photo credit: biggertree

It has been quite some time since I have posted here, and with good reason.  I have been doing a lot of thinking of the direction that I would like to take this blog, and have finally solidified some ideas that will be materializing during the next couple of months.  So stay tuned… I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth!

“It’s time I sling the baskets off this overburdened horse
Sink my toes into the ground and set a different course…”

- T. Anastasio, T. Marshall

photo credit: renatotarga

We had a wonderful New Year’s Eve with some friends, followed by a nice lazy New Years Day.  We’re going to be spending some quality time with friends and family over the next couple days, but after that I have every intention of starting this new year off with some ambitious goals.

I hope that everyone else is having a great weekend.  See you soon!

photo credit: milele

In a previous post, I mentioned that we hoped to spend $250 total on Christmas this year.  We had $95 dollars left and quite a bit to still get.  So in the end, how did things turn out?

• We actually ended up with $105 to spend, since my mom wanted to contribute to the gift certificate for my stepfather (we had budgeted $20, but only spent $10).
• We spent $15 on my brother – we redeemed $20 in gift cards from Amazon, and split the cost of a Wii game with my grandmother.
• We didn’t get my sister-in-law anything.  Things have been tough for her this year, and she didn’t want to exchange gifts.
• We spent $48 on the tree, which was $13 more than we expected.
• We spent $20 on a gift card for my sister-in-law’s boyfriend, and $20 on a simple train to put under the tree for the kid.  I also spend $5 for some alphabet foam stickers (the kids only request to Santa).

Overall, that put us at $3 over budget for Christmas.  I can live with that!

I would highly recommend a Christmas budget for everyone.  It really forced us to pick and choose what was most important to us, and as an added bonus, we don’t have a ton of useless crap after Christmas!

Did you follow a budget this year?  If so, how did it go?

photo credit: Stuart Chalmers

This is one instance where I am so glad that I was wrong.  Yesterday, I was wondering if our truck had finally reached the end of the road.  It turns out that the rear brakes had iced up (it’s a pickup, which explains why warming up the truck for 45 minutes had no effect).

In addition to a free tow (thanks AAA!), our auto shop didn’t charge us anything.  Maybe they felt sorry for us, or are full of the holiday spirit, but I am so thankful that we didn’t have to shell out any money.

This did serve as a huge wakeup call, though.  I don’t like the fact that we don’t have a huge down payment saved up right now, especially considering the economy.  I’ve been thinking about our 2009 goals, and am reassessing our priorities based on yesterday’s experience.  I really don’t want any car/truck loan if we can help it!

photo credit: clspeace

I woke up this morning to find that the car was gone, but the truck was still parked in the street.  My husband always takes the truck to work, so I knew that this wasn’t a good sign.

I called the husband.  He thought that the truck just needed some time to warm up, since it was cold this morning.  He said that he couldn’t get it to move.

I went out and let the truck warm up for 45 minutes.  Basically, it will start and shift into gear, but it won’t move.  At all.  I called AAA, and it’s been towed to the repair shop.  According to the tow truck guy, “The transmission’s locked.  That’s never good.”  Hmmm….

My husband is in denial that anything serious is wrong, but I have a feeling that the truck may be at the end of its road.  After dumping $1500 into it earlier this year, ponying up for transmission work on a vehicle with about 200,000 miles on it falls into my “money in the toilet” category.

We’ll see what the auto shop says.  Luckily, we can easily do with one car until at least the end of January.

Anyone got a nice reliable car for sale?

photo credit: bettyx1138

I have to admit, it is nice to have all of our Christmas shopping done!  The only thing left that I might look for is alphabet stickers (when I asked the kid what he was going to ask for from Santa, this was his response.  Who knew?)

We did pick up some good deals this week.  I ended up getting gift cards from Walmart using their $20 off $80 promotion.  I got $80 in gift cards for $60.  We combined this promotion with the American Express wish list gift certificate on my husband’s card, and we were able to get $100 in gift cards for $55.  Good stuff!  We’ll be saving these cards until we need them, but we did give one away – one of my husband’s coworkers is part of the Big Brother program, so we gave him a gift card to buy stuff for his “little brother”.

Other than a trip to the craft store for some yarn (we just found out our friends are having a baby boy – time to put my new knitting skills to use!), it’s going to be a cozy weekend at home.

How about you?  Will you be braving the malls this weekend?  If so, please follow a budget!

$41 – the Christmas shopping for all of our little friends.  We have three little ones that are like family to us, and I combined this with two birthday gifts for kids (the total order was $69) to get free shipping.  All of the gifts are made from sustainable wood and are earth-friendly.  I had budgeted $15/kid for Christmas, so I came under budget by a few bucks.  But now I am sad since all the fun gifts have been purchased!

$2 – stocking stuffer for our kid.  This was an impulse purchase at the craft store – I got him 2 sticker books with stickers.

