2 Samuel 22:29 You, Lord, are my lamp; the Lord turns my darkness into light.
Wordless Wednesday- Christmas Tree
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Category Archives: Christmas
5 Things Friday
- Matt and Zach are planning to finish up the gazebo on our brand-new back deck tomorrow. We purchased the gazebo back in July during prime days. When we started to assemble, we realized that. We were missing a box need to finish the top. It has taken almost a month to get the new material needed. I am very hopeful that this project will be completed tomorrow.
- One of the things that is suggested is to check to see if you can reduce any of your subscriptions/ regular bills. Our internet service has been with Spectrum for more than 10 years, I am thinking it is closer to 20. Our cost increased by $20 in the month of November. Matt was able to locate, and we should be switching to a different provider in the next week. This should save us approximately $20 a month for the next 24 months. The biggest hurdle is that we will loss access to our main email accounts. I am hoping to spend some time tomorrow while the guys are working outside and starting changing emails to a free account, we should have access to forever!
- We are continuing to experience the warmest November that I can remember! The high today was 79 and the low was 64 which is the average high temperature. I think we will be back to more average temperatures by the end of next week.
- Monday is Veteran’s Day. In the past this has been the day that I start with Christmas decorating specifically my snow village. Because of our current travel schedule, I don’t think I am going to put the village up this year. My current plan is to put out my Disney village stuff, one large Disney themed tree and the kitchen sink will hold a rod of Christmas ball ornaments.
- I dislike daylight saving time. The time change has been difficult for me this year!
Saving on Saturday
Today the focus was on using what we have! We headed out really early for Braxton’s ballgame. I did not want to stop and purchase breakfast, so I made a German pancake and a package of sausage links from the freezer. For lunch, I made meatballs and lil smokies in the crockpot. And for dinner, I added sour dough waffles.
We also finished taking down all the Christmas decorations. I absolutely LOVED having the curtain rod with ornaments over the kitchen sink. In fact, I liked it so much that I decided that I needed to purchase a curtain to go on the rod. However, when I found my bag of Valentine’s items, I decided I could use some of these items and hold off buying a curtain. I do love the way it turned out.
I also went ahead and decorated the sign outside again with things we already have! It also turned out as well.
Total spent today was $20 for entrance into the game.
Every little bit counts!
Merry Christmas
Christmas Celebrations
As you can see below, we have been celebrating Christmas several times already this year!
First we hosted a Christmas Dinner..
Next was a “traditional Chinese lunch with friends.!
Finally Christmas Eve at my parent’s house… food, fun and Rook of course!
Oh yea in between lunch and Christmas Eve, we took family pictures, here is a sneak peek.
5 Things Friday
- It is the Friday before Christmas. Christmas is on Monday. We have exciting plans for every day between now and then. Tomorow, we are hosting a dinner for friends. Sunday is Christmas Eve services at church as well as my family Christmas.
- I have spent most of the day working on the dishes for the dinner. The kids have helped especially with the cleaning. We tried something new and I had everyone come in the kitchen, pick a recipe and then assembly. It worked super well! We got 5 casseroles assembled in less than one hour!
- The kids requested and got to open one present tonight after dinner. Kendall is the happiest with her new journaling Bible ESV version. Lily loved her present of makeup brushes until she saw Kendall! Zach is confused. He opened a double pack of baseball for a pitching machine that he does not have.
- I am planning to get most of the breakfast items prepared ahead for Christmas morning. We are going to plan to breakfast all day along with some leftovers. I do want to clean out my refrigerator and not let food go to waste.
- We leave for Florida in 5 days. My mother, Amanda and Braxton will be joining us on this trip. We will spend 4 days in Florida including a day at Disney Spring and another Christmas celebration with Haley and her family!
Wordless Wednesday – Christmas Decorations
This is probably my favorite thing!
Wordless Wednesday- Snow Village
January in Review
January is always a slow slow month for us! In recent years it has also been a expensive month. I started the year working on the pantry challenge. I have been mostly success with this and I want to continue to use up alot of the items we have. I will be buying items we are totally out of so but I plan to continue with limited meat and vegetable purchases until at least the end of February. Swimming has been the main event of the month! I am glad these five weeks are behind us!
Groceries- Budget = $975. Goal Met! We spent $218 including stocking up on Diet Cokes and our Amazon subscription order! I would like to keep the spending under $250 for February as well but I know I have a Costco trip so is this even realistic? A bright spot is that we have not needed to buy eggs this month. We are currently getting 2 eggs per day. This has been just enough and I look forward to more and excess in the coming months!
Auto/ Gas. Goal -= $600. This does include any traveling as well. This month we are under budget just barely at $539.55. We did some extra weekly driving for swim meets.
Blogging- 15 post per month. GOAL MET! This is post number 15 and I am not cheating and back dating either!
Exercise- Does tripping and falling count for the month.. Nope then the answer is NONE.
Expenses: This month did contain a few unplanned for expenses. First was the washer. Our 14 year old washer died and we ended up replacing with a new washer for $800. I am hopefully that it will help decrease the energy we are using. Another big expense was we decided to put metal on the outside of the Beetle building. Most of the expense came from money that was designated for the Beetle but another $117 was needed. Finally a HUGE expense this month was our electric bill. This is officially the highest amount we have ever paid $345. This include the extreme cold at Christmas along with the camper.
Overall not a bad month but hopefully we have gotten some spending under control!
5 Things Friday- Final Friday in 2022
- The extreme cold last week caused a little bit of panic for us. The automatic closing house vents that we purchased 18 months ago have started to fail. Meaning that we had 3 or so that did not close at all and another 3 that did not close completely. Fortunately for us, our pipes did not freeze under the house, but we could feel a significant difference in the floor temperature. We decided to go ahead and replace these. The cost is not the issue as finding daylight hours to complete the project is.
- We have never been entirely happy with the very expensive sink faucet that we purchased and installed when we moved the kitchen sink. It has started to become difficult to use, setting off our breaker on several occasions and requiring some engineering in order to continue to use. Another decision was made to go ahead and replace it as well. We did decide to go with the low-tech option. Matt was able to install this in one evening.
- Positive news from the blast of cold air, although both of our water barrels frozen neither cracked so we did not need to replace either of these.
- Our chickens also survived the cold. We ended up adding some additional bedding and a separate water bucket which needed to be emptied and filled every day but otherwise they appear to be doing great! The price of eggs has jumped to 4.49 a dozen so I am very hopeful that come March we will not need to purchase eggs!
- After testing positive for the flu a week ago, my goal for this weekend is to get Christmas decorations put away, finish up some canning projects and make a couple of meals for the weeks to come!