So today my plan was to write about something else, but it became necessary to revise my schedule and I thought I’d go ahead and blog about that. For anyone who tries to do things in absolutes (as in “if I’ve got it planned this way, then this is the way it HAS to be done”) like me, this is a hard thing to do. But I was noticing that at about 8/8:30am I would start feeling like I needed to get online to check things.

Let’s face it, we live in an online world. And as well as the fun stuff, I do a lot of the serious stuff online as well. And so, no matter how much I want to cut ties with the computer, and only spend maybe a half hour to an hour a day on it, that’s almost impossible for me. So I decided that since I kind of slow down around the 8/8:30 mark, and since the dryer is rarely ever done by 8:30am, I would switch things around. Plus, I watch my friend’s little girl on Wednesdays and Thursdays and needed to have a few minutes when I could get her in the door and settled in. So I decided to sit down and revise the schedule.

Now I’ve got folding the laundry down there during Isabel’s bath time, and some online time at 8:30am. I’m hoping that this will help solve the little problem I’ve been coming across. I’m very happy that we haven’t started the homeschool yet (again, I promise, the post is coming soon), so that I’ve had that time to kind of sit down and shove things around in my schedule.

But I think this illustrates something important for us homemakers in general (Even those of us who aren’t mamas), and that lesson is that we MUST be flexible. Luckily, we have the ability to be more flexible with our schedules and how we get things done. I think that’s the beauty of being a homemaker! We get the chance to do things how we would like them to be done, and we control our own jobs, and how we go about those jobs.

I think if I were to give any suggestions for revising your schedule when things come up, it would be to look at where you can either trim time away from something, or where you can trade one activity for another. Most important though, again, be willing to be flexible, and don’t decide you HAVE to follow your schedule exactly the way you planned it. Be willing to switch things out and change things around as you learn what works and what doesn’t!

Well, with my rethinking of what it means to be a Supermom, and deciding to become an excellent homemaker, I also had to do some rethinking of how I want to go about losing weight. Obviously, I put in 30 minutes to work with the Kinect, although the previous 30 minutes set aside for my daughter I’d be doing her activity with her. So maybe more like an hour. . . But for me the issue has never been getting activity in. Most of you are probably familiar with the principal that a body in motion will stay in motion. . . I think that applies to people as well. As long as I can get moving I’ll stay moving. My issue has always been food.

I’ll confess, I’m a snacker. A hopeless snacker. Not even when I’m just hungry, but when I’m bored too. I’ve been like that for quite a long time, and the biggest issue for me? Unplanned meals. Unplanned meals are the bane of my existence. As long as I plan my meals, and stick to them, I’m fine. I will eat healthy, and reasonable portions. But the moment I’m faced with an unplanned meal, I don’t know what to do. Hence the need for a menu!

Below you’re going to find a menu that took me the better part of two days to come up with. Every recipe on it is a new one, except the lunch items, most of which I either came up with on my own, or was inspired by Pinterest to recreate. You’ll notice I have two vegetarian meals on it, which is important to me. Before I conceived my youngest, I was incorporating two to three vegetarian meals per week, and my husband loved it.

So let me tell you my idea behind it. You’ll notice from the menu (and the schedule I featured yesterday), that Sunday is baking day. My plan to make bread from scratch (I was doing this right before we moved to the house we currently lived in and it was so much more economical than buying bread at the store), as well as 6 additional items. The bread makes 2 loaves per batch, so if I do two batches, that’s 4 loaves right there (which is what I usually buy). The two quickbreads, the Hawaiian Banana Nut Bread and the Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread also make two loaves as well. The Orange rolls are yeast rolls and the Bagels are like making bread. All of these are relatively easy for my, I think the Orange rolls will be the most involved. I used to bake all the time (daily during the winter), so none of these items are intimidating to me, and I’m very interested to see how my bagels will turn out. These baked items will be made on Sundays, and frozen to be distributed over the week. Because quite frankly, if they were left out in easy reach I may eat them all on Sunday and you’d find me at the end of the day, in a comatose state, having overdosed on gluten.