$20 – gift certificate for the stepfather.  We get him the same thing every year.  Whatever.

$46 – Crap from Bath and Body Works.  They kept giving me coupons for $13 in free stuff when I spent $10.  I am not a big fan of this store, but my sister loves it.  With the coupons, I took care of my sister, her boyfriend, my sister-in-law, and our niece.  Each of them is getting basically $20 – $22 worth of stuff for $10-$12.  I am glad that I found this deal because all of the people mentioned above are hard to shop for.

$23 – a clearance truck for the kid from Little Tikes.  The box is damaged, and the batteries may need to be replaced (I can handle that!).  This is one of those really big trucks that he can push around and play with in the yard.  We like the fact that Little Tikes toys are made in the USA, and this truck got great reviews for being durable.

This leaves us with $95.  We expect to spend $25 on my brother (we’re going in on a video game with my grandmother), $25 on my sister-in-law (gift card), and $20 for my sister-in-law’s boyfriend.  That will leave us with $35 for the tree, and nothing else for the kid.  I’m not sure that this is going to work, as we would like to get a couple more things for the kid; I want to at least spend a little money on yarn so that I can make him some more stuff.

I’ll have to show the numbers to the husband so that we can make a decision.  I am thinking that another $50 might be reasonable, but I don’t want to go overboard.  Any thoughts?

I was asking if there were any new video games that he might like, and she couldn’t think of any, but mentioned that she was thinking of picking up a Wii for him, since she was at her local Walmart the day before and they looked “kind of cool.”

I had never thought of a Wii for my brother for Christmas, only because I didn’t expect there to be any available.  I expressed to my mom how that would be a great gift, since he would have to get up and move around to play the games (he participates in Special Olympics, but has a fairly sedentary job and doesn’t do much when there aren’t Special Olympic practices taking place).

I added that there was a pretty good chance that there weren’t any more available, since she had seen them at the store the day before.  I promised that I would try to hunt one down for her if she wanted me to, and that was the end of the conversation.

Yesterday, she told me that she was able to pick up a Wii for my brother!  I was really excited for him, since I think that he will like it a lot.  Then she said, “I got one for you guys for Christmas too, if you want it.”  She went on to say that she could return it to the store, but that she wanted to get us something fun this year, since “you guys always want practical things and that’s so boring!”

I am not sure what I was more shocked by – the fact that my mom dropped some major cash on a Wii for us, or that she had just called us boring.

So here’s the question: Should we accept?  I’ve wanted a Wii for awhile, but never really considered getting one until they went down in price.  I would really love to get a Wii fit to try to learn some yoga.  I think that we would have fun as a family playing together, and if I had to choose a video game system for my son when he gets older, this would be the one.

On the other hand, it’s not practical at all!  I had mentioned that a gift card to Lowe’s would be a nice gift, since we need to replace the fixtures in our bathroom.  I’m guessing that this falls into the category of boring to my mom…

So if you were me, what would you do?

This weekend, we went to visit some friends, and took some time to walk around Washington DC since the weather was so nice.  As the kid was attempting to scale the Washington Monument, I was looking around and saw the White House from a distance.  As I turned back around to check on the kid, he was laughing happily with a couple other kids from a different country as they all tried to scale the wall.

It just kind of struck me that regardless of who we all go in and vote for on Tuesday, people aren’t really all that different.  Perhaps it is because this is the first election where I have a child myself (and therefore am more aware of the daily political news), but I feel that this is an election where so much hatred, ugliness, and division has bubbled to the surface.  Sometimes it is easy to forget how lucky we are to have the right to walk around our nation’s capital freely, and talk about how much we love (or despise) a candidate, and be able to vote.

I guess that I found myself to be a bit surprised to become humbled when visiting our nation’s capital, instead of being more fired up for Tuesday.  I also can’t wait to take my son back to Washington DC when he is old enough to start learning the significance of the monument he was trying to scale…

It’s time to get back on track.  I’ve been doing some serious bargain hunting – I managed to find some great deals online at The Children’s Place, and got the kid a winter jacket and 5 shirts (I even splurged and got him a flannel for holiday pictures!) for $30 with shipping.  He outgrew almost everything from last year, and many of the second-hand shops in the area didn’t have anything for his size.

We’ve done a pretty good job tackling the potty training – we are down to a pull-up for nap time, and a nighttime diaper.  That’s some money saved!  Also, the kid will be 3 in January, so I’m pretty comfortable with the timetable that we are currently on.

I am still working a lot.  I am going to tutor as much as possible before the holidays to try to pay off some debt.  We’ll see how that works, since we are going on a trip to Arizona in November!

Other than that, I have learned how to knit.  I’m making a scarf for the kid right now.  I made him a “bunny” – it might pass for road kill, so I decided to take it down a notch to something more simple.

That’s all for now!  I promise to get back on the train this week.  Take it easy!