Since I posted how I don't want the government to pay for my vices I figured I should see just what they are, I only have 15 minutes and I would never be able to list all of them in that short a time, but I will get to as many as I can. Maybe I will think of new ways to cut some back or out.

Keeping:
1. Kids, the two I have and any more God gives me
2. Cable internet, I am a true wife of a computer geek, addicted
3. Long hot showers, though tecnically I cut them down a bit.
4. all the computers, Dh is a true geek, with lots of them
5. keeping tv plugged in in LR, and computers
6. Monthly news letter about my kids, which I need to go do now.

Cut back on:
1. wine, or harder stuff, easy since I can't take a pregnancy test!
2. speaking of tests, major amount of money spent there each year
3. Hot chocolate!
4. Steak
5. chicken nuggets! I like chicken nuggets. I miss chicken nuggets
6. cheereos
7. computer use, I have been turning it off earlier, and on later
8. Pop, though again easy due to lack of test
9. lill debbie snack cakes
10. heat, I so woul love a house at 72 or 74 degrees
11. plugged in apliances, like microwave, and toaster
12. Hot water to wash clothes in, sort of a habit, plus when kids have an accident, the hottter the better in my mind.
13. eating out, though since I havn't been in around 6 months it might count as quitting.

Quit completly:
1. hah, I am not a quitter!

Ok saving money might not be the best reason to potty train a kid, but honestly my daughter was halfway there before I woke up and smelled the debt.

Anyway, less diapers since most of the pee is in the potty, a good thing. Yesterday she finally started to tell me about needing to pee rather than only telling her Daddy. Now all we need to do is work on pooping in the potty and we are set. Course my son was at this point for about 5 months, a loong 5 months, felt like eternity!

The house today is 68, I love NC for saving on the heating bill! though in the next few weeks we will have some severe ice storms, I am not looking forward to that.

OK so normally I only post once a day, but with all the baking I have been dooing, my house is 71 degrees!! I love it, I don't have to huddle under a blanket when not doing anything, my daughter is fine in no pants, it is sooo warm! I don't want to think about the electricity used in baking though, but it should save me some grocery money, baking is still cheaper than buying.

This is it, this is the day for baking, My husband is watching the kids, sort of, not like they can go far. I have already gotten 2 batches of cinnamon pie in, and a ton of ships buisquits cut out and waiting to cook, as soon as the oven is empty! I discovered that my DH can do a great jb of pounding them by actually punching the dough. I hope the final product is as good as when I beat them with the rolling pin. It did end up a bit dented looking from his knuckles, but it saved me some pounding and he had fun. Can't wait for DS to get a chance to try it, right now he is a bit short to be able to punch with any strength all the way on the table.

Next I am going to make brownies at a fraction of the cost of the mix, and even smaller fraction of the cost of buying them. And prolly try some bread too, I was getting pretty good at it, but it takes a rather long time, and my son only just started eating whole wheat bread. Thankfully I ate it when my DD was learning to like food, so she has always eaten it. In fact we went for a burger a couple o months ago and the kids wouldn't eat the bun, to pasty white! Weird, I had no troubles. We got my son into the bread by offering him 'brown' bread, his faorite color. We started with honey wheat, and once he got used to his bread having flavor we switched to 'darker brown bread' The homade kind is even darker so we will try it and see if it goes over well.

Well the grocery bill was $55, with 5 of it being for cheereos, I need to find a better breakfast for me, but I don't like bagles, muffins, toast, or any of that stuff. humph, how many moms are the picky eaters! My kids will eat most anything! They like the english muffins on sale and the bagles and such.

I did however treat myself to a loooong hot shower last night, I find it very hard to give that one up. But I am ging to test out the sugar scrub tonight I think (gotta get DH to help) and that is a cheap but very fancy way to pamper myself. He bought me the oil for christmas, and I already own lots of sugar!

I had to wash the bathroom rugs again, yet another potty accident. But I felt proud of myself, I hung them over the shower bar to dry, makes my bathroom smell like clean laundry!

Tonight is another trip to the grocery store, and while I still have to make my list, I have high hopes that it will be about 50$ again. After a couple months of 50 I am going to try and go down a little further. Right now I am focusing on putting up with 67 degree house and not going to BJ's.

