Boys Baptism Photo Ideas & Tips

 

Sorry I haven't been around for 3 months!  So much for doing a monthly theme! lol  Gosh, I guess I got busy.  You see, I don't feel like I have many followers, so I try not to let it stress me out if I'm not posting on the blog...especially if I've got other things to do. ;)

 

ANYWAY, I've been preparing for my almost 8-yr old to get baptized and I searched everywhere for picture ideas, because I was going to attempt his photos myself!! So now that I am finished, I decided I'd add my own ideas out there for people to use. ;)  I will make a post about my daughter's photos soon.  We did some fun things for hers 3 years ago.

 

I decided to get him a suit.  He grows so fast that I know he will grow out of it, but we found a great deal and I feel like it makes him look so handsome! It helped that the weather was still a little cool, so he didn't get too hot or anything.  I let him pick out a new tie, in which he picked his favorite color red. 

The hard part is getting him to have a more natural smile like the ones above, and NOT like the one below, and I'll tell you my secret.....

 POTTY HUMOR!! I'm sorry, but that's the only thing that would get him laughing.  So go prepared with some potty humor jokes!!! It should get that natural smile out:

 As for backgrounds, I wanted to make sure I got some shots that were a little more "boyish".  I think for that you need a little more urban-like setting.  Cool walls or stairs are always good.

I actually took this next one without him knowing...he was telling me something and looking the other way.  But I like it for some reason...not all the pictures have to be smiling to be perfect.  Let him be silly too!!

Angles from above can be fun too

 We wanted to do a photo to represent that he was turning EIGHT, but I'm not sure I love our 8 fingers one...I hope that's not some kind of gang symbol I don't know about. lol  But then after we finished I told him we could get a treat and he LOVES donuts.  So we went to dunkin donuts and I had the idea to make an 8!! Turned out fun!

 And then lastly, we live close to the Oquirrh Mtn Temple.  So we took advantage and got a couple of shots there.

If you are doing an invitation, it is fun to make sure you get a picture with a lot of open space, like the one of him against the blue wall, because then there is room to put the writing on the photo.  If you don't know how to do this in photoshop, you can put a collage like this together with text pretty easy in www.picmonkey.com.  Here's how it turned out (thought it was a good idea to blur my phone number and part of the address):

Save Money at Disneyland

 

 

1.  DISNEY CREDIT CARD : Watch for these offers in the mail!!! We got one that said if we spend $500 on their card, they will send us a $200 Disney Gift Card.  We did it and it worked!  All we did is use it in place of our other credit card and between gas, groceries and bills, it was easy to hit $500.  And then once we got our gift card, and paid off the bill, we canceled the card.  But guess what, we got ANOTHER offer in the mail and this time we did it in my name and did the same thing and got another $200!!  If you haven't seen these offers, try going to their website https://disneyrewards.com/ and see what they have to offer.   OR get on facebook and enlist your friends and family to keep their eyes peeled in their mail for these credit card offers. 

2.  GETAWAY TODAY.com : We decided that it's usually a better deal to do a package through www.getawaytoday.com .  They have lots of deals where the 4th night is free or something like that.  And our hotel had free, hot continental breakfast, but only to people with the getaway today package...not everyone at the hotel.  Our adult tickets were also priced at a child's rate, so that was better than buying at the gate as well.

3.  NEIGHBORING HOTEL :  There are plenty of neighboring hotels with free parking at the hotel and close enough to just walk into Disneyland. Parking at the park is not that bad if you have to do it, but it's $16 per day! That can add up! 

3.  BRING YOUR OWN DRINKS : Everything is already so expensive there, so anything you can keep from buying is helpful.  We had water bottles, but to keep the kids from complaining about wanting lemonade or something, I brought along these handy DRINK PACKETS so they could have some kool-aid or crystal light every now and then.  There are water fountains all over the park to refill your water bottles and any counter service restaurant will give you free cups of water or ice.

 

4. Also, Try to book a hotel with a FRIDGE & FREEZER.  That way you can bring food from home and spend less at the park.  We would freeze our water bottles, usually one full and a few half way, so that we could have cold water at the park, but it also helped keep our sandwiches and fruit cold in our backpack!  I also brought a few ice packs and it was nice to be able to freeze those over night as well.

5.  PACK BACKPACKS with snacks and at least one meal...I suggest lunch, so it will lighten your backpack load for later in the day.  We just  had this one backpack and it held our water bottles, 1 sandwich or lunchable for everyone, a big bag of chips, bag of veggies, a fruit for everyone and a few extra snacks. Of course the backpacked lightened as the day went on, which was nice and then we bought something for dinner. 

