January Goals I Completed

At the beginning of the year I made a post of the goals I plan to achieve this year. It was a busy month, but I'm happy to say that I did accomplish some of the goals for myself. I hope to get better and better with each new month.

Marriage Goals: Brent and I finally had a date together! Granted it was at home, and Train Lover was still awake, but it was a date nonetheless. Thanks to a sale from Hy-Vee, we both got a lot of Chinese food for less than $7. We love their Chinese food - who knew a grocery store could make good food? After we ate dinner we had a YouTube Karaoke night! Using my hairbrush as a microphone we took turns singing songs. We've done this date before and had a great time doing it and we got to enjoy it again.

I also read a marriage book this month entitled Becoming One: Intimacy in Marriage. It's a good read for all LDS people that are dating, close to getting married, and even those who have been married for awhile. It explains the differences between men and women, intimacy issues and concerns, and answers general questions most members of the church have before getting married. I read it shortly after we were married 3 years ago and enjoyed reading it again.

Personal Goals: I started two other books this month and will finish in the first week of February (I was close to finishing this month!)

Stand for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes was the book club book for the month. It is written by late prophet Gordon B. Hinckley. He writes about 10 virtues he feels have been neglected and put aside in our modern world and society, and what we can do to bring them back into our lives. I've enjoyed it so far and have learned a lot from it.

29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change your Life is a book I cannot put down. I started a few days ago and love it. It is about a woman diagnosed with MS and how she takes the advice of a spiritual leader and friend to give away 29 gifts in 29 days and the impacts it has on her life. I love the book and think it's really inspiring. I'm hoping to start my own 29 Gifts challenge soon. If any of you are feeling down about your life right now, I would encourage you to read this book.

Spiritual Goals: We had FHE every Monday this month! That is such a huge success for us. We have always struggled to have it. It's hard to do when it's just two people, and then you add a toddler and it gets more difficult. But I know it's important; that's why it's one of my goals this year to have FHE every Monday night.

For Christmas I got a planner. I've been using it every day to write down appointments, to do lists, and to keep track of praying and scripture study. I also printed out monthly and weekly FHE charts that I found on Pinterest and just changed the size of the image to fit in my planner. I cannot for the life of me now find where I got them from. I'll try to find them in case you want to use them too. Then I cut out the pages and glued them into the section in the back of my planner labeled 'Notes'. Now it's our year schedule for FHE. Brent and I came up with the following topics to focus on each month:

January - Church
February - Family History
March - Family (since #2 joins us this month)
April - Godhead (to focus on Easter)
May - Service
June - Joseph Smith (because he was martyred in June)
July - Emergency Preparedness
August - Scriptures
September - Prophets (to prepare for General Conference)
October - Prayer
November - Covenants (since we were married that month)
December - Christmas

Anyways, here is a look at our FHE plans for the month of January.

Here is one of the weeks lesson plans we had on Tithing.

I'm so glad I have goals to focus on this year and that I am working towards accomplishing some of them!

Sunday Can

A couple weeks ago for FHE (Family Home Evening, you can learn more about it here) we talked about the Sabbath Day and how important it was. Lessons in our home are short for Train Lover to stay focused the whole time. For this lesson, we created a Sunday Can. It's a can filled with strips of paper that have different ideas of things you can do on Sunday to keep it a holy day. The list can be found here. Some of the ideas included writing letters to family or missionaries, reading about an ancestor, visiting a neighbor, and drawing a picture of what you did for the day.

Each Sunday we choose a strip of paper out of the jar and do the activity. We know he is young, and he doesn't understand what he is doing right now, but that doesn't stop us from teaching. Parents need to teach while their kids are young. As Alma 37:35 says, "O, remember, my son, and learn wisdom in thy youth; yea, learn in thy youth to keep the commandments of God."

Today's activity from the can was to write in our journal. Two year old's can't write, but I knew he could help me do something. I talked to him about his day and asked what he remembered. Then I wrote down what he told me and had him color the paper after.

Here is his first journal page:

I know that it is by "small and simple things are great things brought to pass" (Alma 37:6). I'm grateful for the chance I have to teach my little guy good values here in the home.

