What does that mean?  It means that I pay attention to where my money goes.  It’s really that simple.  I strive to not be at the end of the month and say, “What did I spend my money on, anyway?”  I strive to come to the end of the month and say, “I’m glad that the money went to this or that place.”

How do I spend like this?  There are several steps to this, but they’re really simple.

1. Write down (or otherwise record) every penny of outgo.  This is simple, but really effective.  Write down everything.  Everything from the mortgage payment to the $.25 for the gumball machine.  This is a good beginning to an eventual budget because you will get an idea (and probably be surprised) of where your money actually goes.  The first time I did this, I was blown away by the amount that we spent on food.  Food costs were quickly cut just because I knew that I could do better than the astronomical amount that we were spending.  This is probably the most effective step.
2. Make a goal.  You’re saving for your dream house, or your child’s education, or a car.  Maybe you’re saving to help kids or unwed mothers in Africa.  Maybe it’s something small like getting your eyebrow pierced, or you want the newest gaming system, or you want the Coach handbag in the store front window.  It doesn’t matter.  Just make a goal and write it down.  You need this so that you have a reference, a reason to possibly walk away from some of the unnecessary things that you have been buying. 
3. Ask yourself if you really need/want the item that you are looking at in the store.  This is where having a goal comes in handy.  If you have the goal, then you have something to reference to.  You can say to yourself, “Do I want this double-stuffed-shaken-upside-down-mocha-latte or do I want to pierce my eyebrow?”  The choice is ultimately up to you, but if you have a goal and a plan, then you have a reason to forgo some of the little stuff that adds up.  You can even use delayed gratification.  Trent Hamm over at The Simple Dollar has made up what he calls the Thirty Day Rule.  Basically, if you see something that you like, leave it on the shelf for at least thirty days.  If you still want it after thirty days, then go ahead and buy it.  Otherwise, you will have forgotten about it and saved your money.

So, that’s it.  It really is a simple, if sometimes time consuming way to do things, but it is the best way to find out where your money is going.  If you do it for a month or 90 days, you can use the information to start a budget and ferret out places to cut back.  The important thing is not whether what you spend your money on is frivolous, necessary, or somewhere in between.  In important thing is knowing and therefore valuing what you spend your money on.

When I was a girl, my mother had a Mexican boyfriend who used to make a stew for us that was very much like this stew.  They boyfriend didn’t last, but the stew did.

Disclaimer:  The seasonings and spices should be added to your taste.  I don’t measure things like that when I am not baking, and so the quantities that I list are approximate.  Read:  I eyeball it.

1 ½ pounds of pork stewing meat
1 medium onion
1 pound of potatoes, I used baby Yukon golds, but you could use any potato.  I recommend one that is high in starch.
3 good-sized carrots
1 can or ½ pound green beans
1 cup tomato sauce
2 Tbsp.  Chili powder
1 Tbsp. cumin
2 tsp. oregano
2 bay leaves
3 Tbsp. onion powder
3 Tbsp. garlic powder
Salt to taste
3 cups of water
Vegetable oil for cooking the onions

1. Preheat your oil.  While the oil is heating, slice off the top of the onion.  Cut the onion in half from the root end to the top of the onion so that when you slice it the pieces fall apart in half-moon shapes.
2. Throw the onions in the pre-heated oil and cook on low to medium low until they are golden brown, about 20 minutes.
3. Place the meat in with the onion mixture.  Season with the salt, cumin, chili powder, onion powder, and garlic powder.  You could also throw some red pepper flakes in right now too. Turn the burner up to high so that you can properly brown the meat.
4. After the meat is brown, add the tomato sauce, potatoes, carrots and water.  Simmer for 3 hours.
5. After two hours has passed, you should add your green beans if they are frozen or fresh, otherwise add canned beans just in time to heat through before serving.

This is good to serve with tortillas and refried beans.  If you want to serve it with tortillas, I recommend that you cut your vegetables smaller than I did in the picture.  That way you can roll the whole thing up and eat it like a burrito.  The other option is to just serve it with rolls.  It’s a big hit either way.

Linked to Tasty Tuesday at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam and Works for Me Wednesday at We are THAT Family.

• Make it routine:  Sunshine has to pick up all of her toys at certain times of the day.  In the White house, toys  are picked up before lunch, supper, and bedtime.  The theory here is that they will get used to picking up their toys at these times during the day, and it will become automatic (insert maniacal laughter here).
• Do it with her:  The single most effective way to teach a toddler anything is to show them how to do it, and then do it with them.  We still haven’t mastered this skill yet, and so I am still picking up my daughter’s toys.  The difference is that she is helping me do it.  Hopefully someday I will be able to give instructions and she will follow them, but that day is not today. 
• Use lots of praise:  This goes without saying.  My Grandma used to tell me that I would catch more flies with honey than I would with vinegar.  The same appiles here.  If you tell a toddler that she is doing a good job and make a big deal about the good stuff, it will encourage them to keep doing it. 

