My no spend experience....

Well here is the update on the December 2017  No spend month.
 I started off great.  I had all of Christmas bought and ready because I was prepared for this.  I did have a few things left to get but they were small things.  I had been planning out meals that I could use our food storage and freezer stuff.  I really wanted to clean out the pantry stuff and it went well for a good 15 days.  That is impressive for me.
I did use a lot of food in our freezer and pantry.  We have had some really good meals out of what we have come up with.  I have started to use more of our wheat as well.  I add wheat flour into everything I make now since I have an endless supply of it.  A lot of things are surprisingly tasty with it.   It makes me feel great to know I am using up stuff I already have.
  I love seeing my freezer getting a little less cluttered.  I really need to defrost it this spring/summer. So this is a great project to have for the next few months.
Going 15 days of not spending anything was a great accomplishment for me.  I am a big impulse buyer so this was a great start.  I don't remember what exactly happened. I think I went to sams club with my husband and we bought some stuff that we didn't really need and didn't qualify as groceries so that is what started it.

I still count it as a success, just not a full success. I didn't make the goal but I did do pretty well for me.  It was an improvement for sure.

So here is what I took from that.....

I have made a chart for this whole year 2018 where you just mark the day off if you didn't spend anything.  If you did spend you leave it blank. I like being able to see it and its a fun challenge to see how many days in a row I can mark it off with a green pen.  I don't count groceries or bills, normal budgeted stuff in it.  This is just extra stuff that I don't really need.  I feel like I am a pretty hard judge on myself so I can be strict. 

I do find that I save up the stuff I want to get until a day that I know I spent on something else I will just say I already don't get to mark it today so I will just buy this too today.  I need to be better at that.  I guess that is good in one way.  I have time to really think about if I really need it and sometimes I take it off my list of things to buy.  I think about why do I want this?  is it just to satisfy my buying want? or is it really a need?   It has helped.

We are really trying to save back up after all of the house remodeling and upgrading.  We need to build our savings back up.  Especially since we have more projects we want to do in the back yard as well.  That is a great thing to motivate me to think about my purchases more.  Do I want this or the basketball court, horse corral in the back yard? 
I also told Max about saving money so we can build a basketball court out back and he likes to remind me to save money when we are at the grocery store. Its cute and he make me accountable.
I am excited about this Less spending year, is what I am calling it.  Since I am making a conscious effort to not spend as much and mark as many green days as I can.  I love using up our freezer and pantry food that is one of my favorite perks about this.  I find it fun to come up with random meals we can use the older food with.

Finally caught up on scrap booking

For years I have been behind on scrapbooking.  It has been a permanent goal on my list for a long time.  I finally was able to catch up on all of them.  Phew!!!.   It feels so good.

I do a few different ones.  One Riley Family ones that will be ours it will stay here at our house.  Then each of the kids have their own.  I put more of their own pictures in them, along with the family trips and stuff.  It works out nice.  Then when they grow up and move out they can take their own and have them to share with their families.  I love looking back at my scrapbooks from when I was little and its fun to compare the kids to how I looked when I was little.

I really like blurb.com, I know I have blogged about this site before but they have upgraded their programs and I love it.  They make it very simple to create a book with a ton of pictures for a reasonable price.

I can usually get a few years in each book.  I try to get between 200-270 pages before the book gets too big.  So that is usually a few years, especially in the kids books.  Not so many in the family book because it has every picture of all the kids.

I can fit so many pictures on each page in these books though so Its awesome.
I am so glad to be caught up on that life long goal.  Now I just go in once a month or so and do a few pages in their books and stay caught up.  Its much easier once you reach this point. I really am going to try to stay caught up.

The kids keep asking when I am going to get another one printed so they can look at the pictures.
I am glad they love looking at them as much as I do.

Kids incentives and rewards

We have been trying all sorts of ways to motivate and reward our kids.  Some work and some dont but this new way I read about has been working like a charm for quite a few months.  I think we started last spring.  So almost a year.  We do tickets.  I went to the dollar store and found some carnival tickets and we use these.  I use just a mason pint jar for their jars.  They decorated their own and it makes it fun.

So they each have their own jar and they earn tickets by doing things like anything nice that I didn't ask them to do.  Picking up extra stuff around the house.  I will also tell them if they do this or do that they can have a set amount of tickets.  Like if they stay in their beds at night and I don't have to tell them to be quiet and go to bed, they get so many. It was worked like a charm.  

I keep a bunch in a bowl that they can earn and put into their jars.  We reuse them.  If they turn in their tickets for something then I put them back in the bowl.  Except if they get some taken away because they were bad sometimes I will rip them up and I think it helps them realize they lost  their tickets.  

I have two different kinds of tickets they are used the same but its just fun to have different kinds.