I will admit that Disneyland has pretty good quality food as well as some pretty tasty items that you should not withhold yourself from.  You're on vacation after all, right??!

 

BUT you can still try a few new things without having to spend $$ on EVERY meal and EVERY SNACK. See next tip:

6.  SHARE!  Want to try new foods & treats at the parks? Well, each member of your family doesn't need a whole one.  Get one or two and everyone take some bites.  This way you can try more things for less $$!  

7.  Start a Disney PIGGY BANK for SOUVENIRS.  If your trip isn't happening for another month or more...start putting all your change into one container.  You can get the kids involved in doing work for $$ or doing a bake sale or something to earn money for their souvenirs.  The stores there are SO fun to look through, but don't let yourself get carried away.  As the trip gets close, add up what you have so far...get the coins converted to cash and let the kids know beforehand how much they can spend and tell yourself that you are not spending any extra!!  My kids got their one little souvenir and knew we were out of cash, so they didn't ask anymore.  It worked out great.

20 Tips for a Better Disneyland Vacation

I'm going to stray from our theme of Apps this month and do a post on Disneyland Tips. I don't consider myself a Disneyland expert, but we just went and so I felt it might be helpful to share what I learned!! 

(My view point is from a visit in mid February and my kids are ages 6-11) 

 

1.  WATCH DISNEY MOVIES before you go!! There are so many rides that touch on all the old movies : Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Pinnochio, etc and my kids hadn't seen half of them! (Or didn't remember seeing them)  There are too many new movies that are so much more fun to watch, that I feel like a lot of kids today haven't seen the old ones! But a lot of the rides are about these movies, so I made sure they watched them before we left and it made all the rides so much more meaningful for them!  Yes, the rides featuring some of these movies are only a couple minutes long, but if they hadn't seen the movie, they wouldn't have gotten as excited about it.

Highly Recommended Cartoons:

Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio, Alice in Wonderland, The Little Mermaid, Tarzan, Aladdin, Dumbo, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, Cars,  & A Bug's Life.

 

Highly Recommended Non-Cartoons:

 (if you don't feel comfortable with your kids watching the whole thing, maybe youtube some parts of them to give the basic idea)

Star Wars, Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark, Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion and Roger Rabbit.

Optional:

(don't have a full ride based on them, but there will be shows and references here and there)

 The Lion King, Beauty & The Beast, Mulan, Cinderella, Bambi, Tinkerbell. 

2.  HOTEL - Just stay walking distance. We actually stayed at the Radisson in Buena Park 15 min away, and while it was nice and everything, we had to take a shuttle into Disneyland.  This would have been fine since it was free and we didn't have to hassle with a stroller or anything,  BUT it only dropped off and picked up at certain times, so we didn't like the lack of flexibility.  It would just be so much easier if you stay at one of the neighboring hotels.  That way you can go back and forth at your leisure.   If you are going primarily to do Disneyland, it's not going to matter how nice the hotel is...you are just basically sleeping there.  But I would say BOOK EARLY.  We procrastinated and booked a month before our trip and it was hard to get into a neighboring hotel.

3.  Good Walking SHOES!  This was our first time without a stroller.  While their shoes seem great for school and playing in, maybe they weren't the best for being at the park for 12 hours a day!  So it might be work it to invest in some good shoes....and that goes for yourself too.  We set a pedometer and found that on average, we walked about 8 miles a day!!  So make sure your shoes will be good for that!

4.  Understand the park SCHEDULE.  There is Disneyland, and then there is California Adventure.  They will sometimes have different hours on the same day.  If you have the bonus of a "Magic Morning" (where you can get into the park 1 hour earlier than the regular crowd) with your tickets...they are different for each park.  Disneyland is Tues, Thurs, Sat and CA is Mon, Wed, Fri, Sun.  So when you decide which days you will be there, make sure you know the schedule!  It sucks to get there early for one park, all prepared with a plan,  and find out that it was actually the OTHER one that opened at that time.

5.  MAGIC MORNINGS.  If you are able to do "Magic Morning" for one of your days, don't get too excited.  It really was NOT worth it for me.  We got there early and found out that they don't even open the whole park for that extra hour.  In Disneyland, only Fantasyland and Tomorrowland were open, so even though you get in an hour early, so do a lot of other people and without the whole park for them to spread out in, it was quite crowded.  I'm not sure if this changes at different times of year, so maybe call and double check which lands will be open before attempting your magic morning. 

