Finding ways to save money....

Due to the economy and change in income levels we are looking for ways to cut our budget on a monthly basis. Some of the cuts I have found don't even effect our daily living and we are still getting what we have always had, but at a cheaper price. I called our cell phone provider a few weeks ago and told them I wanted to review my plan, I had noticed on our monthly bill that we had a plan that had way more minutes in it, than what we were using each month, so we were paying for minutes every month that we weren't even using. So we cut the plan minutes back. Also we had Internet access on 2 phones and it turned out we were only using the service on one of the phones ,so again we were paying for something that we didn't use. So we also removed Internet service off of one of the phones. 2 simple changes that didn't effect us at all or cause us to lose anything! We saved $60.00 a month for 2 simple changes.



Onto the home phone and Internet service. We get both services from the same provider. Again I noticed in our monthly bill that they had a flier for Internet service at 19.99 a month. I thought what the heck we are paying 39.99 a month! So I called them and again asked for an account review. Turns out the initial contract we had signed with them had long since ended and when that happens they auto put you into the highest rate plan. Hmmmm don't you think it would be good customer service on their part to call me when the contract ends so that they can make sure I am a satisfied customer and I am in the best possible plan at all times??? Apparently not, they make more money this way. I was told it was the customers responsibility to call in when the contract ends and that they don't have to notify you when the contract is expiring. HMMMM again I don't believe that's the way to do good business, but its not my company. Unfortuantely they offer the best service in the area for what we use, so I am pretty well stuck with them, good customer service or not. So anyway while they cant offer me the 19.99 a month because that's only for brand new customers ( so why do they put the fliers in an existing customers bill then??? Kind of like a slap in the face, I think) but they can offer me a rate of 29.99. So a savings of $10.00 a month.



I also called our Direct Tv provider and I didn't do as well there. Looks like we are in about as good as a plan as we can be. I was able to knock 4.99 a month off of the bill because we found out we could put the receiver, that is in the college students room on vacation mode, that way we don't get charged for the service in her room while she is at school. I wont turn it back on, for all of the 1 week here and there times, she is home for breaks, during the school year as it wouldn't be worth it, I might as well just leave it on full time then. So when she is home for Christmas, fall and spring breaks and any other times she will have to watch tv in one of the other rooms, of the house. I will just turn her receiver back on when she is home for summer break. So I guess a 4.99 savings a month is better than nothing.





So all totaled a savings of $74.99 a month.



So if you haven't called and had a check up on your phone, Internet, and cable services it is definitely worth it.

Job cleanup???

