Random Thursday Update

Posted on August 8, 2013 by Sheila

We leave for the beach in 9 days. I am probably more excited about that than the kids!
Purchasing only items we are out of has kept my grocery spending down to $60 so far. That includes a 3 month supply of toilet paper purchased yesterday!
Gas budget is low as well. We have only spent $100 so far for the month. I am hoping to stay way low with our trip this month!
Today, Haley Lily, Kendall and myself all had dental appointments. Haley and Kendall were cavity free. I was as well but am needing some gum work done. Lily has several major issues the first of which will be 2 teeth “wrapped” due to cavities. She also has several other areas of concern and most ~~like~~ definitely will need orthodontic work in the future
Lily also had an eye appointment today. Much better news there, she does not have to patch anymore but may have to again in the next couple of years. She was so excited as she is working hard to not cross her eyes without her glasses!
I have been working some longer hours this weeks so am definitely looking forward to some relaxing pool time if the weather cooperates!

Wordless Wednesday Swim Lessons

Posted on August 7, 2013 by Sheila

Budget Blurbs

Posted on August 2, 2013 by Sheila

I had a vacation day today so I am enjoying a long weekend. Yesterday was pay day as well as the beginning of the month so I thought this would be a good way to start the month.

Groceries- I am continuing to roll over the excess from June. We spent $324 on groceries in July. Our currently budget is $124 so that we will be even for the year. Today I spent $40 at Costco so that leaves up $82 for the rest of the month. The currently plan is to only purchase “needed” items until after our beach trip. So we will be making a huge stock up trip the first weekend in September as well as purchasing chicken from Zaycon foods. My goal is to end August even for the year!
Vacation- Because of my pay schedule, I will receive 3 paychecks this month instead of two. The plan is to use the middle check as our vacation money with a little pulled to offset our regular expenses. The budget is as follows:
Condo Rental= $800, half was a deposit with the remaining due the week we leave. Total expense $400
Gas- $200. One tank of gas each way and a third tank for the week at the Beach
Meals- I have prepared ahead the majority of the meals and already purchased a lot of the food. We are planning on eating out twice each way (total 4). With an additional three meals out at the beach, one of these meals will be from the gift fund as it will serve as my Birthday meal, a second will be at the treat of friends who are staying with us for half the week. So in reality we will be eating 5 meals out during the trip and purchasing some groceries as well. Total Budget is $500
Entertainment- My philosophy at the beach is we enjoy the beach most of the time. However I am putting in $100 for putt putt and or a trip to Magic Kingdom for the kids. A lot depends on the weather and we also may slide some of the grocery money to this as well.
Total Budget for vacation:$1600 with $400 already paid.
Clothing- I have been doing quite a bit of shopping over the past two weeks. I purchased bras for myself, swim suits for everyone but Matt, Pajamas for Lily and Zach, Shorts for Matt, socks and shoes for myself and Lily, and the three white t-shirts an one pair of socks that were on Kendall’s supply list. This should keep us well stock until the weather has a definite turn to cooler probably late October or early November.
Gas- I have lower our gas budget to $400 after examining our spending for the year so far.

My goals this month are simple keep groceries, gas and vacation as close to even as possible. I don’t think we will have any extra income this month but as long as we stay even I will be happy.

Wordless Wednesday

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Sheila

July in Review

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Sheila

Financial goals: July has been a more difficult for us month. My car has required two major repairs, in addition I have been sick which means extra expense as well. Looking forward to August, I will be receiving an extra paycheck this month. The plan is to use most of that for our vacation. I will be using some to offset regular expenses in order to stay on track. We are currently waiting on a new website payment to help make up some of extra money we spent in July. Overall we are currently about $800 short for the month. This money was taken from our emergency fund as well as other categories such as gas, clothing and gifts. I want to replace as much of this as I can in the month of August.

Pay off Lawn mower by March 2014, so no interest is charged. Regular payment only.
Pay off all outstanding debt except the mortgage by June– No new debt incurred! This is a major accomplishment considering the extra expenses of the month.
Emergency fund to $2000– None added, when Matt’s website income comes in it will remain at $550
Maintain a budget using a form of the envelope system – Still working well! It has really allowed me to track expenses this month.
Groceries: Spend $600 or less a month Well under budget this month at $325. We are still $275 over for the year but this is a great number at this point. Our plan is to only grab bare essentials and CVS deals until we return from the beach at the end of August. This should keep us at least on track for the month!
Gas- I am adding this category. The goal each month is to spend $400 or less for gas. I did reduce this amount by $50 but still managed to come in at $344 for the month. The remaining money was used for auto repair.

Blogging: Goal: 15 per month I have already scheduled a Wordless Wednesday post for tomorrow which means I have met this goal!!!!!!!!

Devotions: Goal is 5 a week Goal Met! I am really enjoying my morning time.

Weight: Goal to exercise 3x a week and to be down to 150 by December by losing around 4 # a month.. To be honest, I have not even address this goal this month. I have not gained the 10# I lost but there has been no progress. Repeat from last month…..

Overall July was a success for my goals. We are able to keep our heads above water even when thing happen! I am very pleased this month.