I actually use this method of teaching for a lot of things.  I find that it works really well on my daughter.  Sunshine really thrives on routine and praise, and she loves doing things with Mama.  We do this with cleaning, hygine (we brush our teeth together), and  many other things.

So, now it’s your turn.  How do you teach your toddler new things?

Linked to Works for Me Wednesday at We are THAT family.

Photo by Carsten Mueller

As of the date of publish, this blog will be 19 days old.  During that time, I have learned A LOT, and a lot has happened.  So, without further ado, let me give you the update!

The Good Stuff

Lots of good things have been happening around here.  I’m fond of lists, so let’s just list them!

• As of August 31, 2010, there have been 74 visitors to my blog.  74 visitors and 165 page views!  This is rather remarkable, at least to me it is.  I’m wondering how much I skewed the numbers, though.  Before I found out that you can see how the blog looks though wordpress I visited several times.  Several times, but not 74!  Anyway I hope that didn’t skew the number too badly.
• I posted in my first and second blog carnivals.  On Monday, I joined in Not Me! Monday over at MkMama’s site, and then I joined in with Works for Me Wednesday at We are THAT Family.  I think that this has been the reason for the uptick in traffic, because it has all been since Monday, really.
• Because of Not me! Monday, I got my first commenter who isn’t related to me!  Thank you to Ramblings of a Woman for being my first un-related commenter.  DH was my real first commenter, and I thank him for supporting his wife’s crazy endeavor.
• When I was visiting the blog one time, I clicked over to the about page and noticed that it was the standard wordpress “you-need-to-edit-me” page.  So, I edited my about page, and I even remembered to include some contact information.
• I figured out how to use feedburner for e-mail subscriptions!  You can now enter your e-mail address in the box on the right, and you will receive free content as often as I post. 

Some Problems

Of course, everything hasn’t been teddy bears and rose petals.  After all, starting a blog is a lot of work, and I have run into some roadblocks:

• I signed up for google webmaster (basically, I told google that the blog exists), but I don’t know if it worked because some of the tracking information that I am supposed to receive is not registering.  I’m not sure if I did something wrong, or if I just haven’t waited long enough.  I think that I am going to wait a little longer before I look into it.  When I was trying to use the help feature last night, they said that it could take up to a month for the stats to show.  So, I’ll wait the allotted month.
• There are some little tweaks that need to be made to the blog appearance-wise.  I need to re-name the blog roll (by the way, does anyone know the etiquette for putting someone on your blog roll?  Do you have to notify the owner of the blog?),  and I’d like to tweak some other things, but I’m thinking that not knowing HTML is going to pose a big problem.
• I’m still having trouble with monetization.  I don’t feel like I know enough about it to start, but I don’t want that to turn into an excuse that holds me back.  So, I’m still very undecided about that.
• I’m having a time management problem.  I’m having a hard time with budgeting time for the blog and everything else.  Everything else is still getting done, but I’m sure that I need a new schedule.  I could use some advice here from the seasoned bloggers out there.  I’m sure that this topic will turn into a post when I get it figured out.

Other Updates

And then there are some odds and ends that are neither good nor bad, but you should know about them:

• I decided to put off the HTML class at the local community college until the spring semester.  I want to see if this blog is going to make it worth my time and effort before I just jump in.
• I need to make goals for the blog.  When I was looking at google analytics, it occurred to me that I have none.  So, I will make some and then let you know.
• Thankfully, I have many ideas for blog posts, and they should lead to other ideas.  So, that is really going well.

Well, there it is.  That’s the update for now.  Happy reading!

I shampooed my area rug last weekend.  Fortunately, I had just bought a small carpet cleaner.  I was blown away by the price of the carpet shampoo, though.  They wanted about a million dollars and my firstborn for a really little bottle of the stuff.

As luck would have it,  my friend saved the day.  She told me that she used laundry soap in her carpet cleaner, and that it works just fine.  I was all on board.  I put laundry detergent in the solution tank up to the soap line and then filled it with water.  It worked like a dream!

Then I noticed the bottle of carpet shampoo that came with the carpet cleaner.

So, I used it.  As I was running out of the carpet cleaner (my area rug is pretty big, and that carpet cleaner drinks shampoo), I noticed that it was a lot thinner than my laundry detergent…and then I spied my all purpose cleaner.  I currently have Mr. Clean, but I suspect that all of them would work just fine.  Anyway, I tried that too.  And I can report that it works like a dream! 

So, both laundry soap and all purpose cleaner as carpet shampoo work for me!

