Day	Amount	Place	Category
Thursday	$28.00	CostCo	groceries
Friday	$100.00	Clothes	allowance
	$46.00	shoes	allowance
	$5.50	safeway	groceries
Saturday	$96.00	safeway	groceries
	$21.00	supercuts	allowance

Over half of what we spent this week, I spent on a new blazer, earrings, and boots. Then I got my hair cut (happens about once every 6 months). And would you believe, I’ll spend more on this coming Thursday for a manicure. Yes, it’s a lot of money for “one day”, but I’ll be able to wear the clothes and earrings multiple times, my hair needed to be cut anyway, and well, I like manicures, so I’m good with it.

Otherwise, our Safeway bill was so high because we needed to spend at least $50 to get extra savings on a turkey, so we actually have a lot of our Thanksgiving shopping done already. On Thursday, C went and got a ham- which we ate on Friday, because we love ham, but it’s a pain making both a turkey and a ham for Thanksgiving.

In other exciting news, on Saturday we ordered a glass storage set (so I can take leftovers to work and microwave them not in plastic) and a couple of CDs. We paid $0 using credit card points from both our Citi Thank You card and our Amazon rewards card.

Today, we baked. C made an applesauce pudding pie; I made some pumpkin cookies, and then C and I peeled and cut apples (from our apple trees) to make more applesauce, replacing what we used in today’s baking.

That’s pretty much the excitement of our weekend. What was yours like?

 

We are almost done with 2012. I revised some of my goals because life took some turns I wasn’t quite planning on when I came up with them.

1)      Be paid for publishing one piece of fiction

Submissions so far: 4

Responses: 2 rejections 1 acceptance, 1 pending

The anthology I had a piece accepted to is now available to buy on Amazon. It’s called Conquest Through Determination.

2)      Pay All Adoption Expenses in Cash & Still Pay for C’s College Out of Pocket

We’re doing good here. This was helped tremendously by getting 3x as much in life insurance from the MIL than expected. Our savings is still growing, and we’re in really good shape.

We still haven’t gotten the background check back from the state of NV. With the holiday season fast approaching. I now figure we’ll be lucky to have our license by the end of the year.

3)      Attend FinCon12. Pay for the trip with money from allowance/side projects saved/earned BEFORE the conference starts. Goal: $600

FinCon was awesome. Not all of the money came from allowance/side projects, but it was still easily affordable, so I’m calling this a win.

4)      Become a member of Yakezie (6 month anniversary is Jan 21)

I am not certain this is still the right goal for me to be going after. I love what the Yakezie network stands for, but I don’t care that much about getting my Alexa under 200k. It’s pretty stable around the 275k mark. Maybe I can convince Sam to create a Friend of Yakezie badge/category, for those of us who don’t feel like being permanent challengers.

Anyway, it’s something I’m pondering.

Current ranking: 237,873

Going down slowly but surely

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $30.15 at the end of October, with $0.12 made so far this month. (They won’t send me any money until I hit $100.)

Amazon earnings: $0.00

One of the things that FinCon really brought home for me is that I’m not actually in this for the money. For now, I’m leaving the AdSense blocks up, but they’re getting moved further down the page. I’ll keep tracking, but making money isn’t why I blog.

6)      Be healthier

As of today, I am at what I set my goal weight for the end of the year to be. That means I’m down 25lbs from when I started, 7 weeks ahead of schedule. I’m pretty proud of that. The biggest problem I’ve been having lately is actually eating enough calories. On days when we get busy, since I’m snacking less, I sometimes am searching for ways to get at least 1400 calories a day (my upper limit is 1785 calories/day).

I am walking most days, even in the rain. I brought a poncho and walking shoes to work so that I don’t get soaked/can change into dry shoes. I have been getting up and riding the recumbent bike 3 mornings a week, burning a little over 1000 calories/week.

And in case you’re worried I might fall off the wagon with the baking we did today- I make cookies replacing butter with applesauce (for 1/8 the calories from fat) and we use Splenda instead of sugar, so no sugar calories, either. It keeps what we bake fairly low calorie and still really tasty.