TIP**Someone gave me this great idea: Instead of going to your magic morning....Get there when the park opens and go into the OPPOSITE park.  So if it's a Tuesday, which means Magic Morning at Disneyland, go to California Adventure instead! Most people try to take advantage of the Magic morning and so you might get less crowds at the opposite park.  If you really would like to give Magic Morning a try, I might suggest one person waiting in line at the gates of the other park, while the other person takes the kids and tries to hit a few rides in the other park. 

6.  GET THERE EARLY!  We accomplished the most in the mornings because the crowds were so much lower! We didn't even need fast passes in the morning.  We got onto so many rides so quickly! So do what you have to do to get up and over there right when the park opens.  Pack your bag the night before, lay out your clothes and set an alarm.  It's worth it!!

***BUT if you are going to go through the trouble of getting there early, head straight to the rides that will have the biggest lines later in the day!  Don't waste your time stopping to get pictures with characters or stopping in the shops.  You can do those things later!! Catch the short ride lines while you can!

7.  MAKE A PLAN BEFORE getting to the park.  This goes along with the last one, getting there early.  If you want to make the most of your time, don't spend the first 10 minutes looking at the map and deciding where to go first.  Get a hold of a map, whether printing one from online, or getting one mailed to you and decide where you want to head first.  That way, when you get there right on time, you can just head straight there!  And you don't have to have the whole day mapped out or anything...Just the first few things you want to do so you can head straight there.  You can look at the maps and make more plans while you are standing in ride lines.

8.  SOUVENIRS - I saw a blog tip to buy souvenirs at the end of the day so you're not carrying them around all day AND that most of the toys found around the park can be found in the main shopping stores at the entrances to the parks.  BUT THAT IS NOT TRUE!   If your kids find what they want at a store, JUST BUY IT THEN AND THERE.  Yes, you may carry it around for the day, but it sure beats walking all over the park to find it again and then being disappointed that it isn't there anymore!

9.  WHICH MONTHS ARE THE BEST?  February was wonderful!!!!!  Stay away from Presidents Day though.  We've also been in early October and that was fine as well.  Here is a blog that can give you more info on when to avoid the crowds: http://www.disneytouristblog.com/disneyland-busy-crowd-times/  The DOWNSIDE to visiting at these less crowded times is that they close some rides for routine maintenance.  So we missed out on Splash Mountain, It's a Small World, Big Thunder Mtn Railroad, etc    I'm sorry, but it was worth it for me to miss those and have less crowds AND not to mention lower temperatures.  We were in jeans and a tee shirt...could have pulled off wearing shorts and had a jacket on hand for early mornings and evenings and we were fine.  Never sweating! It was great.  If you have little ones especially, I would highly suggest going in these off months...even with rides closed, you will be thanking the heavens that the lines are shorter.

9.  WEEKDAYS are obviously going to be less crowded.  We did Mon-Thursday and it was wonderful.  BUT we missed out on Fantasmic and fireworks that are only Fri-Sun at the Disneyland Park.  But really, it STILL was worth lower crowds!

10.  TOONTOWN does NOT open when the park does!  There was one day where we planned to hit it first thing to avoid the crowds, but found out it opens an hour after the park opens. Dumb!!  But I would still try to get there when it opens or soon after.  The kids love the Go-Coaster...a really easy going roller coaster ride, but it's a SHORT ride and not worth staying in line 30 minutes for.  But if you get there early, you can ride it several times with just a 5-10 minute wait.

11.  WATCH THE SHOWS!  They have some great shows, and it's a great way to give your feet a break!!  I would suggest taking advantage of them in the afternoon, when the lines for rides will be the longest and the temperature at it's hottest. 

Disneyland

 Captain EO (Michael Jackson 3D from 1986...so funny!), Great Moments w/Mr. Lincoln, Disney Theater (shows short animated cartoons), and the Tiki Room in Adventure land! (you can get a Dole Whip and eat it while watching the show!)  But then there are so many random shows at each of the big theaters, but check the schedule for times.

 

The Jedi training can be fun and gives the grown ups a chance to sit.  It seems almost a guarantee that your kids will get to participate if you do the first show of the day.  We went to the 10:30 one day and all 3 of my kids got to go and do it!

