Happy Mother's Day! (belated)

Happy Mother's Day to all of you beautiful ladies!  Happy Fur Mother's Day to all of you beautiful ladies!

I was not in any mood to type up a post yesterday. I came home and the house was a wreck. Had to chase after my oldest to do the dishwasher. He said he did. Sure he did if you count 1 cup. Meanwhile, stuff was stacking up in the sink and on the counters. Stuff out of his former room mind you.

Last Wednesday I saw an ad on facebook for a purple twin loft bed. I sent my brother a message saying that I would pay for it if he would pick it up for me. It was in the next town north and he has a truck and a trailer. He was able to go pick it up that same day after work and drop it off here.

Well, the boys sleep on a bunk bed frame that has been cut in half. They share a room but since pumpkin sleeps with me half the time and the boys are always fighting we decided to split them up. We moved the middle kiddo's bed to pumpkin's room weekend before last. This past weekend we realized there is no way basically that two bunk beds would fit in her room. The room the boys shared was larger so a room swap happened.

The set up of the loft bed happened Saturday with help from my brother. We basically had to screw the frame together because a bunch of the bits and bobs didn't transfer well.

Also picked up some new blinds because pumpkin likes to look out the windows and just pries the slats apart willy nilly. Have you seen the cordless style blinds that they make now? I must be living under a rock because I had no. idea. They are so very cool and worth the money I feel.

Middle kiddo was using the top part of the bunk while the oldest was on the bottom. We left the frames in the rooms they were in and just swapped the mattresses. We didn't want to have to take off the door frames again. That is the only way the door jams are wide enough.

I will add pictures. Try not the judge the wall decor. My middle was a wall decorator and we have not repainted yet since pumpkin will probably follow in his footsteps. If you look at the slide on the purple bed she already did with sugar-free kool-aid water packets that middle boy will be scrubbing off today.

Oldest's room


Middle and youngest's room

This is why the house was wrecked. Husband spent the day finishing up the room swaps. The sad part is we already took 3 full bags of toys and junk out of her old room 2 weeks ago and took bins of toys to Poppa's house. Do you see all those toys and stuffed animals? Love me some hand me downs!

The last thing I had my brother do is add some hooks to our hallway. I wanted a command station but wanted to do it on the cheap. I am happy with the way it turned out. That will be a future post. :)

PS: This is my makeup Mother's Day. I only worked 2 hours then got to come home to a quiet house today. Kids are at school and pumpkin at Poppa's house. Hubby is home sick but he is sleeping so I am pretending to be home alone.

Grumpy Girl and good news!

I have been busy (and grumpy) this week. I'm trying to learn how to go from four 10-hours shifts to five 8-hour shifts. I am not used to working five days in a row. Then an employee on store level had a bug Thursday, so I had to go work that store. 12+ hour day between the drive and the 10-hour shift.

I was a wee bit grumpy this morning. I planned on taking back my time today but it just wasn't in the cards for me. I was excited to have the weekend off but I found out this morning I have to cover a store on Sunday. Grrrrrr. I'm just a ball of sunshine today! 

While I was working the store Thursday, I came up with a different way to list my bills that may be a little more understandable for you all. Then today I went and got some fancy highlighters so that it is really easy to read (fingers crossed) I started on the menu for next week too.

I also realized that I'm just going to be in limbo for about 6 months. I have dreams of starting our debt reduction but all bets are off after this next pay period. Then summer break begins. My main goal is to not use our credit cards over the summer. I know I might not have a choice when I run out of saved cash but I will deal with that then. Hubby gets another financial aid disbursement at the end of May that will help with summer slump. A $75 bill will be paid off by Oct and hubby's car will be paid off in December. That will free up some money to snowball. Of course, then those student loans will come a knocking. It is what it is.

Good News

Hubby has officially been named the Girls Cross Country coach at the High School he works at for the new year. He was also asked to be the Distance coach for the Track team too. That will be an extra $3k+ to his income next school year. Not to mention he will graduate with his Bachelor in Dec 2019. The school plans on keeping him in the same class he is in, he will just step up and be the teacher instead of the sidekick.

