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Yahoo Personal Finance section posted a gem of an article today that listed 30 freebies.
If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out. Not all of the freebies may apply to you, but some just might. I found a few that appeal to me.
Hulu - This site has full movies and TV shows that you can watch - and it is perfectly legit! I probably spent too much time this evening browsing the site, but they have some of my favorite shows on there: In Living Color, A-Team, Doogie Howser and King of the Hill. With so many TV shows now popping up online, it really makes me wonder if we should cancel the cable. At $18/month perhaps it is time to say goodbye.
Mutopia (note: the link in the article is incorrect, the correct address is www.mutopiaproject.org) - You can print sheet music from some of the greats…Bach & Mozart, just to name a few. In all, there are 1431 pieces of sheet music. As someone who really wants to get back to her musical roots, this site is a treasure.
I’ve really realized lately that there are tons of things for free. The hard part can be finding them, so articles like these are always great to read!
Before we go any further, I have a proud mommy-moment to share. I was coming home from the doctor’s the other day and saw a child riding a bike near my house. I first thought it was my son, but then I noticed that there were no training wheels. So it wasn’t him. Wait - that’s his helmet. Oh my…it was my son! And he was riding without training wheels!
I parked the car, and yelled to him, “Aren’t you missing something?” He smiled ear to ear. I gave him a hug. I was so proud of him. He had been riding well with his training wheels, but he was scared to try it without so we didn’t pressure him. I guess he wanted to give it a shot, and off he went leaving his training wheels far behind.
All morning yesterday, my son was asking, “When are we going bike riding?” He had to go out again and stretch his bike riding legs. So we went out riding for a few hours and had a blast. That night, he wanted to go out again. He reminded me of Forrest Gump - when he was able to run without the braces on his legs, he ran everywhere. My son now wants to bike everywhere since he no longer needs his training wheels. He is so proud and mom and dad are so proud too. This opens up some great frugal fun since there are plenty of biking trails where we live. All three of us can go out and enjoy them and my son can enjoy his training wheel freedom.
“I’m free…I can go anywhere!”
Sometimes the things that kids say are so cute 
No, that’s not a typo up there. If you participate in ABC’s Wife Swap show, you get $20,000 at the completion of taping. I noticed an announcement a while ago and tried to get the hubby interested in the idea, but he doesn’t want to do something like that. I thought we would be an awesome family…
We have a bit of credit card debt
We live frugally
We live in a rural setting
We live in a smaller house, and are even looking to downsize that
We have a non-traditional husband/wife roles
We both work from home
We have one car
We are not big on the social scene
I do think it would be interesting to swap lives for a little bit. It would provide a different perspective and we’d probably learn a few things. At the same time, though, I know how television works and it’s all about the drama. Not sure if I’d enjoy that part of it. While the money would be awesome, Wife Swap probably isn’t for us.
If you are interested in something like this, they are currently looking for people according to this post at WAHM.com. The contact info is over there. It was posted the 19th - I’m guessing the post will disappear when they receive enough responses.
My husband said one thing during our camping trip that left me pretty much speechless. It came about after our discussion about a smaller home. He said, “Why don’t we sell everything and start over?”
My silence gave me away. “You’re thinking about it now, aren’t you?” he said. I was thinking about it. At first glance, it seems pretty silly. There’s no way we’d make a lot from all of the stuff we have and then we’d have to buy new things. No, we couldn’t do that.
I broke my silence, “We couldn’t sell everything.”
“But, we could sell a lot of it,” he said.
By golly, I think he was onto something. In order to downsize our home and simplify our life, we really have to trim out the fluff from our lives. We trimmed a lot during our garage sales last summer, but there is still a lot left. Off hand, I can think of a desk that we really don’t use (except to put stuff on), an extra air conditioner and a cabinet we no longer use because everything was moved into the cabinet I used for the bald eagle collection I sold.
It’s not just the big things, either. My husband sorted through our kitchen and discovered that we have four spatulas, three slotted spoons, three solid spoons and three whisks. Do we need all of them? Nope. But somehow we accumulated them through the years. My guess is that I saw some on sale and bought the extras (I still fight bargain blindness!).
Let’s not forget about clothes. My husband brought up a great point, “I wash the same clothes all of the time - we don’t even wear half of the clothes that we have.” Again, he was right on. I have clothes that I haven’t worn in years, not because they don’t fit, but because I prefer to wear other ones.
I find it amusing that I thought we got rid of a lot of things last summer. Turns out, there is so much more we can sell and it won’t affect our quality of life at all. That’s the thing…I think we were so used to having excess things that it didn’t even dawn on us what was happening. We got so used to it.
My son is excited - we’ll be having another garage sale soon!
A while ago, I almost missed a payment on our credit card. I also forgot to update my running total to the right! No wonder I feel like we aren’t getting anywhere 
All is well now, and things are updated. Our current credit card debt is at $8,602.