Sick Day

Posted on July 28, 2013 by Sheila

This is one of the rare occasions that I can remember that we have missed church due to illness. I went to Urgent Care on Friday afternoon to confirm that I have a strep and sinus infection. I was given an antibiotic and definitely are on the up side. Kendall developed a runny nose on Thursday and add a fever on Saturday but after a trip the doctor, it is a virus. Lily has been tried, complaining of a “sick stomach” and this morning is sneezing and coughing. Zach, who doesn’t like to be left out, threw up last night several times. I think that it was a case of eating too much popcorn at the movies yesterday but I really would not want to be wrong on this account so we are all home from church today. Matt was asked to play drums several months ago and need left around 7:30am to go practice. So just how are we spending our sick today. The kids are enjoying play dough. I really dislike play dough however we have a huge bin of play dough and toys to go with it. This morning I pulled out a huge sheet and let them play, with the rule that all the play dough has to stay on the sheet so I can take it outside and dump afterwards. So far the kids have enjoyed playing for the past two hours! I have been using this extra time to catch up online, and have cleaned out the kitchen pantry. We are planning on no shopping for groceries until after our beach vacation, so I spent about 45 minutes re-organizing and sorting out the pantry. We have plenty of food but honestly I was not sure what was in there so at least now I have a clue, but seriously who needs or can use 3 boxes of Bisquick and 5 boxes of corn bread stove top stuffing?

In other shopping news, yesterday I was able to grab several good deals on-line. First, Old Navy had a $5 swim suit sale, I was able to combine that with free shipping for over $50. I spent $53 and ended up with 1 suit for Kendall, 4 suits for Lily, 2 suits for Zach next year and 1 complete suit and an extra set of bottoms for myself. Next, I located a great deal for bras at NOMORERACK. I hope the quality is as good as the sheet set we ordered several weeks ago.

Cooking/Budget Thursday

Posted on July 25, 2013 by Sheila

July has turned into a very rough budget month for us. My car has required two larger repairs, one we were able to fund with money we had saved; however the second forced us to dip in our emergency fund. The bright spot is that we had the Emergency Fund to us. We have done fairly well in the areas of both gas and groceries. In our gas fund we have $144 remaining. In groceries, we have only spent $300 but because of the huge amount we were over in June, I would like to keep this capped at this amount. Looking to the week ahead, we should have no extra expense and plan to eat our of our freezer and garden until our beach trip in 3 weeks.

We are planning to spend a week at the beach in August and I will post a detailed budget for that probably in the next week or so. One of the ways that we are able to afford this trip is we will be eating in the majority of the time but in order to make it a vacation we need to plan ahead so no one has to spend hours in the kitchen cooking. I spent most of my day today, cooking for our trip. I have frozen all the meals I prepared in throw away containers so that we will not have to bring anything back.

So now to the cooking part. I started with a bag of chicken quarters in the crockpot this morning. I was able to make 2 chicken casseroles to freeze (one for the beach) in addition to 2 bags of shredded chicken to be used for other meals. I also will be freezing between 10-15 bags of chicken booth for future use as well. Next I prepared a baked Ziti, for the beach. I have also made and frozen a dozen muffins in addition to the remaining dozen for breakfast in the morning. Finally, a pot of chili with some frozen for our hot dog meal at the beach. In addition I was able to cook lunch for everyone and dinner for our family in addition to supplying a meal for a family in our church. I am feeling quite accomplished right now and very happy to make one major item off my to do list!

Wordless Wednesday-Late 4th of July

Posted on July 24, 2013 by Sheila

We did have some sparklers before going to bed on the Fourth of July. I had forgotten to post these until I was sending pictures from my phone!

Random Thoughts- Catch Up Time

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Sheila

The last several weeks seems to have flown by in a blur. I am enjoying a “vacation” day today so I can catch up on several things.

Last week included 4 swim team practices, 2 board meetings, tumble practice and cheerleading practice all occurring prior to Thursday.
Our county swim meet was on Saturday, ribbons were given for the top 7 places. Lily received one for a relay team. We are most excited because Kendall reduced her swimming time to 1:12 from 3:54. Zach is planning on swimming next year! Both girls enjoy swimming and it is an excellent way to keep them active in the summer.
This week our church has Vacation Bible School each morning from 9 am-12 noon. Haley is teaching the 3-year-old class and Matt is in charge of games. Today, I was able to go, hang out and help for most of the morning.
Our square foot garden is growing awesome this year. For the last several weeks, we have enjoyed fresh cucumbers, green peppers, squash and starting last week tomatoes. I am not sure how much longer the cucumbers and green peppers will continue. The tomatoes are eaten regulars so I may need to expand that next year to be able freeze some for the winter. We have several watermelon and cantaloupe growing, we can’t wait to eat these.
Using fresh veggies along with some purchased fruit have made for several quick and easy meals this summer. The kids love eating the cherry tomatoes and they never last longer than a day after they are picked.
We had to dig into our Emergency fund last week to repair a fan in my car. Because this fan was not working the A/C did not work. Black leather seats, 90 plus degree heat with only 2 functioning windows means without A/C I was not driving it anywhere.
I attended a planning meeting yesterday afternoon, so hopefully our meeting schedule is empty for at least a month.

How I Spent My Saturday

Posted on July 20, 2013 by Sheila

This morning we had the county swim meet. Lily continues to swim hard and improve each time. Kendall did her best ever by jumping right in and swimming. Zach says that next year he is swimming! Let’s hope so..