So, I guess it's time to make resolutions. Yeah, that work so well for me. I know it's tradition and I've tried to do it for a couple of years now. You can hit the button and see how well I've done. My goal was to set resolutions and check-in each month on how well I was doing on my resolutions. I think I made it to July last year. I'm not sure I made it that far the year before.

This year I have a new plan. No resolutions, instead I'm going to set actual goals. Real, big picture goals. This is better than a Cool Idea this is about making a real change.

Sometimes work comes in waves and sometimes it all comes at once. Last week I had several mystery shops and reviews to write. This week I've been focusing on my writing. It was time. I'm done with the Discovery class I took and I was itching to get some stuff on the page.

If you're a writer and not familiar with Storywonk you need to hop over to the forums and check out the audio modules that Lani Diane Rich already posted. There are some real gems in there. I promise.

This was the second class I took with Lani and I loved it as much as the first. I had no expectations though that I would use what I was learning. Not like I did in Revision. That's not to say that I didn't think Lani would teach great stuff - she always does. But I didn't really think I'd find anything to put to use right away. I figured I'd try everything out and then put them back in my brain and let it sit.

What I found is that the Discovery process was a lot more useful to me than I thought. Silly me. I should have had more confidence in the process. And me.

But I like words. I always have. I'm less comfortable with other forms of expression like music and art. But I do like to watch television and movies. I also recognize the brain's capacity to give us great ideas seemingly out of nowhere and help us make connections that we might not have seen before. That's what the Discovery process is about. And more.

Revision is just what you think it would be about. Once you're done with your story Lani goes through story structure and how to take the story you have and revise it with out making yourself nuts. You will work hard because you'll be revising your story as the class goes on but Lani's not checking homework each week. She's just checking to make sure everyone has what they need in order to move forward each week so if you need more time - taking more time is fine.

How does Lani do this? First of all, she's Super Woman. She writes books. She has kids and cats and dogs. And she teaches these great classes online a few times a year. Discovery and Revision are coming up again in a few months. If you are getting ready to begin a new story [Discovery] or have a story that you are just finishing [Revision] I can't recommend Lani's classes enough. Her teaching is informative and fun and the class community is fantastic. This is definitely a Cool Idea!

I promised I was going to do a better job this year of posting how I was doing with my resolutions - especially meal planning - and I think I can say I'm doing okay.

Here the list of my resolutions again:
1. Get serious about meal planning.
2. Continue to come up with creative solutions to add to my SAHM income.
3. I am a great writer. Whether it's non-fiction, blogging, birthday cards, or fiction. I need to make sure I give myself time to do what I enjoy.


1. Okay, meal planning is still something I need to work on. I did go through several weeks where I actually wrote what we were going to eat each evening on our family calendar. That ended when the first major snow came through and we were all home for every meal/ all day for a week. This was draining and did some major depleting of the freezer!

Now, I'm working on finding some new recipes to try so that we can have some new meals in rotation. I nearly drooled today when Tricia at Once A Month Mom posted her menu plan today and it included bacon cheeseburger meatballs. Now doesn't that sound yummy!

2. I'm continuing to do surveys and mystery shopping and it's working well. I've had to give up a couple of really good mystery shops due to the nasty weather that we've had. I have a mystery shop with a company I've never worked with before and I'm looking forward to that. I've also picked up some shops that are done on the phone which I'm looking forward to since they won't be dependent on our crazy weather and I can do them as soon as I get back from dropping the girls off at school.

3. I AM A GREAT WRITER! I'm over half way through the writing class I'm taking right now and I'm loving it - LOVING IT! This class is focusing on something I've never worried about before - discoverying the story before you sit down to write - and it's really helping me get a sense of things before I start the bulk of the writing. Surprisingly, I'm enjoying the soundtrack that I built. I listen to it all the time and I'm learning more about the story every time.

So, that's where I am. The second month of the year and still some good work ahead of me and many more Cool Ideas to discover.

So I'm stocking my new freezer slowing but surely. And here's how I'm doing it.

Every time I make a 'go to' meal I double the recipe and freeze one.

