Happy New Year!

Wow a whole new year, where did the last one go?! It seems since having kids my days go by at light speed. This year I'm trying to slow that down a little. I can't say I'm completely sad to see 2010 go away. It was a bittersweet year at the Bacon house, from the loss of our daughter, to the birth of Bacon bit there was a lot going on. I'm hoping 2011 will give us more happy times than sad. Looking ahead it's time to make some of those happy times happen! Most of the good things in life take a little work. So with the new year did you make any new resolutions to help your outlook for 2011? I didn't! I've learned that resolution never get finished. So I make myself some goals instead.

Here are some of the goals hope to achieve this year:
*Keep paying off Debt. This is hopefully looking pretty good. Each time I pay bills I re-evaluate in my head how long until the next one will be paid off. It keeps me on my feet and yes usually gives me a headache, but knowing that will be one less bill I have to pay helps me keep my non-essential spending in check.

*Sticking to our budget, and tweaking it a bit too! A good budget can always use some fine tuning I've found over the years. I think back to when my budget envelops had just 4 categories!! Have you thought about your budget yet? Or are you thinking of starting one?

*Another goal I want to try this year is to see how much 'free' money I can get and stick it in our gifts budget. I was shocked this year on how many gift cards or items I earned for doing just a little easy work! This year I won 7 giveaways, just by signing up online- painless and it only took a few minutes. A few of these prizes went to gifts. I cashed in on my reward programs (like the debit card that's linked to our bank account, we get points for every dollar spent). The other big one I found is Swagbucks. It's amazing how fast the points add up! I started this the end of may and with a few minutes of computer time I have been able to get $60 worth of Amazon gift cards this year! You get awarded points for searching the web (I did install their tool bar and it helps), finding special codes and entering them, doing surveys, and polls. If you haven't signed up for your free money yet, sign up here! Nothing to lose and lots of free money to gain. The gift cards really helped buy christmas presents this year and with Amazon's free shipping it's a win all around!

*I want to show my kids that having a good time doesn't always involve spending money, or having every toy advertised on TV. If you're house is like mine, it's swimming in toys... AGAIN. Of course I'm still hearing the 'I'm bored' from the kids. Today is one of those days I need to pull out something 'new'. It's snowing and freezing cold and the kids are going stir crazy! Little miss Bacon and Little boy Bacon wanted to dig out the playdoh. Oh how I despise playdoh! There is always a huge mess to clean up, but the kids love it so I let them play away. Today they wanted to make cookies. It's amazing how some doh and cookie cutters will occupy kids for hours! I surprised them with their very own 'oven' to bake their cookies in too!



Here is Little Miss Bacon's, If you look close you can even see she added 'on' and 'off' buttons to her oven!



And of course Little boy Bacon giving me a peek at whats baking in his oven! Thank goodness for boxes and tinfoil and a almost no cost activity for the kids that keep them from fighting for over an hour now!


I know I have more goals to add to my list along the lines of finding more healthy, cheap meals to serve, what other snacks can we make instead of buying at the store, hand making some of the gifts to give this year, to name a few. What are your goals for this year? I'd love to hear them