Why baking it myself? Because I’ve noticed that if you have the time, and can make it yourself, the foods you make are more satisfying than the stuff you buy at the store. To date I’ve made my own bread and butter, my own whipped cream, and several other things that I can’t bring to mind right now. But the result is always the same. I don’t need to eat multiple servings. Usually, while it’s higher in calories, it’s rich enough to satisfy in one serving. And yeah, I’d rather eat 100 calories more in one serving, than multiply the calories of one into 2 or 3 because I just didn’t feel full after one.

The lunches are small, and kid friendly. I thought about Isabel and I having different things for lunch, but its easier to make one item, and I feel like the smaller lunches will suffice for me too. Plus, the foods I saw appealed to the kid in me. Can’t beat that. I did try to stick with stuff that wasn’t processed though. I think most of our kids loved the processed junk they have nowadays, and sometimes it’s just easier to pick up a bag of chicken nuggets and throw that at our kids because they like it, and if yours are like mine, we don’t see any ill effects. . . At least, at the moment. But focusing on my family means focusing on their nutrition, and since I also need to keep my health and calories in mind, I went with homemade versions of stuff my daughter might be familiar with.  Except the lunch skewers. . . I’ll admit, they looked cool and appealed to me.

Everything I chose for dinners are reasonably healthy, and looked delicious when I was picking them out. Yes, there’s a lot of chicken. My daughter won’t eat any meat but chicken, so I chose plenty of chicken. The stuffed peppers and the tacos were more for my husband, because he likes red meat kind of meals (the peppers call for sausage, which he loves), and of course, as I said, the vegetarian meals appealed to me.

You’ll notice there’s also desserts and they’re not the healthiest sounding. . . I really don’t know what the calorie breakdown is on those yet. They looked great, and again, this will be a chance for me to exercise will-power, hopefully. I decided to add daily desserts because if I don’t, my husband will cook a dessert, and if you think these are unhealthy, you should see the things my husband manages to create. So this is an attempt for me to control our eating habits. I did try to pair the heavier desserts with the lighter meals, just to balance things out.

The thing that this menu does do is it takes the guesswork out of what we’re eating. I don’t have to wonder what I’m having for lunch, I know it already. And I don’t have to snack relentlessly before dinner time, because I know what I’m making, and I know it’ll include a dessert.

So will this help me lose weight? I really don’t know. But it might cut down on some of that needless snacking, which sneaks in calories when I’m not looking.

– America’s Housekeeping Book

Everything I’ve ever read about housekeeping and homemaking have always expressed the importance of having a schedule. So as I’ve thought about what I want to do, and the kind of homemaker I want to be, I decided that if I wanted to do it right, and incorporate homeschooling into the mix (I’ll talk about the decision to homeschool later), I would need a really good, tight, schedule. I know I had come up with a “home routine” and I think it was one of the last  things I posted, but I felt like I needed to have something more formal than that. And the below is what I came up with.

When you look at it, it’s overwhelming. And I’m sure I’ve allotted too much time for some things, like homeschool (when I taught a student one on one we would get done with almost everything in 2 hours), and some other stuff. But right now, this is what I’m starting with. It doesn’t allow for much throughout the day. And you’ll notice that I didn’t allot time for TV. You’ll also notice that I didn’t allot time for myself during the day except for the 30 minutes that I’ll have on the Kinect (for working out) and the hour of quiet time, which is really meant to be me time, while the kids relax and just chill. A lot of women would look at this and go “are you crazy?” But there’s a method to this madness.

Moms and wives are the heart of the household. Don’t believe me? Think about it. When you are happy, I bet everyone’s happy. When you’re not, it’s like your whole family is off. I’ve known that for a while, because it happened often enough when I was a child. When my mother was happy, everyone was happy. When she wasn’t, no one was.

But this means that Mom has a huge responsibility. You set the tone for the household, and if your household runs smoothly, your family will be happy, and you will have a harmonious home life. When it doesn’t it shows. Trust me. I know what an unorganized household looks like, and it’s chaos, not only on the outside, but on the inside of each of our family members.

Hence the schedule. I know that vintage housekeeping books never schedule anything on Sundays. And I wanted to do that, because that’s supposed to be the day of rest. But in making sure that my family gets out the door to church on time, I always feel like I’m doing more work than resting, so I went ahead and embraced that day as a family day.  It’s about going to church, and baking, hopefully with the whole family. Or at least with the kids.