Yep, that way I know I'm putting away food that I know my family eats. The first thing I put away was a Knock Off recipe of Chi-Chi's Corn Cake. I love this recipe but I rarely have heavy cream in the house to make it so I made sure to make two and freeze one.

Next, after testing the Apple Struesel Muffins from Once a Month Mom and getting Toddler Approval I baked a double batch and froze them. I also made the Make Ahead Mashed Potatoes so I'll have something to take to church for potluck for the next couple of months.

Another great way to stock the freezer and keep my butt from getting huge(r) - last time I made a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough I only needed half of it. I froze the other half. Cookie dough freezes really well.

So these are my really Cool Ideas for getting the fridge stocked from nothing. I'll post more as I go along. If you have other Cool Ideas that I'm missing, Please Let Me Know.

The confession part is that I bought myself a major appliance as part of my Christmas present. UGH.

This was originally a rule in our marriage. No household appliances for birthdays or holidays but we decided use our collective Christmas monies to buy a chest freezer for the house. We'd talked about it for several months and watched the sales at Sears and Costco and decided on one that would fit in the area off our kitchen since there was no way a freezer would make the turn into our basement.

So, there it is. Now I have more space and no excuse for not putting good food away. Tomorrow I'll post more about how I'm working to get ahead and stocking our new freezer.

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to acknowledge publicly that I write. Well, obviously, I write - this blog has been around for a year now. But I write fiction. No one's read it and no one's publishing it but I still write it.

Some of you might remember my posts last summer when I went to the RWA Conference in Washington, DC. I spent three days attending workshops on the craft of writing, meeting other writers, listening to people describe their work or how hard it is to get published, etc.

There was some fun, too. I met women who I, at that time, only knew from the internet. We met as part of an online writer's community and it wasn't until July that we met in person. Now I get hear their voices in my head when I read their emails or their Facebook posts.

But Why Do I Write? Because I have stories that I think are interesting and I want to learn how to tell them better. Today I'm at my monthly writing workshop - learning more about the craft of writing, having great conversations and just generally catching up with friends. Not only does it give me a creative outlet but it gives me some personal time as well. And as we all know, it's definitely a Cool Idea to get out of the house every now and then!

When DH and I were first married he was in grad school and often had dinner ready when I got home. It was usually a casserole - he picked a meat, a starch, a cream of 'something' soup, and topped it with cracker crumbs or cheese. Occasionally there was a mystery spice involved, too. I couldn't complain too much because I didn't have to do the planning.

For many years it was just the two of us and with hectic schedules we'd just catch a quick dinner when we got home or we'd go out if we couldn't come up with a better plan. This was not a good habit to establish and one day I had to stop and remind myself that we really didn't have the money to do this.

So, I pulled out all of my cookbooks and made a list of the things we liked to eat. Well, the things I like to eat. That's a shorter list and it's not very broad. We eat a lot of chicken - when we eat meat at all. Or we eat 'go to' meals that my mom made when I was growing up.

Now that our lives have shifted again and Comfort and Joy have joined our family I have an even greater need to make a meal plan. Last year was a learning experience even in the failure to achieve what I wanted to do. I learned that planning a month at a time wasn't going to work for me. At least not right away.

Why? Because I need Baby Steps to get used to this meal planning thing. Yes, I'm glad that I'm not starring in to the fridge at 4 o'clock trying to figure out what we're going to eat and nuking hot dogs for the girls every night but I also need to allow for some flexiblity for us.

Right now I'm planning 3-4 days ahead. This gets me from grocery trip to Costco run and back each week. I'm also not doing this just in my head. I'm keeping track on our family calendar. I thought about using another page - maybe on my computer - but by using the family calendar it gives DH a vote in the meal idea, too.

There you are. My first Baby Steps toward my New Years resolution to create a sustainabl meal plan for our family. Next week I'll continue to write about how I'm bulking up the pantry. Sucess or failure - meal planning is definitely a Cool Idea!