 

California Adventure

Aladdin, 3D Muppets, Disney Jr Live, etc.  One of the best spots we took a break in was the building that holds the "Talking with Crush" & the Animation Academy.  It's a HUGE room with HUGE screens where they highlight almost every Disney film ever made and there are couches and plenty of floor space to just relax.  It was very impressive and almost no one was in there!  Do people know this exists? I thought it was awesome.  I would highly suggest trying everything in this building...there are 4 different rooms to go into and we enjoyed them all!

12. Ride the TRAIN.  When you know you need to get to the other side of the park and your kids are tired of walking...grab a snack or treat and hop on the train!  I would look at your map and circle the 4 train spots so you can find them faster. 

13.  FASTPASS : Take advantage of these!! There are only select rides that have them.  When you get to the park, get fastpasses to a ride and head to the rides that DON'T have fastpasses and hit them while the lines are shorter.  Then you get to GO BACK to your fastpass ride and stand in a shorter line for that one also! We got so much done this way!!  Fastpasses are wonderful! It was helpful to know that if your ticket says come back between 11:00-12:00, you can get another fastpass at 11:01.

TAKE NOTE** that the Radiator Springs Racers is by far the most popular ride.  Therefore the fastpasses run out pretty quick.  I would suggest one person going to get in line for the fastpass for this right when the park opens, while the other person takes the kids to the back of the park to do Toy Story Mania because you will get in pretty quick and can probably do it a couple times before the line gets 45 minutes long.  As you walk into California Adventure and get to the circle with the fountain, look for signs or a long line of people for where the line to get the fastpasses start.  It may look huge, but it goes pretty quick. I think I was only in line for about 15 min. 

14.  SINGLE RIDER lines!  Your kids need to be at least 7 to do this, but some rides have a SINGLE RIDER LINE.  This means that they take one of you at a time to fill in a seat on a ride that might be empty.  Since most families want to ride together, there will not always be an exact number to fill the ride.  These Single Rider lines go SUPER fast.  We rode the ride once as a family, but then when we wanted to ride a ride multiple times, we did the single rider line...especially for RADIATOR SPRINGS RACERS in CarsLand.  This worked great!  My two older kids and I rode it probably 4 times within 30 minutes.  I just made sure to have a plan in case we got separated...showed them where to wait for me, etc.  But we never got too far apart...usually got in the cars right next to each other.  This picture is when we went as a family, but since there are 5 of us, they grabbed someone from the single rider line to join us...that's him on the top left. haha

 

15.  Use the MOUSEWAIT APP  I talked about that in my last blog post here: http://organizeitchallenge.blogspot.com/2014/02/disneyland-app-very-helpful-at.html

16.  Don't HOP parks every day.  If you have a 3 day Park Hopper, I would suggest going to one park for one day, the other for your 2nd day and use the 3rd day to hit anything in both parks that you missed or want to do again.  It can be a waste of your time to walk back and forth, not to mention TIRING!...so use your map and work your way around one park at a time the best that you can.

17. Pack a BACKPACK with snacks/drinks/food.  If the kids need a snack, don't stop and sit at a table! You  might as well get in line and snack while you are waiting!!  This will also save you $$ on buying snacks!

18.  Bring frozen WATER bottles!!  There is nothing better than cold water on hand when you are walking an average of 8 miles a day!!  Get a hotel that has a fridge/freezer so that you can freeze water in your water bottles over night and then you can pop them in your backpack to refill from drinking fountains around the park.  You can even buy those drink packets that you can add to a water bottle for a flavored drink.  I don't think we bought one drink while we were there.

19.  Get your PARADE spot early!   And just so you don't waste time sitting there for an hour, it can be a great place to picnic and eat lunch or dinner while you wait for the parade to start!  For the Pixar Parade in California Adventure we decided that one of the best spots is near the Pier with your back to the water.  There are benches on the other side, but there's a bend in the road, so it's hard to see the floats coming, especially as all the kids step out to peek around.  From our view we sat there comfortable and could see everything coming from WAY down.

 

 

 

20.  Try to RELAX & HAVE FUN!  I know I've talked about a lot of planning and things to watch for, but don't let yourself get stressed out over it all.  You will find that things don't always go as planned anyway, so you have to learn to let it go and move on!  You came to have fun with your family, so make sure that happens!

Disneyland App - very helpful at Disneyland!

I wanted to introduce you to MOUSEWAIT.   I understand this may not be an EVERYDAY app, but I had to include it because we just got back from Disneyland and it was quite helpful!

