and designs and shapes...it'll be hard to chose just a few! I'll keep you posted on how this one turns out. I've seriously been thinking about them for a while now, it's a bit obsessive, really! BUT, just think of all the benefits. 1. It's so much better for the environment (much less wasteful/trash). 2. Cheaper, in the long run, you'll probably save a lot of money on baggies. 3. Convenient. I just think of keeping them in my husband's lunch bag, how easy would that be to just refill them each night. Especially once I have to start making several lunches each night. 4. Organized. I'm envisioning (see, a bit obsessed) a theme for each person's lunch/snack bag. Each person will have their bags and it'll keep things nice and simple, easy to keep track of. Of course, they'll have to get a cute coordinating lunch sack to go with them too! ;)

My other idea was also from a blog! ;) Homemade yogurt. Again, just think of all the benefits. Cost effective, healthier, less wasteful. I'm noticing a theme, are you? I'm going to be doing some real official 'google' research in a bit to figure out how to do all of this without the machine. Apparently you can use a crockpot. I'll be sure to let you know and fully document the process--that is, if it's successful! ;) I'm going to be collecting baby food jars for it too. So, if you live near by and have some, please save them for me! This same blogger, also made popsicles out of it, gonna have to try that!

I just came across her blog and I'm really enjoying it. I think we'd be friends in real life too, since we both seem to be trying to do a lot of the same things! :) She makes homemade deodorant! Since I've become a bit of a homemade nut, I figure, why not? I might as well keep trying these things, right? ;) I've actually heard that there are some links to deodorant and breast cancer...

Garage Sale Recap

Last weekend, as we do most weekends in the summertime, we went garage saling. We came home with bookshelves for the kids bedrooms (which desperately needed to be replaced!) for $10 each! My husband got all sorts of random things for the garage, tools and such. I found some great winter outfits for our son for the winter for some where around $8. He has SO many summer clothes, but not much for this fall and winter, so I'll be stocking up this summer for him at garage sales! I got two Rachel Ray cookbooks for 25 cents each!

On our summer garage sale wish list:
-Bike for our son
-Dresser for the kids
-Bed sets for the kids (maybe)
-Clothes for the kids
-Pink car for our daughter (don't even ask...such a long story! haha!!)

Can't think of anything else right now, but I'm sure when we see it we'll know! ;)

A fun giveaway!

While browsing random blogs, I came across this awesome giveaway! It would be awesome to win!

Blog Hop!

I found some fun new blogs from this Blog Hop today! :)

An attitude of Gratitude

I just ran across this quote on another blog and it got me thinking. So, I'm sharing it with you too. Thankful for a lot today! How about you?

Not a Website Designer!

SORRY!! I seem to be having some serious issues on blogger right now. My posts are showing up strange and I have all kinds of random 'error' messages showing up too. I'm trying to figure them out, but I am not a web guru! So please be patient with me as I try to get these things OFF, but it'll all be on "bloggers" time frame, since I'm not the one actually fixing it. Hopefully for some of you, it's still showing up as it should!

Summer Fun

Make the most of some free fun all summer long with these fun ideas!

A great quote

I liked this thought when it comes to shopping, "It’s not how much you save, it’s how much you spend.  And what you get for your money." Angela, at The Grocery Shrink.

A little getaway

Last week we got to enjoy a little surprise getaway. My husband's boss offered him the opportunity to go to a training/conference in IL for a week, all expenses paid along with his full salary for the week. We had to make the plans with only about a 2 1/2 week notice, but we thought this was a great excuse to go see my sister who lives in Chicago too. We did have to pay for my plane ticket and our daughter's, but our son still flies free for a little longer! :) We found a great price. We knew that this trip would set us back a bit on our goals, but hopefully not too bad. And, we decided our family was in need of a change of scenery, so we went for it.

We set a strict budget for our spending there, which we did fantastic on! We (me and the kids) didn't have all our meals covered, but we still managed to keep our spending down pretty well by eating at inexpensive places, at my sister's apartment and eating leftovers from dinner for lunches.

We planned a budget to include money for outings for me to do with the kids while my husband was in meetings too and that was really helpful since we realized there was no pool at the hotel after arriving there! :( It's always nice to have some variety and new options to chose from the usual things to do around our town. The kids enjoyed a fun little play area near my sisters house, a small children's museum and a pool at the University of Illinois. All of which costs us less then $15/day!

It was a great week and turned out to be a fun getaway for all of us!

