this wasn't in the plan |but life is still pretty good

When I was in college, many of my friends really didn't care for the month of October. There were no days off and mid-terms on top of it. But I love October - it's my birthday month after all! There seems to be a consensus that 2009 was a horrible year and many are happy for it to be in the past. While I recognize the fact that (financially especially) the year was not good to many people, 2009 will always be one of my favorites because it brought me this

My third son.

I began the year with high hopes. On paper it all looked so good finances-wise. But things happen, as they always do, and for us this was a year of spending money that we had been saving, rather than saving (mainly because of all the expenses surrounding our son's birth, which we had saved for in full by the end of 2008). It's amazing though, how one good thing can cancel out many not so good things. And for that reason, 2009 will not be the year that our health insurance went up again, or the year we spent more than we wanted to fixing the car, or the year we didn't get a raise, but rather the year my son was born.

Happy New Year to all of you. Thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to read what I have to say.

I'm very much in love with these dress-up doll sets, and luckily so are my nieces!

I started with this digital scrapbooking kit by Jacque at the Lily Pad. I sized them appropriately, printed them out on my computer, attached them to a sheet of magnet paper (adhesive magnet paper would have been best, but I just glued them on to a non-adhesive sheet), cut each piece out and applied a coat of Mod Podge to give them a nice finish. I used Mod Podge and paper to cover the front of the tin as well.

I'm fairly new to the world of digital scrapbooking, but realizing there's so much more to it than just creating album pages! Hybrid projects involve printing out digital elements to use in physical projects (such as my dress-up dolls) and really the sky's the limit. For the most part, it's quite inexpensive -I paid just $2.49 for these elements and can now use them over and over again! To get an idea of the fun stuff you can create visit The Hybrid Chick and probably many, many other sites that I'm not aware of yet.

Have you blogged about something you made recently? Leave me a link in the comment section - I'd love to see it. What to join in next week? Send me an email and I'll be sure to link to you in next week's post.

Up until November, we paid nothing for The Tall One's own health insurance that he gets through work (we just paid for myself and the kids). Now, in addition to the normal increase in premiums, we're also paying a percentage of his. This essentially means a pay cut for us since there was no raise in salary to go along with it. In addition to that, my hours were drastically reduced at my tutoring job (something I didn't expect until February or March, as that's when they died off last year).  We never really include my tutoring income in the budget, it normally goes straight to savings, but what with TTO bringing home less, we were glad to have that buffer for a few more months. But now we don't have it.

So what to do?

Luckily, we've tried really hard to not increase our spending when his paychecks have gone up, so for the most part, we really can keep our current numbers and be okay. Except for the wiggle room. Oh, I how I love my wiggle room. I love thinking along the lines of "it's okay, I can spend a little extra in clothing because we haven't eaten out yet, the money can come from there" and then when we inevitably do eat out, it turns into, "oh well, a little less savings is okay for this month". Yeah, I pretty much don't do well when it comes to sticking with the actual numbers. But I can't do that anymore. Assuming we still want to save some money (which we do). There's really no room for that.

Essentially, the budget needs not so much work - we (mainly myself) just need to pay closer attention to it.

How have you adjusted when hit with a decrease in income?

This is a picture from a trip that The Tall One and I took to Peru after we graduated from college. These people live in a remote village in the jungle, a very long boat ride away from the nearest town. Visiting the village was an extremely humbling experience. These people had nothing but the very essential basics. What I remember most from the visit was that these people were so happy. At Christmastime it seems I especially need to be reminded of my visit. I tend to get so caught up in all the things that I don't get finished, the things that aren't quite perfect, when really I should focus on all that is good. My family, my friends, a roof over my head. That's about all these Peruvians had and they were the best example I've ever seen of being genuinely happy.

Merry Christmas to you and yours. May you remember, too, to focus on what's really important.

Tonight was spent packaging up treats for The Tall One's co-workers. We did it the same way we did it two years ago when I originally wrote this post.

Have you blogged about something you made recently? Leave me a link in the comment section - I'd love to see it. What to join in next week? Send me an email and I'll be sure to link to you in next week's post.

This post was originally published in December of 2007. With budgets tightening this year, remembering what really makes the season special is more important than ever.

And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: “How could it be so?”
“It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
“It came without packages, boxes or bags!”
And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!
“Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store.
Maybe Christmas … perhaps … means a little bit more!”
From How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss

Who knew the Grinch was frugal? Okay well maybe not, but we can all learn a great lesson in frugality from this wonderful Christmas story. Christmas can be special without going overboard in your spending.

Here are some ways I plan on making this Christmas truly special without going into debt.

Watch Christmas Shows - On Tuesday night, I let Bug stay up late and watch A Charlie Brown Christmas. He loved it. Last night I taped How The Grinch Stole Christmas and we watched it today. Another winner. Taping these shows doesn't cost a thing and watching them can be a fun family activity.

Bake and Give Away Some of the Goodies - Bug loves to help me in the kitchen, and I love to bake, so making special Christmas treats to share with others will be something both of us will enjoy (and The Tall One will enjoy eating some things I don't normally bake).