So some of the things they can turn their tickets in for is $,  or time to watch a movie, if they get 20 then they can choose to go somewhere fun like this jump place we go with all sorts of bounce houses.  They can turn them in for money and go to the dollar store and pick somethings.  

Just this past week I noticed they had a lot in there and they hadn't been turning them in and I suggested that they could turn them in for money.  So they counted them up and they each got $4 each the older kids at least.  It was fun for them to get actual money.  They had a fun time.  Lexi wanted to go to the store and get $1 coloring book.  Max wanted to go get a .25 cent pop.  Sawyer just wanted to put coins in his pocket.  Which he usually looses.  

Its fun to see them get money and what they want to do with it.  They are just starting to ask questions and learn about money and how you get things by buying them.  How everything we bring home we bought.  We earn money by working.... Its hard work.  I think its good for them. 

They actually are pretty motivated by the tickets.  We can bribe them pretty good with them which is nice at times.  I have really loved how simple and yet it works great for our kids.  

Tots Bots Easy fit star Diaper review

Look at those cute printed diapers.  I love them all. 

Its been a long time since I did a diaper review.  I kind of slacked on cloth diapers this past summer with camping and being gone so much plus being sick from pregnancy.  I just didn't have it in me to do it some weeks.
I am full blown cloth again even night.  I haven't done night for a really long time because Sawyer has super ammonia smelling urine and so it makes it hard with night diapers.  I really am trying to save some extra money lately.   I will write more about this later.
So I pulled out my tots bots bamboozled for night again and got them super duper cleaned again so we could start fresh.  I then started looking at other tots bots diapers.  Why?!?  I have no idea.

I just like looking at diapers and new things they have.  I think I found some newborn ones.  I wanted some AIO newborn diapers since I sold all of my easy ones that I used with Sawyer because I didn't really like them that much.  I found some good reviews on the tots bots newborn ones.  Then kept searching.

I"m a sucker I know.  haha.
I have really liked what I have used  so far.  They are super cute and easy to put on.  They don't absorb a ton so I just put a thirsties hemp small insert in the pocket they have.  I really like how thin they are for an AIO.

They have this really long tongue that you can either just fold on top or tuck back into the pocket.  I found tucking is better for cleaning, its easier to spray it off with just the one layer.
So I tuck.  I hated pocket diapers because you had to tuck but these ones its all one piece so its easy to tuck and there is plenty of room inside the pocket to fit it in.






I have really liked these diapers for a quick easy fit.  I still like my prefolds and covers the best. They are just easier to clean off.  These are great for dad though.  They are one of my favorite AIO I have tried.  Plus they are super cute.

A new way to do New Years Resolutions

In one of my podcast that I have been listening to recently they talked about new years resolutions and we all know that 90% of them don't actually work out.  That is just normal.  These ladies had a different idea and I really liked it.
They were talking about just picking a word or a phrase for that year like "rest"  or "discover"  Then they take that word and apply it into each area they are wanting to improve.  Discover new ways to live healthy or lose weight or Discover a new food.  Discover new friends.   They liked an idea better to focus on.  They used prayer and scriptures to pick there theme of the year.  I really liked this idea and I want to try this.

They also said make a list of things you want to do more of and a list of things you want to do less of.  Make that part of your resolutions. Really live life and don't just react to it.  Make sure you are deciding where your time goes and don't let life decide for you.  I love this because sometimes we do let life decide what happens or how we react to what life gives us.  We need to have a plan and be prepared to continue on with life.

I love making goals and writing them down I have been pretty good at doing that since we got married.  I didn't always do all of them but I really tried and I would see my list there next to my desk or bed and it would be a daily reminder of what I had wanted to accomplish that year.  So I like this idea of a phrase and then write a list of things I want to do more of.  I know go to temple will be one of those.  I love going but with little kids its hard to have time to go. I used to trade time with my sister watching kids so we could each go.  I know its on my list to go weekly when all of my kids are in school.  That is a ways off for me though so I need to find an alternative plan until that time has come.

Then to make a list of things I want to do less of is spend money or spend less time on my phone mindlessly reading things of no importance.  I also want to eat out less..... which in turn means cooking more.  I have always had a hard time with cooking meals consistently.  My mom was amazing at doing this.  We always had a great pretty balanced meal.  I go in streaks where I will cook for a few weeks really good then I won't for multiple reasons.   Now that I am pregnant and getting farther along the less I want to cook.  My motivation to cook now is because I want to make sure that we are eating healthier food and know what is actually in our food.

So I have made a list of things I want to do more of and less of and some actual goals too.  I also chose "Back to Basics"  for the theme.  I want to simplify so many things and I feel like that can be summed up in back to basics.  I want to apply that to all things in my life.  I will do random post that will help me be accountable for how I am using that phrase this year.

I am excited for a new year and a fresh new start, even though everyday is a fresh start but the new year is a great time to have some long term goals as well.