I made some cinnamon pie last night for the kids to eat, and I will tyr to make more beaten ships buiscuits today for the kids, though my husband ate most of the last ones. (after making fun of me for making what is essentially 'hard tac' the stuff old soldiers ate before there were MREs. (for fantasy readers, that is 'cram')

Unfortunatly for the no BJ attempt, my daughter refuses to tell me when she needs the potty, she will tell her dad, but not me. Which means that we are out of diapers and I don't want to resort to the pullups, so she is in underware and I will be doing alot of laundry for awhile.

i looked at what was left of my grocery budget and decided what was the biggest expense, milk, snacks, and diapers. (snacks btw not really being junk, cheereos, raisins, crakers, kid healthy snacks)

So I figured I could make some bread and crackers for snacks, I found a recipe for some that are supposed to be beaten with a mallet! It was fun to make, though I didn't have a mallet. and my husband suggested a baking day, because really for me to bake does require well behaved kids that preferable will leave me mostly alone. So next month we are going to pick a thursday that my husband is off and use it to bake, I wont have to stop to help with potty breaks or diapers, and he can help the kids 'help' me.

Last night my inlaws came over to do the christmas present trade. I got handed a triangular box that from the outside looked just like the figgis food boxes (mail order expensive food company) The first thing that popped into my head was what a rip off of a gift. Well it turned out to be christmas tree sented candles. I have been doing some complaining about our fake tree, A perfect gift for me. so I am a jerk. Thankfully a silent jerk

Then I got to thinking they might be trying to cut down on expenses too, the gifts were of a lesser cost, But possibly better thought out. and I realized, my BIL had been doing the shopping, he diddn't just go out and grab the first outfit of aproximatly the right size and throw it in a box, the gifts he got were obviously a guys thoguht out sort. It was cute. DS got a set of finger paints the crayola wonder kind, and some paintable christmas cards, J got a gloworm doll. I happen to not like the gloworm but she already has one (they didn't know that). Anyway the kids seemed to like their stuff and no one minded the reduced cost of the items.

Well we took my DD back to the Dr, and even though she looks and acts healthy she still has fluid in the ear. So we have more antibiotics for her, but this time we were able to use Cristmas gift money to pay for the visit and medicine, and since we have new not so good insurance starting in January I am greatful that we have the medicine now rather than next month.

My kids do not complain of pain to often, on the one hand that sounds nice, but in this case it is what allowed my DD's infection to get so bad before she bothered to tell us about it. And even then it was the ear leak that sent me to the Dr, not her minor complaints. So we have advance medicine since the dr, doesn't trust her to tell us if the fluid in the ear takes a turn fo the worse.

On a good note, we found some steak on sale for christmas dinner, on a bad note on sale still meant over 25$ for 5 of them. Remind me to change our tradition next year and make the steak part for christmas eve when there is no company. then it would have only been 15 or so.

Also on a good note, several relatives have given us money for christmas, expected but still nce. We used some of it for the steak diner with cinnamon rolls for breakfast and cresent rolls for dinner, the rest I have hopes of useing for groceries for the next few weeks. That way there should be more in the bank next month to pay on the credit card.

I discovered that without my computer on to surf in the evenings, I needed some alternate form of entertainment! Now my favorite form of entertainment (with DH) can only really take up an hour or two a night and requires my kids to be asleep, so I dug up my embroidery project. I am making the stocking for my MIL, for the meantime she has been dealing with a cheap felt one aquired years ago. So not only is it free, it is going to save me money on a gift when it is done, prolly in 2007 or so. I am a bit slow and it is a big project .

Last month I started actually turning my computer off at night, I finally realized that when my daughter wakes up I no longer head for the computer whle puting her back down, I just hold her in bed for a bit and sneak out the next time I wakeup. which doesn't take to long seeing as the toddler bed is a mite bit uncomfortable.

Now last night I figured I honestly don't need it on from sunup to well past sundown. I know for some people that is soo obvious and for others that is the end of the world! But I turned it off before dinnertime and managed to survive the whole night without turning it back on. Bu it was close, one of my guests failed to show up so I had to use my husbands computer to check my email and make sure they hadn't left a note for me or anything.