Who knew being let go from your job was so much work??? I sure didn't . Having been at my job for 13 years I had gained experience in many areas of the banking/financial world and I had even been involved in the on boarding and off boarding of employees, but my experience level stopped at the employee receiving their pink slip and watching them pack up their desks and then being involved in the redistribution of their workload to other employees. I had never been involved with the backside of what all the employee went thru after they had been layed off. OH MY GOSH, dealing with the emotional and financial changes that being layed off brings is one thing, but then to realize there is still so much to do is a little frustrating! Your told that you will be getting info by mail to tell you all of the details of when your insurance coverage ends and info about Cobra continuation, any vacation pay you are still entitled too, if any, what and if and when any retirement assets are allowed to be rolled out, and on and on and on . But they don't tell you how slowly all of this info will trickle into you by mail. Here it is the last week of January and I still didn't have all of the info I was needing so I started making phone calls on Tuesday and after 2 days of playing phone tag with people in countless different depts within HR and being transferred here and there and placed on hold for very long periods of time I finally believe I have all of my info. Other wise I was told they had to the end of the month to get all of this info mailed out! So as of yesterday I find out I only have 3 more days of paid insurance coverage, so that sets off a whole new round of phone calls. ( Had I waited for all of this info to come in the mail , my insurance would have all ready lapsed!) I quickly called my Family Dr and my eye DR to see when any of my family member's were due for check ups or if there was anything we needed to get done before I lost my insurance in 3 days. Unluckily our annual exams arent due with the family doctor for another 4 months and the insurance wont cover them this far ahead of time, if we do it this week ,so we have to wait on those, but my Dr said since I have never had a mammogram yet we might as well get my base line exam done yet this week, since the insurance will pay for it in full. (Fun, I'm sure) And my vision insurance said that they will cover my better half's and I's, eye exams if we get them done yet this week, even though we weren't due for check ups until February, they said it was still within the allowable window. So by good graces our DR s have been willing to work with us and are squeezing us in tomorrow to get these items completed before the insurance runs out on Sunday. So we should be pretty well set for another year before we would have to worry about the expenses of yearly checkups or having to buy new glasses and contacts, so that is a little bit of financial peace of mind. Now lets pray for continued good health. Now we just have to figure out whether we will try to continue on with Cobra coverage , which once I receive the info, I have 60 days to decide about ,but I know Cobra is soooooo expensive and I cant imagine we will be able to afford that since my income is gone. I imagine we will have to look into buying insurance coverage elsewhere or see if one of us gets a job with insurance benefits soon. Health care is so expensive!!!!! Also I got another phone call yesterday from the parking garage where I had to park at work and they wanted to know why I hadn't paid my January bill and they were getting ready to send out the February bill and if I didn't get both months paid ASAP they would suspend my parking privileges!!! WHAAAAATTTTTTT Im not employed there anymore! Turns out my employer forgot to notify the parkign garage that I had been layed off so they had continued to bill me, bills are sent directly to the office so I never realized they were still generating. SO they have noted it in my file and will cancel the Feb billing but the January billing is still debatable, as they held that parking spot open for me and they could have rented it to someone else had they known I wasn't an employee anymore. Can we SCREAM real loud now??? I of course made sure she understood completely that this was thru no fault of my own and I wasn't paying for that parking space when I never used it in January. So now I have to wait for her to call my employer and validate that I was layed off before they can decide to release me from the fee for January! Ughhhh. I will be so glad when all of these loose ends are wrapped up and I can really get on my with my life with out this company. Its been almost a full time job just to keep on top of all of these loose ends and try to get it wrapped up. Also to anyone out there that has been layed off recently, please do not assume that your employer will follow thru and complete all of the items that needs to be done to finish up your employment. And don't wait for the info of your separation from the company to be mailed to you, you may lose valuable time and benefits if you do. Start calling your HR service center right away and get the answers you need and make sure your all of these loose ends get wrapped up, as believe me, your employer probably wont care if things get missed.

Fellow The Bachelor show lover

I enjoy watching" The Bachelor" show and I have found a great blog that I follow daily! Stacey B. at http://bachelorlove.blogspot.com/ does a great job of recapping the shows every week and digging up facts and info on current and past bachelor and bachelorettes. Her blog is colorful and full of info and humor!! She does a really great job and I find myself checking her blog every day to see what new tidbits she has out there. She is gathering a large following, so if you love The Bachelor too head on over to her blog and check it out!!

Baking Bread

As the days of my hard core spring cleaning are coming to an end I am looking for other ways to get used to being at home on a daily basis. I am not one to just sit around, I have to keep busy. I love to cook but with a demanding job, kids, and all of the activities at the school, a significant other, 3 dogs, and a house to take care of ,I had always been in constant high gear and I didn't have the time to cook like I really would have liked to. So, much to my better half's delight, I have been able to start cooking regular home cooked meals again and other treats that I just didn't have time for. Cookies for one thing, he has a sweet tooth and loves cookies, along with other sweets but cookies are his favorite! So no more store bought cookies while Life is restructuring itself in our lives. I also have a bread machine that has been collecting dust and I pulled it out and cleaned it up yesterday and I made a loaf of home made bread yesterday. Absolutely wonderful!! Once in a great while I would pull the bread maker out and I would just buy a box mix for bread making and while they were good, actually making a loaf from scratch is soooooooooo much better, So I will be making bread at least once a week for the family. I also mixed up a batch of friendship bread starter up on Monday so in another 6 days I will be ready to start sharing my starter mix with friends but I will also be ready to bake up my first batch of the bread. Yummy!!!!!!!!!

SNOW day.... again

Schools are closed while yet another round of snow comes thru. Winter has been very long,cold, icy and snowy for us this year. Normally our area receives an average of 35 inches of snow a year. We are at about 40 inches now and there is a chance for another inch or so today and another inch tomorrow and another inch the day after that so the totals keep going up! Last year was a hard winter for us also we had about 70 inches of snow last winter! So we have been well above the norms for the last 2 years! A nice mild winter has got to be in store for us soon. With all of February and March to go yet, We very well could be pushing that 70 inches of snow mark again.... (sigh) I'm dreaming of a nice sandy beach with warm tropical breezes blowing in my face, how about you?????

Monday...