Monday through Friday is scheduled like a workday would be, with a very specific goal for each hour of the day. My husband gets up and goes to work on those days, and I wanted to have the same goal for myself. Those are the days I get up and “go to work”, even though it’s in the home. I thought about setting different days as cleaning specific things, but my home is so small that as long as I keep up with certain maintenance activities, there shouldn’t be an issue with cleanliness. Also, with the transition into homeschooling, I didn’t see where I could schedule it in, unless I did it on the weekends, and I refuse to do that. If I do find myself with chores that aren’t being done, I’ll start working it in. Also, once we start the new school year, in the fall, I will start creating chores for Isabel to do, so that way at least some things like cleaning her room she’ll be taking care of.

You’ll notice that grocery shopping is done during Isabel’s bath time on Fridays. My idea is to pop her in the bath and go out and get the groceries we need at the grocery store. I don’t know what it’ll do to Olivia’s bath time, although I’m sure the hubby will be amenable to helping out with her, so I don’t worry too much about that. He understands that it’s easier and faster for me to go out by myself to get this stuff done.

You’ll notice that Saturday is either a field trip day or an R&R day. I want to incorporate weekly activities outside the house. I want us to be out of the house at least once a week, preferably outside. Kids need fresh air, and if we could walk somewhere I’d probably take them out to a park or something more, but where we live now this would be impossible (we currently live on a very busy, and very unsafe, road). However, there are times when we need to stay home, because the hubby needs some time for his school work, and then Saturday will be for catching up on TV, and I’ll probably take the girls out to play for an hour at our local park. You’ll notice Saturday is the only time without a specifically scheduled bedtime, which I did on purpose. I’m really consistent when it comes to what time I go to bed, but sometimes on Saturdays I like to stay up a little bit later. I didn’t change what time I woke up on Saturdays and Sundays though, because you notice that Olivia’s feeding time is at 6:15am, and since she’s only on one to two 8 ounce bottles a day, I wanted to be sure that her feeding times were consistent, since she’s eating almost exclusively solid foods now.

It’s a tall order, I know. And it feels like a lot to do. But I started with it this morning, and I was very surprised how much I got done before 8:30am. I’m remaining a little bit lax with the schedule this week, because we’re not doing homeschool yet, and I want to give myself the option of resting when I need to, and not getting overwhelmed. However, next week, I expect to follow this as closely as possible. I’m proud of this schedule, and the creation of it, and I hope think know it will work out.

Meanwhile, stay tuned for the Menu I created, which I’ll discuss tomorrow, since it falls into the category of health, and tomorrow is weight loss Wednesday.

So it’s not a secret that I’m no Proverbs 31 wife. If you’re not familiar with this woman, you can find her here, starting at verse 10. Heck, I’m barely the kind of woman that could stand in the streets and judge the Proverbs 31 woman, because I’d be too embarrassed should her gaze happen to land on my face.

So I don’t know what I expected when I decided to read this book. It’s a departure for me. while I’m a Catholic woman, I don’t often read such overtly Christian books. Mostly because I feel like these kinds of women are telling me there is no way that I can live up to what’s expected of me, no matter the subject matter. So, again, I don’t know why I chose this book. I think because I really desire to be an excellent wife and mother, to be the kind of homemaker that everyone would be jealous of. That can do it all, as it were.

My So Called Life as a Proverbs 31 Wife by Sara Horn was not what I was expecting. I’m not going to review this book, because there are plenty of people who write reviews, and could probably tell you very well what this book was about, and how it was. I want to tell you about why I’m writing about it, today, which is because it made me think.

Just to give you a quick idea about what the book is about though: Sara Horn, the author, is at church when her pastor starts talking about the Proverbs 31 Wife, and making a laundry list of what an Excellent wife is. A modern woman, this of course bothers Ms. Horn. Why is it that women have this long laundry list of things they are expected to be when men have only a vague idea of what they should be, at least listed in the Bible so formally. And how could one be expected to live up to this woman anyway? Is it even possible? It’s in search of this answer that begins Ms. Horn on an experiment to live up to the expectations of the Proverbs 31 wife.

I’m not sure if she managed this. I’m not sure that she even really committed to this. I do however know that I completely related to her. I know that when I’ve attempted something similar, I’ve been all over the place with it, not being able to focus on what I need to focus on. But this  book wasn’t about detailing her experiment. At least, I don’t think so. I saw this more as a journey of a woman who has had a habit of putting herself first (Even if it was way back in her mind) learning how to put her family first. And she did succeed in that. Not in the way that a lot of people would expect, but I could see how she put her family first.

