Happy Thoughts

So I had a couple of downer weeks. Who cares? I had a pretty good excuse considering my house is revolting.

Turns out the scale cared. I avoided it while Carb loading on comfort food. Besides how much damage could two weeks do?

PLENTY!!!

Turns out all the weight I worked so hard to loose over the last 2 ½ months. Well it found me again – in only two weeks. No-Way! So I’m back to square UNO! I was ahead of Smiley in the Accountability Wager now I’m about 4 lbs behind. UGH!

My vice – Stress! I’m an emotional eater and I let the emotions of finances get to me. It was my biggest baddest bump since I started the whole Healthy Life stuff thingy around two years ago.

Kind of got me thinking about one of my favorite movies…

Wendy: You just think happy thoughts. They lift you into the air.

Hook: Alas, I have no happy thoughts.

Wendy: That brings you down!

Me: And in my case, if your down, you weigh a ga-zillion more pounds than if your light on your feet and happy. I've been more like Hook for a couple of weeks and my kids will agree with all my unpleasantness.

I really need this whole Thankful Heart Month and it has helped. Kind of makes me shutter thinking where I’d be without it. Give me Happy Thoughts!

So I'm happy to report that I met with my Young and Gorgeous Counselor this week and am pretty sure that I can jump start the whole Accountability to the Max thing back to life.

Bring on the Happy Thoughts. No I'm not giving up and I'll track every crumb of food between now and the end of the year. I will make my dreams come true.

In other Fawndear news - No thrilling before and after pictures.

More like before and after tidy pictures. I now realize that I need to find a new home for the T.V.

The Piano would look much better without the big black thing on top of it. I need to work on shelf clutter too. As well as Floor clutter.

It might still get really messy after just a normal hour of my kiddo’s in there. But there are reasons for spaces and I’ll try and keep them task oriented.

From the picture you can see I moved my sewing station out of the dining room and set up my Elf Station in the family room so I could keep a better eye on the munchkins while I’m working.

I’ve lined up all my $1 day thrift store sale finds (sheets, slip-covers, curtains, and tablecloths), and they are more than ready for me to turn them into nightgowns for my girlies, a Christmas Tree Skirt or two, aprons, and a few other odd and end gifts. Can I tell you I’m Too-Excited about the whole thrift thing.

So I’ve got a new goal – Christmas in $100 or less. Don’t know if it’s possible but I’m going to try hard. The only thing I’m not including is special food for Christmas Dinner and postage to mail gifts to family. Because honestly, I expect postage to cost more than what I’m spending to make the gifts in the first place. (Sorry I’m so cheap this year guys!) So I guess I should rephrase and say Christmas Gifts in $100 or less. Wish me luck!

So my Christmas Countdown for this week:

1. Finish presents that will need to be mailed.

2. Start working on all the sewing crafts.

3. Focus on Happy Thoughts!

Before and After the Insanity!

Insanity has been threatening to claim me this week. I happy to report that it didn't, but it was not from the lack of trying.

Remember last week when the Dishwasher and Dryer Broke on top of needing a major roof repair after I gracefully stepped through it. Well, I’m honestly laughing (yes, I am) because Mr. Murphy is piling up the home repair goodies on us. And it seems to me that he has very expensive taste because he is attacking the most costly sections of our home.

Could we possibly be living in…

The Monster House?

So this week, we investigated the Dishwasher problem and discovered some major wood-rot in both the floor, subfloor and on some support beams under the kitchen. In the spirit of my Thankful Heart Month - Let me stop right here and say that I’m Thankful that I will be the recipient of a new kitchen whether we were ready for one or not.

Then Prince Erik discovered that the freezer door was left open and this was the result...

Again I’m Thankful for a great husband who volunteered to defrost the old beast for me. It needed to be done and now it is. Check-off that To-Do!

So this morning my hubby went out to the garage to see how his frozen job had done over night, when he noticed that it was raining over the food storage. Raining indoors – that is. Seems we have sprung a new leak somewhere under the Master Bath Tub. Alas - No more baths. O.K. so who opened the flood gates because this is beyond ridiculous.

