I went to Target yesterday, I still love that place. I totally broke my solemn vow not to buy non-necessary items and I bought a brand spanking new laundry basket. I'm telling you, this basket is such a cheerful shade of bright pink that I felt like I was buying a totally taboo home decor item. I spent $7.99 on it and I don't regret it at all!!! My new washer and dryer are super short (Mia thinks they were made for her so she shoves all her toys in them) and they show off half the wall with the water hoses coming out of it that I thought it needed something to perk it up. I can put the basket on top of the dryer and load my clean clothes in it instead of just carrying them to the couch, they will be contained in a bright basket of joy! I feel so giddy, it's just exciting!!!!! So as I was browsing through the temple of home decor gluttony I came up with a short list of the things that I would like to buy with my garage sale money.
1: Plane ticket to CA to visit my homies (1/2 of that will come from my birthday money)
2: Iced tea pitcher thingy with a spigot (don't need it but it's sooooo cute!)
3: Wii Fit
4: Super cute lanterns for the backyard
5: Super cute fancy decorations for the backyard
6: New bedding for my bed (ours has been puked on so many times it must be time for a new one after 7 years!)
7: Awesome laundry sorter/hanging clothes dryer
8: Coolio ironing board hanger/iron organizer
9: Towels that actually MATCH!
10: Cool awning thing for over the hot tub
11: Net-o lounge chair for sunning myself while I'm recovering from my foot surgery
12: cute garden decor items
13: Adorable play house for the kids to play outside
14: Swimming pool (Greg said "NO WAY")
15: Super cute plastic dishes (perfect for outdoor entertaining)
16: New BBQ (that's Greg's list, but it's MY sale)
This is just a small list of the things I saw in Target yesterday that I thought it would be so fun to get if I were a free spending foolish woman. My list is always changing and I'm sure that I won't be making that much money, but it's good to have a goal of greedy wants. This is why I'm giving half the proceeds to Sharon, at least I know half of the money won't be wasted. Plus, I have to give the kids some of the money since it's mostly their stuff that I'm selling off. I think our final decision will be a play house for the kids to use, but we'll have to build it so it's big enough for them to use as a cool kid hangout as they grow.
Oh well, I would rather do without these items and have credit cards that are being paid off than have them and stress about how we're going to pay off our debts. In this economy we're so lucky that we can survive comfortably on one salary that it really makes me appreciate the things we already have and not focus so much on what we don't. When I go to Target I get overloaded with the items I want, but I quickly forget about them in between trips and don't even dwell on it like I used to! This experiment is getting easier in some ways, but it's getting harder to fight the complacency that takes over and I find that I sometimes overspend on the groceries when I don't need to. OK, so it's not as fun and new and funny as it was in the beginning, but it still reminds me every day of how wasteful we were before we started. I hope you all have good fortune in this economy and find ways to make your lives easier every day. When things start to look dreary if you just make an effort to point out the good things you'll find yourself believing that everything will be find in the end. Life is crazy and scary, but you'll be stronger and wiser from having to deal with the poop.
Happy Easter!
xoxo
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
OMG it's been so long since my last post! I keep wanting to tell you so many things, but finding the time to actually sit down and type them all out is proving to be a job in itself. OK, so I totally just had a really embarrassing thing happen to me right in the past five minutes so I'm gonna tell you what it is. My washer died (we're talking it would have been $500 to fix it!) so we went and bought a new one yesterday. When the appliance fix it man came over yesterday morning I realized (after he had been in the laundry room for half an hour) that my humongo bras were hanging right above the dryer! I didn't want to make a big deal out of it so I made a mental note to take them down after he left. I forgot to do that. The two delivery guys came to bring me my new gift from the heavens (a super deluxe washer, yeeeehaw!) and after they had been in the laundry room for quite some time I went in to check it out. One guy was leaning over the washer to see the back and my bras were lying on his HEAD!!!! He was trying to bat them away and I exclaimed "Oh S**T!" and grabbed them from his head. The guys started laughing and I apologized for my profanity and told them that I was totally embarrassed. One guy said that they're not supposed to touch anything so they just worked around it. How totally EMBARRASSING!!!
Anywho, we have a working washer so we won't have to go over to my mom's house and bombard her with laundry anymore, thanks for the use of your Mexican laundry service mom! We even get a year's worth of FREEEEEEE Tide detergent from the washing machine company, do we know how to work a deal or what?
