More Organizing!

My tackle today is more organizing & moving stuff around! The closet upstairs is just waiting for me to finish moving my stuff into it.

I am also tackling the kitchen floor (hands & knees scrubbing the hardwoods, ewww) & Mt. Laundry today as well!!!

I am making my list of must have to keep my new larger closet functional & neat. I am adding 2 of these to start.

Slide N' Stax

If they work I may pick up a couple more. Right now I have some t-shirts stacked in a wicker basket, which isn't really convenient. I don't like to dig to find the one thing I'm looking for, then you have to refold everything... yuck!

I also grabbed a bunch of our dividers from the chocolate shop. Lots of our chocolate came with cardboard dividers. These are so helpful in the underwear & sock drawers. So with them organized I have extra drawer space, amazing, before we had 4 drawers dedicated to these small things. Now we are sharing 2 drawers one undies, one socks, WOW!

I am not sure what I will put in the wicker baskets after I have the clothes stacked in the slide 'n stax. Maybe purses, exercise equipment, who knows!

I took another bag of papers to our schools paper recycling bin. It looked full so it's nice to see others in the community contributing too. It wasn't just school papers!

The more that leaves the house the better... I am starting to feel lighter everyday. The garbage pick up guys hate me, the freecyclers will love me & hopefully the house will stay "cleaner" longer!!! WOOHOO!

Payperpost

I have made $245 in the year+ I've been posting. And I haven't done nearly as much as I could have to improve my rank or to write as many posts as I qualify to.

So because I was asked by a few people about it I wanted to show how easy it is to sign up & the sooner you do the sooner you can start earning money. There are ways to make money before you are able to write reviews. Referrals, reviews my posts, direct... plus it is motivating to see the people who are making money at it featured on the home page.




Follow the directions to register your blog(s) and start today!

If you already are posting what has been your favorite? How often do you post? What have you done to improve your rank?

Mother's Day is coming....

Retrevo has reviews of several cool electronic gadgets for under $50 and under $100.

I have to admit, if you haven't already realized it I am a gadget girl. I tend to be drawn more toward the kitchen gadgets than to personal electronics but I seriously have discovered a need for an MP3 player. They are awesome for walking! Thanks sis...

I really like the reviews of the digital key chains. I am not one of those awesome Mom's that always has pics of their kiddos at the ready. This handy electronic device would remedy that for me, I'll have pics where ever I have my keys!!!

I am not really a cell phone addict, but if I were a bluetooth headset would be cool. Our neighbor needs one, she is constantly trying to make calls from her car & having to pull over so she doesn't get a ticket.

The site also reviews some floating rose bath lights, that seem to be perfect for the real low end of the $ spectrum but high on the WOW factor!!! Who wouldn't find the multi colored floating wonders strangely fascinating.

The under $100 page has some seriously cool items that every Mom never knew she needed until she has one. Like the WiFi memory card, no more cords, that ROCKS!!!

OK, so hubby pay attention... any of these would be cool gifts for Mother's Day!

GFS - Anyone been?

GFS

I know where there is one, it's not terribly close but then most major stores aren't! I am just wondering how they compare to Sam's Club. I am trying to avoid buying a membership again!!! I don't have the business to justify it or use it as a deduction anymore but I don't know where else to buy the baking supplies I use at such good prices... You know 3 pounds of yeast & 25 pound bags of flour!

I haven't been into the GFS yet so I'm just wondering if anyone has???

I was also given some bacon wrapped Filets by our neighbor, they came for Angel Food Ministries. They were delicious, so I am most likely going to be purchasing their May packages!!!

The Queen of More Green -

Jaci Rae is an author/musician/business woman I was just introduced to. She sounds like another frugalista & her books are ones I have added to my Amazon.com wishlist.

The first site I visited was Shop for a day and her book Shop for a Day with Jaci Rae - How to Get Almost Anything for Free. This book looks like a great collection of money saving strategies & ideas. I enjoyed listening to the podcasts available on the side bar. It's always good to hear someone else's frugal ideas to refuel your motivation!!!