I just realized today that my postings have been lacking. I started a couple and saved them and then never finished them. I have been keeping up on my card drops but the blog posting kind of just fell away for the last week. My mind has been on other things and I haven't felt much like writing, so I have been on my spring cleaning quest yet again this last week. I cleaned all of the surfaces of the living room furniture, swept under the cushions, etc, I ran the cobweb wand around all of the corners of the house and I cleaned the ceiling fan blades, and dusted in every imaginable corner that normally doesn't get done every week. I even got to clean the garage, although that was not a job I had in mind to do! We keep an older fridge out in the garage and we use it for overflow food items( mostly at the holidays ) and for holding all of our sodas, water, juices etc. My youngest daughter went to go to school one day last week and she always grabs something to drink, on her way out the door. Unfortunately when she opened the door, the all ready loose side door shelf holder, busted the rest of the way off and bottles and cans of all kinds fell out and onto the garage floor. Breaking of course and leaking a very nasty sticky concoction all over the floor of the garage and a chunk of carpet we keep at the back door to wipe our feet on. This was no little job to be easily cleaned up with a paper towel! This was a move the car out of the garage and get the hose out and spray the floor down and scrub it with a broom to get rid of all of this stickiness. I also had to get the carpet cleaner out and clean the chunk of carpet. So I figured if I was going to have to go to this much work anyway I might as well clean a few shelves out in the garage and straighten a few things up and run the cobweb wand around in the garage and clean up the walls too. So several hours later the garage was very clean, mind you I was wet, dirty and cold but the garage was clean! I clean my house every week and I keep it very clean, overly clean according to my daughters but we all have those in depth cleaning projects that we only get to a few times a year and since I have extra time now I am getting them all done. If it was only nice outside...

A new start... I think

Well its definitely time to take the first step off of this crossroads I have felt like I have been stuck on for awhile, or maybe I should say I was pushed off of it. I worked for a large financial/investment firm and I am a licensed financial professional and my company like so many other financial firms and banks have been reducing staff due to this on going credit crisis and recession. Little investment firms and failing banks are being gobbled up by bigger firms and banks, and that unfortunately leads to new problems, that most people don't think about. When 2 banks or investment firms merge, you end up with a whole lot of jobs that overlap each other and way too many employees, so the new company ends up letting go of a whole lot of employees while they are restructuring a new company. Add on top of that sales are down, the stock market is down and corporations are cutting corners wherever they can. While so many of us employees in this line of work have been living on pins and needles for months and months now and we have watched lot of other coworkers let go over the last year ,you just never want to believe you will be next. I knew the winds of change had been blowing at my place of employment, for quite awhile now, but I had hoped for the best. I am struggling with realizing that a place I have went to work at, for the last 13 years is no longer a part of my life. There have been times, who am I kidding .. most of the time I felt like I lived at my place of employment and that I spent more time there instead of with my own family. So I have had frustrations with my job but who honestly hasn't??? No job is perfect but after you have been there as long as I had been it had been become my second home, my second family, it was a part of me. To the corporation its not personal when they let people go, but to the employee it is and it still doesn't make it any easier when I was 1 of 8 people let go in the last 2 weeks. I know, I know look for a bright side right??? When one door closes the saying is another one opens, so I just need to keep an open mind. So there are a few things that I will not miss... the hour long commute each way to and from work, the hefty parking fees at the parking garage, the catty office politics, the stress of the constant ups and downs of the stock market, not having enough time for my family and home, the huge fuel bill I was paying to drive back and forth to work.... Its just that its change, 13 years is along time and this has been the only job that I have held in my adult life. Part time jobs in high school don't count, they weren't a career. Everyone keeps telling me I am young, I have plenty of time to start over, Retirement age is still a long waaaaaaaaaaaay off but what do I start over with? My job profession is in a field that is laying people off fast, the head lines every day tell of another bank laying of several hundred to several thousand employees, finding a good paying job in this line of work will be next to impossible for the next year or 2, I am afraid. And do I really want to go back to that line of work??? Now is the time to decide if I am going to reinvent myself, go back to school, start anew career or hope for the best and keep looking for work in my line of expertise and hope that over the next year thinks start looking up.

The Bachelor!

As you may have noticed I have added "the Bachelor" button to my side bar. I know its a reality show and it is more times than not kind of silly, but I enjoy watching it and I know there alot of people out there who also enjoy watching the show. Its a nice place to get away and and just enjoy yourself for an hour or 2. Its also amazing the lengths that these bachelorettes will go to get their man! I also enjoy some of the one on one dates that they go on and its fun to see tropical islands in the middle of the winter or see the extravagant dates they go on. its just a fun fantasy show to watch. If you agree let me know your thoughts otherwise don't hold it against me if I watch the show.

