Today I made my very first trip inside a CVS. I had read all the hype about it and their famous Extra Care Bucks.    I was so excited I had to share my savings and earnings, since I earned my first $2.00 in Extra Care Bucks.  I bought the Palmolive Dish Liquid that gave you ECB’s as well as the Buy 1, Get 1 Free Lays’  and 2 Liter Cokes.  I saved a total of $5.78 which for my first trip I thought was great!

I will also share with you what I did for groceries.  Normally, I shop the first week for groceries and paper goods for the month. I buy enough to last the entire month (the paper goods that is ).  I am considering this my first trip for January since this will hold me through next Thursday, January 3.  Normally, my trip to Walmart at the first of the month costs me in the neighborhood of $100-110.

Today’s trip however I walked out with a buggy full for $70. 82.  Even with CVS I only spent $79 or so. At Walmart, I noticed that Scott tissue was on sale for $6 for 12 mega rolls. Normally I buy the Northern Tissue for $5.94 for 6 mega rolls I realized what a huge savings the Scott would be though it is normally $7.97 for that 12 pack.  So, one savings there.  Another thing I did was use 4 coupons that totaled $2.55 in savings.  So today, my savings was at least $10 if you take into acct the tissue.  I am proud of myself.

If you look at it this way $110 my normal shopping trip versus $79 today I saved $31.  Is that not frugal or what?

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Isn’t she precious??

This year was Lily’s first Christmas I think she actually began to “get it” after opening gifts for the 3rd or 4th time. She would get all excited. It was too much fun to watch her.  I love my baby girl!

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We had a very Merry Christmas, though I am dog tired now. Staying up playing “Santa” was fun but it wears a girl out. We also had many family get togethers the last couple of days, lots of food and presents. We had a ball! I wanted to share some pictures with you from the holidays.

My son got the train set he wanted and he was excited that Santa brought his little sister a rocking horse and a doll as he requested for her.  He got more than he can ever play with in a week, after receiving gifts not only from Santa but from my parents, my inlaws, my grandparents, and my aunts and uncles who have no children it was like Toys R Us exploded in my living room. It still looks that way but we’ll be putting away and organizing the rest of the week I am sure.  One of my goals before January 1 is to get the house cleaned up and organized as I am behind on that for sure.

I hope that everyone’s holiday was as happy as ours.  I’ll share one of Lily in the next post!

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The Lord speaks to me in some mysterious ways sometimes but I truly feel Him telling me to go frugal in 2008 and to get on track with my house, family, budget, etc.

So I have a lot of work to do before 2008 gets here. I am going to

1.  Set up some working routines for my daily life.

2. Start organizing my home.

3.  Prepare a working budget.

4.  Prepare a Get out of debt plan.

5.  Find ways to be more frugal.

That’s pretty much the top 5 things I’m focusing on before Jan. 1 I need you all to root me on.

I have found some great frugal and couponing resources this morning.  Here are a few if you want to check them out.

 Frugal Village- I joined the message boards and looking for their coupon train.

Cara’s Special Report -How to Save Money on Groceries 

Coupon Mom - I joined this site too.

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I listed my business goals several days ago with the promise I would set and post some personal goals  soon.  Well, today the majority of my focus and conversations online have been about saving money.  I know the Lord has his hand on this.  I have tried for the past several years to do better financially, and in many ways I have failed miserably.  This year we did manage to pay off some smaller debts and pay off our van.  But there are still other debts and unfortunately new debts made.

Here are my goals in no particular order.

1.  Pay off debts, credit card, personal loan, hospital bill.

2.  Begin making more income working from home.

3.   Be more consistent with my quiet times.

4.  Develop a better daily routine.

5.  Keep a cleaner house.

6.  Live more frugally.

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Babies they grow so fast. With every one I have wanted them to stay tiny forever, but of course they grew. I guess that is why the Lord is allowing me to experience that tiny newborn one more time. If only they could stay that way forever.

My oldest will be 4 on Friday, yes 4 I am in shock! My baby girl will be 1 in March and #3 will be born around July 13 they say!

I created some tickers to tick the days away…..They will appear on my left sidebar as well.