Another of her sites Penny Meals features another book 5 Meals for $5 - How to Feed 5 People 5 Meals for $5.00 - $8.00 or Less! You Don't Need to Be Wealthy To Eat Healthy This one is huge on my list of must have books. Of course that could be the recipe addict talking...You can read a snippet of this book on the Penny Meals website, including the table of contents, which list the individual recipes available in the book, YUMMY!

You can also visit her blog.

I will be exploring her tips since she seems to take the "CVS extra care buck" theory & applied to lots of the other stuff out there. I am all about the free stuff!!! (At least the free stuff I can use or give away!)

Frugal burnout & the garden

I feel like I crashed & burned! It's like I hit a wall, no motivation!!! I have been busy feeding sourdough starters & cleaning the house. Of course all the flining of the clutter has me frustrated. It's like I know where it all comes from but it doesn't seem possible that there is that much of it.

All I seem to see are all the projects that need to be done & things that need to be bought. New bathroom towels, new bedding for me & the Princess, new curtains all around the house, table lamps (my current desk lamp is a kitty, very grown up!) some more totes for the stuff going into the basement for storage.... buy buy buy spend spend spend. I can't wait for yard sale season to start, maybe I'll be able to pick up some things that will fit my design style (oh who am I kidding, I don't have a "style"!) Of course this is why I think I am reluctant about removing the clutter, with the clutter gone I see the "house" as it is, badly in need of repair & decorating.

I think I'm feeling this way over my last trip to the grocery store, anyone try to buy shortening lately, yikes! Everything is going up in price which is going to seriously cut back on the amount of things we bring home for the same money. Even with coupons, it's going to get harder. My plan is to make more things from scratch, but even the basics are more. Milk, eggs, flour, butter, cheese, all are basics and all are way over priced.

Guess I'll go back to watching the ads & coupons & only buying what's on sale for the rest of my food items! We do have our seeds for our garden. I've already started some cherry tomato plants, mostly because we are going to put them in pots for the Princess to pick at. I might try to sun-dry some if she doesn't eat them all!!!

We will be planting corn, peas, peppers, jalapeño peppers, cucumbers, beans, zucchini, tomatoes for canning & salsa, pumpkins, watermelon, and for a change lemon cucumbers. I am thinking about doing the lemon cucumbers in a pot too with a trellis. I also have to find a permanent home for my chocolate mint plant & try to encourage the strawberries we planted last year, so far I've only spotted one of the 2 out there. I need to get the tiller up here & work up the garden so I can add the compost & improve the soil before it's time to plant.

We won't be planting outside for about a month so I have time. So we'll have the garden to look forward to, but I do need to go spend some $ first. WE need some peat, mulch & fertilizer, I don't have tons of compost but I have lots of garden to cover!!!

The front garden didn't get as decomposed as I thought it would, I tossed some ouf our dry wall scraps out there after reading about it online & used papers, leaves & cardboard to cover the area. It didn't really all decompose over the winter like it was supposed to but I'll remove what is left & work in the small stuff. Then we'll have to go buy some plants to put there. Right now it is an empty garden begging for landscaping. Maybe I'll submit pics to the DIY ugly yard contest! I bet I'd qualify!

My new mission

I am on this purging kick. I'm not sure how all this junk accumulated in my house (OK, so I might have had something to do with it, but really only half of it is mine, maybe 1/3).

I have already managed to find 2 construction sized bags of garbage. Between the broken toys, stuff that was hiding in corners & under furniture. I am hoping to have a few boxes to take to the Salvation Army.

I just realized that the one thing that is standing between me & our moving the master suite upstairs is junk & lots of it. The laundry didn't get put away the three weeks I was working so it has been piled up everywhere. This opened my eyes to the sheer amount of clothing we have that we don't wear or will ever wear, because my closet was still fairly full but I had nothing to wear or that looked right. And of course my sewing room is still in shambles so little by little, project by project I am clearing the clutter & junk out to make room for the stuff I need & use.