Linked to Works for Me Wednesday at We are THAT Family.

Photo by Teodora Valicu

I’m hungry, and I just made a startling discovery.  I looked in my freezer, and I’m all out of convenience foods.  You see, I keep convenience foods on hand because they’re….well, they’re convenient.  They’re just the thing for a late-night snack, or the noon-blues (that’s what I call it when I can’t think of what to serve for lunch), or a lunch on-the-go.  I can hear you now.  You’re all, what is she talking about?  That food at the store is expensive and unhealthy!  That’s right, it is.  But it’s convenient.  That’s why it sells so well.  I do have a healthier, cheaper option though.

I make my own.

It doesn’t have to be expensive.  It doesn’t have to be time consuming.  By the end of the week (I will do a big grocery trip after the first) I will have home-made hot pockets, home made burritos, soup, individual servings of pasta, egg sandwiches, and other things that I am not thinking of.  This is how I do it.

• I plan.  I will start making my menu and grocery list tomorrow.  I will include my meals plus extra so that I can freeze individual portions.  When I make my menu, I will try to make things that can be easily doubled and frozen. Think burritos, spaghetti, cabbage pockets, casseroles, soup, etc.
• When I go shopping, I will be sure to buy enough to make several more servings than usual.
• When I cook, I will make enough to feed my small family, and then I will also make extra servings for the freezer.  This doesn’t take a whole lot of extra time, and I find that it is easier to do it this way than set aside a whole day or even afternoon for making special things. 
• As I have the extra done, I will wrap it well, label it, and then freeze it.

This method has saved me from ordering out or running to the store more than once.  When I do this, I try to make enough over a week’s time to last four to six weeks.  We like it because we don’t really have to stop what we are doing just to fix and eat lunch.  It is very easy to pop whatever it is in the microwave and serve it with fresh fruit and veggies.  Have I mentioned how cost effective it is?  I feel a homemade vs. store bought post coming on! But not right now.  Right now, I am going to scrounge through the kitchen to find something quick and edible. 

Well, you all have my ideas for convenience food.  What are yours?

Linked to WFMW at We are THAT Family.

I did NOT leave Sunshine (19 months) and Harley (4 months–dog) together alone inside the house while I took the trash to the curb and started a load of laundry.  Not Me!  I wouldn’t be that scatterbrained to leave those partners-in-crime loose by themselves in the house.  Nope, not me.  I didn’t then get distracted by another couple of outside chores that I had been ignoring leaving for a better time.

When I finally went inside, I did NOT discover that Sunshine had opened the pantry and gotten a box of confectioner’s sugar.  She did NOT hand the box of sugar to the dog, and he did NOT chew a hole in both ends of the box.  I did NOT enter the house to find the dog running around only to stop every few steps and “kill” the box.  Sugar was NOT shooting out of the box like snow out of a snow blower. No, it wasn’t.  It did NOT look like it snowed inside of the house.

In case you’re wondering, powdered sugar is incredibly easy to clean up.  It comes off the walls and out of the carpeting beautifully.  I did NOT stress out about the potential bugs and spend two days frantically scrubbing and shampooing my kitchen, dining room, and living room.  NOT ME!

Linked to Not Me! Monday at McMama.

Photo by Martin Boose

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.  The secret of getting started is breaking down your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”  ~Mark Twain

If you’ve read the posts that have come before this one, you may be asking yourself, “Why in the world didn’t she learn a little more about blogging before she started a blog?”

My answer to you is that I just had to begin.

“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water”  ~Rabindranath Tagore

I’ve been thinking about starting a blog for over a year now.  I know that I have something to contribute.  I know that I can inform and entertain people.  I had excuses, though.  Excuses like:

• I don’t know anything about blogging.
• I’m not sure I can write fast enough.
• Do I really have that much to say?
• I don’t know if I can find time in my day.
• It’s too hard!

Enough with the excuses, already.

“So many fail because they don’t get started–they don’t go.  They don’t overcome inertia.  They don’t begin.”  ~W. Clement Stone

I hemmed and hawed for too long.  I made my need for knowledge an excuse not to start.  That excuse was remedied a week ago.  So, here I am. Here I am with my foibles, and we’ll just have to work though it.  I hope that you’ll join me for the ride.

And just because it’s fun…

“Beginnings are always messy.”  ~John Galsworthy

Apropos, no?

Photo by Pascal Thauvin

My family loves strawberry jam.  Actually, we love anything with strawberries in it.  We’re spoiled, though.  We like the premium stuff.  We also live in the Pacific Northwest, where one can find the very best strawberries.  This year, I got two flats of strawberries for $46.  I canned some, froze some, and we ate some.  While canning is a hobby of mine, I have often wondered whether or not I actually save money doing this.  Here is a cost-benefit analysis.