Simple Swan meal plan- wk 2

I was walking around the house and even outside last night to get those last steps. I did it though! No clue what I am talking about? See my post titled May goals.

The first week of my Simple Swan meal plan was a success!  Yaaas!  Week 1  if you want to check it out!

I have picked the 7 meals for week two. They are based off what we have in the house.
Technically, I have everything but maybe 2 things for the week. Those things will not be needed till Saturday so I have time to work on that. 

You will see that I only list the main meal part. Veggies and or starch are added at the time the meal is made. Those vary on how I feel each day.

I know this may be hard to read in the pictures so I will list the meals underneath.

*All food is either already Keto or easily adaptable to fit a Keto lifestyle*

Menu for this week*:
Sun:  Greek Salad  (leftover lettuce& ham- feta was BOGO when bought last week at Publix)
Mon: Tacos
Tue:   Spaghetti and meat sauce (will brown double meat on Tuesday for prep)
Wed:  Hot Dogs w/chips
Thu:  Mayo Chicken
Fri:    Fish
Sat:   Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole (yes it is misspelled in pic LOL)

*All food is either low carb or will be low carb with tweaks for me*

May goals

You all now know my May budget so I might as well share my May goals as well.

I admittedly just came up with them last night. Haha! I got this awesome planner (clearance @ HomeGoods for $4.50) that has some neat sections. There is a calendar then a daily goal tracker in the first half. Towards the back, there are sections for each days agenda.



There is also a rate your year area. Where you make a key for 5 feelings and you color in that color for how you felt today.

I have seen those pictures in bullet journals and stuff of the concept of the tracking of feelings. I think it is a great idea!

So in case, you cannot read my handwriting like my coworkers -here they are. LOL

1. Walk 5000 steps (I need more for tonight)
2. Drink 16.9oz of water (I dislike water, but, even I can do this)
3. On plan with no BLT's (Bites, Licks, Tastes)
4. No Spend- LUNCH
5. Follow meal plan (it's only been a wk with my new one and so far perfect)
6. Vitamin

Keep in mind I just wrote these down last night. The ones filled in already are just happy coincidences. Except for the water. That was completed today for the grid. I need like 1800 more steps for tonight to get that 5k. I am tired, off to stumble around the house.

May 2019 Budget

Time to introduce the budget for May 2019

We have a lot of bills. To the tune of $3405.15 a month.  As you can imagine a lot of that is credit card minimum payments.

While I love to see all the fancy pages that people have for keeping track of their budgets- I have notebook paper. Maybe when I get some of this stuff paid down I can have pretty budget pages.

I am listing the budget for the entire month. I do what I call paycheck to paycheck budgeting. I pay everything due prior to the next paycheck with the current paycheck. It works for me.

I have totaled our income for the month as well. Two paychecks for myself and two for hubby. I have no problem sharing our debt, but our income as to what came from who is another story.

I hope that you are able to make out the budget by looking at my picture. I also have the food budget listed along with what has been spent so far in the upper right corner. Four items due this month were paid with the last check of April. Just as two things due in June will be paid by the May 24th checks. I tried to separate the two checks with the highlighter line.

Click picture to enlarge.

Looking at this you will see after the bills and the food budget we will be left with $176.15 for the month. That will cover gas and misc. items like chicken food. I am not a fan as of yet of sinking funds. Maybe my views will change when I have more money to play with but as of now I see no reason to do that.

We also have a $1000 Emergency Fund fully funded along with more money set aside. Husband only gets these two full paychecks and one more partial for the year. Therefore, the set back money will have to supplement my income to help us make the bills for the summer months.

So any monies leftover from that $176.15 must go towards that.







PS. The cell phone bill looks really high but that is 5 phones plus a tablet. $25 of it is device payments. I cover 100% of the bill as two phones and the tablet are my in-laws. They are daycare for our three year old daughter. They will not accept money so I pay their portion of  the bill.