Category: Tip Jar

Tip Jar: Budgeting for 2021

This past weekend, my husband and I sat down to do our annual exam of our household budget and savings plan for the year ahead. We thoroughly look at our budget and realistically examine potential expenses and find ways to cut/save money for the upcoming year.

We have built out and customized an awesome excel sheet template which is an extremely helpful resource for us. I can share if anyone is interested! Having a firm understanding of your budget can allow you to prepare for future expenses (i.e. school, home projects, home maintenance issues, etc.), reconsider what items are truly important and remove things that waste money all while challenging yourself to become a better saver. This sheet is what helped us make the jump for myself to become as stay at home Mom (and of course my husband’s career, we were blessed) – we number crunched and saw the opportunity was possible!

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Motherhood Monday: Buried Alive – Toys Edition – How to Handle All the New Gifts

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Good morning! Happy Monday and Happy New Year to you! Welcome 2021, I hope you are super sweet to us all 🙂

I’m sure everyone is still recovering for the holiday season – I know we are! This weekend, my husband and I took the time to sit down and regroup taking a thorough look at our budget and things we want to tackle. The main thing we both agreed on – donating, purging and reorganizing the house.

If you remember, the kids and I actually went through our toys on Giving Tuesday and donated a lot to make “room” for Santa and also give to those who are less fortunate than us. Along came Christmas and the onslaught of toys so, we decided take another look at the toys we had, where they were being stored and whether or not things should be donated or thrown away – again. We were able to find a lot more, so you can say I was pleased to rid of the clutter! I also went through my closet and found so many things to give away!

Today, I wanted to share some of our methods to keep the clutter under wraps AS BEST WE CAN because hey, we’re dealing with a 1,3 and 5 year old!

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Holiday Gift Guides 2020: Functional Gifts for Kids

I meant to post this yesterday, in fact I had other posts scheduled for the past couple days, but LIFE and VACATION got to me! I am back and hoping to stay ahead of the game! A major goal of mine is to be wayyyy more organized and structured in the blogging world come 2021.

Wrapping up my gift guides with Christmas nearly a week away, I figured I would share some FUNCTIONAL gift items that kids will love, but also YOU will love as well because hey, they’re needed! So here they are, some gifts that are both functional and fun. These gifts aren’t necessarily toys – they have a dual purpose and most likely will satisfy a need in your household! Happy shopping!

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Tip Jar Tuesday: DIY Christmas Cards

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It’s beginning to look like Christmas around here! As we speak we are getting hit with a winter storm so today, I am feeling those Christmas vibes! We were able to take some family Christmas photos this weekend and I will let you in on a little secret, every year I’ve done them myself. I know they aren’t the most amazing, but for free, I’m loving it!

I have a Sony a6000 camera – I purchased it after our honeymoon and was advised by the sales associate that it takes great quality pics, is very portable and acts as a DSLR camera. Now, would I love a DSLR camera, YES, but this was what I decided to purchase 5 years ago, so we are making it work!

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Holiday Gift Guides 2020: Teachers

Good morning and happy Monday! This Monday is going to feel rough after the nice and relaxing holiday weekend we had! Hope you had a restful weekend and wishing you a great week ahead!

Today, I am sharing my teachers gift guide. I’ve already got mine purchased and now I just need to wrap it! Will be nice to give back to Audrey’s teachers who do so so much!

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Tips For Holiday Shopping

I cannot believe Thanksgiving is TOMORROW! Time has flown! I need to get my house in check and have so many things to do around the house today – good thing it’s rainy and cold – I’m forced inside to tidy it up!