Too Cute Puppy...

We have 3 Golden Retrievers, ages -- almost 12 years, 3 1/2 years and 3 months. The oldest is a female and she is the mother of the 3 1/2 year old male and the baby is the son of the 3 1/2 year old male. So 3 generations! We never planned on having 3 dogs at one time but due to circumstances that were out of our control, we ended up having to take a pup in exchange for the stud service. ( Another family member was to take the pup but when the puppies were born things had changed and the family member couldn't take the pup, so we ended up with the bundle of joy) The puppy ( Dakota) has become one of the best thing to have happened to us! He has brought us alot of laughter and happiness , and in these tough times that has been a blessing. Yes puppies are alot of work and the potty training can be a non stop job at first, but the cuteness and the love he has bestowed upon us ,far out weighs the work. He also has given his dad a playmate. Jake at 3 1/2 still has alot of puppy in him and he enjoys having someone around that has as much energy as he does. These 2 are inseparable and keep each other company all day long. All 3 dogs get along great but the female is getting old and she has slowed down alot, luckily she is in good health for her age but she just doesn't get around like she used to. Having 3 dogs in the house has turned out to be no different than having 2 dogs. The puppy is a non stop bundle of energy as all puppies are and he really is a good boy. He loves the water in the true fashion of alot of golden retrievers. My better half is all excited about this. Our female dog has never taken to the water and only likes to wade in the water and not any deeper than just her paws. Jake the 3 1/2 year old loves the water too and you are hard pressed to keep him out of the pond in the summer. BUT baths in the tub forget it, he will put up with a bath in the tub but he sure doesn't like them, the puppy though loves the tub, he will crawl into the tub when its empty looking for water and he is really happy if he finds someone in the shower and he can crawl into the shower with them! And I mean he willingly crawls in on his own, so if you arent wanting a shower mate you had better make sure you have that bathroom door shut all the way! I have never seen a dog love water so much! It will be interesting to see how he reacts to the big pond this summer.

The sun is shining!!

It has been a very long time since we have had such a sunny day! Yes it s still cold outside but nothing compared to the below zero temperatures we have been experiencing the last week. No matter how yucky the weather is outside a nice sunny day lifts your spirits and gives you hope that we will soon see warmer days!!

Happy 18th!!

Today is my youngest daughters birthday, she is 18 today. I cant believe it! In a few short months she will be graduating from high school and then off to college in the fall. Then I will officially be a college Mom. Having 3 daughters has been the best gift of my life but its hard to believe they are growing up and I will soon not have any kids in high school anymore. Next fall I know will be hard as we will officially enter into the empty nesting phase. Even though my middle daughter just started college this year It was hard when I had to take her to college and leave her there and come home with out her. It was way harder that I thought it would be, It was hard when my oldest daughter got married and moved away also, a year and a half ago. Slowly they are leaving and giving me time to adjust but I know next fall will be hard. For so long it has been just me and my 3 girls. As hard as it was to leave my middle daughter at college this past fall , I have quickly settled into realizing it is just college and she gets to come every few weeks and that she will still be home every summer. Mind you I fully realize that as she gets older and makes more new friends at college that she wont be as excited about coming home for every single college break but for now my youngest 2 will be around be a few more years even if it is just for breaks from college. So I will get a little more time to transition to the stage when it will just be me and my fiance' at home. So for now my 19 and 18 year old daughters still need me and they aren't ready to start a home of their own yet. My baby is 18 today, where did the time go??? Several years ago I had a friend walk up to me on my youngest daughters birthday and she told me Happy Birthday! I reminded her my birthday wasn't for another month yet and today was my daughters. She said I know that, but you gave birth to her today, so today is really your birth-day. Today is a day of celebration for both of you! I have never forgotten what she told me that day, it really meant alot to me. Happy 18th Birthday to my Baby!!!

Twist Loofah giveaway!!!

I was just visiting my friends blog," AT the Creek" and saw that she is doing a real cool giveaway of a Green Irene product! She is giving away 2 twist loofah sponges. Here is the info on these really cool environmentally safe sponges--- they will scrub off dirt, grime and grease and are biodegradable. According to the Green Irene site these sponges are perfect for washing dishes or scrubbing hard to clean areas in the house.These sponges have 2 sides, on one side you’ll find an absorbent sponge material and the other side has a natural loofah scrubbing layer for that extra scrubbing power you need on those tough jobs! You can link to the Christy's site "At the Creek" by clicking on my link on this page. Head on over and sign up for the giveaway! This is for a limited time so don't hesitate, she has numerous ways to get yourself in on the giveaway!