The basement is pretty empty now that we donated our old cabinets to the little league snack stand. Except for the clothes I was saving to recycle into clothing for the kids. Most of them are going to get tossed because I doubt I will get to most of the projects I had planned & it has just become clutter. So after I get all the junk cleared out I will be able to have a nice organized storage space for our seasonal items. That will clear up some space from around the house that is currently housing the seasonal decor.

March recap

1. Budget our money better.
We are keeping up with our bills pretty well, we did have an unplanned car repair this month that threw things out of whack, but not so bad. Thanks to my working for the Easter store at least!

2. Pay down our debt.
We made our $120 loan payment, I'm not sure if we used the other $80 for debt or if it went to Easter baskets. I think that it might have gotten spent on something other than debt, given that I wasn't around much in March!

3. Use savings, rebates & misc found money to fund our emergency fund.
The kids received money from a trust started by their Great Grandparents, apparently the account had stopped earning interest so hubby's parents decided to distribute the money. We will be funding their 529s & their mutual fund accounts with it. Since I was busy for most of the month I didn't really shop much or plan my shopping trips. We mostly went for convenient food & the basics. I don't think we spent as much as usual on stuff, but thanks to my previous months shopping we didn't run out of anything important. Now I can get back to my coupons & CVS trips!

4. Blog daily. I really do need anywhere web access!!!

5. Work on one DIY project everyday.
Sure, I've been struggling just to catch up the laundry! But I have been busy this week clearing out the stuff, so we can do the next project!

6. Do better at cards to friends & family.
Why am I even bothering!!!

7. Focus on MYO (make your own) mixes and grocery items.
I just put together a corn bread mix & have 2 loaves of bread dough in the freezer. I think I missed being in the kitchen, scary.

8. Eliminate more clutter.
I have been decluttering the last couple days. I am still having a hard time with the "letting things go" the "I might need this someday" is winning. But not for long. It is just so overwhelming to have things & you don't know why, so out they are going. Hopefully I will be able to make a dent in this by the end of spring. After all it didn't show up overnight, so I don't expect it to be gone in a poof. It would be nice though!

Easter is over!

Hope everyone had a fantastic holiday weekend!

The store has been taken down & emptied, whew! Three weeks & 3 pallets of chocolate later, I think I have finally recovered. I feel almost human again. It really is a fun thing to do & being only 3 weeks it's only a small part of my year, but it seems to take over!!!

After working 23 hours in 2 days I was pretty beat on Sunday, but we managed to make both families dinners. The Easter bunny brought lots of chocolate, I figure that has to be better than the nasty "all sugar" candy right???

Now I am off to clean my house, because it was bad enough before I started the 3 weeks, now it's REALLY bad! Everything is behind. All I wanted was a little acknowledgment for what I do on a regular basis, you know the gross stuff, like the toilet & shower & cleaning the toothpaste off the sink & 3 loads of laundry a day & that the dirty clothes don't take them selves to the laundry room... but NOOOO. Of course not, sigh. I will update our goals some time this week, right now I need to plow a path to the laundry room!!!

New Look

BTW.... the new look is thanks to Split Decisionz, thanks for the great code!!!

Easter is coming

I know it's early and there are so many other things going on to distract us (St. Patty's Day, the Spitzer scandal, elections, etc). I only have had to embrace the reality because I am surrounded by giant chocolate bunnies for 6 hours a day, EVERY DAY!

I am currently waiting for the washer to finish running so I can jump in the shower & start getting ready for today's retail experience! I guess I figured we'd survive the 3 short weeks I work unscathed, boy was I wrong. The goal now is to not run out of clothing before Easter & maybe find the furniture. Apparently the kids have taken over & the toys have made their way into EVERY corner of the house. I have done my best to find at least one corner today!!! Under the love seat was just scary... I swear it was empty just a week ago. Sigh, it will take me at least a week of constant cleaning to "catch" us up to where we were before I started at the store!

Just more proof that messing with the routine is very bad, but I think we'll survive!

The Ultimate Blog Party is HERE!!!

Party time!!! Wish I could party more, but I started working at an "ONLY" Easter candy store, so we are B-U-S-Y right now.

If this is your first time here, Welcome! If you've been here before, Howdy!

