Send Earnings!

Thanks to the fun and informative Donna Freedman, I have found a new way to bring in a few extra dollars! It is the same company that does Inbox Dollars and Donna has assured me that it is the same. It's a get paid to open and click on emails. And you get $5 to join.
Thanks for stopping over,
SonyaAnn

Friend's Friday!

So my booger for the day is A.Marie from My Money Mission. I torture that poor thing every week with my Wicked Wednesday posts! Stop over and say Hi and then please apologize for me!
Have a great weekend,
SonyaAnn

Santa's Secret!

I keep forgetting to post these! Sorry! CVS had there Christmas stuff 90% off a while back, it was about gone but I managed to snag a few things. I paid $3.17 for all of these. Wouldn't it just be wonderful if everything we needed was 90% all the time.
My gift closet is about packed, I'm so happy. Just what am I going to do when I find more stuff! I think next year I'm going to have to work on not only cutting back on the money we spend but also on the size of the things we buy. So my OOP for the year is $18.83. The good thing is I'm pretty sure I know who is getting what now. Thank you, slugmama! I'll keep you posted but it will probably take me a while to remember. 8-)
Thanks for stopping over,
SonyaAnn

Wonderful Wednesday!

This is sweet. I hope you like it!
Have a wonderful hump day,
SonyaAnn

OMG Cookies!!

I know it's hard to believe but I made up a cookie recipe and it actually turned out! Who knew? I didn't. Not to brag, well maybe to brag a bit but these are amazing. Usually my oatmeal cookies are flat but these are not. They are nice and crunchy on the outside and gooey in the middle! Just looking at it is making me hungry! So here it is.........
2 cups butter
2 cups sugar
2 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
5 cups flour
6 cups oatmeal
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1.5 cups of walnut pieces

Cream butter, sugar, & brown sugar
+ eggs & vanilla, mix well
+ flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, baking soda, & nuts, mix well

roll into golf ball size balls
bake @ 350 for 8-10

The only problem that I had with this recipe was my oven. It's a GE so basically everything on one half of my oven is burnt beyond recognition and the other side is raw. Using the oven is a test of your patience every time. So I'm not completely sure about the cooking times. Because after using the oven for about an hour the temperature likes to change. So makes sure you keep an eye on them until you figure out your bake time. Every time I make cookies, I can leave them in about 4 minutes and then I have to flip all of the trays. Then I have to stand there and watch them and then sniff the oven to see if anything is burning. Maybe if I had a decent oven, I wouldn't mind cooking. Maybe my problems in the kitchen aren't my fault maybe it's the oven. I'm not buying it for one minute, how about you?
Thanks for stopping by,
SonyaAnn

Piccyfix

I thought that I'd give you a quick tip. As you can tell by the quality of a lot of the pictures on my blog, I use my cell phone to take pictures. And sometimes I can't get it all in the picture and I need to turn the phone/camera sideways. And then when you load it on blogger, its sideways. So I found this site that will rotate and crop and just will do just about anything else to your photo for free. I love free and it works about the same as blogger so its not hard to figure out. So if you need to work on a picture, go here. And I'm sad to say that I'm not getting a cent to tell you about them!
Thanks for stopping over,
SonyaAnn

Friend's Friday!

My friday booger is Maygan from May Be Frugal! She is a really nice person and always helpful! Stop over and say hi!
Have a great weekend,
SonyaAnn

Santa's Secret!

I bought a few more things a while ago but I'm not sure who they are going to yet. I was at Walmart and what they had left was marked down 75%. I spent $14.71 on all of this. They are cute little bath sets, the ones in front were marked down to $1.25. And the ones in back were $2.25 each. Even if I tape a gift card to them, it is still cheaper than a gift bag. So my total out of pocket for the year is $15.66. Not too bad!
Thanks for stopping by,
SonyaAnn

Wicked Wednesday!!

This one is YUCKY but funny!
Have a great day,
SonyaAnn

A Quick Tip

This is the inside of my closet. We have very little storage space. It's awful. I'm not a collector of crap and we still have a hard time finding room for everything. Anywho, I'm not much of a girl. Who knew? But I do like to wear a necklace every once in a while. I tried storing them in a drawer organizer but they would get tangled and it was a lot of trouble to fish them out. So I put them on push pins next to my clothes. It makes finding a matching necklace super easy. I would like to get a cork board for the inside of the closet door but I don't know if they would stay because the door gets opened and closed so often. And I would probably need to get a few more necklaces to fill it. That wouldn't be such a terrible thing, now would it?
Thanks for stopping over,
SonyaAnn

Santa's Secret!

