Spending Money Saving Money

Sometimes I am sure that I am spending more money by trying to save money. I hate paying full price for anything now days and it is even harder to pass up a good deal. I set a $75.00 a week grocery budget for my family several months ago. We were doing great until I started to lose steam. It is tough work following the sales ads, clipping coupons and reading money saving blogs. I have been busting our budget for the past two months now.

We made a trip to our local Big Lots this morning. It is relocating. Everything in the store was thirty percent off and I had a coupon for an additional twenty percent off of that. Can you picture me sprinting to the van this morning, three babies in tow?

I slowly browsed every aisle. I only purchased things we will need in the next few weeks. I resisted the urge to stockpile for the next decade. I also picked up a Christmas gift for mom and for the baby. $37.00 well spent.

I decided that today I would clean out the fridge and reorganize the pantry. I have had enough wasting food and wasting money. The holidays are coming up and money is tight. Time to get back on the wagon.

Success As A Stay at Home Mom

Today is  day six of my 30 day goal to a more efficient house hold. My husband is on shift and grandma has gone home. I am here alone with the twins and the baby. I'm tired, I have a sink full of dirty dishes and the girls are whining for my attention. I can't help but wonder what makes a successful stay at home mom? Did my children laugh more today than they cried? Did I teach them something? Did I say please and thank you when I spoke to them or did I simply nag them to say it? Did I roll my eyes when the baby cried? It was easy to measure my success as a Soldier. It is much more difficult to know if I am doing a good job as a wife and mother.

It is so easy to take a day for granted but days turn to weeks and weeks to months. My tiny NICU babies are walking, talking opinionated toddlers and my dream of a baby is a the chunky little man sitting on my living room floor.

I Need More Sleep

One of the first things I need to do to start getting my house in order is to reestablish a bed time for the girls. I have a seven month old but he isn't the one giving me trouble. He goes to bed at 8:30 and sleeps nearly five hours before he gets up to eat. The girls are a different story. Abby figured out how to open the doors about a month ago. We have been struggling to get them to bed ever since. We will follow our nightly routine than wait for them to pop their little heads out 50 times before they finally settle down. Our new goal is to go to bed at 10:00. Hopefully they will go to sleep since the house is dark and quiet.

I am sure we will miss our movie and cuddle time alone on the couch but it will be worth it in the end. I am exhausted. They have been staying up until 11:30 than sneaking down and crawling into our bed at 2:00 in the morning.

So how was our first night of Mission Get Some Sleep...... Exhausting.We cleaned up, got ready for bed and said our good nights. The girls snuck down stairs 4 times!! Oh well walking up the stairs counts as my exercise for the day right?

 

Yes This is the before picture

 

I am approaching my goals one small task at a time. Today we organized the girl's bookshelf and took all the big girls toys out of the toy box downstairs.

I took out all of the magazines and left 10 books for the girls to read. The plan is to change out the books every month. 

Oh yes and we went to the costume store and looked at Halloween stuff!!

30 Days To a More Efficient Household

I making the commitment today to make my home a more efficient household in the next thirty days. I have been feeling a little overwhelmed and tired. I find myself scrambling to fix dinner, putting the kids to bed without reading them a bedtime story and over all neglecting the important things.

It all started a few months ago. I started creating websites online in hopes of making a few extra dollars. I have to admit I'm addicted to Squidoo but it went from being my creative outlet to my escape from reality.

My husband and I had been planning a vacation for the girls' third birthday for nearly a year. It wasn't a big vacation but money has been tight so we were pinching our pennies and making plans. I'm sad to say that our vacation was a flop! What does this have to do with our household. Well. I couldn't help but feel defeated. I started dedicating more and more time to the computer.

I got this crazy idea that if I made a little extra money making websites that life would be easier to manage.

My mother said something to me that made a lot of sense. She said " If you can't be happy with what you have than you won't be happy with more". Wow!! what an eye opener.

My goals for the next thirty days:

1. Spend more quality time with my children and less time on the computer
2. Get more fresh air and exercise
3. Organize and baby proof the house before the holidays..... the baby is crawling it needs to be done.

Today is day 1 of a healthier, happier home.

 

The baby sat up today for the first time!

I took the time to make cookies with the girls.