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Friday Favorites, volume 26

November 7, 2014 by Jana 12 Comments

Many things I didn’t enjoy happened this week. I’m trying to turn the negatives into positives because silver linings and everything so I won’t share all the crap with you and instead I’ll move right into my weekly favorites.

(Quick question for you guys before we get started: does anyone know of someone who can help with some design elements? I have a new header that’s been updated to be more reflective of what I write about but it’s a floating header and for the life of me, I can’t figure out where it’s currently coded and how to code the new one and it’s making me crazy that I can’t add it to the site. I’m on WordPress, if you need that information)

Favorite 90s song

I know I ordinarily pick rock songs but every now and then a non-rock song will creep its way in. Today’s one of those days. I had a college friend who LOVED the Indigo Girls and we’d all listen to them and they’re really not so bad (even if my husband calls them “Lilith Fair music”) and I heard this song a few weeks ago so let’s work it in this week and get it out of the way. “Closer To Fine”. The Indigo Girls.

Favorite frugal find

I haven’t been shopping so looking for deals and coupons hasn’t been on my list of things to do, and none have come my way. Oh, wait! Bath and Body does have their winter scents on sale (4 for $18) so that’s a good deal but I’m pretty sure that stuff is always discounted but it’s worth mentioning.

Favorite blogging tip

I didn’t do much reading involving blogging tips this week, and some of the pins that I have are a bit dated to share (this is why I need to cull my pins) since Pinterest has apparently changed their algorithms for the way searches come up. But you know what stayed the same? Needing a quality image. Fortunately, Helene had a good post on how she uses PicMonkey for her blog’s images.

Favorite book news

The only book news I have is the reminder that my and Steph’s Show Us Your Books linkup is happening on Tuesday so make sure you join us for that. Also, if you’re looking for a literary agent or anything related to publishing, the 2015 Writer’s Market is on sale at Amazon.

Favorite Internet reads

As a mom, I loved this post from Babble on the 7 Stereotypes About Motherhood That Annoy Me (number 3 is a huge pet peeve of mine. Really, a shower can take 5 minutes. It’s not a badge of honor to smell). I struggle with some of these but this list of 15 phrases you’ll never hear successful people say is something to think about and strive for. Dolly Parton is one of my heroes and this interview with her proves why. And, lastly, I need to update my house and make some improvements but we don’t have a ton of money right now so this post (and video) containing 23 ways to update your home for under $50 is quite useful.

Favorite funnies

Sometimes it’s the highlight of my day

It’s the only hat I’ll wear. And it looks so good on me.

Nostrils, I will never again take you for granted.

Yep.

Coming up on Monday: Should be post #1 in my cheer mom series. But I can’t make any promises.

Have a great weekend!

Linking up with Amanda

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Thursday randomness: Jamberry, Meghan Trainor, and more

November 6, 2014 by Jana 28 Comments

I wanted to have a well thought out, useful post for you guys today. That dream died when I realized just how many pictures I needed for the post that of course I didn’t have since it involves food and I’m the worst at taking pictures of my food because I’m too focused on wanting to eat than remembering to take pictures. So maybe we’ll table that for next week.

Instead, you get another round of random Thursday brain dump.

You’re welcome.

I have a cold. Again. Second one in a month. I’m pretty sure this isn’t fair and I’m really tired of sneezing and blowing my nose.
I have more blog post ideas than I can keep track of but I’m hesitant to share some of them because sharing my weight loss stuff and book writing process makes me nervous because that’s just so personal. (You’re probably thinking that this sounds insane since I share all about my depression but for some reason, that’s not as sensitive of a topic).
To know me is to know that pop music makes me queasy. But damn you, Taylor Swift and Meghan Trainor for making me not only enjoy but like some of it. And then Meghan went and sang with Jimmy Fallon and she’s just too adorable for words.

