Happy New Year...New You!

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Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe New Year's Eve. We played board games, watched movies, and ate a ton of junk. New year's is a time to reflect on the year just ending and look forward to the year ahead. Many of us think of the things we want to change and the things we want to continue on. For most of us that dreaded resolution has popped up. Like a million others, mine is to lose weight and get healthy. (financially and physically). There are many, many diet plans out there; all with there pros and cons but I'm turning to one that has worked for me in the past and if I stick with it will again work for me in the future and hopefully for the rest of my life. My favorite part? Its FREE!! My favorite four letter word. ha! ha! It's called SparkPeople.com



It's a totally free weight loss site that gives you educational tools, diet suggestion plans, and a ton of tools. My favorites are the food and exercise trackers. You simply input your foods and their vast data base can pull up all the "numbers" calories, fat (good and bad), sodium, sugars, fiber, etc. The fitness tracker lets you input your daily exercise which figures the calories your burn and calculates your over all time. There's daily and weekly goals you can set up which you get points for. Awe! The wonderful points. What do points get you? FAME! No just kidding. The points are just a fun way of making a harmless competition of it. You really don't get anything for your points but its addictive to make your points add up. Which leads me to one of the best parts...teams! With hundreds of teams to join you can find a "community" to participating to get encouragement, have questions answered, and just sound off to. They've even started contests and competitions. The latest is one that starts this Sunday called SparkPeople's Official New YOU Boot camp Its a 4 week exercise jump start to a new you. While the prizes are great, the encouragement and structure to a new you are the real prizes. It's great to have someone to push you in a fun way not a hateful way. Here's a little tutorial/preview of this great site.

Check them out and see what a wonderful place this is. You can even stop by and say hi to me on my SparkPage...I'm Jeffysgirl. Stop by and say hey. Seriously though, this is a great free resource that really has heart behind it not just a money making scheme. There is NEVER any fee just positive and encouraging help. Happy New year everyone! Happy New YOU!

I've read a couple of articles on a No Spending Day technique to save money. Some extended it to a week in which you spend no money - cash or credit cards. Basically, although you do spend money each day on things like electricity, mortgage/rent, etc. you aren't allowed to spend any money through out the day on anything else. This got me thinking, can you do this on a regular basis? Many of us are scouring the Internet, papers, and coupon sections to find the best deal to stock up at the cheapest price possible, but can we take one day or even a week in which we spend absolutely nothing? I've done it the past 3 days but I've been at home for the holidays. I don't return to work until after the first of the year so, yeah, I could do it but then I wouldn't leave my home for 2 weeks. Not a pretty picture. ha! ha! However, I do think that I may start with baby steps and have a No Spending Day once a week for the entire year of 2009. Maybe I'll even get brave and have a No Spending Week in there somewhere. I'll officially start this in January 2009. Now I just need to pick one day and set it in "stone" so to speak and stick to it.



I've also decided to let go of getting a soda pop at work for $1.25 each day but instead of letting the money just go back into my regular budget, I'm going to add it to my change jar. I've not decided what to use the jar for yet. I do raid it occasionally to buy 3 different newspapers on Sunday for the goods (coupons/sales ads) but in general its untouched. If I pass on the soda pop & save the $$$ from it I can save roughly $25 a month. Wow! That's roughly $300 a year!

Wow! It's amazing how much we spend without even thinking about it.

Have a Very Merry Christmas!

Christmas - Glitter Graphics

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Wraping a small paper gift the fun way

One of my favorite parts of Christmas is watching my boys open their Christmas presents on Christmas morning. This year I got my oldest son, car insurance and the car my dad gave him registered so he has some wheels when he gets his license next month. (Oye Vey) This was quite a big expense and took up a good part of his portion of my Christmas budget. It made me a little bit sad to think he'd get to open one or two little things and then an envelope with papers in it. Sooooo, I decided to do something different. Something that would let him open presents and have fun.

First thing I did was make this certificate. The picture's a little hard to tell but it says: World's Soon To Be Best Driver...in recognition of getting your car registered and insured. You may now drive your car. I then included it and the registration and insurance card in a box that opened up to show them nicely.

I then made little cards/papers with cute says on them like This isn't your present...keep going...not there yet...etc. Then I got a bunch of different boxes to put those in:

Then I put the actual gift box in the bottom of the box and threw all the other boxes, totalling I believe 12 boxes, in on top of the present box. I used every shape an size I could think of.

Then I wrapped it all up pretty and put a bow on it.

Now he'll have just as many or more presents to open. Hee! Hee! This was my frugal way of giving him a fun and good Christmas. I hope he enjoys it as much I did coming up with it!