With summer getting started (even though this weather doesn't feel like it!) I thought I'd share with you some of the ways we've found to save money on family outings/trips/getaways that may come in handy for you too. Watch for a few of those later this week! :)

New Poll

If you look to the left side of the blog under my profile information, you'll find the next poll. Here is this week's question:

THIS SUMMER, WHAT BIG ITEMS ARE YOU MOST LIKELY TO SPLURGE ON?

Go ahead and vote! And you can always leave comments below if you have something to add to your answer. 

Poll Question

I was asked to expand on my opinion from the poll I posted last week, so here you go...

First of all, there were only 6 people who voted, so it's not like it's a big scientific experiment or anything, but I do think that it showed that most people tend toward not cutting much out of their budgets to save money. I'm no expert on this stuff, but I do think that it's possible this tendency tends to keep people from getting to their ultimate financial goals. Which gives me my next poll idea! ;) I'll post that soon.

Anyway, I think that if you asked people if they'd rather have a. more stuff, more dinners out, bigger vacations or b. financial security like an emergency fund, a good nest egg to retire with, etc.; they would chose the second option. Maybe not initially, but I don't think any of us don't want some financial security for our families. So, if that's true (which I don't know for sure, but would assume so), then it'll require more sacrificing them people are willing to make upfront. Which is sad and maybe why the results of the pole were what they were. It's hard to take things out of our lives that we are used to having, but in order to reach a bigger goal, then sacrificing is a requirement.

So, where do I stand? It's a little complicated of an answer, but the short version is B (everything that is not essential has to go). Which I did vote for! ;) BUT, if you know me and have been in my home, then you know we have 'extras' and we don't have only the 'essentials'. I do think that 'essentials' is a matter of opinion and hard to define. If I were to define it, it would be things that cost extra that aren't really improving our quality of life, which for everyone will be a little different. So an 'extra' for some may be a vacation, but for us that is worth the extra expense and improves our quality of life. In order to make that possible, we budget for it and make the best of the money we can set aside for those things. We also see having regular date nights as an essential, so we budget for that and make it fit our lifestyle. Something that isn't worth the money for us right now are things like phones with data plans and cable. They aren't BAD things (we may have them some day, but right now it'd cost us about $120-140/mo to add them) they just won't improve our quality of life enough to be worth the extra expense each month, we'd rather save that money for our vacations, as an example. We drive paid for cars, because again, we'd rather have money for other things each month then to have a car payment on a newer car. Remember, these are just OUR preferences and aren't anything I would look down on other people for having. For some, those things count as 'essentials', whereas something we'd chose to keep wouldn't be for them.

Back to the bottom line. I think that if people really looked at their expenses honestly and re-evaluated what  is really a quality of life expense and what is just a waste of money (essentially define their 'essentials') and made those things a priority in their budget, then they'd save money by eliminated the extras they really could live without. What I'm saying, is that people don't want to live without things they enjoy, but a lot of times we mindlessly add things to our lives that we think we should/need to have, when we really don't. The end result of taking some of those items out will get us closer to our goals sooner, and in the long run our choices will make us happier with our financial situation.

How about you? What do you think of the results of the poll or what I've said? Feel free to disagree and/or add your thoughts to this discussion.

 

Poll Wrap Up

Last week I posted a poll asking you how far you would go to save money for your family. The choices were: a. Only cut out a few things you can live without, which got 4 votes, 66%. b. Everything that is non-essential has to go, got 2 votes, 33%. The final two didn't get any votes, but were c. Bring on the reusable toilet paper, baby! (Which I can't understand why NO ONE would vote for! ;) The truth is, I didn't make this concept up, there are people who really do use cloth toilet paper.) d. I'd rather not eliminate things from my lifestyle. (I actually think there are a lot of people who fall under this category, but they probably aren't reading a blog like mine regularly! ;)).

I'll post a new one this week, so check it out and be sure to put in your vote!

Blogging Class

Yesterday morning I got to spend some time with a group of an older generation and teach them about blogging. It was a fun time! A friend of mine works with a company that helps support the elderly and aging by providing services for them as every day things become more challenging. As a marketing opportunity they've been giving classes throughout the area. She asked me if I'd be interested in sharing about blogging and how that could be something they could do. I wanted to share with them that there is so much wisdom and experience that they can share with us through their blogs and leaving a legacy or some history for their families. I hope some of them take the plunge and start their own blog! For the most part they were quite intimidated by the whole process, the internet and computers just scared them! ;) Maybe this got them thinking though...

I'm giving a blogging class this morning! :)

The psychology of splurging

If you are desperate for an excuse to splurge on something you have been eyeing, here's an article on how to do it well and stay on budget! :)