What Keeps Me Fighting:
Apr 17, 2013
Wordless Wednesday: What Keeps Me Fighting
April 17, 2013 By 1 Comment
Mar 19, 2013
Crazy Mornings and Yummy Breakfasts
March 19, 2013 By 1 Comment
My family is not made up of morning people. Really. Mornings are not a pretty. We all like to sleep until the last possible minute which can often make mornings a little frantic. Our family is proof that DNA is not required for the apple to fall far from the tree 
Thankfully during the week, Abby has breakfast at daycare so it allows us to sleep a little longer! I am not sure what will happen to our chaos level when we have to add breakfast to our weekday routine! I am not looking forward to losing sleep Abby may not adjust well to having to get up earlier.
Weekends, however, can still be a little crazy. Especially Sundays. If you are in ministry, you know each what I mean. John also plays in the praise band so it means getting to church 45 minutes early so I’m on my own to get myself and Abby out the door. It takes some time to get this fashionista out the door:
While I’m ok with the occasional donut, I love knowing that I am giving Abby (and the rest of the family) a nutritious breakfast to start the day and get their batteries going. Maybe one day I’ll have the ability to cook breakfast regularly but until then, I have found the next best thing.
This is where Aunt Jemima’s comes in.
Abby loves pancakes and french toast and I love knowing that I can give her what she loves knowing that every batch is made from scratch and is made with real ingredients and without HFCS, artificial flavors, or preservatives.
I love getting this face:
Aunt Jemima’s Lil’ Griddles are a perfect fit for our family and while supplies last, you can try them out by requesting a coupon from Aunt Jemima!
Are mornings crazy at your house to? What are your favorite ways to contain the chaos?
Thank you to Aunt Jemima Frozen Breakfast for being a sponsor. I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective. All opinions expressed here are my own.
Jan 14, 2013
Creating a Spoonie Savings Plan – Review Your Spending
January 14, 2013 By 5 Comments
Let me just start off with a disclosure that I am far from a budget guru! I am a newbie and hoping to create a manageable budget as we consider disability. Hopefully as I research and share my journey, you may be able to learn a thing or two as well!
As we are preparing to create a Spoonie Savings Plan for our family, the first thing I wanted to do was review our spending and see where our money was currently going. We no longer receive paper statements so I went online and printed off the last three months of transactions and grabbed a handful of highlights and went to work. Some banks may have the option to export the transaction data to a spreadsheet like Excel so that may be an option as well. I’m a paper-and-pen gal so I printed everything off.
I color coded all transactions by type – gas, groceries, eating out, etc – and created a simple spreadsheet so that I could tally the numbers by category and by month and then I passed out. What an eye-opening experience! After I regained my balance, of course. It is amazing how quickly small purchases can add up. A soda and snack here. A couple of simple but unnecessary “bargains” there. At the time, it doesn’t seem like a big deal but it can really add up!
A 20 oz Coke at most gas stations is now $1.60 (with tax) and if you purchase one every day (I have a soda habit instead of a coffee habit), it equals $11.20 a week or $44.80 a month or $537.70 A YEAR! Holy smokes! 7 day passes at Disney for the 3 of us will be $846 so to think that giving up a daily Coke will cover over half of the ticket cost is CRAZY!
Then there are extra subscriptions we can consider cutting like Netflix ($7.99) and Spotify ($9.99). Cutting each of those would save an additional $215.76 a year – which would bring the savings total to $753.36 just by cutting out those three! I am floored that taking the time to review our spending could yield such results!
This was a general pass over our spending and the next step will be to dig in and go back through these reports and formulate workable numbers for our savings plan and see where else we can cut spending and still implement ways like couponing! I have totally been stalking the blog Couponing to Disney) to save for our Disney vacation! 326 days to go!
photo credit: kenteegardin via photopin cc
