Consignment Sales!

One of the other things I really want to do a better job of is managing our finances and making every dollar stretch further. Who doesn't need to do that?!?

One way to do that is consignment sales! I spent yesterday combing through some consignment sales and was really happy to get some clothes in preparation of our upcoming Bundle of Joy and knocked TWO kids off my Christmas shopping list for $5 each!!! That was exciting. 

If you are looking for consignment sales near you check our www.thebargainwatcher.com. They have a really good listing of sales in several states and you can search by date, county, or state.

Here are some tips for shopping consignment sales:
- Bring bags to hold your stuff as you look around or make sure there is plenty of room in your stroller to pile things
- Bring cash - although much more common now, not all sales take cards. Taking cash will also keep you from gong overboard buying things just because they are $1.
- Plan your route. There are usually several sales going on in a particular weekend. Use Google or Yahoo maps to plot where they are and plan out your day for maximum efficiency. Be sure to pay attention to opening/closing times of the various sales and any special rules, such as no strollers or only umbrella strollers or things like that
- If you are looking for a particular large and/or in-demand item consider volunteering for the sale. Most sales have a presale for consigners and volunteers. This can increase your chances of getting ahold of that particular item if it is in high demand.
- Use the day as a social outing, too - especially if you have to take the kids! Multiple moms make managing the kids a lot easier as you can trade off trips to the bathroom, watch each others' kids while checking out, etc.
- Have fun! If you don't get everything you were looking for, don't stress out! Just look at all the amazing deals you did get and remember that even if you have to pay retail for one thing, you didn't on four or five others.

Self Care - The first step in taking care of others

If you have ever been on a plane you have heard the whole safety spiel about what to do if catastrophe happens. Personally I think this is why so many people are scared to fly. People would be scared to drive if every time you got in a car you were informed of all the bad things that could feasibly happen during your trip and what you should do to survive them, but I digress. One of the things the flight attendants will tell you is that if the cabin should lose air pressure oxygen bags will fall from the ceiling. The key thing they tell you is to place the mask on yourself before helping anyone else. That, and that oxygen is flowing even if the bag doesn't fully inflate but that has nothing to do with my thoughts for today...

There is a lot of evidence that the same philosophy holds true in other areas of life. I can't take care of my family if I'm not taking care of myself. And while I have been taking better care of myself lately, it isn't really that I'm taking better care of me - it's that I'm taking care of my unborn kid. If I am going to continue to be able to do everything my family needs me to do and set a good example for my kids to follow, I have to take better care of me for my sake and not just for their sake. 1 Corinthians 6:19 says " Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own". I know how sad it makes me to see peeling paint on the side of a church building. Imagine how much sadder it makes God to see the condition of His true temple!


The first thing I need to do is get more sleep. By nature I am a night owl (as evidenced by the fact that I am writing this post at 11:00PM) but my children... not so much. Whether I want to or not, my day starts around 7 in the morning. If I am staying up until 11... 12... or occasionally even 1, then there is no way that I am getting enough sleep. Particularly being pregnant and having Bear wake up occasionally in the night still. It means I end up crashing in the middle of the day and... you guessed it! Turning on the TV. It's really amazing how these things intertwine... 


So goal number two is that I am going to go to bed earlier. The ideal time is probably closer to 10 but yikes! That is a big change and I would probably lay there and stare at the ceiling. So I am going to start small. My self care goal is going to be to actually be physically IN BED by 11:00 every night. And on that note, I shall sign off. I am already late tonight, but there is no reason to be any later!

Project Update #2

It is amazing how quickly Satan will attach your resolve to do things better! Yesterday I set my television goal and first thing this morning it was completely threatened! Bean woke up at 6:50AM! Ugh. Last week I would have bundled her in bed with me and set up the laptop to play Dora the Explorer. I am happy to say this morning I did not do that! It helped a bit that Bear (my younger daughter) woke up 15 minutes later so I had to get up and fix her breakfast because that is absolutely the FIRST thing she has to have. But still... Bear went back down for a nap not long after breakfast and I still only let Bean watch one show while she ate her breakfast. She was then allowed a show while I fixed lunch and we did not watch any more TV until this evening, despite the visit from the Pregnant Hormonal Fairy that visited this afternoon and put me completely on edge so that every little thing drove me completely nutso! We even worked on a project that I would normally have tried to do during nap time so that I wouldn't have "help".

I know that it is only one battle one, but it feels like a very good victory! I am sure there will be days that I don't meet my goal because I am still human, but at least I didn't fall down right out of the gate. Yea!