Gospel ABC Book

I've been wanting to make a little quiet book of ABC's for our Sunday church bag for awhile, and I finally got around to it and completed it today. I found a great website that had a template of the ABC's and all you had to do was add your own pictures. It was just what I was looking for! You can find the link to the template here.

You open the template in any photo editing program. I used the LibreOffice Draw program (the same one I made our Christmas newsletter on). I love LibreOffice! It's similar to Microsoft Office but it's free. There are a lot of features on it that I love a lot more than Microsoft's programs. If you don't have Microsoft Office, download LibreOffice here and you won't be sad you did.

Add the photo you want for each letter, place it behind the wording, and adjust the size so it's at least 4" by 6". All my pictures were bigger than that. I then added a border around the words to know where the picture would be once I cut it from the sheet of paper. Print the pictures on paper (or real photos from Walgreens) and add it to a 4" by 6" photo album. I got mine at Dollar General for $1. That's it! It's really simple and looks great. I'm excited to see Train Lover's reaction to it tomorrow when he pulls it out of his bag.

Here are some of the completed pages:

$5.57 for 9 products at Target! + Rebate Apps

Another great buy at Target tonight. My favorite store!

Oci Clean Baby was on clearance for $6.45 instead of $7.59. I also had a $2 off manufacturer coupon bringing the price to $4.45.

Ricola was on clearance for $1.14 instead of $2.29. We bought 8 packages bringing the total to $9.12. The Snap by Groupon app had a rebate offer of $1 off Ricola with no limit. I snapped pics of the receipt, sent it in with the total packages I had purchased, and within 15 minutes I received confirmation that I earned back $8!

So my grand total for all 9 products was $5.57, saving me over $20!

If you have a smart phone, download these free rebate apps right now:

Cartwheel

Checkout 51

Ibotta

Snap by Groupon

Jingit

BerryCart

Shopmium

Savings Catcher (if you for some reason still shop at Wal-Mart!)

Shopkick (not a rebate app, but you earn giftcards just for walking into stores like Target and Wal-Mart and scanning items if you want more 'kicks')

All these apps work a little differently. Check them out and see what you like. They each offer different offers, but sometimes they have the same offer so you can have double or triple the savings, and use a coupon! I've been using them less than a month and have already saved over $42 in my groceries, just from these apps alone! My favorite apps are cartwheel (seriously, Target is the BEST!), Checkout 51, Ibotta, Jingit, and Snap.

Once you've downloaded them you just take pics of the receipt from the store showing proof you purchased the item and let the app know which items you're cashing in for. Read the rules to understand each app, but that's how most of them work.

I hope you all download them and use them. I look at them before I go grocery shopping and I usually have at least one item I can redeem cash back for by the time I get home. So go out there and start saving tons!

Couponing at Hyvee + 97¢ for 3 products!

I've been obsessing over rebate apps for smart phones the last few weeks. I have to say - they are amazing! I'll share some pointers throughout the next few weeks but I wanted to share my sweet shopping experience tonight.

Hy-Vee is where I do my grocery shopping here in Iowa. I love it because of their prices, the cleanliness of their store, their weekly sales, and the helpful customer service I receive. I also love to get 'fuel saver' rewards for certain products I buy. Certain items give you 1¢ to 50¢ off of each gallon of gas you buy (up to 20 gallons). There have been times where I have saved $1 and more per gallon of gas at the pump. That's a lot of savings when you drive a van. And I get the rewards for buying things I use anyway! I'm getting off track now. I just love Hy-Vee!

Through Hy-Vee's website, or using their app through your smartphone, you can add digital coupons to your fuel saver card. There are hundreds of coupons you can add to your card that are sent digitally to your specific barcode (similar to Target's cartwheel app). After reviewing Hy-Vee's coupon policy, and verifying with an employee at the store, I found out I could use a Hy-Vee digital coupon along with a manufacturer coupon. What's even better is that most coupons that Hy-Vee provides are the same coupon found from the website coupons.com. That means DOUBLE savings for the same item!

Here's what I bought tonight:

Excedrin is $3.99 originally for a 24 count bottle. I had a digital coupon for $1.50 off, plus a manufacturer coupon for $1.50 off. My final cost was 99¢.

