I mentioned in last week's blog about how I am trying to get into a few new things to keep busy and productive on my days off. With going part time at work, I knew I was going to have to start doing a few things differently to counteract not bringing home as much money per week as I had been, so I've been cooking a lot more at home and have been coming home for lunch even on the days I work. Living at my Dad's this past summer, I was so busy that I had no time at all to grocery shop or cook, so now fast food just sounds nasty. Which is good since it's so bad and not to mention so expensive. When I make meals I try to make more than we will eat in one sitting so that we have leftovers and it is saving so much money (which I love). The weird thing is a lot of times meals taste better the next day (the food develops more flavor, like marinating meat - this is true, I am a Food Network junkie - it's like one of the two TV channels that I watch, besides Kyla's cartoons channels). I'm also starting to get into couponing. There is a blog that I follow called Happy Money Saver (it's on my blogger profile or whatever it's called if you are interested in checking it out). A lady who lives in the same town as me started this blog and I found it after I had my daughter. Women I work with told me about it, because I was always telling them how much I wished I could be home more; they all thought I was going to quit (which on several occasions I came very close to quitting), so they told me if you ever do quit, try couponing to save money. They showed me the blog and gave me tips and tricks but I never really got into it. Now that I've got two days off/week, I'm trying to get back into it more because who doesn't want to save money? My goals for our family is to sometime not too long from now purchase another duplex property so that we have no house payment at all, since we live in one side of our duplex (we'd still have house payments, but our rent would cover both payments, plus we'd have a little bit of income each month). I want to get completely out of debt (like everything, cars, boat, and the one credit card that we have a balance on). Like I've stated before, kids are expensive, (mainly daycare, not the kids themselves).....more than one kid is even more expensive, if you get what I'm saying. Also, I do want to send Kyla to a private school once she hits that age. Not because I want to be overly protective of her, but because I'm not so sure I want her in public school (even though I went to public school myself), and private school is also expensive, so I'm trying to get us ready for this. Currently I spend about $80/week on groceries for a family of 3 and that doesn't include dog food and most beauty products. Personally I'd rather spend money on vacations (Lord knows we don't take enough of these), clothes (I love clothes but the past few years I find it hard for me to spend money on myself, so I've definately cut back compared to what I used to spend on myself), date nights (Lord also knows we don't have enough of these, LOL. I'm too attached to my baby still, she still has yet to spend the night at anyone else's house but mine!) and fun family activities (like a hockey game or something). I've also been wanting to get a little bit of a stock pile of food together anyway, ever since we had Kyla because I worry about if something were to happen like a natural disaster or something crazy, we need to make sure we have food at our house to keep us going for a while and couponing is about stock piling when you find a really good deal on something you would normally purchase. The one thing I've found since I've started getting into this is I'm totally unorganized, so tonight I purchased a pre-made coupon organizing binder that will make it much easier and less time consuming. It's funny when I was younger and saw women using coupons at the store I used to kind of feel bad for them like "oh that's kind of sad, they must not have much money." LOL... That might be the truth, but more than likely they have more money than a lot of people because they are smart with their money. I don't plan to get crazy or anything, like I'm still picky about the stuff I buy and the brands I buy. I'm not going to buy like cheap products just because they are cheap, they still need to taste good or be quality items. Whole milk for instance needs to be a certain brand that doesn't have hormones in it, because I don't like to give my baby the cheap milk that has hormones; you get my drift. Another goal that I've had for a few years now is to learn how to knit! A few years ago I put on a silent auction at my work for something; it was for some charity thing but I can't even remember what exactly it was for now, but anyway, a lady I worked with knitted the prettiest/cutest baby stuff I had ever seen and ever since then I've been wanting to learn. I tried to learn by purchasing a kit online and teaching myself, but that didn't work, ha! So now my goal is to take classes at a local knit shop. My Dad has been dating a gal who apparently knows how to knit, so maybe if they continue to date and I meet her at some point, I'll have her help me. We'll see.
Oh, and good news, my camera shipped last week. I am so excited. That's another one of my goals, to learn how to use that thing and be able to take pretty decent photos. I've already got my Sister and Niece arranged to be my models as soon as I get it. Of course Kyla will be my favorite model, I'm sure.
Two fun photos (one taken this morning, this was Kyla's "project" using Klennex, yep babies with one hand are capable of mass destruction; usually her target is the living room, but this morning it was the tissue box. The other photo I took after I left a Super Bowl party early so that my baby could take a much needed nap; this is her completely asleep! Who falls asleep like that? Babies do.
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