Wordless Wednesday- Beach
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Category Archives: DITL
5 Things Friday
- We are enjoying our mini vacation so far, one of the favorite things about this trip is that we are eating out most meals. Zach actually at all his breakfast this morning at IHOP.
2. Amanda decided at the last minute to join us for this trip and everyone is really enjoying having some quality time to spend with her. The funniest part is that they are “taking turns to sit beside her” but no one wants to sleep with her because she snores! 
3. We had planned to play Putt Putt today but the weather has not cooperated at all so instead we surprised the kids with a trip to Ripley’s Aquarium. They LOVED it..I am going to plan an entire “Wordless Wednesday” post with some of the awesome pictures that Matt took.
4. The water slide that is part of the outside pool at our hotel was open today and all three of the little kids were so excited to go down it. Unfortunately Zach ended up with a battle scar from it. I was so proud that he did go down a second time after hitting his head the first time. 
5. We have not even been down on the beach because of the weather but I did at least get a picture from the pool.
Yard Work
I am not a person who enjoys working in the yard, well except for mowing. As a mom, who can say no to an hour of uninterrupted quiet time? I do however, want to have a yard that is pretty and looks like I care. I really enjoy flowers at least looking at them. We are finally at a season in our life when we have the money, time and energy to attempt to beautiful the yard. We are also focusing on making our square foot garden not only productive but at least not an eye sore. Yesterday, we spent most of the day working outside, the biggest project was adding a “platform” to the square foot garden as well as getting it ready to plant in a couple of weeks. I am so excited that it turned out this well.
Next after twenty years, I decide to replace the brick chip with mulch on both sides of the house.
We also ended up replanting some grass up front and I did some rearranging of the flowers in the front bed. Finally, I replanted tulips and love my flower pot in front of the house.
I am exhausted and sore but very pleased with the results.
Five Things Friday 4/10/2015
So glad that Carla did this post today! So I “borrowed” her cute picture and will share my five things!
- The white van was treated to yet another set of repairs yesterday. A new heater hose and air conditioner compressor. This depleted our emergency fund by $450. I am hoping to be able to add a little bit back to the fund this month but even more so am praying that this is the end of repairs at least for a couple of months.
- I was driving the van to cheerleading last night and on the way home suffered an allergy attack. After a little bit of thinking, realized that it was most likely due to “dust” that had accumulated in the air condition system. This morning, Matt spent another $10 to replace the cabin air filters. I am so frustrated with this van at the moment.
- I did have a major success in saving for Groceries. Our menu plan called for Baked Potato on Thursday. I realized when getting out the potatoes that I still had about a fourth of bag of potatoes that were starting to spout. In order not to waste food, I filled the crockpot with potatoes, used the remaining ones after dinner to make mashed potatoes. One 2 cup set I will use for “shepherd pie” this weekend and the others (2) are frozen for later use. I also started a crock pot with “potato corn chowder” which will be a second meal for the weekend and then at least two additional meals in the future. So I have managed to cook a minimum of 5 meals in one day using crock pots and food on hand.
- I am working toward a goal of significantly lowering our grocery cost for the month. To accomplish this I want to stick to shopping at CVS and Aldi, no Costco trips. So far for the month, we have spent $38 on groceries. The goal is to spend less than $50, purchase some landscape items and plants for the square foot garden with another $200 and use the remainder to now cover the unexpected van expense.
- In NC on Saturday, the temperature is suppose to be in the low 70s and sunny so we are planning to spend the day working on the Square Foot Garden. I hope to post pictures of all the yard tomorrow.
Yard Sale Success
I have hinted for several weeks that we were preparing for a yard sale. I am excited and eager to announce that the physical yard sale actually took place this past Saturday. I actually began planning for this the first weekend of March. I am not at all new to yard sales. In fact, I remember travelling with my mother to a flea market as a child in order to bring in some extra money. Since becoming an adult, I usually participate in a yard sale either once a year or once every other year. For the past several years, I have been going to a small bank and setting up with our cheer gym. The standard that makes a yard sale successful has not changed over the year either. If I am able to bring home a profit of $100 then that is a very successful yard sale.
One new thing that I have never tried before was “online” yard sale. Basically this is a free facebook group., where you post a picture and description of the item, along with price and general area for meeting. I decided to only place 1-2 items for sale at a time. I also only arranged pick up and meeting in private messages and did not consider an item sold until the meeting was arranged. I was nervous at first due to the publicity of recent bad horrible stories from meeting arranged on craigslist and also some of the stories that I had heard about people just not showing up. I am excited to say that my experiences with this have been overall positive. I had one person come to what I thought was purchase an item but they looked at the item and decided they did not want it. I replaced this item for sale and in less than 2 hours had another person arrive and purchase the item. I also had one experience where I arranged to meet someone and they did not show up. Otherwise everyone showed up with cash in hand and it was the easiest way to sell items that I would consider big and I did not attempt to sell anything under $10 as I didn’t consider it worth the gas. Matt ended up doing some of the meeting during the day but even he will agree how easy and quick most were. I made around $400 just on the online part.
After the huge success via online selling, I decide to go all out with the advertising and not only pay for advertising in our local paper which cost $38 for 3 days, but also placed an ad on craigslist and on the site I use on Facebook. We also placed several signs on Friday night as well. I am so excited to announce that on Saturday we had a profit of $350 after covering the cost of advertising and two meals for us!
OVERALL YARD SALE PROFIT $750…………………..my most successful/profitable Yard Sale EVER!!!