The Television Debate

We've all heard how important it is to limit the amount of television that our children (and we ourselves) watch. Some reports say they shouldn't watch any TV at all before the age of two, others say it should be limited to under an hour. I'm not sure how much credit to put in all these scientific studies because there's always another one coming along to contradict the first one. I do know however, that is isn't good for her to constantly be sitting still staring at a screen. I also know from experience that Bean learns well and mimics what she sees on TV. Because of this I am very careful what she can see on TV. Hubby and I don't watch any of our shows when the kids are in the room and I don't allow her to watch the action cartoons and things like that. By further enforcing what she's seen on TV she's already learned her letters, numbers, and things like that.

So the question then is what is the correct balance of TV or is there one? Is the knowledge she's gaining from watching television okay as long as she's not watching hour upon hour of it and still getting some activity with regular toys and her imagination and things?

Regardless of whether or some television is okay, the amount of time I am currently using it for a babysitter is not okay. Some days are good. She watches a show in the morning, one as I'm fixing lunch and then we may watch a show or two as a family in the evenings. This would equal two hours of television time a day. Some days she gets way more. There have been times I am just not ready to get up and I let her watch TV until my younger kid wakes up which can sometimes amount to an hour or more of television - just in the morning!

Based on this I believe my first goal is to make every day a good television day. Television will be limited to 2 hours a day. If Bean gets up early I will let her get a book and crawl in bed with me instead of turning the TV on to allow me to sleep longer. The only thing left to determine is... if the TV is on one of my shows and she isn't paying attention to it, does it still count?

Project Update #1

I don't have any metrics in place yet, but I can say that today, at least, I managed to change the way I did things a little. My girls didn't watch any of their TV shows today. Though that was largely due to the fact that Daddy was home this morning and kept them entertained while Mommy tried to convince herself to actually wake up... but still! My big personal accomplishment today was that I let Bean use her watercolors. (No, my child is not actually named Bean, but since this is a public blog, I am going to at least attempt to secure some privacy for my children. Bean is one of the nicknames of my oldest daughter.) Anyway, she was given some watercolors for her birthday and I have been hesitant to let her get them out because all I could think about was the potential mess... But today we got them out. I took one of Hubby's old t-shirts and cut it up the back to make a smock and set her at the kitchen table and taught her how to use her watercolors. She had a blast and the mess was minimal. It's a small step, but a step nonetheless. Yea for progress!

Goal Setting - Step 1 - Determine where you are starting from

It is well known that you won't get anywhere if you don't have a goal. The more specific the goal, the more likely you are to achieve it because you have something to strive for. So, just saying, "I want to watch less TV" is helpful to a point, but eventually you have to start asking, "What is less?" If I set my ultimate ideal goals from the beginning they are going to feel entirely unattainable and I will get frustrated and quit. Baby Steps that I can actually accomplish are the name of the game. When you lose weight you don't start by saying, "I want to lose 100 pounds." You start with ten.

The question then becomes where am I starting from? So often we set arbitrary goals because they sound good without looking to see how far or close we are to reaching those goals in the first place. Over the next week (maybe 2 - it just depends on how many areas God reveals to me to work on!) I am going to be setting a baseline and figuring out how I'm going to measure those areas.

The first step to getting anywhere is figuring out where you are!

Super Mom Project

A friend of mine recently posted in her personal blog some thoughts she had while driving that mirrored some thoughts I had been having myself recently. It made me start thinking, what is a "Super Mom"? Is it the mom who had a sparkling clean house and makes every meal from scratch and her kids make perfect little crafts for Grandma's birthday without getting paint or markers on their spotless clothes? I really don't think it is.

I think a "Super Mom" is a mom who makes an environment fun, healthy, and enriching environment for her kids. So starting today, I am embarking on a project to become a better "Super Mom". A mom who doesn't park her kids in front of the TV because she's procrastinated on her to-do list for so long that it's the only way to get things done before crunch time. A mom who does things with her kids - things that might make a mess and might even mean something else doesn't get done but also things that make my kids ready to get up and say "What are we doing today, Mommy?". Will it happen right away? No. And I will probably never become my ideal mother, but starting today I'm going to try and I'm going to get better because THAT is the only way I'll even have a shot.

So what will the Super Mom Project entail? I'm sure it will change over time, but for now I want to focus on watching TV less and learning more. Not necessarily learning their letters or their numbers but learning that mixing colors of paint will make other colors, bugs live under rocks, and bubbles make awesome beards.