I figured that I might as well post our Christmas list! It's long. I figure that I will just check it off as I continue to gather things. I really hope that all this effort pays off. This is a lot of work.
Me($25)-
Den($25)-
Anna($250)-
DJ($250)-
Dennis($50)-
Donna($50)-
Cindy($50)-
Chris($50)-
Justin($50)-
Sheila($50)-
Kyle($50)-
Erica($50)-
Nicole($50)-
Chris($50)-
Grandpa Mott($50)-
Willie & Margie($5-10)-Basket*done*
Emily($25)-
Aaron($25)-
Al & Phylis($5-10)-Basket*done*
Laura($10-20)
Tom & Marsha($5-10)-Basket*done*
Carolyn & Gene($5-10)-Basket*done*
Jennifer & Jason($5-10)-Basket*done*
Savannah-($10-20)
Dee & Terry($5-10)-Basket*done*
Bruce & Lauren($75-100) & Basket
Alex($25)
Andrea & Daniel($5-10)-Basket*done*
Daniel($40-50)
Jason($40-50)
Spencer($20-30)
Donna & Steve($10-20)-?????-I know you are reading this!
Jordan($15-20)
Bekah($15-20)
Mail Lady($5-10)-Basket*done*
Jennifer($25)
Kristen($20)
Karate Teacher-Anna($5-10)-Basket*done*
Betty($5-10)-Basket*done*
Gerald & Maureen($10-20)
Juan($25)
Chio($5-10)-Basket*done*
Martha($5-10)-Basket*done*
Soledad($5-10)-Basket*done*
Anna($5-10)-Basket*done*
Gloria($5-10)-platter*done*
Litsy & Uritsy($20-25)
Mrs. Bauer($25)

Be kind when you leave a comment because I know that there is no need to buy for this many people. A lot of them are just token gifts but you can see how I spend $1700 pretty easy. Trimming $200 off of this would be great!
Thanks for stopping over,
SonyaAnn

Friend's Friday

And my booger for today is Chatty Girl! She found me even when the blog was a mess.
I hope you all have a great weekend and thank you for coming to see me! You make me feel loved.
Thanks for stopping by,
SonyaAnn

Doody Head

Santa found this to be screaming funny! My children on the other hand did not. Being the wonderful parent that I am, I am always threatening them with coal in their stockings. Threatening kids with coal that are almost 14 and almost 18 isn't much of a threat anymore but I have to do things to entertain myself. One year they did get candy coal in their stockings but they were happy about it. Anyways, they got crap instead of coal. You toss doody at each others head. This gift was not warmly received and I don't know why. But I can say it was a hit at my neighbor's house on New Years Eve. Grown ups love this much more than teenagers! So if you are looking for a unique gift go here!
It's always fun here,
SonyaAnn
P.S.-Today is DJ's 14th birthday! It's been a busy and wonderful adventure with The Boy.

Wicked Wednesday!!

I couldn't stop laughing at this one! Have fun!
Thanks for stopping over,
SonyaAnn

Santa's Secret!

Yes, Santa has a secret. I personally have always thought that he was into leather. He just seemed the type. Between the elves and all the little kids that he wants to sit on his lap. Ummm, sorry! It's like I have a touch of A.D.D. and just fly off on a tangent. And it is mixed with Tourette's syndrome and I feel the need to just shout out whatever is on my mind. I should say that I'm working on controlling myself but I'm not, I'm just going to go with it.
Anyways, you know in A.A. when someone admits to having a problem, you are not allowed to rip them apart, well I'm hoping that you will be kind when I admit to my problem. (Don't you love how I go from Santa the pervert to A.D.D. to Tourette's to AA, all in a few sentences?) I totaled up everything we spent on Christmas and I have got to do better. We spent $1543 on gifts. Ugh!! BE KIND! Yes, I know that this is too much and I'm going to work on it. The problem is we have a lot of people to buy for. And we like to give a little something to everyone. I can hear you thinking, cut people off of the list. I just can't. I've tried and it ruins Christmas for me. So what we try to do is just spend a few dollars on each one. We buy for 60 people. Oh I can't wait to read the comments on this post. You are just itching to type something, aren't you? A lot of the gifts are a family gift so we get off with just one thing for them. I'm thinking about making different kinds of flavored popcorn as a gift this year. Anyways, I'm going to post all of the gifts that I collect throughout the year as a way to get my spending under control. Another problem is we spend about $500 on Anna and DJ. We don't buy anything but the necessities for the kids and this is our one splurge for the year. Den and I spend about $25 on each other. Sad, I know!
So, I'm going to track what I buy and how much I spend until Christmas. This is a huge undertaking but I hope this will help me cut back. I would be happy with even 10%.