It's Tuesday - in case anyone is keeping track - so I'm a day late posting this. Joy was helping me cook dinner yesterday, and the pizza dough was having trouble rising in our amazingly cold kitchen, so everything took just a bit longer than anticipated. I do love that she's helpful but I'm constantly reminding her that things are hot. At least she can say that word!

So, my resolutions. Well, I haven't really do a lot of thinking about them. Meal Planning is still an issue so that goes back on the list. Income is still an issue so that goes back on the list. My writing has always been an issue but I've only just named it publicly so I'm finally going to put it on the list. Living Smart is part of who I am and who I want to continue to be so I'm moving it from 'resolutions' to 'goals'.

What does that leave:

1. Get serious about meal planning.

2. Continue to come up with creative solutions to add to my SAHM income.

3. I am a great writer. Whether it's non-fiction, blogging, birthday cards, or fiction. I need to make sure I give myself time to do what I enjoy.

There. That feels do-able and like a list I can continue to be accountable for throughout the year. I hope you'll stick around and see how it goes. Already I have a few ideas to get started. And if you have tips and tricks that work for you, I'd love to hear them. We all know I could use some help here and sharing what we know already works is always a Cool Idea!

Probably my first resolution for the New Year should be to do a better job of being accountable for my resolutions. I noticed that the last time I did a monthly Recap was in July. Not good. This time I'm going to put it on the calendar. Well, probably it was on the calendar last year but that laptop died in April.

Here are last year's Resolutions:

1. Do a better job with coupons and pantry stockpiling.
2. Continue to find creative ways to cut expenses
3. Meal planning/ smart planning
4. Increase my income as a stay-at-home parent
5. Find ways to live smarter in the balance between frugality and the environment
6. [not sure yet but I feel like there's something still there to be explored - so I'm leaving room for one more]

1. I think I did a good job here. I 'stuck to the list' - by which I mean - The Grocery Game so that I would be getting my items at the least possible cost to me. I love that the list also tells me where to find the coupon in my pile of coupons. Definitely worth the small cost, I think.

2. Cutting expenses continued to challenge us. One benefit I hadn't realized was that the school that Comfort and Joy attend serves breakfast everyday so theorectically I don't have to serve breakfast 5 days a week, 9 months a year. Bonus!

3. Meal Planning was my down fall and will be carried over into this year. Smart Planning is something I'm good at and I might pull them out and treat them as two different items. We'll see.

4. Creating income as a SAHParent is a challenge. I now have a couple more hours a day in which I can work but I still can't entirely rely on that time because I get called to get one of the girls from school at least once or twice a month. Surveys, mystery shopping, and online focus groups have been my main source and I've kept on top of this to try to maximize it.

5. Living smarter is definitely a strength and I hope I can continue to find additional ways in which we can blend frugality and our goal of being gentler on the environment.

6. This one never did get named but I think it probably had something to do with my fiction writing. I should just call it what it is and move on. I'm a Great Writer!

I'll post my Resolutions on Monday and I'm going to have Recaps set up for later each month.

How well did you do on your resolutions last year? Any that you'd like to reshuffle and try again this year?

What A Cool Idea! has been around for a year and here are a couple of things that I've learned:

• I'm perhaps the least successful Mommy Blogger [by page hits] on the internet
• I Am A Great Writer

So, for 2010 I'll be working on both my strenghts and my 'challenges'. I hope you'll be along for the ride with me. Heck, for nothing else, you'll at least want to see what this year's Resolutions might be and how well/ badly I do. It will definitely be a Cool Idea!

Odds are that if you belong to community organization, church, or other faith community you've heard the word stewardship lately and probably in the context of the organization as it comes together to create its budget for next year. People in churches laugh at the euphemism and sometimes joke that attendance drops so that people can protect their wallet when 'Stewardship Sunday' roles around.

It's unfortunate that Stewardship has taken on the connotation of revolving around money. It's true that stewardship of money is important and definitely part of the conversation, but it's not the whole conversation and it's not the only conversation.

Over the next several days we'll be looking at what it means to be a good Steward. How we can be a better Steward of that which has been entrusted to us and what this means going forward.

It's a Cool Idea. I promise. Really.