Making a Special Christmas Breakfast - I think anything I can do to set Christmas Day apart from other days will help make the day something we look forward to. When I'm hosting Christmas (or we're on our own) I always make orange rolls, something I don't make any other day.

Make Crafts - I try and do art activities with Buggy, but they really are few and far between. Making December a month of crafts will make it fun for him, we can use what me make as gifts and we'll have some fun things to decorate the house with.

Talk about Jesus - This will be a big one. When I ask my kids what Christmas is about, I don't want the answer to be "Santa Claus". I think Santa Claus has his place, and we like him at our house, but I want my kids to know there's more to Christmas

Do Something Each Day - I plan on thinking of 24 things to do to celebrate Christmas, they will include all of the above. Each day we'll do something. I think this could be a great tradition for my kids and give them something other than presents to look forward to come December.

Gifts are great, don't get me wrong. I just want me and my family to have more reasons to love Christmas other than getting new things.

Last week, Bug came home with a note about his school's Winter Wonderland Workshop. The kids would be able to choose, purchase, and wrap small gifts for their family at school. I was excited because I remembered doing a similar thing when I was his age. I think I bought my little brother a pencil, and I'm anxiously awaiting something equally fabulous from my son.

I love this for many reasons. Of course, it's great because he gets so excited about it, but there are also so many great money lessons involved. First off, I counted his money, told him how much he had and let him decide if he wanted to spend all of it, or keep some of it for himself. He chose to spend all of it, but only after learning that he'd probably be getting some more cash for Christmas. Then we talked about how much he wanted to spend per person. At school, he had to check price tags to make sure he had enough money for each thing. He came home with some extra money, which is nice because it means he knew when it was time to stop and didn't just keep buying things simply because he had more money!

What money lessons have your kids learned this holiday season?

Kelly from Almost Frugal interviewed me a month or so ago for her "This is What Frugal Looks Like" series and the interview is up at her site now - go check it out! While your there, take a moment or two to browse, I'm sure you'll like what you see.

I created these for gifts for all the ladies at church. They are a fairly inexpensive and quick to complete project that's pretty darn useful too! For just about $15, I was able to make 100.

The internet has many, many tutorials for these, so I won't go into too much detail as for how to make them. Essentially, you  just choose some paper, cut it to size and glue it to the flat end of a marble and then glue the magnet to that. I used a hot glue gun and it worked quite nicely.

Have you blogged about something you made recently? Leave me a link in the comment section - I'd love to see it. What to join in next week? Send me an email and I'll be sure to link to you in next week's post.

It's never a good thing to view one's credit card statement and be surprised by the amount due. But for two months that was just about our situation. It comes as a result of not keeping track of spending for those two months, which is not something I'd recommend!

It started with a virus on the computer that we use to update our finances. We don't use it for much other than that, so it took us awhile to get around to fixing it. The next month was a result of sheer laziness. After a month of not entering any bills or transactions, there was a lot to catch up on and I just kept putting it off.

I wouldn't say that we weren't budgeting during those months. I know the numbers pretty well and could keep a fairly decent mental tally of what was spent in the big categories. Ultimately, I don't think that I would have spent the money too differently had I been on top of things. I didn't miss paying any bills, which is always a good thing, as well! But really, it was not good not knowing for sure where we stood financially. Sure, I had a good idea, but something still could have been off.


The upside to it all? One of these months happened to be my birthday month. Since I wasn't checking things regularly, I didn't see a birthday transaction. Had I seen it, I would have asked The Tall One about it and he would have been forced to fess up.

There are many reasons why buying bulk isn't always what it's cracked up to be, but one that recently occurred to me is medicine. We pulled out our massively large container of ibuprofen only to find out it expired nearly a year ago! Expired medicine isn't necessarily bad for you, but some of the strength will wear off and it won't be as effective. When I bought a replacement, I took into account our pain reliever usage and opted for a smaller package. Even though the unit price on the larger package was better - it's not better if we'll only throw half of it away.  On a recent grocery trip I saw some pain reliever of some sort in the clearance bin. I thought about getting it, but realized that I was better off paying a dollar less for a smaller package that wouldn't expire so soon.

When is buying bulk not worth it for you?

On Friday, like many of you perhaps, The Tall One and I went out shopping. At Toys R Us, we picked up two Lego sets for Bug, so guess what's on sale there this week? That's right, the Lego sets are buy one get one half off. At first I was disappointed that we didn't wait seing as we could have saved several dollars. Eventually I realized that chances were pretty good that there would have been no saving involved. Chances are if we had gone to the store and saw that promotion, we wouldn't have bought two $10 sets, we would have used it as an opportunity  excuse to just purchase more expensive sets!

A similar thing happened at another store that day. I went in and picked up what was on my list plus an extra t-shirt for Monkey and got in line. Only then did I notice that the everything in the store was an additional 25% off! I thought about getting out of line to grab some more things, but I knew there was nothing else I needed so perhaps staying in line was the best thing for my wallet!

I do love a good sale, but you must be careful that it doesn't trick you into spending more than is necessary!