With that in mind – and it STILL being my grateful heart month – I’m thankful that our water bill will be smaller for the foreseeable future and that sometime after we fix the kitchen I will be the recipient of a new section of my Master Bathroom. Wish our favorite plumber didn't live two states away.

Wow, I feel like I just won the lottery in Lemon Houses.

Needless to say, we sat down and had a hard look at finances and I honestly shed a few tears and maybe walked around like a zombie for a few hours to boot. It isn’t anything we can’t handle but it will require that we live the whole Month of Needs Lifestyle for the next umpteen months to be able to cover these new expenses. I’m also looking at ways that maybe I can pitch in a couple of pennies here and there. You know I have the hardest time with budgets. They rank right up there with the taboo words like diet and goals. I have dreams instead. And I’m dreaming and praying that everything will work out. I know it will because God doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle – Right?

That being said, I heard somewhere that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. So I'm trying several new things with money in an effort to gain control over it. I'm shoving the credit and debit cards into cold storage and experiementing with the cash system. And no you won't get a bucket-load of cash off me should you decide to rob me, so don't get any ideas. I just think that I'll be able to have a better grasp of the whole in-and-out cashflow stuff if I see it before my eyes.

Christmas will be very green this year as I’m making most of it. I’m set on what I need to finish for my little girls (Would love some suggestions on what I could make for electronic craving teenage boys). I'm still excited as all get-up about the excuses to be creative.

I had a great day yesterday and was able to finish getting my front yard ready for winter.

Princess, and Lea and our neighbor Ethel’s Daughter helped for a solid couple of hours, raking and pushing leaves, and washing sidewalks, while I mowed the lawn. So I'm thankful for their help because they volunteered to do it without a word from me.

I loved every moment spent outside. It’s my environment. Even saw some of my friends Bambi and Faline pass by within a dozen feet or so while we were out.

Another great thing about the week was that I put the Halloween decorations away and cleaned up my costume sewing mess in the dining room. So here’s the customary before and after pics.

So the before was really the aftermath of our Wizard of Oz costume tornado hit!

And After…

I know a bit simple but I’m digging simple right now.

The best and most wonderful thing about the past week was Princess.

Hope and I spent the day at Children’s Hospital with Princess undergoing tests as a follow-up for a condition discovered last year. A condition, which could have meant surgery, if not resolved. She had to be partially sedated for one of the tests which was hard to watch because it turned her into a glassy-eyed slobber girl. The equivalent of someone so drunk they can’t walk. It seemed to effect her more than the normal kid and took an hour longer than normal to wear off.

Hope, meanwhile, had the nurses eating out of her hand (thank goodness), but if I ever have to go again, I’m getting a sitter. Don’t know what I was thinking when I decided to take her with us?

Well, the tests were all very positive and her chances of a full recovery are splendid. No surgery needed! So we are super-duper Thankful that Heavenly Father has helped heal her little body.

Can I just say that I’m extra Thankful for all of the many blessings and miracles of Health that our family has had bestowed upon us in the past two years. It really gives me hope that we will handle the all our difficulties be they finincial, or mental.

So my heart is still happy because it's still Thankful!

I Spoke Too Soon!

Due to the apparent collapse of anything financially sound in the world, among other things, I’m sad to announce that Christmas is going to be postponed this year. Sorry big red fellow.

KIDDING!

So here I was being a holiday pro-active little mom, checking off my Christmas To-Do List by hanging lights yesterday; When my words came back to haunt me. You know the one’s where I said last week, 'Because if I really am cursed then the repairs will pile up faster than the savings.'


Why? Why? Oh why do I tempt fate that way?

Maybe it’s because this was the first week in seven where I actually gained weight instead of lost it. There should be a warning on roofs that say. “If you’re a Gi-Gantor Mom – Stay Off.” I knew where the leaky part of our roof was. My husband put black plastic over it. The wind loosened it up a bit and so I was going to go and lay it flat again when lo and behold I decided to have a Twilight Bella moment and...

‘My Foot Fell Through the Roof’!!!

Luckily the drywall on the ceiling stopped the rest of me from following after. But I don’t think we can leave a hole a foot wide in the roof until we have enough money to repair it.

