This is Decembers End 08 Great challenge at Happty to be @ Home.

While I didn’t post about this earlier, I am doing a pretty good job at this one. I created a Christmas list and then pared it down quite well when Anthony lost his job a week ago.

I have some things that I’ve collected over the past year for gifts. We are also suggesting to some family that instead of gifts, we give money to a worthy cause (local or international) in someone’s honor. See my post on the Advent Conspiracy.

As for Fabulous – well, I finish school tomorrow so the season can’t help but be fabulous. We have singing, bells, parties, the Christmas Pageant last night – it’s a season set up to be wonderful.

I did go minimal on the decorations this year. We don’t have many people over here so we don’t have anything to show off. What goes up should be for us. I had Anthony pick up a creche scene for us since we apparently don’t have one. I think every year I tell myself we need to get one and then I convince myself we have one packed away in a box somewhere. The ladder tree went up and we’re gathering our presents on there. (I also gather empty boxes and bags where we open presents – keeps it looking full all season long.)

To see the ladder tree and our other decorations, check back here on December 15. We’ll be participating in the Christmas Tour of Homes for 2008.

This week we had a party on Monday for the deacons of our church and their families. We had good food and a lot of fun. Then while we deacons were meeting, a few friends cleaned up my kitchen and even put my trash out. It was awesome to come downstairs and see it all done! Thanks Krista, Kathy, and Amy.

Last night was the Christmas pageant at church. I had a major role this year for some reason. I was glad I could read from the script, but the kids did a great job with all their songs and their lines (with no scripts to cheat from!). Connor had a part and did it well. Anthony ran the sound board with the CD, 6 mics, and following along in the script. We agreed it would have been much easier with two people so we’ll plan better next year.

Sunday bell quartet plays. Monday I have lunch with my friend Audrey. Tuesday I spend the entire day with my friend Charlotte. Then next Sunday full handbell choir plays. Then trio (quartet minus 1) plays again on Christmas Eve, along with my solo of ‘O Holy Night’. Christmas Day we are doing rolls and Snowball cookies at my aunt’s house (my mom and two aunt’s are providing all the really good food). All fun stuff and nothing requiring that I get crazy about anything. Probably the craziest I have gotten was getting the house clean and food/plates purchased for the party on Monday and even that was mostly fun with Connor and Anthony around to help some.

All of that to say this Christmas (and the entire month) has been pretty frugal and is shaping up to be very Fabulous!

This fits in well with other things that have been coming across my space lately. I found a link to Productivity501 and their Habit List. Then the Habit List course talked about putting Negative Items on your Habit List.

This weekend at the beach I read Anticancer by David Servan-Schreiber and mainly what I got from there is that I need to follow my original plan and get rid of all white-flour and white-sugar and salt. We originally got this idea from Energy Up! and Anthony really lost weight when we did it. High Voltage even called us at home after Anthony wrote to her talking about his success. 

This fits in with last month’s plan as well. I WILL create meal plans and shopping lists which move us away from the flour and sugar. This will be better for Connor, too!

I did it. I created a shopping list first. It sat around for 2 weeks before we had time to go to the grocery store. My husband graciously bought the items on my grocery list while picking up food to make chicken parmesan for a visiting couple this weekend. Yesterday got away from me. So this morning I grabbed Connor and made him help. I browned the meat and onions while he opened and dumped cans in the crock-pot. We’ll see tonight how the Cowboy Soup turns out.

Connor grabbed the camera to get a few shots. The view of the stuff in the crockpot before we stirred it was pretty disturbing.

This month it’s cooking!

I really want to do a better job of getting cooking done so I am happy to have this motivation. The introductory article is a great resource, discussing having a master menu plan and base grocery list. She also provides samples and blanks.

One key thing I see in having a master plan is that you have to have a wide range of options. Not so wide it’s unmanageable, but wide enough that you don’t get bored with it. 

We tend to get in a rut and do the same thing for a few months and then get tired of it. But I am looking to begin using the crock pot and collecting other good recipes here. There are a lot of nights that we aren’t home, but the meals are still useful for lunch and individual dinners since on any given night usually at least one of us is eating at home.

Todo for this week – work up a master menu plan and a grocery list. Then begin to put it into action! It will be nice to have a month’s worth of meals already in the pantry and fridge with limited weekly purchases.

I’ve treated cooking as one thing I can ignore while I work to keep everything else under control. But I am going to change my thinking to see cooking as one thing I can control and contribute to my home, even amidst everything else that is going on.

I found this idea, but not until the last few days of Sept. We have decided to do this for October.

Here is how it was described:

These are expensive times, and families are having to get creative in maximizing their resources. One blogger, Mary of Owlhaven, is a mom of ten kids committed to teaching her kids common-sense frugality by example. She’s hosting a carnival at her blog called 30 Days of Nothing, an idea originally launched a couple of years ago at another blog. The idea is, at once, simple and daunting: Mary and her family aim to cut out all unnecessary purchases, and focus only on the essentials, for 30 days. But Mary’s motivation isn’t purely a financial one.

Reasons for doing this include a disturbing sense of entitlement and taking control of our spending. 

but not because of anything I’ve done.

I followed one of those internet links to get an estimate for how much life insurance for Anthony would cost. That lead to sales calls and emails from the company to get us to sign up for something. While it was annoying, it was the push we needed. (The company is called Matrix Direct so the first time we saw it on the caller ID we joked that Neo was calling). I got on the phone and answered the questions to get a more substantial quote. Then Chris (not Neo) said he would email and mail an application for us to review and to let him know if we wanted to move forward. This is where I would have dropped it. But the nurse who had to do the physical called Anthony and set up an appointment for Wed (9/10). That meant I had to pull the application out of the envelope, review it, complete it, and get Anthony to sign it 7 or 8 places. 

So, without any real initiative of our own, we have one piece of our finances fixed up already!

I wonder if the rest of the month will be this easy!

I came across Happy To Be At Home and they are having a great second half of 2008 challenge.

July was Conquer the Clutter

I’ll take credit for my work in June to clean out the nephew’s room after he went home for the summer.  I took a large trash bag up there, threw out or gave away trash and toys. I also took the storage containers out of his room (fewer hiding places).  Then this past weekend we also had him empty the boxes out of the closet to that room into the quiet room.  That’s a lot of clutter conquering. (We won’t talk about the quiet room.) I tend to conquer clutter once a month in the main living areas. It’s those rooms with closed doors that get out of control.