My ''No Spending'' Experiment

I'm a nutcase job when it comes to making my budget, on paper.  I think budgets are sexy, that' right... I said the ''s'' word. My budget is made for well over a year in advance, that way, I know, say, next February, that I'm not in the red financially, again, on paper that is. Doing this, as crazy as it sounds, makes me feel anything but, it reassures me. Yet, after careful review of my budgets over the course of the last few months, it would seem that we've always managed to overspend (read over-overspend)!  I planned to rectify this and spend only what was necessary for the next month. Apparently,  according to financial advisors, giving yourself a break from spending is a great method to get your budget back on track.

This is Epic!

Okay, so, there's nothing really epic... I may have exagerated a little to get you to read this post...but remember, these are MY everyday truths, and so it's all about MY version of things, and thus, I can't be held to a standard of complete accuracy. So there!

My 8 month old son won't eat. Logan is just so completely infatuated with my boobs, he's decided that he could live on nothing but love and mother's milk. Can you blame him though?

Actually, he does want to eat, he just has no clue whatsoever as how to swallow the darn food...I mean, it's not rocket science. He prefers to gag and choke...it's liquid cereal for crying out loud!

Toy Story Versus Disney Princesses

Today, while I was preparing my meal plan, grocery list, and clipping coupons for the week (cause I'm a mom, and that's what moms do. I think.), I dropped a Pullups coupon and Noah picked it up for me. Before handing it over, he looked at it carefully, only to decide he wanted the pink bag of diapers over the blue. Let me spell this out for you: Noah is a boy, they don't get any more boyish than him. The blue diaper bag is "Toy Story" themed. The pink bag is all about Disney princesses. Noah, my boy, wants a bag of princess diapers.

Jibberish can be Beautiful

So my blog has just survived a major makeover. It wasn't quite ''a day at the spa,'' but I,  we,  ok,  it, came out tweaked and trimmed, and ready to rock and roll. (Almost like when you go for a therapeutic massage and come out sore: you know the treatment did you good, but owie-iii). As we say in French, ''il faut souffrir pour être belle'' (One's got to suffer to be beautiful) ((Silly notion, I know))...Alright, enough with the parenthesis.

Why the change? Meh, who needs a reason to go to the salon (or the spa(!))? And, me being completely out of the personal makeover loop (hence, I did not have a said massage, although I really, really, really need one), with caring for a toddler and a sleepless, nursing. baby, (and those said kids both being boys so I don't have little girls to play dress up with, or have hair to style and nails to paint), I figured, a blog makeover was the next best thing. Brilliant or pathetic? Wait, don't tell me.

Nappers

Yay! My toddler is asleep… and.. Drumroll… so is my baby. Ok. I’m cheating. The Baby is sleeping in the swing (only way he stays alseep longer than 30 minutes for naps)…


Truth be told, I’m loving the down time. Truth be told even more?…. Today, I almost wish that nap time would extend  into the evening… where, both would get up, eat… and go right back to bed…

Oh don’t you judge me, if you’re a mom… you’ve secretly wished this as well!

But then again… when I see the horrors of Haiti on the tube, I’m so grateful for my rascals!… How I love em so…. but, not enough to wake em!

I should probably be doing some scrapbooking... hmmmm... I'll go "plan out'' my first page to come... yeah... that's what I'll do

Scrapbooking update

Well..........This is going to be harder than I had imagined... My little 52 week scrapbooking project is not up to speed obviously. I have not even begun any pages. Heck, I haven't begun printing pictures or deciding where to start at that!

How to get started? Well, first I need to organise my "stuff", meaning, bring everything upstairs. I have organisation drawers for all my scrapbooking stuff, but, it's all "down there", in the basement where I rarely go. Not helping. Everything used to be well organised, but in the last year, I've purchased a few more things here and there. For Chirstmas, I also received a few more things to add to my scrapbooking stuff collection (Thanks mom, thanks babe!)...This, should help... but where are all these new additions... well, let's just say that I have to organise everything in the respective drawers, binders, etc, where they belong... cause right now, I just piled, and dumped everything ON TOP of the drawers. Oh the mess! (This might partially be why I fear the basement...)