Good-bye Disneyland, Rose Bowl Half Marathon, Christmas! The Money Grinch came early this year. The last time we priced getting a new roof it was $14,000.

I won’t kiss Halloween good-bye because I’ve mostly purchased everything I need to make the costumes.

Ya know – There is no way I’d cancel Christmas. Even if I didn’t have two pennies to rub together I could make magic out of nothing given the chance. You’d be amazed at the Trash to treasure blings I could come up with on a nothing budget. In fact as soon as I conjure them into existence I’ll fill you in on my magic.

So I’m not fretting about putting my munchkins through anything similar to this here little potato and cabbage Depression Era Christmas dinner.

After this last week, I am however telling you that I am totally rethinking my gift lists and adding many more homemade items to them because I’m starting to get a little paranoid that we are going to totally fly over the recession and hit another Great Depression. See I’m a major worry wart and all. I know the retailer’s are just going to love me this year. But I’ve got to stick to my guns and try and make it through three major holidays and a birthday without seeing so much as a penny of red this year – Ah – other than the roof that is.

If you’re here for a Christmas Countdown – well my official Yule-tide To-Do List is mostly postponed this week so I can go about the crazy task of our Oz Costumes. I want them done by the blog Halloween party on the 18th. But here’s my own personal resolve for in the meantime…

1. Call the Roofing Guys so we have a roof over our heads for Christmas &…


2. Take newly hung lights off the roof so that we can get it replaced. (Sigh)


3. Rewrite the Christmas Gift List to include things that I can make to give away instead of buy. I was planning on simplifying anyway. Maybe instead of a Disney Christmas we can do our Pioneer Christmas again. It was my favorite one anyway.

The good news is the sewing machine and serger will be going full force this week and maybe I can squeeze in some Christmas and Birthday stuff as well, you know, when the herd isn’t paying attention.

Meanwhile I've got to stop looking and feeling like a deer caught in headlights, and get moving.

Money Madness

O.K. does anyone have this book so I can borrow it because I'm feeling like a financial idiot right now.




Here is where all those CEO's and financial advisors pocketing our hard-earned money should spend a vacation. Stocks for the Stock Crash... How appropriate.

I hate money. I know – HATE is a strong word. I dislike money to the N-th degree and financial advisors, well; they are right up there too. Apparently we are the only people on the planet Earth that are not liquidating our stock right now. Don’t know why? But we are riding the market and I’m more than depressed and worried about it.

We made the idiotic mistake of hanging onto our stock during the Dot-Com bust on the early 2000’s. My husband’s company stock fell from 121 to 25 and never recovered. And we trusted the blasted experts and rode it out then too. Have any of you lost $100,000? It stinks.

Now we are watching our splendidly diversified 401K portfolio disappear before our eyes. And the experts say to stay put. I think they are secretly hoping there are enough saps like me out there stupid enough to listen to them while they make off like bandits.

That’s o.k. I never planned on retiring anyway. I want to work forever.

Now what’s going on in the market is painful to watch but I think I’d be a lot saner about it if I didn’t dislike my own inability to control money. I’m trying, I’m really trying, but I think I may be cursed when it comes to dealing with finances.

Last month gave me such a glimmer of Hope that I can finally live within my means. I was totally hanging onto that idea of making focusing on Needs and Simplistic Living the Norm around our little forest.

This month we’ve had a few surprises already. There are things that definitely need to be fixed like the blown-out back window on Abner’s portable pool, the leaky roof, the down to one burner stove-top. But any one of those things would tip us into the red if we decide to take care of them right now.

So this month I’m still shooting for spending less than we make – Still! I’m hoping now to focus on saving money. The repairs will have to wait until we can pay cash for them. Meanwhile I’m sure the neighbors (forgive us please) will just love the sight of black plastic on our roof and duct taped plastic on our truck. Can I cross my fingers and hope nothing else breaks down in the meantime? Because if I really am cursed then the repairs will pile up faster than the savings.