More spring cleaning!

I know its not really spring but it is so nice to be able to say the word. I can dream right??? But I am doing my major cleaning jobs now, that alot of people wait and do in March or April, when its warm enough to open the windows and doors. January and February are our down months so we get as much as we can get done now. When spring breaks the greenhouses will take up all of our time and I wont have time for all of these in depth cleaning chores and painting that I am getting done now. So since the weather again has forced us to stay inside the last few days I am now scrubbing carpets. I usually have my carpets professionally cleaned once a year and this year I will have that done mid May, in preparation for my youngest daughters graduation, from high school. I have a carpet cleaning machine of my own and I use that in between professional cleanings to keep the carpets looking good. Since we also have a new puppy in the house we have been potty training, I have been cleaning the carpets myself a little more often. I cleaned them right before Christmas so that they would be all clean before we started having guests over for the Holidays. Unfortunately the puppy wasn't 100% trained yet so he has had a few accidents since the last cleaning. (mind you I always spot clean where ever he has an accident as soon as it happens, but its just not the same as getting the steam cleaner out and going over the whole floor) I am happy to report though that the puppy has went almost 2 weeks now without any accidents so I am hopeful that we are past this part of his training stages. So I cleaned the carpets in the living room, office area, and 2 of the 3 bedrooms, yesterday. Today I will tackle the 3rd bedroom and the family room. Then all of my floors will be completely cleaned! Yahoooo!

I Love Etsy

For those of you who don't know what ETSY is just click on my link to my Etsy store on this page. I am fairly new to Etsy ( 2 months) but the number of people that have come thru my store all ready, is great! I still have alot of Christmas related items listed for sale but I can custom make just about any kind of decorative item designed to a color scheme,design, season or holiday. Give me a holler if you are interested. I also have started listing some vintage/antique items at my store and am having very good luck. I just sold an antique typewriter yesterday! We have tried to sell these items locally with no luck but the Etsy store has opened my products up to a whole new market and has helped us to find buyers that are interested in these types of items. Head on over to Etsy and take a look around there are alot and I mean alot of cool items, that are hand made or vintage!!

FREEZING....

Unbelievable at 7 am this morning the actual temperature was -17 and the windchill has been 20-30 below zero. They say we could break records here. Indiana gets cold but not usually this cold! All of the schools that I have heard about from the middle of the state clear North are closed. Alot of the colleges are still open though. My college freshman called me last night and she is freezing! The whole dorm building is frigid, the school tells them the heat system cant keep up with outside air temp. So the students are having to wear their jackets and gloves in the dorms and stay covered up with blankets to keep warm. Lots of hot chocolate is being drank too! She attends a very large and prominent college in the state and I cant believe they aren't doing anything for these kids. They were told that until the deep freeze breaks they cant do anything about this and it will be the earliest of Saturday before they can even start to look at the problem with the heating system. On top of that the main campus is a good hours walk from the dorms and the buses are so full that some kids are being forced to walk to class in these frigid temps! And the school wont add additional routes to help with the overflow. The college wont close unless the actual temp is neg 25. She tells me that the temp is neg 18 at noon but it never hit the magical neg 25 to shut classes down. I know, I know I am being an overly protective mother but nobody should be out walking around for an hour in those kind of temps. Luckily so far to day she has been able to get on a bus and is only walking from class to class on the main campus .My youngest daughter and I though are staying in all day! I am not a lover of winter and this just makes me want to pack it all up and move to a much warmer location. How about you???

Scrubbing hard!

Since I completely painted both bathrooms last week and I washed all of the rugs and shower curtains and window curtains in the baths also. I decided to finish up today and make it so the bathrooms were 100% clean from top to bottom. The only thing left was the floors. I have tile floors in both bathrooms and while I love the tiles and the pattern , I hate the color of grout that was used. We bought this house just 3 years ago and we have slowly been remodeling and changing things. The tiles and grout were put in by the previous owners. The tiles are pretty shades of creams,tans and browns and have a rippled texture to make them look like marble or stone. Unfortunately they put in a very ,very light colored grout and it shows dirt quickly! I would have went with a tan color myself. Because the pattern/texture of the tiles is uneven the grout lays lower than the tiles and the dirt settles into the lower areas where the grout is and no matter how much I mop the grout gets stained and dirty over time. The mop flows over the top of the tiles and not down into the grout. I also have teenage daughters that help out with the housework but they don't like to put any more effort than necessary into the job and they wont really scrub the floors when they mop. ( Imagine that!) So every so often I have to get down on my hands and knees and spray the grout down with a bleach solution and scrub the heck out of it with a stiff bristle brush. Not fun!! So while my bathrooms are super clean now, the whole house smells like bleach. yuck!!! As I said before all of this snow and cold weather we have been having has given me the free time to get alot of much needed chores done! What yucky project can I come up with next??

the Gardens...

