Month: January 2011

Just some random thoughts …..

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Today I was thrilled to get some books in the mail I had  ordered last week . One being  The Art of Non- Conformity.

What an interesting book and I am barely into it.

He is talking about how we need to start living the life we want to live, not the life we are supposed to live according to what we have been taught . I guess you could say a bit of thinking outside the box, but so much more.

He brought up the statement that many people are living lives of quiet desperation and I never really got what that meant before, but I t hink I do now.

I am happy with my life. I love my husband and my kids and thier families and the life we have built, but inside, I am  far from happy with me. I get up every day and feel a bit lost. What do I want to do ? Who do I want to be, aside from the wife and mom and grandma that I am. What do I want for me ?? I do not know   yet.

I do know a few things. I want to be creative. I want to be part of the world, not just watching it from the window , ie, computer and tv, that is how most of us watch the world go by, sitting at our desks or on our sofa.

I do know I want to do something that I feel passion for, drive to do, feel fullfilled doing it and that I can do for my personal livelihood. My husband takes good care of us and works hard to support our household, but I want to contribute to our lives too through  my c reativity and hard work.

Hard work, yes. I am not afraid of it or want to avoid it. I want to work hard at something I love to do. I want to jump out of bed every morning and be excited to do something that excites my imagination and makes me feel I am contributing somehow to the world, not just my family.

I am not sure what that is and I am hoping that by reading this book and thinking about my life I will figure it out. I am tired of being bored and not having any focus in my life other than housework, and taking care of everyone. Those are important things, family is everything to me, but I need more, need to find something to bring personal happiness to myself which will overflow to my husband , kids and grandkids. I firmly believe w hen we are personally fullfilled we have more to give to those we love.

I have a wonderful husband , David , who is never anything but supportive. He wants to see me find my passion and be successful. He likes it when I have a fun day or do something intersting and is always happy for me  when I do something new I find interesting. I know he is not personally fullfilled working as a maint. mechanic in a factory, but he is proud of his skills and enjoys his time off leaving work behind. He never lets his own lack of time to create his own dreams ,  affect his positive support of my dreams.
I do think a part of my dream to be successful at something I love so I can take the pressure off of him so he can pursue his dreams too.  I would so see him do the things he has always dreamed of and so I will be honest, part of my dream is to  give him his. He supported me being a stay at  home mom when that was my passionate dream, raising our kids myself is what I wanted, and he made sure it happened, so I want to do the same for him .

The only regret I have is that during those wonderful years I was a mom and wife and let that be the sole focus  for me.  I never thought about the day when that huge job of raising  four kids would be over and I would need to find a new focus. David said to me, you did your job so well you worked yourself out of your job, what a sweet and wonderful thing to say to me.

So, now I want to find my purpose, and I know everyone uses that catch phrase.  What is my purpose and I want to live my authentic life, but it is true. It is what I want.

I want to wake up everymorning so excited and happy to get to work on what I want to do. When my husband and I have some time together on his days off, I think it will make me a more interesting and happy person to be with.  I do believe when we are personally fullfilled we can only be better at everything we do and be a better person to be around.

I was thinking about all of this and looking at our trees in  our yard. They are beautiful but they are pruned and where the branches have been cut, they do not look like they should. So, the tree is still beautiful but not as pretty as it would be if  it had not been cut to be what the people that take care of it t hink it should be. I think many of us are like that. Beautiful creations of God but have let life cut our branches so that we are not the full people we could be if we only said no, I do not want to trimmed like that, I want to grow the way I need to grow to be fullfilled and happy and beautiful . Trees cannot say that to save thier beautfiul branches from being trimmed, but we can. 

So, just some random thoughts running t hrough my head, but that is what this blog is about. I made it a place I can come and just talk about thing and figure this all out. I hope someday to have others here to interact with me, I know that is what we all need,  hearing other stories and finding a way to help each other to thier dreams.

So, finding my dream is the goal. To quote a line out of a song in the movie South Pacific, Happy Talk,

You have to have a dream, if you don’t have a dream , how  you gonna make  your  dream come true ?  Wow, simple but to the point .   So now, I  start the search for my dream so I can make it come true. That is my fervid  wish , and my ultimate goal !!!