Darfur...doctor's pictures

My family doctor works at a small, warm clinic in Longueuil (Clinique Ste-Catherine). The owner, a doctor named Yolande Leduc, went on a mission to give some of her services.  Her travels brought her to Darfur.The walls of the clinic are a testimony to what she has witnessed. Beautifully framed photographs of War Soldiers not older than fifteen years of age, little underprivileged children,  families still bonded despite an obvious scarcity of ressources: this is what we can see. The photographs are absolutely beautiful. The emotions conveyed in the faces of the subjects can't be missed, or ignored at that. Some of the photographs are joined with explanatory notes that can't do anything but break your heart. Can you imagine having been trained in war, to kill when you were merely 12... or imagine your own children???!!! Even after being saved from this life, what kind of scars do these individuals suffer from? Is there any refuge for them?

There is this one photograph, ''The Girl in Red''... It is stunning. It depicts a little girl in the middle of a dirt road. The entire scenery is drab, dirty, poor. This little girl however, despite her situation, is wearing bright red. It seems to represent that there is still a glimmer of hope of a brighter future for this girl, and others like her.

Welcome 2010!

What are your New Year's resolutions? Do you have any? Do I have any? Are you saying goodbye to 2009 satisfied or are you anxious to put it behind you welcoming 2010?

One more day to go and I'm not sure what my resolutions are yet. Correction: I'm not sure what the resolutions that I actually plan on keeping are. Sure there are the usual '' eat better, exercise more, yadiyadiyadah'' resolutions, but, they're a given. I know that I want some change in my life for 2010... where to start?

First, I have to decide what I think of 2009 overall. What's happened? I started to work from home. Love it or Hate it? That's easy. I adore working from home and only having to go downtown to the office once a month or so. I save on transit time (2.5 hours +). I save on a bus pass (105$ +). I get to see my son every morning (he used to get up around seven thirty, eight-ish... and I left at 06h50...Now, I go in my home office at 8h20... I see him EVERY morning! I can either start a load of laundry at my break or shower, start preparring supper at my other break.... jump in the pool during lunch..... lots of perks!

Realisation... I wasn't going to be a lawyer

I used to read fairly regularly. School had never been an obstacle to this as I pretty much always found it easy (minus math the last 2 years)... but then in college, there was so much more reading to do. ( I was in Liberal Arts). I enjoyed it, but I think that's pretty much when I stopped reading for the sheer pleasure of it. Even if I enjoyed what I was reading (learning)... and I learned a lot (!)... Something changed. I skimmed books. I was always last minute. I remember opening Shakespeare's Othello the night before I had an exam on it... (I confess, I rented the movie.. and then skimmed the book). We had weekly quizzes in Humanities and Philosophy on various (long) chapters from our course material... and again... I don't remember an instance when I did not read that stuff horizontally. I to this day, never finished Wuthering Heights, or this other book from English class by this German author. . I started research and writing essays 48 hours before they were due. I'd get away with it, always with an average ranging between 85-95% I was perhaps lazy. No, I was definitely lazy... but I think I was more than lazy. I was cocky, and I didn't like the sentiment of obligation. Now, if there was something I was really into (like cadets), I would devote countless hours towards that...  What  a mess of contradictions I was!

Forgotten Scrapooking

Were you one of those kids in High School who just COULDN'T keep your school agenda intact, untouched, clean, almost as if it  was never used? ...Well, I was.

My agenda was a canvas. Decorated with collages of the ocean, of Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, Jonathan Brandis (no laughing as my husband did while reading over my shoulder (!) )... It had famous quotes that meant something to me at the time, sketches, and other personalisations. I was still an organisationtal nut even then with color coded post-its for the things that needed to be done... but, my artistic side was clearly visible in my agenda.