Hi! for those of you that keep checking in to read about life at the greenhouses or gardening tips I promise as we get closer to spring I will be writing about that more often than not. Right now this is our very quite time as far as plants go and like alot of new businesses we are in deep thought about how to survive this recession and still be around a year or 2 from now. So many new businesses and even well established small businesses are going under and those that are still here, have went into survival mode and are re-looking at their business plans and scaling back just to survive and come out on the other side of this economy we are in now. So as we get closer to spring and we go thru the changes we will have to make this year I will share more. as our blog theme says we are trying to find the flowers amongst the thorns of life and right now there seems to be alot more thorns, to weed thru.

day of frustrations....

Winter has its grips on us and will not let go. Another storm warning today and when it expires tonight we go under a blizzard advisory. They say another 2-4 inches may come tomorrow and another 1-3 inches the next day and don't forget to add in the very bitter cold temps, and wind chills! Looks like the weather is acting like the economy-- very difficult! On top of all of this I had to be in court again, this morning to deal with never ending problems of an ex who doesn't want to , doesn't like to, or a countless other reasons pay child support or his portion of the uninsured medical bills he is responsible for and he is forever behind! And I mean way behind, I have essentially raised my girls on my own. So we end up being in court alot and I have had to deal with the court system, judges, attorneys, child support enforcement offices, for a very long time. Its sad but as much as I would like to keep my girls young for a little while longer so I can enjoy them before they completely take off and start their own lives and make homes of their own, there is another part of me that cant wait until they reach the point (usually 21 or after 3-4 years of college) and I no longer have to deal with this and to me that is so sad that I have to think like that, but its been 17 years all ready and that is a very long time and Im tired. I realize that when they do reach that magical age we will still be dealing with a large dollar amount that he owes, but it wont be getting any larger after that point and I can hope the situation will resolve itself. This is one of those situations where I still have not fully seen the reason for why I have had bear this burden for so long but I still am positive that at some point in my life I will understand. I keep saying that at some point in my life if I were to ever come into a bunch of money I would pay off all of my own debts and get myself into a situation where I could help other single parents that Have had to deal with similar issues. I unfortunately and not necessarily from my wanting to, I have gained alot of knowledge over the last 17 years and if I could help other single parents that would be a blessing. I have gained alot of knowledge and have personal experience in areas that no single women should have to endure. My marriage was very abuse and I wish I could help other women who have had similar situations or are going thru what I have. Court days really reinforce that over and again, in my mind but as of yet I am still financially struggling to just take care of myself and my family and I am unable to do what I would like to do. Maybe this idea I have had in my head for so long isn't what I am meant to do and that's why it hasn't come to happen yet , and my mother tells me maybe I need to write a book about my life experiences and that would help other women, but that idea hasn't grabbed me yet and jumped out at me and said just do it. So today is a day full of self reflection and wishing I had made better/different choices early on in my life and I had never been with this man but then again I have to remind myself I have 3 beautiful girls and I wouldn't want, to have not had them as the are the best blessings in my life but as for the rest of the hardships Ive endured because of this man, Im still searching for a more positive reason as to why I am still having to deal with him. So the weather today and over the next few days, will match my mood. See the post below that I did initially on 1-7-09 and am just now putting out there.... What are your goals that for what ever reason are hanging around in your mind but life and its happenings haven't allowed them to materialize yet?

Cleaning tip....

