Free Money!

What? Free money? Now I know that Americans have the coupon thing down, but here in Australia we are lacking some what. BUT, when you do recieve something in the mail that you know you can spend money on use it.

I got a $40 gift voucher from spot light this week, it came with a spend $100 and get $40 off string attached but $40 is $40. Now it might be the ideal place to buy presents for kids i.e. not many Lego toys there. But...Dean is making some picture frames this year for certain members of the family and our bosses (as they are female). So we got some supplies for him.

I had on my gift ideas list new beach tows for the kids. So guess here I got those. Funny enough all kids beach towels were heavily reduced. For example we got Spider-Man hooded towels for $9 and a camp rock towel for $5 and so on. We got some chains for necklaces dean is making for the boys and to get it up to $100 we got wrapping paper. It all added up to just a few dollars over $100 but when the am swiped my VIP card he said we had to go back and and spend $20!!! Cool hey. So we got a beach mat and more wrapping which was $2 a roll because of my card. Grand total spent $60.67 who's smiling now. I got a press any for all the kids plus some! So message of the day, think outside the box and take advantage of those vouchers.

Let you light so shine

The next step I suppose is to decorate your house. Clean it fort and make everything smell nice. Then dig out the tree. Dean and I bought ours ten years ago, and every year we say we will get a new flashy fandangled one, but then very year we use the $12.50 Kmart one.

So once the house is looking good and smelling sweet. Gather the kids and tell them what a good job they did and then have the chat. You know, the chat telling them what the true spirit of Christmas is and that even though they can expect Santa on Christmas Eve send them to bed with a preyer in their heart that we can find someone else to give Christmas to so on Christmas morning their light will so shine.

Starting with a list

Ok so I think it's important to start with a list. I write lists for everything I started writing lists for everything when I was a little girl and they work. So trough out the year I hve been jotting down what the kid safe into, well their getting very little of that now and what I get for my kids another family will get also. So here we go this is my list of people I HAVE to buy for, why, because I love them and society demands it. Alright here we go


My mum
My dad
Foster brother 1
Foster brother 2
My sister
My brother In law
My nephew
My husband
Jackson
Charna
Kealin
Tyren
Baydan
My nana
My cousin
My boss
Deans boss
The eight single elderly people in my ward

Yep that about does it. I have a rule, I you don't live here you don't get and it goes both ways we don't receive from those not here. And you can throw in the family Going to unwillingly target.

So now that I have the list, I can see it, I can start to work through it. My kids and husband will be last though, mean yes, maybe, I'll tell you this now though. When you give you receive much much more! My kids are going to get the biggest gift that no money can buy!

Gifts for Christmas

So here we go again its Christmas time again, and I have the same internal argument about what to do.

So I'm Christian, and with the holiday season comes with it, for me, the joy of celebrating the birth of Christ. I find it an awkward balance to have the kids be excited about receiving presents, but maintaining the humble beginnings of where the tradition comes from.

So a few years ago we did hand made gifts for everyone and although I believe the gifts had more meaning, because we didn't give out half hearted, thrown together whatever's. we thought and we planned, but, in the back of my mind I still felt as though we were cheating our kids . Last year wasn't so bad. We bought TOMS shoes for the whole family, that actually didn't arrive before Christmas so we rocked up with nothing for everyone. Yes we were embarrassed and were scrambling around to get at least something and ended up paying twice.

With my husband going back to school this year it's been even tighter in this house. I missed the markets for my bags, twice, and now we have nothing.

Whatcha this space though because I am resilient and I am going to show myself and the whoever wants to read this blog how I'm going to make this Christmas work on a shoe string and teach my children a life lesson they can take with them forever. And you know how I'm going to do it...I'm going to give what I have away!! Yep you heard me. I'm going to find a family that has NOTHING!! And I'm going to give them something.

I Can't Believe it!!

So I just realized that there is a blogging app! The thought that there might be one came to me when I was thinking how much I can do from apps. So I searched for it and voila! Behind in time much!