It made me think very hard about some things. I’ve always been just like Ms. Horn, putting myself first, even if it was in the back of my mind. To tell the truth, I’ve done my life backwards. I spent my youth putting others first, usually my friends. Of course, that led to a backlash later on in life, so in the time that I should have been putting others first (namely my family) I’ve been struggling to understand why I can’t be first. Why life can’t be all about what I want and need. And I understand why that is, although I don’t need to get into it here.

But it’s all wrong. My family needs to come first. It’s why I decided to pull my girls out of daycare, and stay home again (not to mention the prohibitive cost of daycare). I don’t often say things like this, at least not in public, but I think God is trying to tell me that I need really need to put my family first and serve my family. Like I said, I’m a Catholic woman, which means I do believe in the value of service. But I’ve always been about serving others, whether it was through volunteering or just being there for others outside of my family. But I’m coming to understand that serving others does not begin outside the home. It begins right here, in my own home, within my own four walls. It begins with serving my husband and my children the way they deserve to be served. It’s something that I want my children to learn. Service begins within the home, and it begins with taking care of my family. God has called me to a vocation, and that is the vocation of being a mother and a wife. And to really do it right.

I think if I focus on this, I’ll meet my homemaking goals, and also improve the relationships I have with my husband and children.

And wow, what a vocation to have!

So I think the first goal was to establish a home routine. The first home routine I established was too complicated, so I scrapped that and made a much more simple one. While the next home routine was simple, I didn’t feel like I was getting enough done during the day. So I scrapped it once again, and started with something that was simple yet had a few more steps:

Nathalie’s Home Routine

Morning:

• Get up at 6:00 am
• Feed baby
• Put on M’s coffee
• Eat Breakfast
• Get dressed
• Make Beds
• Start a load of laundry
• Wash dishes
• Sweep Floors
• 30 minute declutter
• Fold laundry
• Put dishes away

Evening:

• 1 hour cleaning goal of the day
• 30 minute work out
• 30 minute learning time
• 1 hour quiet time
• Make dinner
• Eat dinner
• Wash dishes
• Put away dishes
• Bathe I
• Bathe O
• Shower
• Wash Face
• Brush Teeth
• Bed at 10:00pm

So it’s not super specific, and some of the things on the evening list should probably be on the morning list (and some of the stuff quiet frankly I shouldn’t have any problem remembering doing). But these are things I have on an app and as I do them, I cross them off, so that I know I’ve done that. The specific goal is to get the morning stuff done before noon, and the evening stuff after noon. Actually, the evening stuff basically schedules the rest of my day. But it’s simple enough so that I don’t get overwhelmed, but not too simple that I get bored, or feel like I don’t get anything done.

As far as tackling the house, I feel like I’ve been getting that done satisfactorily. It’s not happening overnight, and while I could clean that way, it would be stressful, tiring, and would still not help me learn to maintain. In fact, you notice that most of the items on the home routine are maintenance work. I feel like if I establish those maintenance chores now, then I won’t have such issues with them later one. Better to establish them and chip away slowly, than get it all done in a day and never learn how to maintain my home environment.

I’m also trying to learn to be a better wife and mother. Not that I think I’m a bad wife and mother. That’s not true at all. But I could be better. There’s always that potential.

So right now I’m satisfied with my work around the house, and I hope to get it all done eventually. Which reminds me, it’s time to wash dishes. . .

So, as you know I’ve been tracking my calories and have been absolutely horrified! My average intake of calories, for the last 10 days? 2477!! I know! That’s so incredibly much! I can barely believe it, even though I could see it happen! So after some thought, and because it’s been so easy to track my calories, I’ve decided that I’m ready to move on to my weight loss efforts.

So there are three goals here:

1) Eat no more than 2000 calories a day. I know that still seems like a lot, but since I’ve been eating 500 calories over that almost consistently, I think that this will certainly be helpful. I know I won’t reach that goal right away. . . I’ve been eating whatever I wanted for the last fourteen months now (since I found out I was pregnant with my youngest), so I think it will take a while for my body to adjust to 2000 calories a day, since it’s not used to it. So my ultimate goal with this is to keep attempting it until I can do it without too much hardship. Anyone who has ever cut down on their calories should  understand what that means. When you first adjust your diet, you body always craves what it’s used to for a while, until it stops being used to it. At that point you find that it starts becoming easier and easier to meet your calorie goal, until it’s virtually effortless. And that’s what I’m shooting for.