Ok I expiramented with making my own hair gel, I don't use it but my husband and son do. It is a bad idea to use knox gelitan and water, unless you are looking for a severe hold. I will have to keep it in mind in case anyone wants to do a mowhawk for halloween or someting, it could prolly get even my husbands shoulder length hair to stand straight up!

truthfully I need to do one, not that I could stick to it just yet, but I need to know how much further I have to go. But I am afraid of it!

Well my inlaws decided to go buy the mattress for my sons bed while they were here, so he now has a huge bed! I swear the thing is taller than him! But it has a sortof ladder in the footboard so he can climb up.

And we now know how much money we need to save to get a new mattress for our bed, the middle of the line mattress we want is around 250. Not to terrible, about the cost of one crown . We have lots of dental bills lately so I am comparing everything to that.

On the way home from the mattress store my husbnd mentioned to my FIL about our need fo a mattress and of course my FIL asked why he didn't mention it while they were in the store. And the reason is we don't want them to buy everything for us! I mean yeah it would be nice to have, my back is begging for a new one, but we feel guilty when we take there money all the time. besides it gives us a concrete goal to save for after we get the credit card paid off.

I was so proud of our grocery shopping, my husband bought stuff for the week at less than $50. But then this morning I was debating about what desert to cook for the holiday party this Saturday and I realized I forgot to get the ham! I have people comming to my house and I have no idea what I am supposed to be feeding them! Since we already spent the budget on food this week I really don't want to go back to the store for more food, but at the same time I don't have anything worthy of company.

We had to take my Daughter to the Doc's yesterday to get her ear checked out. Boy was the doc mad, seems breastfed kids who don't go to daycare arn't supposed to get those. But we had to use her money to pay for the visit and the credit card for the medicine. Sucks. Seems like there is always something. I so hope my son doesn't get it! although he started the flu thing so hopefully he already beat it up.

On a good note, my MIL had a single bed frame in their attic, two actually so we are set for the next time. Now all we need to do is find a mattress for it and my son can have a big bed (he is 45lbs, getting too big for the toddler bed he's been in for a year.) Which means we can put my daughter in a toddler bed now, and save the crib for the next kid, which my husband is avoiding because they cost money. I figure as hard as it may be God will provide if we are careful. besides I like kids!

Also on a good note I found a birthday present for my nephew which is the last thing we absolutly had to buy this year, I still want to find someting for mydad but oh well.

K first get your mind out of the gutter, BJ's is a warehouse club.

We made a run last night and I am very proud of myself, we only boght what was on the list. Enough pnut butter and cherreos to last a month. which is a lot of pnut butter . Plus some grahm crakers and nilla wafers.

course I was not proud of the fact that we had to put it on the credit card. But we honestly have no money. I have come to the conclusion we can't afford our house! But with the local market so bad we wouldn't sell it either so we are stuck with it.

We have been doing rather well at the grocery slashing, so I need to figure out what to do next. I am clueless on what to do tho. The only thing I know is that obviosly the mortgage wont go down. but what can?

She was laughing and smiling and giggling and getting into things! It was awesome for the whole hour I had her, then she turned into the sick kid I've been dealing with for awhile now.

Now we need a thermometer, because my daughter broke the one we have, I have been putting up with a rough guess of fever for 4 days now. I am going crazy! Any mom will tell you that having a sick kid sick for 4 days will do that to you, having a sick kid for 4 days right after having a sick kid for a week is way to much (DS was first now it is DD's turn). And to top it all off there is no working thermometer so my frazzeled brain isn't sure if it is a bad faver or just a fever!

Though tonight she was finnally herself again, for a little bit. It has been so long I had almost forgotten how cute she was! Hopefully after a good nights rest (preferably not in my arms) she will be better.

Well I did it. We decorated the same 1.5 ft tree from other years, but I also packed up 1/4th of the ornaments to get rid of, mostly I didn't know where they were from and didn't like them anyway.

I cried, oh man how I cried when I took that little tree out, but it doesn't cost anything, and it made DH happy.

We also canceled the phone. We need the cell phone for long distance and for travel, but I honestly never use my phone, and if I did need it in an emergency I could always use my neighbors up the street.

