Happy New Year! May 2009 SHINE!

Well, 2008 definitely was not the best...but then again it wasn't the VERY worst! :)

I love New Years Eve (despite having to work this year--UG! at least I was able to run home and kiss my guys at midnight before running back to work!) I like making resolutions and those who know me, know that I set unreasonably high goals and then knock myself around for not achieving them...so in that light....

No really, I've tried to be more reasonable, but still have high expectations.

I don't know if God will have us moving as we hope. As Man pointed out today, we've lived in our current home longer than anywehere else we've lived in our 16 years of marriage (almost 17) but it's not been lack of trying. We've been trying to move for over 3 years now, but His all-knowing hand has come in at the last minute to save us from ourselves. So I still pray this will the year that we move somewhere. But in the meantime, we need to do with what we have so here are the "HOMESTEAD RESOLUTIONS"

1. Improvements and updates as we can afford to make the place more sellable.
2. Add 3 more chickens and start selling eggs.
3. Aggressively working on our debt. (We are so overstrapped!!Stupid surgery--no not really, I'm grateful that I now can walk again!)
4. Eating more homemade / homestead food.
5. Blog regularly...(daily?!?)

With resolution 3 & 4 (and 5), my plan is something I saw on a magazine and then found a blog of someone who did it. So we are going to have "Month-of-Nothing" and "Month-of-Half" What this means is in the Month-of-Nothing (mon) we will spend essentially nothing. This goes for food, gas, etc... Now I realize this is a fairly unrealistic goal as our normal monthly for this type of stuff is about $250 (and know that we do not go out to dinner and movies, rent movies, etc) So we are 'allowed' $25 each week. I've been grocery gaming so we have a fairly good pantry and freezer full. The $25 will also be if there are grocery game deals that are just too good to pass on. We can carry over from previous weeks. We have essentially $3.25 per day, so on weeks like this one where there are only 3 days...it's a $10 week. And on the MOH (Month of half) it won't really be half...I'm going to allow $50...with a bit of play upto $65 per week. This is the game plan, keep tuned in to see how we do. I'll be posting on here for accountablity.

January-Month of Nothing
February-Month of Half
March-Restock Month
April-Month of Nothing
May-Month of Half
June-Restocking Month
July-Month of Nothing
August-Month of Nothing (HARVEST MONTH!)
September-Month of Half
October-Restocking Month
November-Month of Half
December-Month of Half

You can also follow some of my personal resolutions (my faith, faithbooking, and scrapbooking ones HERE.