Goals for the Week 2/26

Wow, it is Tuesday and I still have not made goals.  I think you are officially starting off on the wrong foot when you can't meet your goal to set your goals! 

Here is how I did last week.....

• Exercise five times, running at least twice.  E.P.I.C. fail!!!  I think I only exercised once.  Life has gotten quite busy!
• Complete two mystery shops....I'm taking my mommy out to dinner on one of these :)!  Check :) and I had a nice dinner with my mom! 
• Grade one class's papers.  Thanks to my volunteering position, where I wasn't busy, I was able to get this done plus almost an entire other set of papers!
• Vaccum the basement - it desperately needs it!  I only did this because it was on the list, but I did it!
• No spend week for me - this is more of a requirement than a goal.  I didn't do to bad, but it wasn't a no spend either.
• Juice or smoothies in the morning.  Check
• Post once during the week.  Thanks to having last Monday off, I was able to do this, otherwise I'm not sure I would have been able to do it.
• Complete one survey.  Check
• Read to the kids or have them read to me at least once.  I have been having A read to me a lot, but not C.
• Return clothes to Kohls and Loft.  I did it!!!!
• Finish my mother's valentines present....yes, you read that right!  This was another fail!  What kind of daughter am I!

Seeing as though I have a problem exercising during the week, I am really going to attempt to focus on that this week (So far I have already exercised twice).  Exercising will be my number one goal throughout the week.  Hopefully this will make a difference, because it is so warm & beautiful here right now it is a shame not to get out and enjoy it.  Lets see what else I have....

Health and Wellness

• Exercise 5 times and run at least once.
• Lift weights twice.
• Juice/Smoothies twice a day.

Kids

• Read with both kids at least once.
• Spend sometime on Sunday with each child doing something they would like to do.

House

• Clean and organize one area of my own choosing.
• Pay all bills and look at finances.  Set up a financial plan for March.
• Clean the bathrooms.
• Make one food item that can go in the freezer for a later time.
• Complete one survey and one mystery shop, with money to go into the gift fund.

School

• Grade two classes worth of papers.
• Write research plan.

That's all folks!  Have a great week!

Food Waste Friday

On Wednesday July 6, 2011 I decided to finally join The Frugal Girl and begin TRULY attempting to reduce our family's food waste and in the spirit of Mom's Plans I am guesstimating how much the food waste cost our family. 

This week went to the beans, garbanzo beans that is.  About a month ago I made a huge batch of garbanzo beans.  This allows me to have quite a few for some yummy homemade hummus and my hubby plenty to eat himself.  The bad news is we didn't eat enough of them and they went sour and I means S.O.U.R., totally nasty.  So quite a few are heading to the compost bin (2.00) along with one tomato that was free, one lime (.25), one orange or lemon (I can no longer be sure which it is.... .25) and a bit of leftover hummus (.50)

So, it looks like this week I wasted about $3.00 worth of food.  It pained me to throw out the tomato, that is just not allowed!  I hope you did well yourself this week!

A "New" Bedroom for about $100, Part I

We moved into our house close to three years ago and until recently hadn't done a thing with the master bedroom including our horrible yard sale furniture.  This is the first of two parts explaining how that all changed for right around $100 including getting "new" furniture.

We had been living with our atrocious bedroom furniture for way too long.  I wish I had a picture to show you of our furniture before the makeover, but since I don't here is the story behind it. 

My husband and I met in college and in his senior year of college (1996) his mother purchased for him a bedroom suite at a yard sale.  At that point, I am willing to venture and say, the furniture was close to thirty years old.  It is very much from the 70s.  To go along with the 70s theme it was also $70.  This included the two nightstands, the headboard, frame, mattress and box spring as well as the dresser.  He loved the retro vibe of it.  I felt a "bit" differently about the set that had an awful lacquer finish to it and screamed to be paired with orange shag carpet. 

Anyway, it was fine furniture for a male college student and it served him well.  However, it followed him into our marriage and has been with us through an apartment and three houses now and unfortunately it isn't in the guest bedroom - it is still in the master bedroom.  We did get a new mattress though :)! 

So, when my husband suggested we paint the furniture I saw it as my out.  This was my chance to get new furniture!  I had patiently been waiting (for 15 years) and once we painted the furniture (translate as - make it unusable) I could finally get the new furniture I wanted.  That isn't what happened though, I am now in love with our yard sale furniture and although I would still like to have new furniture I realize what I have right now is far better than dishing out the money for something new.  Here are pictures of how it turned out:

Before the makeover, it was a light oak with a lacquer finish, really shiny, with gold hardware and don't forget it looked like something out of "That 70s Show." 

We had to sand it, prime it and then we painted it the brown you see.  We also used the same hardware that was on there before.  We just spray painted it silver. 