I have found a way to seriously save money on groceries, not only did we keep the bill down this week, but I havn't used any of it! I can't get my DD out of my arms long enough to cook so we are having 'el cheapo stuff that DH is good at. Egg drop soup last night, tonight is spicy noodles (oriantal brand of Ramen noodles). The night before was cheap too, but I can't remember that far back- pathetic, ain't it .

Now you know why I post here in this journal every day, I would forget if I waited! I don't want to forget that I am in debt up to my ears, I want to NOT be in debt up to my ears!

Yesterdays dinner and lunch for 4 cost 2.50, tonight will be just the cost of cyanne pepper and heat, the noodles come free from SIL.

And since I can't get her to leave me alone (she has the flu- not normaly clingy) I havn't been eating much. Normally I eat like a horse, so it is saving us money (no I am not overweight 140lbs and 6ft is fine, I just eat- a lot)

Ok I am feeling a little like a squeaky wheel or somthing. the recent journal entrie notice in the 'savings advisor' had two of my entries! out of three! OK I like keeping track of little money things every day, but I am feeling a little silly.

I sent my husband to the store alone last night, I was a little worried but he made it back with only a $55 reciept. pretty good for a weeks worth of groceries. I should trust him more often . Course it helped that I sent him with a specific request to stay under 50 and NO pringles. that and we still have some frozen chicken and ground meat .

Thru my Discovery Toys company I can get a website to sell toys from. Now it comes the first 3 mnths free so I thoughI would check it out and see if I thought it was worth the 20$ to keep open. Well I forgot to cancel it!! so now Ihave a website costing me 20 $ that I havn't even been advertising because I thought it was going to disapear last month!!

On a plus note I found out about it because my cousin ordered her christmas stuff from there, and made me a couple bucks. Now if I can get a couple more people to order I will make my 20 back.

But why is it that everytime I think I am making headway on cutting out stuff something else comes up!!!

Now he doesnt want to get a tree 'cause of a rash of bugs seemingly related to fresh trees. but what do I put all the christmas ornaments on? Last I checked a decent sized fake tree cost close to 100$? I hope that isn't true. The only tree we own is a tiny little topper all of 1.5ft high! I have spent three years not using my ornaments, I want to use them this year! Big Pout

On a plus note I did most of the non tree decorating and managed to get rid of a box full of stuf, with the kitchen stuff still needing done. I figure I can pack better and get rid of one of the boxes. Should save space, if not money .

I work with a MLM selling toys, Ok I take the discount and hook up some friends with toys. But I do have to do some paperwork, and Apparently I need to figure out how to make a part of my house only for DT stuff so that I can deduct it. Problem is, where in a 1100 square foot house to I hide a desk? I mean I have a desk but it is in he living room, I am not ruining what little free space I have here to put up a curtain!

I have to keep thinkin on it. Someway I have to be able to do it.

I hate going to the mall after thanksgiving, not only is it busier even on a Thursday, but it is just plain not convenient. I don't like going looking for 'something' If I knew what I wanted that would be cool. But something for relative A, B and C, and friend D, E, and F is a pain in the butt! Fortunatly that was all we needed. But unfortunatly we only found 2 things, so we will still be headed back again.

On a plus note niether thing was over budget, and I managed to finish my husbands stocking without going over budget either. I didn't get exactly what I wanted but then I couldn't find it.

I couldn't think of a habit to quit, my habits revolve around food, and cleaning and playing with kids so far as I can tell, it takes an outside observer to notice them. Or anyway I can think of lots of habits for other people to quit, but not for me .

But I noticed the link for the 'pay to use' game and I decided I could prolly do that, not that we have any cash to pay for something so I picked my TV. I hardly ever use it anyway, except at night when I am puting my daughter to sleep. She is one and it is high time she learned to put herself to sleep but mommy is spoiled with 5 minutes of a movie and she is out.

So last night I did it I put her to sleep without the TV it took closer to 10 minutes, or anyway it felt that way with nothing to distract me, while I tried to stay awake!

Not that the TV really costs that much to run for a few minutes each night, but I did something good for her and it felt 'frugal'.