Yesterday and today have been great reminders to keep and check your receipts!

We spent last weekend painting the house inside, it looks so good and feels good too. I decided to hang up all the art and such that we have so we can enjoy our space and found I needed quite a bit of frames. We stopped at the craft store yesterday for frames and for storage that was on sale (love craft storage!). But when we checked out the storage rang up full price and one frame I thought would use a coupon, instead rang up full price since the coupon went to the storage. I went back through the customer service line to get my money back and to use the coupon on the correct product. It took a few transactions because they couldn’t quite figure out how to get it all on one receipt, but in the end it worked out fine.

Today I was reading the Sunday ads from the paper and found that the coffee table and side table I bought were now on sale! Don’t you hate when that happens? I’m such a bargain/clearance/sale shopper this drives me crazy! But I called the store, told them what happened and asked how long I had to get the cheaper price – two weeks and what do you know, tomorrow will be two weeks. I’m headed there today! So I made $50 by reading the ads and hanging on to my receipt.

Mom’s Radio Network is having a contest to share our favorite mom podcasts – here are two of mine. It was hard to pick just two as I listen to about half of the ones on the network!

WAHM Talk Radio

Kelly’s program is at the top of my listening list! She always has great interviews and information. She tells it like it is, doesn’t let anyone get away with scamming Mom’s and recently launched a daily Mom’s Morning Show along with another great online friend, Tishia Lee. WAHM Talk Radio has a panel of experts that are on the show as well as sometimes a “Coffee With Kelly” day. The coffee with Kelly is awesome, I enjoy those shows a lot and always want more.

Here is a photo of me with the show homepage that Alice took – I’m proud of her because she got it on the second try! And the only reason the first picture didn’t work was because she zoomed in on me.

Another favorite is Mom’s Money Show – official title being Mom’s Controlling Money vs. the Other Way Around. We’ve always gone back and forth with being able to have a good handle on our money. Last year I was very much into paying off our debt via a debt snowball and for some reason this year that took a back seat to everything else in life. I love this show because the Mom’s on it all have different experiences to share. We are working on a new financial plan and that will kick in the next time we get paid.

PS I swear I moved around between these pictures but look, the same pose! My best friend has always told me I always have the same smile, guess she was right!

I feel like I’m back at square one with homeschooling. Or maybe square four. Kindergarten was super easy for me – we just kept doing what we were doing and Alice still learned! I know, amazing right? 😉

This year first grade started out great. We started early in anticipation of taking time off when the baby arrived, which was good because we’ve taken off about three weeks with all of the issues we had and his death. My Mom being the fabulous educator that she is talked to me about setting up a different way of homeschooling, we have structure and much as Alice loves worksheets, I didn’t feel she was getting as much as she could. I don’t view sitting at a desk and filling out forms as education – I could send her to public school for that! (Okay, that may be a bit harsh.)

So I’ve talked to my step dad (star curricula writer he is) and more to my Mom, in addition to doing a ton of searching online. I found a great site that had objectives and such listed, which I’m going to use as a guide for myself. I also am a fan of Kate over at I Think Therefore I Blog and she is a fellow homeschooler. She has been doing a weekly resource list with awesome websites and has many other observations about homeschooling on her blog. Yesterday I looked through her archives and opened every website she listed, closing ones that didn’t click with me practically instantly (just a few). I then saved them all and picked a couple to go back to today. I am going to take the weekend and look at all of them, along with the rest of my bookmarks. I plan on deleting and reorganizing – I still use my bookmarks and have a great system that works well. I’ll take the next few days, probably until Monday, to write up a months worth of what we are going to do. I have lesson plans but this is going to be different.

I’m scared and excited now. I know my Mom and Stepdad can help if (or when) I run into problems or questions so it isn’t that. I think it’s more the oh my gosh am I doing the right thing? Do I know what I am doing? I’m sure I am and this is just a moment I’m having.