It took about a day to do all of that, at the cost of about $50 and it really makes me wonder why we waited 15 years to do it.    It may not be new furniture, but I love the color and it was whole lot cheaper than purchasing new.

I will be back later in the week to tell you about how we finished the room off for under $100 total.

Goals for the Week

It was quite a busy week around the Simpler Life household....it wasn't very simple that's for sure.  But anyway let's see how I did in terms of goals.

• Complete research plan for work.  Well, I presented it, but when I got into creating there were some problems and questions that I just couldn't answer.  So, I did as much as I could.  What the heck, let's call it a success.
• Grade two class's papers.  I graded one, class's but not two.
• Cut both kids' hair.  Check, and the best job I have done to date (I'm not sure how much that is saying though!).
• Do our taxes.  Check!  We can't wait for that refund!
• Exercise five times this week and run two of those five times.  Fail on the five times and fail on the running.  I did get out a couple of times, but there was too much to do this week :(.
• Stick to a grocery budget of about $50 again this week.  I spent $60, Not too bad.
• Complete at least one survey for Pincone or Synovate.  Money to be deposited into Christmas fund. Check!
• Complete two BestMark shops and sign up for one additional shop if possible.  Money to be deposited into Christmas fund.  I did a phone call mystery shop and an oil change.  I loved the oil change because in the end I got a free oil change, plus earned $15. 
• Juice or smoothie for breakfast and lunch.  Check
• Read with the kid's at least once this week. Failure, can you believe it!?!  Probably one of the easiest on my list and I couldn't get it done!  I did have "A" read to me and he is doing so well!
• Cut back on sweets (so far today I haven't had any!).  I did pretty well here :)!
• Put up a post for "Going Green Tip of the Week."  Fail, I did not post at all during the week - Sorry!

Now onto this week.....

• Exercise five times, running at least twice.
• Complete two mystery shops....I'm taking my mommy out to dinner on one of these :)!
• Grade one class's papers.
• Vaccum the basement - it desperately needs it!
• No spend week for me - this is more of a requirement than a goal.
• Juice or smoothies in the morning.
• Post once during the week.
• Complete one survey.
• Read to the kids or have them read to me at least once.
• Return clothes to Kohls and Loft. 
• Finish my mother's valentines present....yes, you read that right!

Have a good week!

Goals for the Week

A quick review of last weeks goals.....

• Exercise 5 times this week and run one of those times at least.   Completed!!!!!
• Juice in the morning and smoothie for lunch throughout the work week. Completed!
• Make it a "No Spend" Monday - Friday.  I did spend a bit during the week, but overall I would call this a success!
• Only spend $50 at the grocery store on Friday. As above, not a 100% success, but I only spent $7 extra dollars and considering it could have been $125 I count that as a success.
• Clean up the ceramic pots on the deck that broke because I left them out in these low temperatures :(! I truly only did this because I didn't want to write on here that I didn't do it!  Public accountability!!!!
• Grade one class's writings.  Check!
• Oh, here is the kicker, eat only one sweet food item per day!!!!  If I fail, this will be where.  I believe there was some foreshadowing here, and this is my one and only fail and boy was it a big one.  Each day I woke up and told myself it was a new day and I could do it and each. and. every. day. I. FAILED.  Most days it was by more than one sweet too!
• Put one more post up here this week.  I actually put up a couple, lets keep this trend going!
• Complete one survey from either Synovate or Pinecone and put that money in our Christmas savings.  Completed.  I actually did one for Pinecone and one for Synovate.  The Pinecone one yielded our family 3 full size samples.  I'm not allowed to say more than that as part of the contract, but did you see the part about THREE FULL SIZE SAMPLES!!!!
• Complete one internet mystery shop for BestMark with pay to also go in Christmas savings. Only one, but I keep checking back for more and there aren't any.  I will be getting a $10 check soon and can add that to our Christmas savings. 

Now, for next week I would like to:

• Complete research plan for work.
• Grade two class's papers.
• Cut both kids' hair.
• Do our taxes.
• Exercise five times this week and run two of those five times.
• Stick to a grocery budget of about $50 again this week
• Complete at least one survey for Pincone or Synovate.  Money to be deposited into Christmas fund.
• Complete two BestMark shops and sign up for one additional shop if possible.  Money to be deposited into Christmas fund. 
• Juice or smoothie for breakfast and lunch.
• Read with the kid's at least once this week.
• Cut back on sweets (so far today I haven't had any!).
• Put up a post for "Going Green Tip of the Week."

Wish me luck, especially with the sweets!  Have a good week!

Food Waste Friday

On Wednesday July 6, 2011 I decided to finally join The Frugal Girl and begin TRULY attempting to reduce our family's food waste and in the spirit of Mom's Plans I am guesstimating how much the food waste cost our family. 