Today I wanted to share my holiday shopping “routine” so to speak. I noticed there are things I do every single year and I figured they would be worth sharing! Speaking of worth sharing, my holiday gift guides are out and I’m sharing a couple each week! You can check out the guides below:
Toddler Gift Guide
Ladies Gift Guide
Mens Gift Guide

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Holiday Gift Guides 2020: Toddler

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Today I’m sharing the first of many gift guides and it’s one that I happen to know a lot about because these are toys my kiddos use or are on our wish list! This list was made for both toddler girls and boys in mind. I hope you can get some really good ideas from this guide and it makes shopping for your child, niece, nephew or grandchild super easy! Age range for these items would be ages 2-6.

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Gift Guide Launch!

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Good morning and happy Monday! Can you believe Thanksgiving is right around the corner?! Oh my gosh then right after that, Christmas?! The end of this year seems to be flying by so to get ahead of the game and start tackling your Christmas shopping, I figured I would share some gift guides based on items I use, love, gift to others and actually want for myself and kiddos!

I’ll be posting a couple gift guides each week all the way up until mid-December, so be sure to stop back to my blog to check them out! I LOVE gift guides! First off, it eases the stress of holiday shopping and getting ideas from others is extremely helpful when you are stumped trying to figure out what to buy for someone. I hope my gift guides are helpful to you this holiday season!

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Motherhood Monday: Parenting Self Audits

Good morning and happy Monday! I hope you had an amazing weekend – we definitely did as our weather was an absolute dream! We still have some nice weather on tap for us this week and we are definitely making the most of it.

I’m not going to lie, the past week has been rough. I’ve found myself angry, I’ve found myself consumed by everything that is going on in our country and also slightly terrified. I stepped away from watching ALL the news/media, which is sad this is what it comes to. I’m often left feeling upset that we are being controlled little by little and we will never know the total TRUTHS in anything going on. Journalist integrity is DEAD and that alone has put me in a dark place.

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Tip Jar Tuesday: Winterizing Home Checklist

Good morning and Happy Tuesday! My husband and I are starting to feel better which is good, the kids don’t QUIT – so that has been hard trying to juggle resting and playtime particularly when we’re trapped inside because the weather hasn’t been the greatest.

We did have a chance to get outside last week/weekend during some of the nicer days and finalize some of our home winterizing tasks. As I was working through my list, I thought, am I the only one with a winterizing checklist for the house? Are there things you button up every year and if so, how do you not forget about doing them? I would love to hear how you plan for the cold weather days ahead!

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World Sight Day 2020: Hope In Sight

Each year, World Sight Day is recognized on the second Thursday of October and the purpose is to raise awareness about blindness, vision impairments and a reminder of the importance of eye exams and screenings.

Today, I see it necessary to spread this awareness and encourage you to take eye health very seriously – in particular being that advocate for our children. This is something they need us for! As a parent, it is our obligation to make sure we are aware of the vision developmental milestones and are actively listening and advocating for our kids.

If you’ve been following along, our daughter was diagnosed with Optic Nerve Hypoplasia – along with esotropia, hyperopia (farsightedness) and strabismus – at the age of 5 months. She is now 5 years old and has had 2 eye alignment surgeries. I shared our diagnosis story last year and since publishing, have heard from many people sharing similar stories.

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October Coffee Stand Decor

Happy Tuesday! I was so shocked that it was time to already change out my September coffee stand decor! Today we are headed to a local orchard to enjoy the beautiful fall weather! In fact, it looks like it will be hanging around for a bit, which makes me SO happy!

As you know, and if you’ve been around here for a bit, I have so much fun changing up the decor on my coffee stand every month! Again, I like to inexpensively switch out this decor and subbing in seasonal vibes around a few standard pieces that are always there!! The Dollar Tree has AMAZING little items to help give you the vibe you are looking for!

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Fall Home Tour 2020

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Good morning and happy Wednesday! In honor of the second day of fall, I’m sharing a little home tour of how I decorate our house for fall! Hope you enjoy our little tour and feel inspired to get a start on your fall decorating as well!

Our first day of fall included a pumpkin patch, donuts and apple fritters from our local apple orchard, hot coffee, a playground!

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