As regular readers to this blog know, Menu Planning was one of my New Year's Resolutions and it has been my biggest challenge. I still don't have a reliable plan. In fact, I cannot tell you what we will be having for dinner tonight and it's after 2pm. So, I'm thinking that I might be trying out something like this very soon.

Services like relish! are popping up all around. Some are free and some are subscriptions based. This one is a subscription [at $7 a month] but it it seems that you get to pick your 5 dinners from a list and they guarantee that your weekly dinners will cost less than $85. That includes entrees and sides and the prep is 30 mins or less.

So, if you are menu planning challenged like I am head on over to relish! and check out what they have to offer because it genuinely looks like a really Cool Idea!

Kinda sounds like the election cycle doesn't it? I assure you that it's nothing so prolonged.

Remember at the beginning of the month I thought that maybe I could go this whole month without grocery shopping except for perishables. I promised check-ins for accountability so here I am.

I did add to the stockpile a bit last week and here's everything I bought:

• Worcertershire sauce was on sale/ with a coupon for something like $.54 for an 8 oz. bottle. That'll last us for many cookouts and through our winter of homemade barbecue brisket.
• Also, there was a great deal on Huggies at Kroger. I snagged as many as I had coupons for - which I think was 4 packs of diapers.
• We also bought 4 gallons of milk, 1 double pack of eggs, and some bananas at Costco.

So, this is all that we've bought. We do continue to go to the Farmer's Market to make our weekly CSA pickup but this isn't new money spent. This was money spent last year.

Sure another trip to Costco will happen this weekend for milk but that's life with two toddlers. In fact, DH will be making that trip this week since I'm going out of town. They'll probably get a rotisserie chicken while they're there or grab a hot dog but I'll cut them the slack.

Stay tuned for more about our month of little or no shopping. We're half way there!

I've enjoy doing surveys to fill in the gaps in our budget and if you - or your child just getting home from college - is 18-24 years old - then Pinecone Research is a good place to start. Check is out and get started! It's a Cool Idea and a great way to earn some extra money and have a say in the way that products are marketed.

I've been a member of Ipsos Survey Panel since last summer and I've thoroughly enjoyed the surveys that I've gotten from them. Several have even been screeners for product testing panels for baby products and any mother of small children can tell you that not having to buy bath or baby products for a few weeks is easily worth filling out the questionaires that are sent. Just click on the button above to get started!! What A Cool Idea to get started on building some extra money for your pocket.

It's been a while since I've checked in with how I've been doing on my resolutions. There's just been so much else to talk about. I hope you've been able to see how it all connects though. But, in the spirit of accountability, here is a point-by-point post:

Here, again, were my resolutions:

1. Do a better job with coupons and pantry stockpiling.
2. Continue to find creative ways to cut expenses
3. Meal planning/ smart planning
4. Increase my income as a stay-at-home parent
5. Find ways to live smarter in the balance between frugality and the environment
6. [not sure yet but I feel like there's something still there to be explored - so I'm leaving room for one more]

So, #1: I'm still using The Grocery Game and according to the Kroger check out slip I'm averaging 45-50% off of my bill using coupons/ in-store discounts. It's not as great as seasoned, hard-core couponers but it's working for us right now. As for stockpiling we're doing great on Goldfish crax, TP, canned fruit, canned tomatoes, canned beans, and other assorted items we used less frequently.

#2: Cutting expenses has been harder since we'd already done a good job weeding through expenses in the past year but Cable gets nixed this month. The weather is nicer an we'll be spending more time together as family so no sense paying for staying in and watching TV. That'll save us $80/ month. I did notice that my newspaper subscription went up so I need to check out alternatives and see if there's a less expensive option. If not, decide if the savings at the grocery is worth the expense of the newspaper.