So how are we spending this money. 1) Purchased a new stroller to use at Disney. 2)Purchased several gift items for the kids including Autograph books and a dress for Kendall to wear. 3) Purchased matching shirts from the Disney store to wear 4) Applied $400 toward our trip cost!
Easter
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To me this is the most important day of the year. I have the privilege this morning to be teaching the Beginner’s Children Church group which is the two year olds. I hope that they will begin to understand the significance of this day even in the smallest manner. I am using the Resurrection Rolls as the base of my lesson. I was not able to find a recipe that I really liked so I combined a couple including scripture to make the meaning as clear as possible. Do you believe?
Easter Eggs
In pictures…. but I will add this was the most I have enjoyed coloring the eggs. It was easy and not a lot of clean up!
And the final results….
The Cost of Vision
Eyesight is one of the most important things in our world. So it would also make sense that I would have a cost associated with it. However, I am coming to realize just how expensive it can be. Last Thursday, all three of the little kids had eye appointments. Lily and Kendall were scheduled for their yearly exam. Zach was scheduled at the request of our ophthalmologist, at the girls visit six months ago. It turns out that she wanted to monitor his eyes and she was right he indeed needed glasses and has the same eye condition as the girls, esotropia, but he also is very far sighted. After the visit, we came out with some news for each of the kids. Lily asked and was given permission to purchase contact to begin using. Lily is also in need of new glasses as her cheerleading pair is very tight and damaged and she recently broke another pair . Kendall was excited to learn that she no longer needs to patch to improve her weak eye but also needs both glasses for cheerleading and regular glass as well. Zach gets to join his sister with new glasses to be worn. Vision Works is currently offering a buy one get one free promotion which is why the wired arrangement of glasses. Cheerleading glasses need to be black plastic frames with plain lens while other frames where child’s choice and transition lens . Unfortunately, I made the decision to drop our eye insurance for this year but on a better note, I do have a medflex account just for this reason.
So are you wondering how much eyesight is costing….
Each appointment plus cost of refraction $115 x 3= $345
Zach two pair of glasses $309.93
Cheerleading glasses x 2 $99.00
Lily and Kendall glasses $289.93
Lily second contact appointment $60.00
Contact for six months for Lily $120
Total cost for vision $953.86 but well worth every cent in my opinion!
Playing in Dirt
That is how we spent most of this beautiful Saturday! Playing in the dirt! The temperature was around 65 degrees and it was sunny! I would call it a perfect Spring day in North Carolina!!
I started the day with a long list of small projects that needed to completed to make our yard at least presentable.
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Mix new dirt into square foot garden.(See above). Weed all three flower beds and place new mulch.Fix square foot garden where it was hit this winter.Drill holes in large planter and re-plant.- Move and straighten playhouse.
Place lime over wet area of yard.Mow and trim yard.Fix Matt’s van, (small leak).Fix cup holder in white van and add cup holder for Lily.Wash and hang to dry all sheets.-
Apply mulch to playgroundand then Preen It (this will prevent weed growth). Wash dog and all his bedding.
As you can tell we did accomplish a lot. The ground is simply too wet right now to get the playhouse adjusted, so hopefully in the next couple of week we can get this marked off the list. Applying the weed preventer, need to happen just prior to it raining so I am going to do this on Sunday in anticipation of rain late Sunday night or Monday.
This is one area that I will admit that I usually forget to budget for however this year, I did not. I had budgeted $100 for the yard, after using this I ended up pulling $25 from the yard sale profits to keep us even for this project. I am so excited to have this behind me and to not have to borrow money to complete. One of the ways that I ended up saving money was buying plants off the “clearance” shelves at Lowes. I ended up purchasing all but 2 of the plants from this area this year. I had great success with these last year as most of the time the plants are simply not blooming or missed getting water prior to being placed in this area.
Lily is a bit of a prissy girl and does not like playing in the dirt but because we were all outside, she was required to at least sit outside as well.
And finally a picture of the mulched beds and planter…
Paying for Disney
I talked about our projected budget for our Disney world trip in this post. A more interesting and better question is okay where do you plan on getting $7340 to pay for the trip. Today, I am going to answer that question to the best of my ability. I will be honest up front and tell you that we don’t have the entire amount figured out. Over the past couple of months I have been searching and looking and hopefully learning a lot. These are real numbers so feel free to help Fund me but if not I am confident that by November we will have the trip paid for.
At the beginning of the year Matt was able to gain a contract for 3 new small websites. The entire amount for these sites is being used to pay for Disney. When all three sites are complete and paid that provides us with our deposit of $1500. Next up Matt has started working in the cheerleading booster club to pay for most of cheerleading related expenses. I have a line item in our budget to cover these cost. Starting in March I am converting this line from cheerleading to Disney.$1600.
Our budget also currently has budget amount each month for gifts and clothing, We have discussed at length with the kids that we are not spending much on Birthdays this year in fact, I am planning to give the kids items for use at Disney for each of their birthday. This should add another $1600 to the fund.
I am paid on a bi-weekly schedule, this means that I receive 26 paychecks a year. I base our budget on 2 paychecks a month or 24 checks a year. By doing so, I will receive an “extra” check in the month of July. My plan is to place $1000 of this check to help to pay for Disney.
After doing the math, that still leaves $1640 to be paid. We already have planned an yard sale to help a small amount. Other plans include saving money from other areas of the budget and our goal is for Matt to grow his business in the next six months which should cover this additional expense.
One of the main reason I am so excited for this trip is that it will be entirely paid for prior to our arrival. We will be able to enjoy! Do you have any suggestions for helping to fund the trip?