Here’s the real kicker. I’ve no reason to complain. My husband makes good money, and we have no auto payments. However I think we spend the equivalent to auto payments supplying fuel for our gas-sucking drivable people movers. But honestly no matter how we may be feeling the financial pinch I realize we are a lot better off than millions of others.

Honestly my hats off to single parents, and people on low incomes wages. I don’t know how you do it? And if you live within your means you are the real hero’s. I think you should replace all those silly financial advisors on wall street because you wouldn’t be silly enough to loan out your dearly saved money to people you know can’t pay it back.

Trenadoll’s organizing class on finances was a good refresher for me. Now I’ve actually just got to put two or three minutes together where I can sit down, brain-storm and follow through with the assignments. I know I could have been doing that instead of blogging but I needed to vent.
There I’m all better… Thanks for listening to my rant.

So has any of the rest of you had to change money habits of the last few months and if so what are some of the changes you’ve made? I’m washing Ziploc bags so that I can re-use them in the kiddo’s lunches and I'm picking up pennies I see on the ground. How cool is that.

Nothing but a WOW Week 1

Our first week of Nothing but Needs is over and how did we do? I think I can honestly say that we spent money on needs only.

Before we started, our average WEEKLY grocery bill (including eating out) was…

Beware it’s very, very scary. Not a pleasant amount. Enough to shock the socks off anyone…

But keep in mind we are a family of eight with three teenage sons, and sadly no garden of which to brag about this year. – NEXT YEAR it will be awesome.

Sorry for beating the bush leafless but back to the total.

$347.00 per week. Scary right? I’ve had weeks where it’s over $400.

So this week – our total was

Drum roll please:

$110.45

And of this $110 at least $28 was those canning supplies and another $16 was dog food for Itchy. Yes Itchy’s food comes out of our grocery budget. I figure that if the world ends and we eat through our food storage then we can always eat Itchy’s food – before we start consuming the bugs. Anyway it’s on our list.

So if you take those two off we spent $66.05 on actual food.

That my friends, is quite remarkable – for me at least.

I don’t think we will be down as low this coming week because I can see some things like laundry detergent, diapers and such that we will need to get next week.

I know we could probably go lower if we decided to eat purely from our food storage but I look at this whole month as a stepping stone to living a more needful, less materialistic overall life. So if I get a good sale to add to my food storage to replace something I used then, by golly, I’ll do it.

Other money I saved from getting sucked out of our account this week – Abner permitted me to cut his hair. Because I did it with scissors, don’t have any hair clippers anymore, it took a while. Probably a good hour fifteen minutes or at least we almost made it through the whole Napoleon Dynamite movie while I was feverously snipping. He was too mortified to have me take a picture (Not because it looked awful) but because he’s a teenager and that would be too embarrassing. And if he thought it was yuck he was kind enough not to tell me. I think it looks o.k. and I know several people at church said it looked good. I’m not comfortable cutting hair and it takes so long but I figure if I can round up some nice clippers and practice a bit then this could be a viable thing to do- permitting my boys keep allowing me to experiment.

This week I’m going to attempt something I’ve never in my life done before. I haven’t told Prince Erik about it yet because I don’t know if would scare the be-geebers out of him to know I was trying it. But I want to try it. May make a huge mess and wonder what in the blazes I was thinking but I’m going to give it the old college try and… get this… change the cruddy oil filter on the family tank. I think with it’s monster truck tires I should be able to wedge my rapidly shrinking body under it long enough to do the job.

The liquid sunshine is also supposed to hold off this week so I’m going to see if I can’t string up some line out back to hang dry some clothes as well. So wishing I had a clothesline still.

Right now I’m sure we are still in the honeymoon stage of seeing everything that we can do for ourselves. And I can see how making homemade bread can get tedious but until then I’m really beginning to enjoy seeing how little I can spend.

And if this month works well maybe I can encourage my kiddos’ to try it for yet another month and another, and just maybe we might be able to afford to take the Family to CA for a last big family trip to Disneyland before Abner leaves the nest.

A Whole Lot of Nothing...

So I was checking out my friend Mother Owl Haven the other day and got tipped onto a great idea.