Men's Speed Stick Deodorant was on sale for $3 instead of almost $4. I had a digital coupon for $2 off, plus a manufacturer coupon for $2 off. That means I EARNED $1 for buying that. So it paid for my Excedrin.

Olay Body Wash was $3.97. I had a digital coupon for $1 off, plus a manufacturer coupon for $1 off. I also had another $1 off by submitting my receipt on the Ibotta rebate app. So it was 97¢ for the body wash.

So for all 3 products that would have cost me $10.96 originally (since the deodorant was on sale), I paid only 97¢!

Baby prep + Bathroom cleanup

I have a few friends that are pregnant and due around the same time as me, or after. Lately they've been posting a lot on Facebook about getting ready for the baby: baby registries, washing baby clothes, arranging furniture, and so on. I haven't done a single thing for this baby yet. I don't know if it's because it's the second one and I'm not too worried, or because I just haven't thought about what I need to be doing. But I realized that the next 3 months are going to fly by and I do have things to do. Last night while watching Lady and the Tramp with the family I made a list of all the things I want to get done around here before the baby comes.

Bathroom

• clean and organize closet
• make inventory list of items we have

Kitchen

• clean and organize the pantry
• clean and organize the cupboards
• prepare 72 hours kits for all family members

Bedroom

• go through closet and get rid of clothes
• organize paperwork
• create office in walk-in closet
• arrange room for baby

Train lover's bedroom

• arrange room for baby #2
• sanitize all toys
• remove books from bookshelf that aren't age appropriate

Living Room

• sell and donate books/organize bookshelf
• arrange room to become playroom

Van

• wash inside and outside
• clean and empty out the inside
• set up carseat
• prepare emergency supplies and kits

Today I tackled the bathroom closet. Here's what it looked like before (sorry for the bad angles).

Here it is after!

• I labeled all the containers on the outside so we now know what's inside. 
• I also created an inventory list of all the items we have. Now I know I need to buy shampoo and deodorant before our current stuff runs out!

 

• The medicine and first aid supplies are now separated. 

 

• I moved a few things under the sink that belonged there, like hand soap refills. 
• I threw away expired things. 
• I took all the towels out of the closet and moved them to our bedroom closet. We never use those towels because we love our Norwex body towels too much!
• I also got a big pile together of things I know we won't use and posted pictures of the items online to sell. I should get about $50 for all the items I posted! 

Best thing about cleaning the closet was figuring out the things we need and making $50!

I also organized Train Lover's bookshelf. It was jam packed with books before. Now all the books on the shelf are perfect for his age. No more red, black, and white books and no more chapter books. Maybe seeing the books he has will get him more interested in reading :)

All the books I took off his shelf. A lot, right?

I tackled 3 things from my list today and it only took a couple hours to do. Going slow and steady each day for the next 3 months should make my list a piece of cake to achieve!

'Better'-ings for a Better Me

I was inspired by Crystal Paine's blog post "Why I Bombed My 2014 Goals". It made me look at my past goals, just as I did last year (I blogged about it here). I couldn't agree more with what she had to say.

This year is going to be busy in just a couple months when we add Baby #2 to the mix. I know it's going to be a challenge adjusting to two children and I'm going to be frazzled and frumpy for a time. But I want to make it a great year nonetheless!

So here is to me trying to better myself and my life this 2015 year!

Marriage Goals:

• Put Brent and our relationship first
• Go on a date at least once a month
• Read 6 marriage books

Mothering Goals:

• Stop yelling at my child(ren)
• Read 1 book a day with kids
• Monthly one-on-one time with my Train Master (little one #1)

Personal Goals:

• Read 3 books every month
• 10 minutes of Facebook per day TOPS
• Get back to pre-pregnancy weight

Spiritual Goals:

• Be prepared for Sunday School and Relief Society lessons each week
• Visit teach all my sisters each month
• Go to the temple at least 4 times
• FHE every week

I'm excited about these goals. I have a plan of action to accomplish all of these and I really hope believe I can do it. I'm grateful I got a planner for Christmas. I've already stamped in spots to mark of some goals and glued in some monthly and weekly FHE charts. Maybe I'll blog about my planner another time. Right now I need to get to work though! The day is almost through and I still need to do some of these things.

Share some of your goals with me down below!