So today is day 100 of our experiment and I'm going to give you a little state of the Lewis' address:
We haven't had fast food since driving to Spokane in Feb. and the kids didn't even eat their food at that time. We drive by a fast food joint and not one little voice begs for chicken and french fries! The kids know that there are snacks in the van that they can nibble on when they're hungry and they LOVE making their own lunches and snacks at home. My parents take us out to eat a few times a month, so it's not like we're missing out on much. I'm going to say that in the past 100 days we've splurged on eating out maybe 5 times. I know we said we're going to quit cold turkey, but considering we were eating out about 3 times a week, 5 times in three months is pretty impressive to me! We're only human and sometimes we need to treat ourselves OK? I'm pretty impressed with us. As well as staying on the, mostly, straight and narrow eating out path, we've been working our butts off on getting our house organized. In the past month we've filled our dumpster three times with CRAP from the house that was not recyclable, resellable or charity worthy. Broken, junky items people, why was I holding onto that stuff???? Our garage is filled with garage sale items and the month long garage sale will begin in two weeks. I'm pleging to give half of my garage sale proceeds to my friend Sharon who is raising money to walk in the Avon Breast Cancer Walk, she'll be walking 39.9 miles to raise money and awareness. Here's her donation website if any of you are interested : http://info.avonfoundation.org/site/TR/Walk2009/SanFrancisco?px=3185004&pg=personal&fr_id=1820&et=xW-ySL2_ugG7D9Yp1emJ5g..&s_tafId=402033
the link is long and you'll have to copy and paste it, but it's well worth the visit, she's bloging all about her training and you can see how much money she's raised so far and more about the cause. You go Sharon!
Greg has been working like a mad man, he's worked three over time shifts in the last week and he's on track to work at least one more, that's all money toward the card my friends, woohoo! We've had some set backs with having to get the van fixed, get a new washer, etc. but we've been lucky that all these things have happened during the tax return time so we haven't been too hurt by it. I think the kids have finally settled into the lifestyle we're living, they don't ask to get toys as much (except for Mia, she's always talking about wanting toys for her B-Day), Emma is helping out more, doing laundry, etc. All the kids like to help clean the house now, that's HUGE, they all have their jobs and do them without complaint. My house is staying clean for once in my life! When I say clean I'm not talking show house clean, that will never be me, but I can actually have people drop in and not die of embarassment at the state of my house. I'm all about my house looking like kids live there, I don't mind toys being here or there, but we've been keeping them contained inthe play room mostly and the floors are swept and vacuumed and the bathrooms are clean! I'd like to thank the Fly Lady ( http://flylady.org/index.asp) for her inspirational website on how to keep a clean house without killing yourself. I feel better about myself and my house. With my home being organized it's so much less hectic for the kids, especially before school. I've actually taken to making all of Emma sandwiches for the week on Sunday and freezing them! They thaw out by lunch and it takes no time to make lunches now, I can actually make waffles every morning with no stress. I lay the kids clothes out the night before so there's no fight. These are all common sense things that I've never thought about doing before because I'm a disorganized person, but this year of change is actually changing ME!! I feel like I've created so much stress in my life by not being organized, but you just don't realize how much it affects every aspect of your life until you've made the change! My goal is to get the house running like a well oiled machine before my surgery because I won't be able to do anything for a month and I don't want things to fall back into disarray. I have a month to get the kids automatically tuned to the program and then they'll be like little robots dusting and vacuuming and doing the laundry.
I'd like to thank all of you for following us on this journey and the encouraging words and the understanding of our being human and fallable when we screw up. It means a lot to me that you are still reading and care about what we're doing.
One last thing before I go. We had the gang over for a BBQ on Saturday (Rebecca & Noah, Adam & Emily & the kids) and I would like to anounce that Emily KICKED MY BOOOOTAY twice at Sing Star. Yes folks, she is a waaaay better rapper than I am, she can out Eminem old Slim Shady himself! It takes a lot of cardio practice to be able to sing/rap an Eminem song and I almost passed out, I need to do more cardio then challenge her again. She also out Bobby Browned me, or was it Tone Loc? Either way it was her first major victory over me and it was a proud moment. Hopefully it will not be repeated! It looks like all the coaching from Adam and practice have worked out for Emily. Congratulations girl!
Until we blog again, I bid you good day.
xoxo
Anywho, we have a working washer so we won't have to go over to my mom's house and bombard her with laundry anymore, thanks for the use of your Mexican laundry service mom! We even get a year's worth of FREEEEEEE Tide detergent from the washing machine company, do we know how to work a deal or what?
