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Oct 27, 2014    |       5 comments

Making Do: Family Picture

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Full disclosure:  I actually wrote this post back in August. I have no idea how/why I forgot about it until now, but I wanted to publish it as part of my “making do” series (see others here, here and here). So, as you read, sorry about the dated language (i.e., I mention October being “almost a year ago” when….clearly its been a full year at this point since last October, lol). At any rate, enjoy!

The first week of preschool the teacher sent notes home with our girls asking for us to bring a recent family photo to school for a special project. It turns out that the kids used the pictures to draw their own versions and each was hung on the wall side-by-side for parents to see.

You should have seen the photos that the other parents had sent with their kids. They were beautiful! All professionally done family portraits that I’m sure will be held onto and looked back on for years to come.

Us? We’ve only had 2 professional photos done with the girls in their whole lives. The first was a “newborn” photo shoot (I say “newborn” in quotations because the girls were born very prematurely, so they spent the first month of their lives in the NICU. As a result the newborn shoot that is usually done in the first week of life was actually done when they were 3 months old).

The second professional photo was taken last October at the Sears studio (using a Groupon) for our family Christmas card.  I suppose that was recent enough, though its nearly a year old at this point and we’re all wearing our “Sunday best” in a very posed position, so I wasn’t fond of using it as our “recent family photo.”

Instead I decided to select a photo that my mother-in-law had taken with her iPhone when she was in town visiting last month. We had gone to a local ostrich farm and let the girls feed the animals. In the photo, Chris and I are each holding a girl and there are ostriches all behind us.

There are so many imperfections about that photo:  we’re all hot and sweaty, Chris and I are wearing sunglasses, and the girls aren’t even facing the camera. But its the real “us.” And I love it.

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I don’t have a digital copy of the family photo since my MIL had sent us a printed version only, but enjoy this photo of Bailey from the same day at the Ostrich farm.

I’m so glad that we used this for our recent family photo.

We’ll have our turn to get professional photos down the road. Right now I’m putting more monetary value on trying to find us a reasonable kitchen table to accommodate our whole family. Professional photos really aren’t making the top of the list. And you know what? We’ll survive just fine.

Hey now, remember that goal to get a suitable kitchen table to accommodate our whole family? Wow, almost forgot all about that! Needs to happen ASAP!

Oct 27, 2014    |       5 comments

Modified Money Envelope System

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Well the month is almost over and I wanted to report on how my modified money envelope system has gone.

Remember, I decided to do a modified money envelope with only 2 categories: groceries and eating out. Instead of a traditional envelope I used the two compartments in my wallet and designated one for each of these purposes.

How did it go?

Well, as with anything new, I think there were a bit of some growing pains.

Cons:

There’s really only one. Because the money was stored in my regular wallet (instead of a big, bulky envelope), at the beginning of the month I would sometimes forget it was there! Twice I went to the grocery store and paid with a debit card out of habit, then got out to the parking lot and face-palmed over not using my cash!! This was frustrating and annoying to try to reconcile with the cash I had on hand (by subtracting odd dollar amounts when I didn’t have correct change, etc.). Just a bit of a learning curve as I tried to re-learn to use CASH ONLY instead of debit.

Pros:

I really, really paid attention to that money dwindling! These are categories that I usually go over on and this month I basically told myself that this cash was all I have in the world (even though we obviously have more money in the bank). So when the money started running low I had to get creative with making meals at home and using ingredients we had on hand. Instead of just putting it on debit and worrying about how I’d gone over budget later, I was forced to really work with ONLY the cash that I had allotted to these categories, no more.

Overall, I think the system worked great! After learning to spend my cash instead of automatically defaulting to debit, I didn’t have any problems. I’m definitely going to keep it up next month.

One potentially negative in terms of my grocery budget……I don’t know how but last month and this month I’ve run out of money well before the month was over. In both cases I’ve been forced to eat out of our freezer and pantry. That’s all well and good and helped me from going over our grocery budget. BUT, our freezer and pantry are both looking pretty darn bare right now. Our freezer, in particular, has rarely been so low on food! I’m hoping that with Thanksgiving next month I’ll be able to stock up on a lot of sale-priced meat (turkey is at a once-a-year low in November); and on the bright side of things, I have the room in my freezer to spare fore stocking up on some meat and other freezable food. However, I’m going to have to get crafty on how to stock up since I still don’t want to increase my grocery budget. That will be a challenge for next month. Fun times!

 

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