Enjoying my day

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I got up today and just decided to enjoy my day and come what may !! I will do some housework, watch some tv and play on the computer and enjoy the beautiful view outside !!

I am working on figuring out the things I love to do to get to the bottom of what I  want to be and do for the future, but just for today I am putting that aside and enjoying the day, something I do not  always do !

I got up at nine and made breakfast and enjoyed watching Oprah, which made me cry because she found out she had a sister that she did not know she had, her mom had given up a baby for adoption when she was a child, and being adopted, it really hit me hard seeing the emotion.  It brought back my emotions when I found my birth family and then lost touch again which was harder than never finding them at all in some ways.

I guess some things in our past just never leave us even from childhood, so  I am sure that has defined some of who I am. I think that is why I work so hard to help our kids and enjoy them around me so much, even when I am worn out from it, lol !!

So, for today, I am enjoying the day and talking to a friend on the phone as I type and going to just take in this wonderful life I have and let the future reveal itself over time.  I think I have been trying too hard to find myself and it is time to back off and just enjoy the day each day and know I will figure it out when I am ready !!!

Finding the key

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Got to start working on what I want to do. I stared this blog to figure “me” out and so far, I am no closer to knowing what I want to do !!

It is funny how as little kids, we never have a dull moment. We jump out of bed excited about the day and do not need to think about what we want to do, but just do it. We play, we draw, we eat, we drink, we burp , what ever we feel, we do it  naturally with no censure and no debate, we just do the things that come to us that sound like fun.

Then we grow up and become responsible and that child part of us disapears. I think it is still in us, deep inside and some people can access it even as adults, but for most of us, the grown up closes the door on the child part of ourselves , locks it and puts away the key.

I want to unlock that door and find that part of me again. I want to  jump out of bed each morning excited about the new day and all its possibilites, what a wonderful way to live !! I know there will always be responsibities, things we did not have to do when we were kids, but why can’t we make time for that child inside of us all that wants to play and enjoy life ?

So, that is my goal, to unlock that little girl and let her out and let her lead me to a more fun life, a life where I can be excited every day to find out what exciting things are in store for me.

Imagination is the key. I want to re enter the world of imagination and have fun like I used to every day. I know I can find that part of me and find a way to balance what I have to do, with what I want to do.
Now, where is that darn key ??

Three weeks in now

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We are just over three weeks into the new year and doing pretty good. We are still spending too much on groceries, but have not spent a single penny on eating out. I am proud of that.

I may have to adjust our allowed grocery money as I think food has gone up more than I realized. When you are spending without thinking like we were,  no real budget, just buying food each month, you do not pay attention to what things cost. Trying to keep our  groceries at and non food groceries together at 300 is a real challenge. I will still try to keep it close to that, but I know I am at around four hundred this month with a week to go.

The eating out habit is broken, we do not even mention it as an option , and haven’t since we started Jan 1. Neither one of us has  suggested it at all but we have pointed out on the days that were crazy, oh, this is the kind of day we would have grabbed some dollar burritos. We do not grab the dollar burritos, we find something to make in our own house. I can not even explain what a significant change that is. I am very proud of us. We still do a bit too much impulsive buying in the store though, and that can add up to a hundred or more a month, so more care will be taken to avoid unnecessary purchases and keep the impulse items down to very few.

We are going to try making a menu up that we repeat for a month at a time. We will see, I hate that idea but I am willing to give it a try !!!  It will help to keep the grocery money down, but  am afraid it will be boring.

So, in a week or so I will be posting what we s pent on groceries this month and how we did over all.

I am pretty happy with this  month and the start of our new year !!!

Eleven days in

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Well, we are eleven days into our challenge year. I am still very excited and motivated about what we can accomplish this year by making our money go where it needs to, versus where we thoughtlessly spent it.

I cannot say we have made much progress yet, two paychecks in, but it is in the budget and by the end of the month I will have my progress for the month to share. I will compare our spending on everything this month, to last Jan last year. I have all my reciepts from every month last year and plan to compare monthly. It ought to be very interesting and not something I look forward to seeing, all the money that could have been channeled so much more wisely. It is however, something I need to see so we never repeat it again.

We are eating healthier, and that makes me happy. Hopefully I can post some weight loss achievements end of the month too.