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Are the one’s you make yourself.  I am in the middle of making trash mix (homemade Chex mix) and chocolate peanut butter fudge.  It is taking a while, each batch of trash takes 1 hr in the oven.  The fudge I must confess was easy peasy I will tell you if you ask, but I won’t reveal my easy recipe here on my blog. 

I am giving these two items in a decorative Christmas tin to all the men in our family as well as 2 guys my hubby works with and my son’s teacher at K3.  I’m having to make it now because tomorrow is my son’s last day of school, mainly he just has his Christmas party.  Anyway, I am enjoying a taste of my homemade goodies tonight and I am truly proud of my efforts.

I also made the women in my family’s gifts as well.  I painted canvases with a cross.  I decorated the cross with gold metallic paint and made them all different colors to match the style and  color pattern that is already in their home.  I gave one of these to my secret sister in my Bible study group/group of friends as well.  She had no clue I made it.  She will not even know who it’s from till we reveal who we had this year in September of next year, our church year starts each Sept.

Anyway, enough rambling. The main thing is I’m proud of my homemade gifts this year.  I”m also giving all my family members picture of my children. I took them myself but they turned out GREAT if I do say so myself.

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Normally I don’t post my goals until the beginning of the New Year or at least on New Year’s Eve, however I thought I would today to encourage my friends to do so as well.  Of course these are my goals for my businesses so I still need to make some goals for my personal and family life so I’ll save those for later.

• Complete 2 resources in Mom Masterminds per month.
• Create 1 information product per Quarter for Beauty By Design Ministries.
• Start an affiliate program for Beauty by Design Ministries by July 2008.
• Maintain 6 retainer clients with Writer for Hire.
• Increase my income through residual means.  Ultimate goal to make ½ my income this way

Leave me a comment with your  link to your goals, I’d love to see them!

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Today is the last working day of the year, for me at least. I am taking the rest of the month or year actually off. Yes, I may dabble in work a little here or there, but only if I want to. The other night I postdated blog posts for Beauty By Design Ministries blog and I wrote the last 3 ezines of the year early. Today I really need to produce a podcast for Mom-Daughter Connection but if it doesn’t get done I”m not going to stress out.

I want to enjoy my holiday season. My son has 3 days of school left, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. He may not go on Tuesday because we’re planning to take Greg’s dad to the doctor out of town and want to just take Baker since no one will be here to pick him up from school. Wednesday is his Christmas party. All in all next week of school will be short and sweet for him.

I still have fudge and trash mix (chex mix homemade) to make for the men in my family as I am making all Christmas gifts this year. I plan to do that the later part of next week as I have a OB appt. on Thursday and I plan to go to the store for supplies that same day. So most likely the actually fixing will be done next Friday, which is also my son’s actual birthday, though we are celebrating his party tomorrow.

Then, the holiday rush begins I have a half dozen places to go to be with family, open gifts and eat of course, all through next weekend and the first part of next week. After that I will most likely do some planning for next year as I have already set my goals. I’ll post them here in a few days. But, more than anything I’d like to develop some better routines for my work and housekeeping so that I can truly get more done. My housekeeping is slack these days and work is taking front seat.

I will post here I’m sure, as my blogging addiction is just too hard to stay away from. So I’ll see you around, though most likely I won’t be working so if you want to chat or something, I’m game!

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Well, my son’s birthday is Dec. 21. This weekend we’ve planned him a party at the Pizza Inn in the next town. We invited all 11 other children in his 3 year old preschool class. My son is turning 4. We ordered the giant party pizza and I bought a cake in the bakery at Walmart today. I even let my son pick out which one already decorated with Happy Birthday that he wanted. However, I’ve chosen to forgo the party or loot bags this year. My son has gotten them at other parties and as a youth and children’s director at my church for 5 years I gave them out at almost every event. Many times I only received groans from both the kids and the parents. The kids really didn’t appreciate anything they were given, either they didn’t like the candy or the pencil and pad wasn’t what they were hoping for. And the parents, well they see it as “more junk to clutter their home”. Being a parent myself now, I can say “AMEN” to that. So, I’m forgoing bags this year, and I’m saving some bucks. Looks like a win-win situation to me.

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