2) Work out 30 minutes a day. This doesn’t have to be perfect. Because I know it won’t. I’ve gotten horribly out of shape since I was first pregnant with my youngest (which is a shame, because I was in pretty good shape right before we conceived her, I’d been working on it for a while). So I think right now just trying to build up my ability to work out for 30 minutes a day is what I need to work on. I’ve attempted a few workouts, and I’ve found them almost impossible to do, because I just have such a hard time with it. I’m carrying so much extra weight, it is actually physically difficult to complete some activities.

3) Drink nothing but water. This one is do-able because I’ve done it before, without too much trouble.  Once I get in the habit of it, I start to crave water, and I don’t have as much issue with it as I’ve known other people to have, so I don’t expect this goal to be too difficult. Still, it will be an adjustment, as I’ve overindulged in soda for the past month or so.

So those are my weight loss goals for the week. I will continue with these goals until I can complete them successfully. . . I think that’s about it, except for one thing. . . My weight. I hesitate to share it with you, because it’s so much. . . I’m so embarrassed. But in the spirit of full disclosure, and because I’m sure some of you feel the same way:

212 lbs.

That’s my official starting point.

I don’t know about anyone else, but when I focus on my family, things go well. I concentrated solely on my family 2009 and 2010, and you know what? Those were great years! We had very few financial troubles, very little family discord. It was great. But the minute I shifted the focus to me, things kind of started slipping out of my control, just like I was talking about in a previous post. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about being an independent being, and all that. . . But right now, whether you wanna call it God or the Universe (or something else, I’m open to all religions), someone is telling me that I need to keep my focus on my family. So I’m taking a little break from other things to remember what it means to be a mom. I’m lucky that I have a good husband, and a beautiful family, and I need to appreciate them a little more I think.

Which makes you realize how important being a mom is. . . I know that we joke when we call other moms supermoms for what they can do, and usually we’re lumping in their wifely duties with that. . . But I think every single mom I know is a supermom to me. I don’t think being a supermom is working, and raising a family, and trying to keep house, and being a great wife. I think a supermom is a mom who is there every single day, working her butt off, putting her family first because she loves them, to make their lives better. I never thought of myself as making anyone’s life better. I figured I was just doing all the things no one else had time for, or had the capability to do. But being a working mom has made me appreciate the role I play as a SAHM a little bit more. I not only do all the things no one else has time for, or the capability to do. It’s my job to do them well, so that my family’s life is bettered through my efforts. Which is actually a pretty neat role. And I bow to the mothers that can do all these things at once. Because WOW, you just amaze me!

So on to my goals. . . So the only two things that I’m completely on track for and am doing like I envisioned is tracking my calories, and tackling the house. Everything else I’ve been doing kind of sporadically, or very little of. With me being officially at home though, I think I’m going to adjust my home routine/schedule thing. I’m going to basically sit down with my goals tonight and figure out why what is working is working, and why what’s not working is not working. The conclusion may just be that I’m lazy. I don’t know. But I think it’s worth looking at it all again.

Before I begin this list, I do want to make it clear that I am in no way affiliated with any of the following companies, and I am not making any money from listing them. I genuinely like the following items/apps/and software.

Also, these are in no particular order.