I was alerted today that my feed is not working correctly. For those feed readers out there, I thank you for your patience. I will be looking into the problem this weekend when I have more time so that should be resolved soon.
As I mentioned before, my husband and I had some interesting conversations while we were clearing the clutter out of our heads during our camping trip. The first one was regarding the cabin itself.
Our cabin was about 10 x 10. I didn’t have a tape measure, so that is my best approximation. It was a very comfortable size for a room, although their layout was poorly done to maximize space (they had a really weird bunk bed where the top bunk and bottom bunk were at a 90 degree angle). We’ll just say that the cabin was bigger than some rooms in our current house and a little smaller than others (our living room is about 13 x 13).
As we discussed the size, I already started thinking about the layout. To me, that cabin size would make for a comfy kitchen. Add another cabin on the other side and I could see our living room. Add a few more cabins and you have two bedrooms. That puts us at 400 sq. feet. At two more cabins for a bathroom and perhaps a little more space in the living room and you have a 600 sq. foot home. I should note that any future home of ours would have a basement so there would be added storage area and some peace of mind during a tornado warning.
With being in that cabin, it gave us a great feel for what it would be like living in a smaller home. Both my husband and I liked it. Of course, we had to discuss the screened in outdoor living room/porch that we would also have, but that is not included in a home’s size Next up, I would love to visit a small home to really get an idea if we would like it or not. I do believe our current home (about 1,100 sq feet) is too large and poorly laid out.
Is a small home for everyone? Of course not. I don’t think everyone should do it. But for us, where we are in our lives, our ideals are becoming more concrete. It doesn’t involve a huge home with a white picket fence. Sure, they are very pretty and grand, but who are we kidding? There’s no way we’d want to clean a large home - and there’s no way I’d want to spend the money to furnish it! The key to making a small home work would be to have a great layout and smart furniture/appliances.
Of course, not much can be done until our finances are in better shape. But we can keep looking at houses/plans and we can start doing another important step into turning all of this into a reality. That’s discussion #2 which I’ll write about tomorrow
We did end up going camping over the weekend. I found a small cabin available on the Lake and snatched it up for Saturday night. We were thinking buying a tent, but the cabin ended up being cheaper right now once you factored in the tent cost and the site fee. There is also that fear of rain since I’ve slept in a leaky tent before. If we buy a tent, I want it to be a really nice one and that will cost quite a bit.
So we got a cabin. It was probably about 10ft x 10ft and had electricity complete with a small fridge and a hot plate. Because of that, we didn’t need any special food for our trip. Well, we did get some marshmallows for the fire. I thought the trip would run about $60 but it ended up being $83. $30 of that cost was from buying three of those fold up chairs. Now that we have some, we will be using them for going to the beach, fishing, parades and any future camping trips. Before we were just sitting on the sand, rocks or pavement. A bit of a luxury for our tushies, but we will use them and they fit with our whole downsizing/maximizing our space goal.
Now that the monetary consideration is out of the way - let me tell you…I needed that break from the “norm.” Everyone had a very nice time. Here are a few of the highlights:
1.) My son got to see his first flaming marshmallow. I tried to get him to take a bite of the charred remains but he wasn’t going near it.
2.) Our campfire was fueled by four containers of dead wood from our yard from the past few years. We were finally able to get rid of that. Yay!
3.) The only pair of shorts that fit me (the rest are too big now) bit the dust. They had a little hole near the pocket and it literally let rip. At the time, I was the only one at the cabin and I was starting the camp fire. When my husband and son came back from a water trip I asked my husband to get me a towel. “Why?” he asked. “You’ll see when I stand up,” I said. I wish I could have seen the look on his face when he saw it.
4.) We went for a hike and hit the jackpot. There were thimbleberries all over (they are sort of like raspberries but bigger and not as sweet). My son and I went crazy picking and eating. Yummy!
5.) My son’s pedal fell off his bike and we were about 3/4 mile from our cabin. Before I could even think too much on trying to fix it someone came up to us and asked if we needed a wrench. Kindness of strangers always puts a smile on my face.
And here was the one thing that happened that made me feel like we were in the right place at the right time (MB, you are going to like this one ):
6.) My son was riding his bike around our cabin and I decided to walk out by him. I happened to notice something flying low on the lake. It didn’t take long for me to notice the white head and tail. I yelled to my son to get off his bike and run with me to get a closer view of the bald eagle that was probably looking for fish. We didn’t catch it actually diving for a fish, but I have never caught one flying low like that before. Usually I see them soaring high above or sitting on a rock or tree. It was a first for me and it was awesome. Too bad our camera battery died on Saturday night!
I am very happy we went camping, even though it was a short trip. All of us had fun and it was a change of pace that we needed. We had a special experience that we will remember for a long time and I’m probably going to hear about my shorts ripping for years to come
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Credit Card Debt
- Starting = $37,614
- Paid Off = $29,012
- Current = $8,602
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