So our family has decided to play along. Nothing but Absolute Needs, and simple goodness for the entire month of September, and I can’t wait. I’ll be updating you on my progress every week. Can I handle taming my shopaholic tendencies? We’ll see?

I’m really motivated to get this going after writing out a check to the high school for around $200 for school class fees, student body cards, etc. And that was basically for only one of my six kids. So much for the money I was planning to spend on buying new back to school clothes.

I’ve got a couple of weeks to figure out how we are going to do it. So far the fast food, candy, movies, rentals, and stuff like that will be totally out of the picture. I’ll have to reach in my dusty bag of creative tricks to keep the family entertained on a budget of nothing. But I like challenges! Especially ones that result in more money staying in my pocket.

I was talking to Prince Erik and he wondered if he would have to give up the Bogus Basin Bike race he’s been training for all year. I told him I thought it would still be o.k. to do but we are rethinking how he will do it. Maybe we’ll have to find a friend near Boise that he could stay with so he doesn’t have to rent a hotel room. Pack his own food instead of eating out. Etc.

I’ve been tempted to stock pile a bunch of goodies to get ready for September but I think that would defeat the purpose of the challenge so I’m trying to live as close to normal up until day 1. In the next few days I’m also going to add up our averages to see how much we spend on utilities, groceries, gas etc. I’ll try and break them down so that I can really see how much we save by trying to stick to the whole nothing goal.

It might be similar to our No-Technology month of February. Dang hard to deal with at the beginning but easier and more fun near the end.

Anyway let me know if you want to play along. You can email me for the button’s code that you see above or check out Owl Haven’s blog to see her information on the whole wild and crazy idea. September can’t come soon enough for my bank balance – how bout yours.

Mom's Priorities

I love my Therapist! She encourages me in my favorite (Twilight) addiction, and has been helping me get over the others. Don’t know how healthy that is but I still love it! So I saw my Young and Gorgeous Counselor yesterday and told her I had pulled out of my Giddy-Girly Mom weekend Get-Away with other Insanely Fun Mommies, to celebrate the release of the fourth Twilight series book ‘Breaking Dawn’ in Port Angeles and Forks, WA of all places.

‘Why?’ she asked.

Mainly because of finances, what with Spooky’s vet bill and our recent gas-sucking trip to the Rocky Mountains – the bank account is a bit tight.

‘Not a good enough reason.’ She replied. She knew how big this trip was supposed to be for me because we’ve been talking about my guilty obsession for a few months now. So we spent the rest of the hour brainstorming my dreams and challenges and seeing if there was a way to overcome the hurdles while still making the dreams come true.

Now don’t get me wrong Ms. Young and Gorgeous isn’t encouraging me to go into debt by any means BUT she is saying that I need to make things that are really important to me a priority. Too often in the past I’ve given up on things I really want as a way to punish myself for my lack of financial budgeting skills or something or another. Until a year and a half ago I really never did anything for me. I was a Yes Lady who never said No to anyway and never took the time to take care of myself physically or emotionally – no time to exercise, attend concerts or retreats, give myself a pedicures, develop talents etc. I thought by putting my family and friends first I was teaching my kids about Christ like service. But what I realized was, that I was also teaching them was I didn’t value myself enough to take care of myself.

I’m a new person now and much happier. I’ve made taking of my physical, emotional and spiritual self Priority #1 and discovered that I’m now above and beyond better able to take care of my family and give service to others. I can give so much more now than I was ever able to give before.

The solution to my Twilight weekend dilemma that we came up with was … Garage Sale. That way I’m getting rid of a lot of the clutter, so I’m moving towards my conquering the Clutter Monster dream as well. And I’m putting a little change into my pocket so that I can afford to go to Port Angeles without my Prince seeing red in the checkbook.

Meanwhile I’m excitedly running around like a mad dervish through the house collecting clutter here and there with hopes that it could be worth a few pennies to others. I’ve even got some great friends who are bringing some of their clutter treasures over so that my sale looks big and will hopefully draw in more people.

So I’m getting excited again because the trip is officially back on if I can bring in around $150 or so. Cross your fingers for me. Less Clutter and More Fun!