1. The Top 100 Free Bestsellers in Kindle eBooks - This is one of my top favorite freebies, ever! While there are lots of free ebooks to be had on the Amazon.com website, this is a good list for those of us who want our freebies while being lazy. There they are, the top 100 free books to be had on the Amazon.com website for your Kindle, and I can tell you, half of the time there will be quite a few good books who are up due to some promotion or other. I’ve gotten lots of ebooks this way, and at this time have so many ebooks that I would have to read full time just to get to all of them. Also, if you happen to have Amazon Prime – like we do – Amazon now has the Kindle lending library where you can “check” out an ebook for free, 1 per month. You do have to pay for your Amazon Prime subscription, but if you have one anyway (like we do), then you have access to this. And let me take a moment to encourage you to sign up for prime, especially if you order a lot of stuff from Amazon. While it feels like a lot to begin with, it does become economical eventually.
2. Calorie Counter - the app, not the website. I like the app much better because it’s simpler, more streamlined, and presents the information in a very easy to use format. One of the features I love? Being able to scan the bar code on a food and the nutrition information coming up for it! Seriously, it’s one of the coolest things ever, and I love it! It also “grades” your progress, from A-F and you get an overall grade for the day. In the past, I’ve used Sparkpeople, but just for the purposes of keeping the information in an easy to keep area, and the ease of use in finding foods, I would rate this higher. But if you get it and find it’s not for you, check out Sparkpeople. It’s just loaded full of features, and the website is extremely user friendly as well.
3. Goodreads - If reading more has been on your list forever, but you never seem to reach the goals you want to reach, then sign up with Goodreads. I’m really not sure what Goodreads is doing for me, other than making me even more competitive, especially when it comes to reading, but you can see what you’ve read, you can see what you want to read, and you can see the progress you’re making on what you’re currently reading. With their 2012 Reading Challenge section, you can even make a goal for how many books you’d like to read this year, and work towards that goal. I will warn you though, Goodreads is good at giving recommendations, and you might find yourself with more books on your To Be Read list than on your Read list.
4. Youtube - We all know you can watch cute babies and animals do crazy things on Youtube. We know that you can watch teenagers rant about things, makeup gurus teach you how to artfully apply your makeup, people beating each other up, and the newest released music videos. . . But did you know that there are those lovely people who put television shows on Youtube? I’ve caught up with many a series this way, and watched those BBC shows that you can’t get States-side here. I know that some are in 10 or 15 minute increments, sometimes 20 minute increments if you’re lucky, but if you make a playlist then after a while you won’t even notice the quick interval between the increments. Plus, the same thing happens when you’re watching regular tv, you know. . . It’s just that a commercial is sitting there in that interval.
5. Spotify - Okay, so when music first started coming out online, we could only dream of a website like this. We hoped and prayed that one day there would be a website where you could listen to music, for free, anytime you wanted. Hence the whole issue with music sharing. . . But now there is this wonderful website for Spotify, where you can listen to most music for free when you want. I say most, because I notice sometimes it takes a while for a song to be available to listen to, so if there’s something specific you want to listen to, it may not be available at the time. But chances are, anything else you might want to listen to is available online, and this website makes it easy to listen to it. Even better? You can make playlists, just like you would on iTunes or your iPod. . . So you really can customize this a lot.
6. Ravelry - If you’re a knitting and/or crochet enthusiast, then you probably already know about Ravelry. While the patterns on there aren’t exclusively free, you can find so many free patterns that you can knit/crochet for years without having to purchase a pattern. The only caveat to that is that sometimes a pattern may not have been tested. . . then again, I’ve done patterns that were supposed to be written by professionals that weren’t free that had mistakes in them, so I think it’s a pretty good deal.
7. Coupons – I don’t have a link for this one, because you can find coupons everywhere. And yeah, I’m talking about coupons you can find in the paper. . . But Nathalie, you say, I have to pay $2 for a Sunday paper! But how much money’s worth of savings is in there? A fifty cent coupon at a place that doubles coupons, is $1. Two of those pays for your paper. Yeah, I thought so. There seems to be a couple of schools of thought about couponing. Either you look at coupons as though they’re only for poor people and you are above that, or you’re a crazy coupon lady roaming grocery stores and drug stores, buying 200 of one particular item, that you couldn’t use within a year and hoarding it like the apocalypse is soon approaching. But there are those of us who may not be dirt poor, but we’re not rich either. And we use coupons too. If you’re trying to make a budget and stick to it, coupons can really help. I’m just a little bit crazy, but mostly because I like to save $70-$80 at a time. And I will admit, it’s a lot of work. But if you can just clip a few, and use them, you could save a few dollars. I would routinely save about $10 when I clipped coupons and just used them as I came upon those items. And let me tell you, $10 can be the difference between $100 and $90. Still don’t think that’s really significant? Get yourself a piggy bank, and put what you save into it, then count it up at the end of the month. I bet you’ll see a difference then.
8. Free Cell Phones – Okay, if you’re living in the 21st century, chances are having a cell phone is a priority for you. But you don’t have to shell out $300-$400 for the latest cell phone. Usually when a new model of phone comes out, the previous one will be hugely discounted or even free. I got an iPhone 3GS free when the new iPhone 4 and 4S came out, paying only the cost of the plan and activation fees. Now, if you already have a cell phone plan, some companies will allow you to upgrade your phone after a certain amount of time for a discounted price than a new customer would have to. Or even free! But you might want to check with them first, just to be sure.
9. Formula- I don’t care what company we’re talking about: baby formula companies love to send you free cans of formula, and free “checks” to apply to the cost of formula. And if you’re expecting a baby, I would sign up for all of them. Because no matter your intentions about breastfeeding, there could come a time when you may need to have some formula on hand. And then those free samples will be handy. And if you use formula for your baby, then collect and keep those samples. You never know when you’re going to run out of formula in the middle of the night, and then need something else, and when you have no formula on hand, even a brand you don’t use can be a lifesaver. Trust me. So go sign up with the major formula companies. And if you really never use those formula samples, then please, go donate them to a food bank. I promise there is a baby somewhere that needs it.
10. Allrecipes.com - I love this website, and all the free recipes on it. I don’t think our generation really appreciates freebies like this, because we’ve gotten so used to it. But there was a time when the freebies for recipes you got were in the paper (which, as you already pointed out with coupons, aren’t free), or on a product (also, technically not free). So the fact that we can find a recipe with just the click of a mouse, and then also see what other people thought of it, so we can judge whether it’s good or not, is actually huge, people! If I need a recipe for bread, I can find one in under five minutes. Have a weird combination of ingredients? I can list the ingredients and come up with a recipe for that, or several recipes.