I have been blogging for over a year now, I'm not the best at it, but hey it's a learning process! I have other blogs, so posting to all of them is challenging & sometimes I just go on a posting binge!!!

I'll leave you with the hamburger recipe I made for dinner tonight, it was delish!

1 pound of ground beef (I used the 73/27 stuff)
1 egg
1 handful of oats (rolled)
2 T flax seed
2 handfuls of finely chopped fresh spinach leaves
1 dash of minced garlic

Mix all ingredients together, form patties & cook as you normally would a hamburger (I cooked them until the internal temp was 145 degrees in a grill pan, blizzard conditions so no grill!) I had provolone on mine & it was so moist & yummy I just had to write down what I did!!!

And welcome to my crazy life.

Easter candy has begun, so if I don't post it's only because I am no where near a computer... I just knew I'd regret not buying an iphone!!!

Brief update on life... It's snowing here, yuck. We had a wonderful spring like day then ice now snow. I really wish this global warming would start soon. At this rate we'll have to break out the Christmas outfits for Easter!!! Hubby just had to hammer the ice off our back steps, I should have thought of that at the store 2 days ago, it would have been faster than the shovel!

We fixed our leaky pipes, and that's about it, we still haven't gotten to installing the new hot water heater. My hours are just too crazy now, but I do enjoy getting out of the house! And being in a room filled to the gills with chocolate isn't sooooo bad, it's just hard to keep from eating it ALL!!!

Sometimes I just want to ask...

What does the world have against us??? We received our tax refund & made several much needed purchases (and some not so needed, but nothing over the top obnoxious). SO what happens Friday??? I am in the kitchen one minute all is well, I grab the remote to turn on some cleaning music & then I hear it. WATER??? Nothing was running, so I go investigate only to find a leaking pipe in the laundry room. Of course, I should have known. We had just gotten the dryer moved in all happy next to the washer & bam we have to move everything out to fix the pipe. The lines froze overnight in the cold & I didn't run the washer just the dryer so it thawed the joint & made a leak, oops am I bad???

So after hauling out all the laundry products on my newly well placed shelf, the shelf & the dryer... Hubby cut out the bad joint and we headed to town for some fittings. While it was all apart we insulated the pipes & filled the wall with more insulation. For anyone who doesn't know our house is 141 years old, so it has issues, BIG ones. Like big gaping holes in the walls that just suck cold air into the house. The laundry room was an addition over a crawl space so the plumbing is all run above the floor & outside of the walls. The dryer vent hole (not cut by us) was HUGE and in the same location as the pipes. Of course we also wrapped the heat exchanger over the furnace which has been effective in lowering the temperature of the basement, maybe we need to rethink that one!!!! My dryer vent is very effective at pulling in air so the metal vent laying on top of the copper lines just wasn't a good plan. Sorry to all the experts but hey, live & learn!

It just figures that the one thing we didn't buy in our Home improvement shopping spree was a soldering kit, so we had to borrow my Dad's. OF course it never dawned on me that we should have just called a plumber. If hubby wasn't capable of piecing in some copper my Dad can. It is nice to have handy people in the family.

But while we were at the store we also bought a new hot water heater, electric to replace the 2 that heat our upstairs water. The apartment's gas hot water heater appears to be one of the first tank heaters ever invented and is very scary when it fires up. I'll be glad to get rid of it. I am impressed at how long it has lasted, usually 10-12 years on a water heater is tops, but this baby is O-L-D! And it will also supply hot water to the front bathroom, which will be part of the Master Bedroom soon.

Looks like we'll be making a scrap yard run sometime in the spring!!!

At 8 AM you'll find me...

Planted on my couch watching Charmed. I'm not sure how it happened or when but I am now addicted. And to make it worse they are 2 hour blocks. At least this time I started at the beginning, so maybe I can stop watching once I have seen to the end. If it were just me I'd think it was ... well, just me, but my hubby can't miss an episode now either. I think it's like one of those Lifetime movies that just sucks you in.

I can say the whole witchcraft thing isn't what I'm into, it's violent at times & creepy but it has us hooked like trout!