During my blogging hiatus I still worked hard to keep our food waste low.  Sometimes that worked and other times not so much, especially when we were in the late fall months of our CSA and we were getting lots of things I had no idea what to do with.  But my fridge is pretty well cleaned out right now and here are the nasties:

• Some veggies I had intended to use in a pastry and just didn't get around to making.  Yesterday, I decided to try them in some spaghetti sauce and it tasted down right foul!  So the veggies hit the compost and the sauce pictured went in the trash. The veggies were practically free, but let's say they cost $1 and the sauce that ended up tainted by the the veggies was $1.50.   
• I also had to trash some spaghetti sauce that had started to grow mold :(.  It was organic, which makes me doubly sad!  The cost of this sauce was about $3.00 (best guess!).
• All total I wasted about $5.50 - not so good, but I guess that is what happens when you have to throw away organic spaghetti sauce.

Have a good weekend!

Banana, Chocolate, Chocolate Chip, Muffins

We love chocolate around here and since we have moved to less processed food there hasn't been as much chocolate in our house.  Thankfully though these muffins fit the bill - mainly whole foods and lots of chocolate!  This is a really big batch, (more than double what is pictured) but sadly it only lasts about a week around here.

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees (since I use dark nonstick pans I only set it at 375) & grease your muffin tins.

Add the following ingredients together and lightly mix together:

• 4 cups flour (I use two whole wheat and two all purpose and/or mix some wheat germ in too.)
• 1 cup sugar (I often switch half of the sugar out with agave.)
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups of milk
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 1/3 cup applesauce
• 1/4 cup of cocoa powder

Once you have lightly stirred those ingredients add:

• 2-4 mashed bananas
• 1 bag of chocolate chips

Bake for 18-20 minutes and enjoy all week long!

Goals for the Week

So, I really like the idea that many bloggers have of making their goals public and I am going to join them and hope that I will be more accountable as a result.

• Exercise 5 times this week and run one of those times at least.
• Juice in the morning and smoothie for lunch throughout the work week.
• Make it a "No Spend" Monday - Friday.
• Only spend $50 at the grocery store on Friday
• Clean up the ceramic pots on the deck that broke because I left them out in these low temperatures :(!
• Grade one class's writings.
• Oh, here is the kicker, eat only one sweet food item per day!!!!  If I fail, this will be where.
• Put one more post up here this week.
• Complete one survey from either Synovate or Pinecone and put that money in our Christmas savings.
• Complete one internet mystery shop for BestMark with pay to also go in Christmas savings.

I will come back next week and let you know how I did.

I'm Back....Let's Hope for a Bit Longer this Time

Sorry for the absence...life just gets busy and when something had to give blogging was it.  I'll try to be better :)! 

So, what has prompted me to come back to blogging you ask?  It is the accountability of it.  Over Christmas we spent too much money....typical of us!  So, now we are trying to pay it off again.  Along with over spending at Christmas we also bought a third vehicle that came to us through family.  We thought having a van would be nice because we would finally have a vehicle that we could comfortably take more than 4 people in and for that purpose it has been fantastic!  However, as far as everything else goes it is looking more and more like a money pit.  When we decided to buy it we were well aware of this possibility.  We had done some research and found that some people absolutely loved the van and others were on the exact opposite end of the spectrum b/c it seemed like one repair after another for them.  But we were buying it from family and were getting a good deal on it and everyone really thought it was a great deal. 

So we laid out $3000 for the 2002 Chrysler van that had 70,000 miles on it.  Registration costs were about $500, then we had to pay for something related to the transmission which was another $400, and now there is something else wrong and we are looking at another $400.  We have also noticed that the DVD player doesn't work, the hatch will not always stay up and one of the automatically opening side doors has to manually be opened in order to get the automatic part of it to work (once you manually open it, it will automatically open for the rest of the ride, crazy huh!). 

A bit of explanation on why we didn't sell one of our vehicles when we got the van:

• We were afraid it might be the money pit we had read about and wanted to have a back up if we needed to.
• What we would have sold would have been the Honda and it is so beat up aesthetically and has 140K+ miles on it that we would not have gotten much for it.  So, now my husband drives it to work and is actually saving on gas mileage. 

So, now we have three vehicles and some Christmas credit card debt that amounts to about $5,500.  Thankfully, this should be close to paid off with our tax refund.  But, our refund will still fall a bit short.  Right now in order to quickly pay all of this off we are really focusing on our spending, which obviously got really out of hand during the holidays.  And that is why I am back to start documenting our financial journey again!

So, here is my first financial goal.....

• Between now and the end of February I only want to spend $166.50 on groceries. 

Although that seems like a small amount so far this month I have spent 333.50 on groceries.  This total includes the end of January and averages out to $100 a week.  I have stocked up pretty well, but I don't know if we will be able to do it.  Wish me luck!