So those are my favorite freebies, and while they might not all be specific, and while they may not all be internet based, I use them all. Copiously. Those free formula samples, I’m all over them. Coupons? Life can’t go on without me getting  my two Sunday papers. You may not like all of these freebies, but I’m sure you can use one or two in your life.

I have a nifty little app that I got a year or two ago called Streaks which I use in my iPhone and every day that I complete one of my goals, I check that day off. So I’m sitting here looking at my goals and so far I’m doing OK. . . Not great, but OK.

As far as tracking calories, I’m doing fabulous with that! I’m trying to be as honest as possible, and I’ll be honest, I’m not liking what I’m seeing. I also got an app for that (as they say, lol), and I really love this calorie tracking app and how it depicts the calories I’ve eaten etc. Like I said, I’m not happy with the way I’m eating, and I keep looking for it to change, but seriously, I don’t think it will. I think this may be how I eat right now. And if it is, it’s just appalling! And definitely needs to change. . .

My cooking dinner goal. .  . Eh, not so good. I cooked dinner yesterday, but since we were on the road Sunday, I obviously couldn’t cook, and I had my daughter at a place where she needed to be quiet, so I promised if she was good we’d go to McDonalds this evening, so I know that tonight I won’t be cooking tonight either (I take my promises to my kids very seriously).

As far as following a home routine. . . Well, I made the big mistake, of course, of making one that was too complicated right from the get go! So I’ve changed it around (I’ll talk about that later) to be much easier to follow. And it is, it’s just four items in the morning that I need to remember, and four items in the evening. . . So definitely do-able!

As far as tackling the house goes. . . I’ve been doing great with that! Which I was sure I wouldn’t since I hate to clean, and always have a hard time keeping myself going when it comes to cleaning. But I’ve been making a real effort to get up and clean something, even if it’s just a couple of dishes, or sweeping the floor, or putting in a load of laundry. I’m pretty happy with this. . .

Working on my book(s). . . I’ve been procrastinating. . . And I don’t know why! But tonight I’m going to sit down and write some notes on both, and do a little bit of research on one. . . Maybe a bit of brainstorming and prewriting on the other. . .

And of course, here I am, writing a blog post, so I’ve got that one covered. . .

So of course, this is not a particularly thrilling post, but I did want to check in. . . In a day or so I will be sure to write a little more about one particular goal I’m working on. . .

What am I going to do if I don’t meet a goal. . . I’m waiting the thirty day limit. Once I’ve logged in 30 days for each goal in my tracker, I will then move on to the next goal that has to do with that overarching goal I have. It may be at the end of the month, it may be at the middle of the month, but it will be done!