So today is day 100 of our experiment and I'm going to give you a little state of the Lewis' address:
We haven't had fast food since driving to Spokane in Feb. and the kids didn't even eat their food at that time. We drive by a fast food joint and not one little voice begs for chicken and french fries! The kids know that there are snacks in the van that they can nibble on when they're hungry and they LOVE making their own lunches and snacks at home. My parents take us out to eat a few times a month, so it's not like we're missing out on much. I'm going to say that in the past 100 days we've splurged on eating out maybe 5 times. I know we said we're going to quit cold turkey, but considering we were eating out about 3 times a week, 5 times in three months is pretty impressive to me! We're only human and sometimes we need to treat ourselves OK? I'm pretty impressed with us. As well as staying on the, mostly, straight and narrow eating out path, we've been working our butts off on getting our house organized. In the past month we've filled our dumpster three times with CRAP from the house that was not recyclable, resellable or charity worthy. Broken, junky items people, why was I holding onto that stuff???? Our garage is filled with garage sale items and the month long garage sale will begin in two weeks. I'm pleging to give half of my garage sale proceeds to my friend Sharon who is raising money to walk in the Avon Breast Cancer Walk, she'll be walking 39.9 miles to raise money and awareness. Here's her donation website if any of you are interested : http://info.avonfoundation.org/site/TR/Walk2009/SanFrancisco?px=3185004&pg=personal&fr_id=1820&et=xW-ySL2_ugG7D9Yp1emJ5g..&s_tafId=402033
the link is long and you'll have to copy and paste it, but it's well worth the visit, she's bloging all about her training and you can see how much money she's raised so far and more about the cause. You go Sharon!
Greg has been working like a mad man, he's worked three over time shifts in the last week and he's on track to work at least one more, that's all money toward the card my friends, woohoo! We've had some set backs with having to get the van fixed, get a new washer, etc. but we've been lucky that all these things have happened during the tax return time so we haven't been too hurt by it. I think the kids have finally settled into the lifestyle we're living, they don't ask to get toys as much (except for Mia, she's always talking about wanting toys for her B-Day), Emma is helping out more, doing laundry, etc. All the kids like to help clean the house now, that's HUGE, they all have their jobs and do them without complaint. My house is staying clean for once in my life! When I say clean I'm not talking show house clean, that will never be me, but I can actually have people drop in and not die of embarassment at the state of my house. I'm all about my house looking like kids live there, I don't mind toys being here or there, but we've been keeping them contained inthe play room mostly and the floors are swept and vacuumed and the bathrooms are clean! I'd like to thank the Fly Lady ( http://flylady.org/index.asp) for her inspirational website on how to keep a clean house without killing yourself. I feel better about myself and my house. With my home being organized it's so much less hectic for the kids, especially before school. I've actually taken to making all of Emma sandwiches for the week on Sunday and freezing them! They thaw out by lunch and it takes no time to make lunches now, I can actually make waffles every morning with no stress. I lay the kids clothes out the night before so there's no fight. These are all common sense things that I've never thought about doing before because I'm a disorganized person, but this year of change is actually changing ME!! I feel like I've created so much stress in my life by not being organized, but you just don't realize how much it affects every aspect of your life until you've made the change! My goal is to get the house running like a well oiled machine before my surgery because I won't be able to do anything for a month and I don't want things to fall back into disarray. I have a month to get the kids automatically tuned to the program and then they'll be like little robots dusting and vacuuming and doing the laundry.
I'd like to thank all of you for following us on this journey and the encouraging words and the understanding of our being human and fallable when we screw up. It means a lot to me that you are still reading and care about what we're doing.
One last thing before I go. We had the gang over for a BBQ on Saturday (Rebecca & Noah, Adam & Emily & the kids) and I would like to anounce that Emily KICKED MY BOOOOTAY twice at Sing Star. Yes folks, she is a waaaay better rapper than I am, she can out Eminem old Slim Shady himself! It takes a lot of cardio practice to be able to sing/rap an Eminem song and I almost passed out, I need to do more cardio then challenge her again. She also out Bobby Browned me, or was it Tone Loc? Either way it was her first major victory over me and it was a proud moment. Hopefully it will not be repeated! It looks like all the coaching from Adam and practice have worked out for Emily. Congratulations girl!
Until we blog again, I bid you good day.
xoxo
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