In my previous post I talked about washing my shower curtain. This is something that I have always done and if you have never tried it, please do, it will save time and money. No hand scrubbing and no smelly toxic shower chemicals that you have to spay on! I know alot of people just throw their shower curtain liners away when they get shampoo and soap build up on them and they start looking yucky, but that's not always necessary. You can wash your vinyl shower curtain, in your washing machine, in warm water with a couple of towels ( the towels help scrub it as it is washing) and normal laundry soap. Usually running it thru one wash cycle is all it takes, if it is extra dirty, you can do it twice. You can also wash it in hot water but I try to use only the warm water to save on the energy bill. Normally I only wash my clothes in cold water but the cold water just does not do well on the vinyl shower curtain, it needs the warm water to keep it pliable in the washer. It will be wrinkly when you take out of the washer and you can do one of 2 things from this point. Go hang it up immediately in the shower and let it air day ( the first time someone takes a nice hot shower all of the wrinkles will fall right out, of the vinyl curtain.) You can also put the curtain in the dryer on a very low heat setting and let it dry for a few minutes and I would suggest only a few minutes, as too hot of a dryer or too long in the dryer can cause some damage. I learned this tip years ago and it has saved me alot of money over the years and has also kept my cleanliness habit happy as a shower curtain can quickly get yucky. Please note, that if your curtain has holes or tears in it ,the washing machine will just make things worse, so this tip works best on shower curtains that are still in good condition and just need a good cleaning.

Making things pretty

Snow, snow, and more snow, it doesn't seem like its going to end. Since we are pretty much stuck at home I have used the last few days to get some to do items, crossed off of my list. I also have a very bored college student at home that is sooooo bored she is begging for things to do and volunteered to help me get some painting done around here. All Right!!! She helped paint her sisters bedroom a week ago in very light shades of an aqua /teal color. My youngest daughter has always had a thing for teals and light blues. The bedroom turned out very pretty and really brightened her room up. So when my college age daughter came to me yesterday and said you know we still have time to get the 2 bathrooms done before I go back to school, I was ecstatic!. So my master bath was painted yesterday! We used a two tone approach when we painted this room and used shades of cream and a light cocoa brown and it turned out wonderfully. It brightened the room up and made the walls all fresh and clean again. I also washed my curtains, the shower curtains and the rugs in the bathroom as well, so spring cleaning a little early. I keep my home clean and am somewhat of a neat freak but no matter how hard you try to keep the bath walls clean, you always seem to end up with water streak marks on the walls that just wont wash off! So in the last year and a half we have painted the kitchen, the entrance way, 2 baths, all 3 bedrooms, now all that is left are the living room and family room. The family room is very large, so I wont attempt it until the spring/summer when it is warm enough to open the windows so that the paint fumes don't smell us out. I also am not sure what I want to do with that room yet, as far as a color. The bathrooms I wasn't worried about as they are fairly small and we turned on the vent fan and the paint fumes never got bad. The living room I could easily do in the winter yet and I just about have the color scheme worked out, but after tackling the bedroom and 2 baths I am just about painted out for now and may wait a bit, maybe even until spring before I start painting again. So being snowed in can be a good time to get those items on yur to do list done that you normally dont have time for. Now off to make cookies for my better half. He has been asking for me to make him some fresh chocolate chip cookies!

Crossroads....

All of us at one time, or another in our lives have found ourselves standing at point where we know big changes are coming to our lives. Sometimes I don't even realize I have been at a crossroads in my life until I'm some ways down the path ( sometimes its months or years) and I will look back and realize the exact moment that led me to the moment I am in. Sometimes I have made good decisions and other times I look back and wonder If I had only just taken the other path, Life would have been so much easier! Other Crossroads I have arrived at with much difficulty and I have found myself standing at the crossroads knowing I must go forward and knowing with all certainty I Definitely cant go back, but yet just not sure which path to take. I find myself in that spot now and for some reason I can see that there are 3 paths ahead of me but I honestly don't know what I am supposed to do. 1 path of course will eventually find me down the road realizing I made a wrong turn and I will eventually find myself at another crossroads, trying to figure out how to make things better, the 2nd path will be the right path and the path in the middle will walk between the 2 options, giving me time to figure things out . Alot of people believe there is only right and wrong in the world, I believe there is gray as well, a middle ground that is a compromise. So that also describes my 3 paths that are lying in front of me. I realize that when I hit these moments in life, I don't have all of the answers and I'm just going to have to push forward and hope and trust in the future and hope I haven't misread the signs of my life that I am supposed to be following. So soon I will need to step off of this point, I am just standing on and have faith that everything will be ok, but for now I am just standing there waiting, to take that first step and hope that I will have made the right decision. I definitely have faith and hope in my heart but I am also an analytical person and I find that I don't like to do things, unless I am fairly very certain of the outcome, so I tend to be cautious and over think things and study and research like crazy until I feel ok about my decisions, but this cross roads is a puzzler . I don't believe I have all of the info I need yet so I will stand here awhile longer before I start the next trek down a new part of our lives.

Bookkeeping!