Homemade

I paid $46 dollars for two flats of strawberries.  This is 24 dry pints of strawberries, and the farm that I bought them from piles those little pint containers high! Out of the two flats of strawberries I made:

• 18 one-half  pints of strawberry jam
• 9 pounds of frozen whole strawberries
• 5 pounds of cut strawberries for eating

I already had all of the jars and lids, so that didn’t factor into my costs.  This initial cost might drive up the numbers for your first year, but those jars are reusable except for the lids.  I happened to have enough lids on hand too.  The sugar I used cost me $6.48 (I got sugar on a crazy-good sale at the commisary), and the pectin was $2.88.   I don’t use sugar on my frozen berries, and these were sweet enough that I didn’t need more than a teaspoon full on the cut berries.  My total outlay was $55.36. 

 Store Bought

I used the prices at my local commissary.   

• Smuckers Simply Strawberry (10 oz):  $1.58
• 16 oz. whole frozen strawberries:  $2.08
• 1 lb fresh strawberries:  $2.00

These numbers correlate pretty nicely to what I put up.  The half-pint jars really took between nine and ten ounces to fill, and so forth. 

The Verdict

The numbers combined as follows:

• 18 one-half  pints of jam x $1.84=33.12
• 9 lbs frozen strawberries x $2.08=18.72
• 5 lbs fresh cut strawberries x $2.00= $10.00

Grand total:  $61.84

So I would have spent $61.84 plus tax (we don’t really pay tax, but we do pay a 12% surcharge, so I figure in tax) to buy all of this at the commissary that total would have been $69.26.  That is a savings of $6.48 (I used the initial $61.84).  While that is not a huge savings, I enjoy canning.  I also enjoy the fact that I can pronounce everything that is going into the product that my family consumes.  Admittedly, this number is significantly better if you grow the produce yourself, but I did save money. So, I’m counting it as a sucess.  My family gets good, real food, and I get to do something I enjoy.  Next year I am going to try to grow my own strawberries, though.

Photo by Jakub Krechowicz

I have to say that I am excited about this series.  This is the series of posts that I was looking for when I decided that I wanted to start a blog almost a year ago.  I couldn’t find it, though.  They (whoever they are) do  say that if you want something done, you should do it yourself.  So, here it is.  This is a series about building a monetized blog from scratch.  I plan to be as transparent as I can (people who promise total transparency are selling snake oil).  What I haven’t decided yet is how often I will update this series.  I will try to update it weekly, but it may be every two weeks, or even monthly, depending on how quickly things happen.

The Beginning

So, what is my background?  I am currently a stay at home mom, and a wife to my husband.  I served in the Unted States Navy for six years, and I have worked several retail jobs.  In case you were wondering, I don’t have any background for blogging.  I like to write.  In fact, I’ve always liked to write, but I’m not what one would call techno-savvy.  In fact, I’m a little closer to technologically illiterate.  I don’t know anything about HTML except that it is NOT computer programming (I learned that two days ago).  I also don’t know anything about CSS.  These are important skills to have when designing and running your own blog.    I got my domain and hosting from go-daddy.com.  They have a really nice package that said one-click wordpress hosting.  Unfortunately, I didn’t know that this really meant one click.  I searched for two days wondering where my wordpress instillation was!  I was sure surprised when I ultimately typed the URL in and saw my blog!

Using WordPress

Have I mentioned that I am technologically illiterate? I bought my husband a new TV for Christmas two years ago, and I still don’t really know how to turn it on.  With that in mind…Wordpress is hard!  It is supposed to be easy, but then you need to reference the fact that I don’t know HTML or CSS.  WordPress is a world of themes, plug-ins, widgets, RSS feeds, and e-mail subscriptions.  You need a passport to come here,  folks.  I think my RSS feed is broken and I cannot figure out how to make the e-mail subscription thing happen. 

Where to go from here

So, now you know where I’m at, but where do I go from here?  I have a few ideas:

• Right now I am using the free WordPress theme called Atahualpa.  I think this is a really good theme, but I don’t think that I am knowledgeable enough to use it to its full potential.  With that in mind, I am going to change to a different theme with fewer options, but one that I can use for the interim.  Read: one that is easier to use without HTML and CSS skills.  Update:  as of the time of posting, the wordpress theme has been changed to WordPress Weaver 2010.  It is much easier for the techno-challenged.
• I need to learn HTML and CSS pronto.  There is a class offered at the local community college on website design.  I am going to check into that.  I am also going to look into online seminars, but right now it looks like the community college is the way to go.
• I’ll just keep working.  Some of the solutions will present themselves if I just keep looking for them.

So, there it is.  My first update.  I’m in the weeds right now, but, God willing, I’ll cut them down.