- I need to ramp up my work on the blog’s Facebook page (have you liked it yet? Go ahead. I’ll wait) but I keep not doing it. I don’t know why. Am I lazy? Am I forgetful? Do I not care enough? Probably a little bit of everything.
- Sons of Anarchy is killing me. It’s a hell of a final season. And this past week’s episode? STUNNED. I’m not giving any spoilers but if you’re watching it, please let me know so we can discuss.
- Working through NaNoWriMo this month is making me realize two things: I’m not nearly as disciplined as I need to be and I really need people to read my book when I’m done so I can get feedback for editing. But I’m too afraid to ask people to read it because I fear their comments. #ihaveproblems
- Jamberry, yes or no? I haven’t bought any, ever, and I feel like everyone’s all
- I have approximately zero Christmas and Hanukkah shopping done. My daughter’s birthday is in December and I always wind up focusing on that instead and the holidays always fall by the wayside which leaves me scrambling. It’s starting to stress me out.
- On voting: First, it bothers me that I don’t get a sticker when I vote. I mean, I’d do it anyway, and on Tuesday I drove 30 minutes to vote because I still haven’t changed my address on my license and couldn’t vote in my area, but damn it, I want a sticker like everyone else gets. Get your shit together, Delaware. Second, I find it a bit annoying when people don’t vote because a) it’s not that hard; b) it’s not that time consuming if you don’t have to drive out of your way; and c) for so long, so many people couldn’t vote. Why wouldn’t you exercise your right now that you can? Voting and jury duty are a few of the primary ways normal citizens, non-politicians and lawyers, can participate in our democratic process. I get that they’re an inconvenience but seriously, don’t complain about our government and our justice system if you do nothing to try to make them better. /rant
- There are so many pretty things I want from Etsy. People are so creative and I love the idea of supporting small businesses than buying more crap from big box stores.
- “What am I, your fucking sandwich welfare? I think you should establish a good line of credit”. This is probably my favorite scene from Good Will Hunting (which is back on Netflix, by the way. Hooray!)

Thanks for sticking around! See you tomorrow for Friday Favorites!

Linking up for Stuff and Things

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The November in which I get organized (sort of)

November 5, 2014 by Jana 27 Comments

I think today is the day we’re supposed to report on our results of October’s Wallet Watch and I think tomorrow is the day we link up for our Choose Your Own Adventure Challenge but I’m pretty much a mess and since I’m remembering both now, they’re getting crammed into one post.

If you want to break it up, read the first half today and the second half tomorrow but that seems a bit ridiculous to ask of you guys so you probably should just knock it all out today.

Let’s cover the Wallet Watch first.

This is what went down:

No unplanned going out to eat. The results: HAHAHAHAHA! I never should have even made this a rule because we didn’t even make it past the first weekend.
Stop abusing my Starbucks gift cards. The results: I still have $5 left on one of them (which is half of the $10 initial amount) and I started drinking more tea at home. This was aided by the fact that my daughter said “Mommy, you should drink tea from home. It’s cheaper.”
Stay away from nail polish and makeup. The results: I bought no new makeup. I bought no new nail polish. I spent $0 on anything beauty related, except for what was necessary like face wash. But I’m committed to getting the Naked or Naked2 Basics palette for Christmas. Or Hanukkah. Either will do.
Find free stuff to do. The results: I think I did okay with this. Um. Well, except for the I can’t mention what it was family road trip the first weekend of the month. That was CRAZY expensive and maybe we used the money we had saved for our new dishwasher to do it but every minute was worth having to hand wash my dishes every day for the forseeable future.

So, to sum up

And now, the Choose Your Own Adventure Challenge.

I had one goal. To not drink diet soda. And I mostly achieved it. Except on the 7 or so days that I didn’t and had the deliciousness that is diet soda.

And it was glorious. #noshame

For November, the theme is organizing which I love more than words can say. I need to get some of my shit organized because I keep losing important things like bills and my daughter’s homework and gloves. And I really want to start using Pinterest more than just a place to internet hoard (between Pinterest and Pocket, I am set for DAYS with things to do and read). So I focused my organizing to these areas:

My daughter’s homework station. She doesn’t have a desk yet and we needed somewhere to keep her craft supplies and homework and assorted school stuff. It’s impossible to find anything. It needs to be dealt with.
My hallway closet. First of all, it smells like feet. So that needs to cease immediately. And the piles of winter accessories need to be sorted and stored in a fashion where my daughter doesn’t wind up wearing my gloves and my husband doesn’t have to use my polka dot umbrella.
The living room table. I don’t know how to describe this situation. It’s essentially a table that gets filled with junk daily. I hate looking at it and if we didn’t need it, I’d set it on fire. Since we need it, it is a moral imperative that I figure out how to tame it.
Pinterest. I need to cull my pins, reorganize my boards, and sort some into my new boards so that when I want to do a project, I can go to my board of projects I’ll actually do and when I want to menu plan using save recipes, I can find ones that fit my time constraints and my budget, and I need to do something with my secret boards, too.

I’m pretty sure I could attack my whole house so I might revisit this challenge on my own in a couple of months but for this month, the above list will do.
And this is how I feel about it.

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The return of Pinterest Project Tuesday

November 4, 2014 by Jana 12 Comments

Last year, when I transitioned the blog from strictly personal finance to a lifestyle blog, I started documenting my attempts at completing recipes, projects, and assorted other things I found on Pinterest. I stopped when we moved and never started it up again.

Until now.

As part of my Choose Your Own Adventure Challenge for November, I’m working on organizing my Pinterest boards (full details on what else is in the challenge coming up tomorrow) and I thought this would be a good time to resurrect Pinterest Project Tuesday.

So let’s get to it.

