First off, I can't believe I am now 23 weeks pregnant. To be completely honest, I never imagined I would make it even this far. Although I am still afraid and know that almost anything can happen in the next 16 weeks... I'm surprised I have made it this far. I now have a baby boy in my belly that I can feel on a daily basis kicking around and swimming all over the place. (Which is a wonderful feeling by the way). And I am so excited for him to be here. I can't imagine how it's going to feel when I am finally able to hold him in my arms.
That being said, I went shopping with my mama today and we bought some clothes for the baby and some things to make some crafts for the nursery and such... (More to post about that on a later blog) I have said it before, but I truly mean it. I am so lucky I am having a boy. I find some really cute clothes for the baby, but only after searching long and hard. If I were to be carrying a girl, I would be in some serious trouble. All the cute dresses and such would leave me flat broke.
In the interest of talking about money... I have tried for the past few months, unsuccessfully, to try my hand at couponing. I am still in awe at the people I see and the savings they are able to find. I have had a little luck like getting some razors and band-aids for free and maybe saving some money on a few of my groceries.. But nothing at all serious. I know that soon we are going to have a baby, and we are going to have no choice but to save some money on groceries with coupons. So, I'm still researching the best way to get my system set up. Wish me luck, I seriously need it.
By the way, the puppy is doing great. He seems to be doing very well in the fence my amazing husband set up for him. So hopefully he will continue to grow and remain a healthy, happy dog.
I have also been thinking alot about cooking. With my job, I never get off work before 7pm and I have to work a 10 hour shift. By the time I get home from work, not only is it late for dinner but I am usually pretty exhausted from being on my feet all day long. So, I usually only make dinner on my days off and on the days we are busy, I don't make any homeade dinner then. Now on these days I have to work my wonderful, amazing husband always cooks dinner. And he is very good at cooking frozen meals and heating up food. But, I know it's my place as the wife and keeper of the home to do the cooking.
Being a stay at home wife/mother has been my dream job since I was young. Now that it might be a possibility sometime in the future, I need to do some serious budgeting on our money and figure out a way to make it more possible. If anyone has any budgeting or ways to save money ideas... PLEASE SHARE.
Well, with my thoughts out there, I would like to share some ideas I have found for the baby and the nursery.
Here are a few tips for you: First, keep buying the Sunday newspapers and don't give up. It usually takes at least 3 months in order to start saving a lot of money. The main problem is a lot of things require coupons from newspapers that were months ago, which you probably don't have. Just build up your coupon datebase. Don't cut them out until you need them (Label then with SS 5/29 or RP 5/29 so you can easily find the coupons that are referenced. Also, you will still be spending the normal amount of money on groceries at first b/c you are still buying stuff that you need b/c you havent built a stockpile but you are also buying stuff you dont need (that are on sale + coupons) so that adds up. Just stick with it. It is awesome. If you want me to, I can send you my Excel spreadsheet from all of last year. You can see as the months go by that my savings get a lot better. You just gotta build your stockpile and ONLY shop the ads and don't buy what you need, buy what is on sale!!
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