It's the first time we've had the opportunity to use this app and I was very excited about it!  When you first open it up, you see the screen shot above, on the left.  It shows you the hours for the day at each park and then what the 'crowd index' is.  That's pretty much a percentage of how full the park is.  It also shows the rides that are closed for the entire day.  Then you can choose whether to look at Disneyland or California Adventure and you will see the above right screen shot: a list of all the rides in the park, listed alphabetically or by "land" and it will show their current wait time.  This is SO great because instead of walking ALL THE WAY to the other side of the park to find out there is a 70 minute wait, you can save yourself the trouble by checking this app.

 

Also, as you see above, you can ask for the "restrooms near you" or "food near you" or "events near you" and it will bring up the closest ones and list them.  Yes, all of this is on the Disney maps that you receive BUT this saves you the step of finding where you are on the map first OR having to get out the map every time you need to go to the bathroom.

 

Now, I would say that most of the time the app was spot on...BUT there are times where I do feel like it was a little delayed....for example, we went to go ride a ride and got there and it was temporarily closed...could be just for 10 minute or an hour...they couldn't tell us.  But it wasn't updated on my app yet.  And then I checked it 10 minutes later and instead of the wait time it said CL for closed...so it does update for those, just sometimes not right at the time it happens. 

 

But overall I found this app very helpful! So for sure, if you are going to Disneyland or Disneyworld, I highly suggest giving this app a download!  Good luck!

Organize Your PINTEREST

Organize your Pinterest?  I know what you're thinking...the purpose of Pinterest is to help you organize all of your ideas, to do stuff & interests, so why do you need to organize IT?

Let me tell you, I LOVE pinterest.  But have you noticed the more you use it, the more the pins pile up on one board and before you know it, you go to look for that Cheesy Potato Wedges recipe you've been dying to try and it takes SO long to scroll through your hundreds of pins that you've pinned to "FOOD".

Here's what I decided works wonders for me:

Tip #1 : BE SPECIFIC. Create boards as specific as you can.  This will save you a lot of time in your searching later! Don't just have a FOOD board, but maybe separate your foods into sub categories, like soups, breakfast, drinks, etc.  Trust me, you 'll be glad you did it. 

Tip #2 :  SMART BOARD NAMES. Create board names that will be easy to find alphabetically.  For example, if we are separating our FOOD board into more specific categories like Salads, Soups, Crock Pot, etc then I would suggest naming them Food - Salads, Food - Soups, etc.  This is because when you go to pin a new pin and need to choose which board it needs to go to, it will be easier to find. All you'll need to do is go to FOOD and all your subcategories will be right there.  I have categories called Fashion- hair, Fashion - skin, Fashion - clothes, or Holidays-Thanksgiving, Holidays-Christmas, etc.  It's saved me!!

So if you are somewhat new to Pinterest and are still creating "boards"...remember those tips!

Here is mine, and you can see my board called "Yummy Food Recipes".  That's what I started out with and it still has a lot of pins in it, but it had way more before I started doing the sub categories under Food - _____.  You can see all of the boards that follow.  I even did boards labeled DESSERTS - cookies/brownies, DESSERTS - cakes, etc

As for those of you who already have a couple thousand pins, it's not too late for you!  Just take a few minutes here and there every now and then to RE-Sort your Pins.  It's now hard to do this.  You just click on a pin that you already have, for example, I found a casserole recipe that could be moved into my FOOD-casserole file.  Click on that little pencil looking icon

It will bring up a box that will allow to create a new board OR, find the board you've already created

Yes, it can get a little time consuming to edit them all, but I swear it will be worth it!! At least make sure all the pins you pin from here on out go into a new board that is more specific. 

 

Hope this helps you!!

Good luck!!

Pinterest App

Pinterest came into my life only a couple years ago.  I remember when my cousin first introduced me.  I looked at the computer screen and was overwhelmed with what I was looking at.  But once I figured it out, I decided that it is a GENIUS idea.  A way to categorize and organize ideas and interests.  I would compare it to your FAVORITES on your computer.  You know, if you use a certain website a lot, or if you've found something you don't want to forget, then you would add the webpage to your FAVORITES so it's easy to access later.  Using Pinterest helps you stay MUCH more organized!   Sorry if most of you are feeling like saying DUH to all of this babbling, but I have several friends and family who don't use it and I think they are crazy (you know who you are).  A lot of people are worried about having one more thing to spend time on electronically.  Some people complain that they spend hours on it.  Well, let me just say that of all things to spend time on, I think this is the most useful.  And it's just like anything else on the internet...YOU CHOOSE how much time you spend on it.
 