Anyway, not much to update yet, but we are off to a good start and plan to have a lot to show for our hard work and tough decisions.

Moving along in our challenge

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Mindset will be everything this year and I firmly believe it. Once you remove all thoughts about the behavior you want to change, for us, eating out much too often, it is much easier.

I know David wanted to eat out yesterday but we went and bought eggs and sour cream and made breakfast at home. Breakfast burritos. We had the other ingrediants already. Now, normally we would not go and buy groceries to make something last minute like that, but we had to finish up our shopping for the week and so I had to pick up eggs and s our cream anyway. We will only buy what is on our lists from now on and eat what we have at the house.      If we make a  habit of going out and buying groceries, that is not any better than just going out  to eat whenever we want.

I am  very excited about this year and looking forward to changing our bad habits. I know we can since we have set our minds to that goal !!!

So, on to the next day and another day of eating at home.

12 month challenge

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My husband David and I have set a year long challenge for ourselves. 12 months of being very careful with our money and breaking our bad habits.

We eat out entirely too much and spend way too much impulsively on stuff we really do not need, both at the grocery store and out at yard sales, t hirft stores and places like Target or Walmart. Wants versus needs.

We used to be very frugal out of necessity when raising our four kids,  but as money was not so tight we developed extremely bad habits, and now it is time to break them.

I saw myself do it at the grocery store the other day, adding this and that, but made myself put each of them back. It would have  added twenty wasted bucks to the grocery bill for things we did not need.  We have been doing this for years now and it is time to stop it. I am tired of living check to check and not having any savings and we are frankly getting too old for this kind of irresponsible behavior.

David retires in just over twenty years and so that means we have only  twenty years to set us up for our retirement. We do  have some money in our current 401k and we need to keep uping the percent of his check we contribute, there is no match whatsoever. He will get a small pension, just over a thousand, but that is not much, so our work is cut out for us.

We also have a lot of weight to lose, around two hundred between us, or just under. I have to lose around 120 and he has to lose about 60, so around 180ish we have to lose, a large person, what he should weigh between us.

So, we have started our challenge and I will keep track of our progress on this blog. I will add a catergory for our budget goals and monthly spending.

One of our  goals for this year is to stop eating out almost entirely. So far we have allowed my birthday in june, his in August and our anniversary in November. That is it. Far cry from 200 to 300 a month. Some months are even worse than that !!!

Our next goal is to cut our grocery bill way down. We have been spending as much as a grand a month for us and sometimes for the kids , our daughter and her  husband and kids live with us. So, we are chopping it down to between 200 and 300 a  month, period.  Buying only for ourselves for this year. Once every few months an extra hundred or two to go to Costco and split the cost of all the non grocery items, t paper, paper towels, dish soap, etc, along with some  grocery stock up those months,  with the kids, and I think our youngest daughter might go in on it with us too.

Yard sales and thrift stores are our entertainment, our favorate thing to do and I am even writing a book on having  yard sales because we are very good at it, both having and shopping at them, and only because of  some research photos this summer,  we decided on on trip a month with a limited budget for that one yard sale day a month, and that is it. Thrift stores probably the same. After we hit some  bill payment goals this June, we can budget in maybe on trip a month for the thrift stores too, but only as the budget allows and very limited spending. If we try to cut it too much, down  to zero, we will set ourselves up for failure. We do want to try for zero visits to thrift stores though if we can but will allow the one a month IF we really feel we want to go that badly.

We are also going to be starting our eating plan tomorrow. Really cutting back to healthy eating and more excercise.

So,  a twelve month challenge. It will be hard and it will be a challenge, but I am really excited about it and hope we can even do zero eating out for the year and zero thrift stores and only the four or five yard sale days for the year,starting after June 1. I would say NO yard sales, but I do have to get p ictures for the book, but we will take budgeted money only and forty or less for the day, but still push ourselves to not spend it , just research !!!

So I want to use this blog for my benefit to keep track of all the things we are accomplishing.

I decided to put this in its own category too so I may do all my posting here, but will see. 

So, day one started yesterdsay and of course we are on plan at day two, lol !!

Will post daily and will be brutally honest with how I am feeling, what we talk about and how we are doing and if we blow it. Which I am determined we will not.