I’m terrible at remember to take pictures so for the first post for the resurrection, I’m showing you guys a project I worked on over the summer. Next week’s will be a new, more seasonal one. I promise.

Okay.

Here’s the ingredients I used (not pictured: the stuff used to make the cake batter like eggs and applesauce)

While I mixed the batter, my helper put the cupcake liners in the pans

The cupcakes baked in the oven and I got out my blue food dye

Then I mixed it with the vanilla frosting (note: I usually make my own frosting but I didn’t have shortening and ain’t nobody got time to run to the grocery store twice in one day)

After the cupcakes came out of the oven and cooled, I generously applied water blue frosting on each one because really, cupcakes are just holders for frosting

Then, because this was supposed to be an edible version of bears floating in inner tubes, I added the gummi Lifesavers “tubes” and put Teddy Graham bears inside each one:

Lastly, because we can’t have our bears getting sunburned, I added cocktail drink umbrellas. On the left is my version. On the right is the Pinterest version.

Save for the Christmas wrapper (remember what I said about not going to the store twice?), I didn’t screw the pooch too badly on this one. It turned out better than my usual attempts, as you’ll see going forward.

And now is when I announce that I’m going to try this as a linkup next week, but on Thursday instead of Tuesday since next Tuesday, November 11, is when Steph and I want you to show us your books in our monthly book chat.

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.lifeaccordingtosteph.com/" title="Life According to Steph"><img src="http://i1290.photobucket.com/albums/b536/lifeaccordingtosteph1/bookbuttonlinkup_zps01365b43.jpg" alt="Life According to Steph" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Have you guys tried any Pinterest projects lately? How’d they turn out?

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Confession: My big, scary goal

November 3, 2014 by Jana 41 Comments

According to my blog planner, I was supposed to start my cheer mom series today. However, my blog planner is sort of turning into a speed limit sign; it’s a guideline rather than an absolute. So instead of starting the series today, I’m going to backtrack to a post I’ve had in draft for awhile and confess something that makes me nervous.

One of the tasks from the Intentional Blogging Challenge I quasi-participated in last month was vulnerability. To confess something. That’s not really a problem for me since I’m all about sharing my weaknesses and imperfections and what I’m learning as I muddle through my daily life, trying to figure it all out. However. There’s one thing that I’ve leaked out in drips and drabs but I’ve never fully explained.

That thing is my big, hairy, scary goal. What I’ve been dreaming about since second grade when my teacher was shocked by the fact that, at 7, I knew how to properly use an ellipses.

That goal? To write a book that’s published in paper and is available for sale in real, brick and mortar bookstores (what’s left of them, anyway).

But it’s so much more than that.

I want a literary agent. I want a PR agent. Basically, I want “people”.

I want my books to be on the New York Times bestseller list.

I want at least one of my books to be developed into a movie.

I want a multi-book deal with a traditional publishing house.

I want to do a multi-city book tour (and I have all the cities picked out, too, so really, it’s all about having the book to sell since I make a great travel planner. See, agents? Part of your job is done for you).

I want to have TV appearances (I think. I’m not 100% committed to this one yet. But it is a reason why I’m working so hard to lose weight. Need to look good on camera).

I want to reply “I’m a writer” when people ask me what I do for a living (I’m mean, technically I can tell people that but I’d like to have a paycheck to back it up).

I want to finally achieve the goal I set for myself all those years ago so I can tell that little girl “we did it”. She had big dreams back then. It’s up to me to honor them so if I ever have a time machine, I can go back and tell her that no matter how she feels, she shouldn’t quit (unless older me meeting second grade me causes some weird sort of Back to the Future/space-time continuum rift in which case, second grade me is shit out of luck and she’s on her own until she’s 37).

Now that I can admit my goal, I can stop hiding behind it and being evasive about it, it’s time to actually start working towards it (this is the part where I get stuck and all the terrible voices start talking to me, convincing me I shouldn’t do bother, so I clearly need to work through this, too). Because I know that none of this will fall into my lap. Much as I’d like, the outlook does not look good that I’ll have a post go viral and come to the minds and eyes of all the people who can help me make my dream come true. Nope. Instead I need to rely on my own discipline, hard work, commitment, and the little bit of talent I have.

Basically, it’s up to me. And I have a ton of work ahead of me.

But I have a list. I have tasks, short term goals, things to do, people to connect with, and a whole lot of time I need to put in to make this happen.

I’ll do it, though.

It’s too important not to.

If I can just get out of my own way.

Do you guys have a big, scary goal? What is it? Is there anything I can do to help you achieve it?

Linking up with Liz

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Friday Favorites, volume 26

Thursday randomness: Jamberry, Meghan Trainor, and more

The November in which I get organized (sort of)

The return of Pinterest Project Tuesday

Confession: My big, scary goal

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