Money Saving Challenge

Hello all! I hope you are all having a fantastic new year! I have been loving having the week after Christmas off – getting started on some organizing projects, hanging some artwork I made for the girls’ rooms.

Today I’m here with a bit of a different post. My cousins over in Ireland did a weekly money-saving challenge and managed to save a huge chunk of money over the past year. I found a similar one on Pinterest  and thought it would be fun to see if I could stick to it and save up some cash. I don’t have a plan for what to spend the money on, I’m just excited to save it up!

The challenge that I found said that by saving $1 the first week, $2 the next week, and so on until by the last week of the year, save $52 for a grand total of $1378.00 saved! This sounds like a great plan, but I thought I needed to make a little tweak. Rather than having to save $49, $50, $51 and $52 in the month of December (prime Christmas present buying time), I decided to switch it up and work backwards for the 52 weeks. So this week, I’ll be putting $52 into my savings canister, next week it’ll be $51, and so on.

For me, the trick is going to be NOT dipping in to the piggy bank when I think I “need” to. So, I scoured the house and found a not-in-use container with a lid, grabbed my trusty hot glue gun and some wrapping paper and got to work making it sealing it up and making it pretty.

I think it turned out alright, I’ve got my savings container and my list of deposit amounts in a kitchen cupboard (because that’s where my purse ends up most nights) and I’m ready to start building my little nest egg.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope I’ve inspired you a little today!

Simple Living Lesson # 7 – Time

Anyone who knows me knows that I L-O-V-E my lists. I create a list every week of our menu, our to-do’s, and our activities. Recently I set up a planner for my little blog, to help me plan posts and what projects I have in the works. If you know me, you probably also know that I am the Queen of Over-Scheduling. I think that I am physically incapable of saying no to people.

photo source

This week’s challenge was examine how I spend my time. I had to examine which relationships I need to spend more time on, and what I could do to make the biggest impact on my time, my happiness and my peace of mind.

Obviously the relationship that means the most to me and makes me the happiest is my relationship with my husband and with my sweet little girls. In order to make sure that we can spend the time we have together doing the things we love, I need to make time for just us.

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to learn how to and actually practice saying no. I find myself booking our weekends full of events and parties and plans. The plans are for fun and exciting family things, but sometimes I feel like it’s just too much packed into two little weekend days. We don’t get enough time to just be ourselves, with each other.

I know that the only thing standing between me and being able to live a simple life is, well, me. Sometimes I need a reminder that time should be spent with those you love, doing things that make us happy. In that vein, I’m planning a day out, just the four of us - a snow day, ice skating on an outdoor, mountaintop pond and some yummy hot chocolate. I can’t wait.

How do you spend your quality time?

2013 Resolutions and Goals

Welcome 2013!! Although 2012 was a wonderful year filled with fun, family and adventure, I am looking forward to the new adventures we will take this year.

Do you make New Year’s Resolutions? Last year was the first year that I made some resolutions and actually stuck to them. I resolved to learn to run. And I did. I ran. After nine months of training, the hubs and I ran our very first half marathon!! Funny that it took nine months to train, because that race was just about as painful as a pregnancy and childbirth!
I can happily say that this year I do not need to resolve to exercise more. I am committed to my twice weekly spin classes and three times weekly boot camps, and I love them! This year my resolutions are going to be tough, for me anyway.

Hopefully by putting my resolutions up here I’ll work a little harder knowing that the blogiverse is watching! So far we are almost two weeks into 2013 and I have been doing fairly well with my resolutions.

1. Take a multivitamin. Every day. When I made this resolution, I promptly went to the medicine cabinet and grabbed out the women’s multi-vitamins. Then I checked the expiry date. January 2011. I guess I should have figured since they were prenatal vitamins and my youngest child is almost FOUR! Since then I picked up a new package of vitamins, and now religiously take a multi-vitamin, plus vitamins D, C, and a B Complex.

2. Stop swearing. I’m not gonna lie, I have a potty mouth. It’s bad. There are some really bad words that I say a LOT. I am on day eleven of trying my super-duper very best to stop with the bad language. I’ve taken to given my hand a smack when I slip and let a bad word out. It’s working a little, but I still have a long way to go.... perhaps this resolution will take as long to accomplish as the learning to run took in 2012.

3. Learn to say no. This is probably going to be harder to conquer than the bad language! I am famous for over committing myself and my family to four, five even six parties or events on one weekend. I do it all the time!

OK, now that the resolutions are out there for the world to read, it’s time to establish some goals for 2013!

Photo taken by the amazing Alana Joy Photography

1. I am going to try to consciously spend more quality time with my family. I am extremely lucky to work part time and would love to continue to do so, but I need to spend the extra time that I have with the girls playing games and lying on the floor with Lalaloopsy dolls and Hello Kitty. I am too quick to pack the girls up and cart them along with me to do whatever I want or need to do instead of intentionally spending time playing. So there, I need to PLAY more.

2. I need to make more time for my amazing husband. Without (much) complaining, he gets our little household up and running in the mornings while I’m at the gym. He brings the girls to school every day and oh yeah – he does ALL the laundry. He’s great, and I need to find a way to spend time with him. My husband works an afternoon shift, and we only see each other from 7:30-8am in the mornings and from 10:30 until whenever I fall asleep at night. I need to actually schedule dates for just the two of us. We never go out just the two of us, so I’m hoping that 2013 can be the year of the date!

3. I’m going to keep on keeping on with my exercise, but try to make better eating choices. Hopefully I’ll be able to add more vegetables to the meals I make for the family (if only I could bribe Miss A to eat some of those vegetables!!).

OK, I’ve been rambling on long enough now. Thanks for reading this insanely long post!! I hope that if you made resolutions that you are successful!! 
 
All the best in 2013,