I am happy to say that I have all of my info updated in quickbooks, as I had thought I had let things go further than I like. Mind you quickbooks is easy to work with, but if you let your receipts pile up, it can be a daunting issue to look at how high the pile is. I love just about anything to do with accounting so that's not the reason, I always fall behind, in my inputting, of my entries. Usually I do really well until the greenhouse is in full madhouse rush stage in the spring/early summer and then the receipts just start getting shoved into a file folder and I keep telling myself the next week will be better, I will get to them then. But as is normal we don't come up for air until late fall and by then the pile of receipts is so large that I just dread the thought of even starting on them, as I know it will be a full days work or more to get caught up. 6 hours today just sitting at the computer and sorting thru receipts and inputting them into the computer! Luckily nothing else was going on today with my better half or the kids and I was able to work straight thru without any interruptions, which is very, very rare. So now I just have to wait for the rest of our w-2's and other tax docs to arrive in the mail and we will be ready to go see the accountant. Hopefully that will bring good news and not a tax bill owing. Oh well, for now I will just dream about how great a refund would be. Are you dreaming of a tax refund too??

FAFSA's---WHEEEEWW its out of the way

For those of you that have college students or high school seniors graduating this year and are planning on going off to college, you know its time to submit your FAFSA online. This makes the third year I have had to fill one out. I remember sitting in a college funding meeting with my oldest daughter 3 years ago and listening to the counselor talk about how long the process was and how hard it could be to fill out the Fafsa, I also had several parents tell me how horrible it was and I had myself all set up to believe this was going to be an absolutely teeth pulling horrifying ordeal!!! I am thankful to say and can put your minds at ease, it was no where near as bad as I had thought it was going to be. Each year that I have had to do one it has gotten easier and faster. The system is very user friendly and hallelujah it saves info in it from one year to the next, all you have to do is review the application and make updates were needed. Since this is the first year that I have 2 girls going to college next year it carries information over from one application to the next making the second childs FAFSA soooooo easy to do. I always like to get the Fafsa done as early as is possible as I believe the earlier you get your financial aid requests in the better shot you have of getting approved early and for more options. So if you have a child going off, to college next fall, jump in and get your fafsa done, its really not that bad.

Managing Monday.....

As the new year gets underway I find myself getting ready for tax time. The first tax docs arrived in the mail today, so I will start to set aside all of the docs, we will need for the accountant in a separate file. Hard to believe its that time of year all ready but hopefully the tax man will be kind to all of us, and we will get a much needed refund check!! I consider myself to be a very organized person but every year at this time I find myself looking at our quickbooks and realizing I have a whole day of inputting to get the records caught up for the end of year. Again another goal for this year input deposits and receipts as I get them, That way I dont end up with a mad dash in January to wrap up the previous years books. Its just so darn easy to think I will do it tomorrow and then things just keep coming up and the next thing you know several weeks have slipped away somehow and you are behind. We will definitely work on this, this year.

January settles in

The Holidays are over and now we turn to the long days of winter. Hopefully they wont be too long and spring will be upon us soon. Being new to the blog scene I am having a hard time getting myself into the habit of blogging every day, that and getting over the second guessing of what to write about and thinking no one will want to read about that. So while this may seem like a small goal to some, I have got to set time aside to write at least every other day. I really want to get moving in the Wahm world, so any tips you have would be great! I would really like to earn a few hundred dollars a month to help supplement the household. I'm just struggling at figuring out how to get myself to that point where I can earn some cash and trying to figure out what opportunities are legit. All feed back is greatly appreciated!!!

Happy New Year!!!

2009.... What do you think the New Year will bring us? I'm not sure yet but I am glad that 08 is over and that we have a fresh slate to start with. We spent New Years eve at our neighbors home along with 5 other couples. We had lots of fun and had lots of time to talk to friends and catch up. The happiness of the group was catching and made us all hope for a brighter year to come. Today myself and the rest of the family took down the Christmas tree and all of the other decorations, then we dusted and swept the whole house, So Christmas festiveness is gone. I always hate taking it all down as the house looks bare when it first gets put away. My mother has always had this belief ever since I can remember that its bad luck to have your Christmas tree still up on New Years eve. Apparently there is some type of superstition that if you still have the Christmas tree and decorations up on New Years eve you will also carry any bad Carma from the old year in to the New Year. Have you ever heard of this?? I have always left my decorations up until at least January 1 and sometimes a few days after that just depending on what entertaining we have yet to do. usually I think nothing of this superstition but this year it has been in mind as I don't want to carry any negativity into the new year! How did you spend your day??