#3: Meal Planning/ Smart Planning: We definitely don't go out at the drop of a hat any more. I'm proud of that. I still don't have a handle on finding foods that Comfort and Joy will eat on a regular basis - other than pasta, chicken nuggets, hot dogs, quesadillas, etc - but then again they are toddlers. I've even toyed with putting the weekly menu plan here on the page so that it keeps me honest but then I'd really have to be ready each week and some weeks it's just not that well planned out;)

#4: This month I've had several good Mystery Shops!! I just finished 2 grocery store shops this week so I got some free groceries!! Two weeks ago I had a different kind of shop. It was a revealed shop, where I went in and checked out how the store had the products placed. I made under $10 for 15 mins work but it all helped. Also, I cashed in some points from My Points and Opinion Outpost. The survey points paid in cash and it was enough for the babysitter the day I got my haircut. The MyPoints paid in gift cards so I'll have enough for a good book from B&N and lunch at Panera. These are the ways that I've traded my time for money. Time I have while I sit with the kids and money I need:)

#5: It turns out that I think I'm more in tune with things in the environment than I thought I was. This isn't a bad thing. I've enjoyed the seasonal shift that meant that I had more time to do laundry and I've enjoyed that the Farmer's Market is open and the CSA is providing us with yummy good stuff. This week we opted for carrots that had gotten caught in a freeze. They aren't pretty since they split open but they'll taste just as good in a salad and they were half off. Comfort and Joy are pretty easy to please when it comes to things like this.

And now we're in the middle of May. Books are being read. Dinners are being cooked. Kids grow up. School is almost done. It's all amazing and definitely Cool. Hang on with me because we're almost half way through the year.

As I sit with a sinus headache due to incessant rain and increased seasonal mold count waiting for the Advil to kick in I'm trying really hard to come up with good reasons for this weather. Here's what I've come up with:

• Great for the flowers and other plants that have just been put in. Personally I'm horrible with plants so I rely on Mother Nature to take care of them. If she's doing good work they they are likely to live a better life.
• The Water Table will rise. Central Virginia is not a drought prone area but we have had some pretty dry summers lately and the only reason that we dodged full-on water restrictions was because we had excessively wet springtimes. Seriously. Last April [or May, I can't remember] was one of the wettest months on record and it got us through one of the driest summers on record.
• Respite from achingly high temperatures and it becomes much easier to keep to our resolution to keep the air conditioner off until June. Sure, the ceiling fans are on but they are on in the wintertime, too. So, good for our power bill and the environment.
• As the seasonal mold count increases and sinus headaches increase it's a good time to curl up under the quilt [because it's a bit cooler] and read a good book. I treated myself to a Nora Roberts reissue today which will go on my TBR stack. 

How ever you decide to 'enjoy' the rain be sure to take some time for yourself whenever you can since we're indoors more often. Do puzzles with the kids. Practice scissor skills or draw pictures of the flowers that are outside soaking up the rain while they can. Just remember, be careful on the roads, slow down and take a look at the beauty around you. It's just part of the cycle. We'll dry out eventually and then I'll be writing about that, too!

It's time for me to check in again and be accountable for my resolutions. I believe one of them had something to do with saving money at the grocery store:) Last week I had a huge trip to Kroger where I was able to take advantage of several deals they were running. First, here are some reminders:

• Register your loyalty card. Kroger will send you coupon booklets periodically. I had 3 booklets and probably half of the coupons in the booklets coincided with the in-store deals that were running.
• Check out e-coupons on shortcuts.com. Remember, you can't stack these with paper coupons but they sure do help.
• Bring your own shopping bags. Those nickels will add up. My mom literally adds nickels to a jar when she comes home from the store and then sends the $$ to the grandkids. We like!

Okay, so here's how I did. I did a lot of stockpiling. Especially for baby-type products since the Kroger-brand baby products were on special. My total savings was $64.02 with $14 of that in coupons and $49.02 in in-store Kroger deals. My guess is that the majority of the latter came from the fact that I stocked up on Pepperidge Farm Goldfish. Our stash was down to the last bag and in a house with 2 toddlers that is just dangerous. Goldfish were $1 and I bought 10 bags on that trip. Goldfish crackers are a bonus for Comfort's school, too, because they collect the Campbell's Labels for Education. And, when you register your Kroger card you also collect e-Labels. See, it just gets better and better.

