New Years: Blogging

Today is day five for my New Year goals and the final day. I'm already thinking I took on too much. That's why I need your support! If you are just joining my New Years Goals you can start here.

Today's goal I'm sharing is blogging. You may have noticed I've been slacking lately. Well this year that is about to change! How? I'm taking things slow. I'm having an official blogging day once a week so you should see at least one blog post every Monday! Something to kick off the week. Every once in awhile there will be some extra posts thrown in there. But for now I'm keeping it simple and once i've mastered that I'll kick it up a notch!

In addition to more blog posts with recipes and crafts and what not, I want to host my first giveaway! Also possibly starting a linky party (need to research that more) once a month.

Not only do I have Crafts By CJ, I also have a personal blog with my families fun stuff. I haven't updated that in awhile. It's sad to think of that. It is a journal for my family that I never write in. So I'll be doing that once a week as well to give updates on the family.

I'm hoping you will enjoy my posts in 2013, it's going to be a good year!

~CJ

New Year Goals: Organization

This is post #4 on my New Year Goals. If you are just joining the fun you can start here.

I'm embarrassed to say that our office/ craft space is a nightmare right now. it is out of control! This year is my year to get organized and stay that way. Hopefully in the next month or so I'll be posting a craft space reveal. Here is the little beauty that I bought that is getting me motivated!

Sorry for the poor picture, taken on my cell phone.

I bought this off of a local Facebook Yard sale site for $5! Does your city have one? It is so nice!  Before this picture was taken I had already removed 4 or 5 stickers. Let me let you in on a secret, when Goo Gone says let stand for a couple minutes they mean like 10+ minutes. At first it was not helping at all. Then I sprayed it and let it sit for like and hour and they came right off.

I am so excited to fill these drawers. Not just to teach my little bug to stay out of them. How is your craft space organized?

~CJ

New Years Goal: Weight

This is post #3 about my New Year Goals. If you are just joining please start here to get the full scoop.

I make a loss weight goal every year and every year I am disappointed. Ever since I can remember I have always had problems with my weight, never happy. It's effected me in some ways and kept me from doing things at times. Now being married and having a sweet boy my weight is out of control!

So every year I make a goal to lose a bunch if weight, but it never happens. So this year I'm keeping my weight goal simple: DON'T GAIN WEIGHT. I know this sounds silly, but if I could just not gain any weight this year that'd be nice. It could be hard thought because we are trying to get pregnant.

We signed up for a gym membership and like 7 other family members (9 including us) go there too. So we'll have a lot of encouragement. In addition to that we are still biking every once in awhile. When it warms up a tad Ryder & I will probably bike more. Also, we inherited Wii Fit from a sibling and have been doing that about 4-5 times a week.

Food is where I need to make the big change. Chase & I get into really bad habits, especially when he is off from work. We've been staying up late watching Netflix and snacking on junk! He's done with his winter break so we should be better.

What are your keys for losing weight?

~CJ

New Years Goals: Savings

This is post number #2 on New Year Goals. If you are just joining the fun start here.

We try to save money every year, but some how we always manage spend most of it. I recently came across something called the 52 Week Money Challenge. Basically each week you put money into a jar. In week #1 you'd put $1 into it, week #2 $2, Week #10 $10. Week #52 $52. In the end you have $1,378!!! We have our chart taped onto a mason jar and cross off the week once we put it in.

Sorry for coloring, printer was out of ink...

The post where I found this didn't credit the original person so I have no idea who came up with this idea, but I love it! So simple and can be changed to fit your needs. My husband works with Schools so we have no income during the summer, we may be putting it on hold during those months or instead of increasing just do $20 a week. Is more than $20 too much for you a week? Just stick with $20 a week. You still end up with over $800.

I saw someone suggest doing it backwards so you don't have the larger deposits in December with Christmas. If you are like us we are still recovering a little from Christmas so we are happy it's just a few bucks. We also are thinking you don't have to go in order. For example, this is week 2 for us so we'd be putting in $2. We rarely have cash (going to make this a challenge) so I had to withdraw money from our account. Instead of putting in $2 we put in $5 and crossed off weeks 2 and 3. Now we don't have to worry about it another week, or finish a week early. I think the important thing is to put in something each week.

This is a perfect way to save up for something. Can you say Christmas?!?! My mom always said, "Why shop for Christmas only in December? I don't make any more money in December than the rest of the year." If anything you make less because of that days or week off you get because of the holiday.

Here is how I made mine. I took the chart I found here and adjusted it so it will fit on a quart size mason jar. You can get my adjusted version here. Look at the money building up already!

Do you have any money saving tips and tricks? What works for you?


Happy Saving!
~CJ

New Years Goals: Food Storage

This is goal #1! If you missed the intro you can start here.

I don't know about you, but I am really pumped about Food Storage lately. I just feel so strongly that it is something that we need to have. I'm not saying go out and spend thousands of dollars. Start small. Work on a 3 month supply and then build to 6 and then 12 month.

Our goal is to spend $20 bucks a month towards our food storage. Most of it will be going to the LDS Cannery and working there. It is the cheapest around because you don't pay labor costs. You do the labor. It's pretty fun to do.

I have a whole outline/ schedule of my plans this year of what I'll purchase. Ex. For January I'm getting 5 cans of canned ground beef and a 2 pack container of propane tanks from Walmart. This costs me around $16.50. Then I take the remaining $3.50 and save it for a month when I'm spending more than the $20 limit.

Now if you are like the 2012 me you have food storage, but not quite sure what you have. We recently went through all the stuff we inherited and threw away what was expired and organized what was left and recorded it.

Then I made a cool little spreadsheet. I'm hoping you can edit this to fit your family without me losing my original and everyone else seeing what the last person did to it. Make sure you type in the amount in your family in column B2. The amounts I got from the LDS.org website. I did not factor in kids because a lot of the Food Storage lasts 30 years so kids will be adults before it expires so I'm counting my almost 2 year old as an adult since he'll be 32 when this stuff expires.

Some stuff isn't on here, like meats. Also, I lumped all my beans into a generic category, I don't think I'll be purchasing lima beans etc.

Hope this helps!
~CJ

Happy New Year!

Wow I really slacked off at the end there. New Year= New goals! I love this time of the year. Yes I'm sad all the Christmas stuff is packed away and that cheery anxious feeling is gone, but in it's place is a new anxious feeling. The feeling of a clean slate. I'm really excited for my New Year goals this year because I feel like I am a lot more excited about them this year. They seem more manageable.

I've come up with 5 goals I would like to accomplish this year. I will share them with you next week (Monday-Friday) and the resources I have found to help me with them. I'm super excited and since I've chosen a few of the common Resolutions I'm hoping I can inspire and help you in your goals. The best way to accomplish goals is to talk about them and have support right? Thanks for being my support. Feel free to return the favor I'd love to hear about your goals this year!

~CJ

Quick Link to my goals:
Food storage
Savings
Weight Loss
Organization
Blogging