Here is what your "boards" might look like:

It is up to you which boards you create to hold all of your "pins" (ideas)
Some of your boards might be "organization", "crafting", "recipes", etc

 

And then on your home page, it will show you the latest "pins" from the people you follow

 

All you do is glance through, and if you see something that peaks your interest, you can REPIN it onto one of your boards so that you can refer to it later.  You don't have to go to the actual website and read all about it or anything.  You've simply placed it in a file to look at it later.

Yes, you have followers and you can follow as well, but it's ultimate purpose is not keeping in touch with others or revealing personal information.  It's simply a way to be organized.  So really, it doesn't matter who follows you. 

Ok, so this might all be old news to some of you, and I know a lot of people who might use Pinterest at home on their computer, but you MUST put the Pinterest App on your phone or other mobile device and I'll tell you why:

  

1. Accessibility - If I am at the store and need to look up a quick recipe for ingredients or the items needed for a craft idea, all I have to do is get into my pinterest app, find the board I need and click on the pin to get my information.

2.  Passes The Time - If I am stuck waiting in line at a store, or at a bus stop, or let's admit it...we all have chosen to read on the toilet, right? Well, pinterest can serve the same purpose.  haha  Seriously though, it's nice to have it on hand for those few minutes here and there with nothing to do.  It's fun to use it looking for new ideas to add to my collection. 

3. Liberty - Many people will confess that they could sit on their computer and be on Pinterest for hours.  Well, the App leaves you free to look at pinterest wherever you may be, which leads to less time sitting in front of the computer. (refer to #2)

 

If you haven't tried it yet, I hope you can have some fun with it! Stay tuned for my post about how to ORGANIZE your Pinterest. ;)

AWESOME Budgeting App to SAVE MONEY!

Let me introduce you to
GoodBudget!!

My husband I starting using this app this year and I really think we've done better than we ever have with our money.  It's comparable to the cash envelope system that is highly recommended by many finance professionals.  This is when you divide your income up as soon as you get paid.  When you decide on how much each envelope will get per pay period, you put that cash in your envelope and that's ALL you get for the month.  When the cash runs out, then too bad for you!  You literally have no more money!  This works well for a lot of people and keeps you from spending more than you have.

I liked the idea, but it didn't always work well for me.  It was an extra trip and extra time to pull all the cash out and divide it up, not to mention I would get nervous about carrying a certain amount of cash around with me.  Overall, I'm too lazy. ;)

GOODBUDGET gives you this SAME envelope system idea, but you don't have the hassle of the actual cash.  We still use our credit card, but as soon as we spend something, we go to the app and take it out of the envelope we spent from and it AUTOMATICALLY shows you how much you have left.  It even tells you things like "you might want to stop spending for 5 days, you're falling behind"

The only CON I can find with this is that it's always a risk to use your credit card because when you're money on the app runs out, that doesn't mean that your credit card is unusable.  So you have to take it seriously.  When your cash is gone in your "envelope" you are DONE for the month.  No excuses!

I know a lot of financial experts will say that credit cards are a big NO NO, but if you can follow your budget, there is one big PRO to doing it this way.  REWARDS.  Find a credit card that gives you a % back on your spending.  We end up paying for most of our Christmas at the end of the year on the rewards that we earned on things we were going to pay for anyway.  And I have family that use the airline's credit cards so that their spending helps them to accrue mileage.  They often times travel for free because of it. 

But all this budgeting will not do you any good if you don't pay your credit card off EVERY MONTH.    So when you sit down and decide what you budget amounts will be, then be very realistic.  And if you can set your amounts a little lower than your "realistic amount" then you can put the extra $$ into savings.  I'm telling you, it will start to add up and you will be amazed.

And the BEST part about this system is that you can SYNC it to your spouse!  So while you are both out and about doing separate things, you each have the same budget and updates at your fingertips.  GENIUS!  We LOVE it! 

PS:  Everyone just needs to find what works for them.  If cash is how you've got to do it to keep things under control, then do it.   It doesn't matter how you do it, as long as you are staying out of debt and even better, saving some money.  Good luck to you all!!

The Best Apps - Theme #2

February is here and with it comes a new theme!  I have given you so much to think about and so much to work on last month with Preserving Your Memories, so I will take it easy on you this month by just introducing mobile apps that I've found help to keep me organized.  So hopefully this will give you information that might be useful as well as give you time to continue working on some of your projects to preserve your memories.  Sound good?

Here is what we've talked about so far:

 

A great app to keep your BUDGET in check