So, even though my grocery bill was $91 I had 4 packages of diapers [2 of which were Huggies so I'll turn this receipt in to Caregiver's Marketplace for a few cents back, too], 4 packages of baby wipes, and a quart of Pedialyte. I also stockpiled 10 bags of Goldfish Crackers, 5 bottles of Suave Shampoo and Conditioner [which had been listed in The Grocery Game], 5 bottles of BBQ sauce I needed for Once A Month Cooking I'm doing, and 4 cans of baking spray to keep up with the extra work. 

The nice thing about this grocery trip was that even though I did a lot of stockpiling I also had food to eat, too. Comfort requested yogurt. Or 'oglurt' as she calls it and I had a coupon for YoBaby and grabbed some less expensive cups of Kroger Brand to tide us over until I get up the nerve to try my hand at making another batch. I also had coupons for things like flour and sugar, which were in the Kroger booklets and I desperately needed those since I've been doing so much baking lately. 

And there you go. It was a big day. The Power of the Coupon. Definitely a Cool Idea!

Check the Coupon Bar to the Right. Word has it that the $5 and $3 Huggies coupons have been reset. I got them to print one more time and Boy am I super happy about that!!

Now for the Resolution update:

1. I didn't do much with Coupons and Stockpiling this month but I was definitely the beneficiary of the previous work I'd done. The only trips I made to the grocery this month were our weekly trip for milk!! Seriously. That was it! I'm very happy about that.
   
2. We were able to Creatively cut expenses by using a couple of mystery shops to eat dinner and I bought 2 Restaurant.com certificates for $2 each. 
3. Meal Planning is still a stretch for me but I haven't gone back to the 'what are we having' thing - except for yesterday. I got caught in a 'day' and didn't have a plan and after 3 days of leftovers we'd cleaned out the fridge so we took advantage of a kids eat free night and went out.
4. Increasing my income as a SAHParent is going slowly. I've had some luck this week with several surveys and I'm grateful. I'm also finishing a focus group this weekend which will contribute greatly. I'm behind on this since I lost all of my browser bookmarks when my laptop hard drive crashed and I haven't gotten them moved to my desktop yet. 
5. Living smarter, more frugally and being more aware of the environment is something that I'm very aware of especially as we take part in the pilot study with the power company to monitor our critical peak point power usage. I know I keep saying this but I really, really will write more about this.
6. The 'something' bigger resolution hasn't come to me yet but it's only the beginning of March. Already the year is shaping up to be tough economically. I hope that everyone is finding ways to make things better for themselves and better for the world at the same time. I think that's the way we're going to get through this.

Most women over the age of thirteen have been on a diet at some point in their lives and have learned that the correct serving size of a protein (3 oz) is the size of a deck of playing cards. I have been paying attention to the size of the portions that I've been eating and over the course of the last six months I've lost weight this way.

But think about other things around the house - 

How big are your drinking glasses? I love to drink milk. Love it! Love it! Love it! And it turns out my glasses are 12 ounces. Milk is good for you and but since we only drink organic milk it gets expensive - so I make sure to pour myself less than a full glass.

Dental floss - it's always a Cool Idea to floss but the floss that I love is pricey and I'm picky. I make sure to not pull off more than I need each morning.

Laundry detergent - especially if you have a high efficiency washing machine you don't need a lot of detergent. Check the instructions on your machine but you can likely back off the amount you are using.

Same goes for dishwasher detergent. The amounts specified are to get us to use more detergent whether we need it to get our dishes/ clothes clean or not. Experiment with slightly decreased amounts and see if you notice any decrease in cleaning ability and if you don't, you'll save yourself some money along the way.

Toothpaste - I never noticed how much of my daily toothpaste I wasn't utilizing until I started using an electric toothbrush. These toothbrushes foam up the toothpaste so much more than I was used to that I nearly choked the first 5 or 6 times. I was  a slow learner!. Using less toothpaste each day makes the tube last longer.

Smaller portions are always a Cool Idea and they help cut expenses, too, since we can stretch the time between trips to the store. Oh, and here's one I'll throw in for free - never let a toddler unroll their own toiler paper. Therein lies madness. Enough said.