This is the gift closet after Christmas. Empty and longing for more gifts!
The first thing that I bought was an 11-Tools-in-1 Stainless Steel Credit Card Survival Tool. I paid $.95 for it. I figured that it would be a good to slip a gift card in. I like something like this over a gift bag.


And then I bought 15 baskets and one platter at Cracker Barrel. It was their after Christmas clearance. So everything was 60% off. It was $101.28 but I used the gift cards that I got for Christmas and my birthday. So I'm not sure how to total this up. My out of pocket costs were $.95 or $102.23. How should I add this up?
Thanks for stopping by,
SonyaAnn

No More New Year's Resolutions!

I'm with the Tight Fisted Miser on this one! No more resolutions! It isn't working. I keep beating myself up for my failures. So I'm going to say that these are things that I would like to happen in 2010.
1.) stop dieting all together. It's just another tool in the "beat up SonyaAnn arsenal" Maybe get a bit healthier though.
2.) Finish my book and start another.
3.) Continue to fight the good fight against all of our bills.
4.) I would like to get a book deal.
I spent so much energy wishing for some of the things on last years list to happen. And that is so stupid, my future isn't going to happen by wishing. It's going to happen with hard work. It's so hard to accomplish some of the things I want and still put the family first. So I need to realize that somethings will be on the back burner for a while. I write as a hobby, it's not a job. I would love to spend my days writing but all I can give myself now is an hour or two a day, at best. And that is good enough, I'm not going to beat myself up. Maybe some of my goals need to be obtainable and some need to be far fetched. So I'll keep you posted on how my UnResolutions turn out for the year!
Thanks for stopping by,
SonyaAnn

Friends Friday!

Since, I have been going through all of my old posts to not only reload them but to fix all of the links. I have decided to get back in touch with some of my old friends! So my booger for the day is Frances from Looking forward to an equally frugal 2010! Who doesn't love a booger the second time around!
Thanks for stopping over,
SonyaAnn

A new budget for all the extras in 2010

This is the budget from 2009. This is all the extra stuff that should come up during the year not our monthly budget. I just hope that we don't have too many unexpected expenditures this year. But it is still us so I'm sure that something traumatic and expensive will happen!
Anyways, this is what I started with in 2009.

Car Fund $800
Pool Fund $125
Flowers & Garden $125
School Registrations $325
Vet Fund $200
School supplies $100
School picture $200
Christmas $1100
Trip in Oct to FL $2500
Dr, ER & dentist $350
Computer $100
Glasses and contacts $1000
Car stickers $240
WI fee $65
Bdays $500
All other holidays $350
2nd mortgage fee $90
Tax Prep. $25
Clothes $100
Haircuts $100
4th July fund $75
Thanksgiving $125
For $8595.00
Everything was paid except for the glasses fund. Which will be moved to the top of the list this year. Some of the funds though were shorted terribly but we somehow managed to make it though the year. So this is what I'm thinking for 2010. We won't be taking a vacation because Anna will be going away to college and she needs her wisdom teeth pulled. That little problem should cost about $2000. I'm not above human experimentation and I said I could get the job done with a bottle of Jack and pliers. She did not think this was funny. I told her it wasn't meant to be funny, it was meant to be a solution. I guess we will be going to the dentist. Anyways, here is my starting point for the year.....
Car Fund $800
Pool Fund $250
Flowers & Garden $200
School Registrations $200
Vet Fund $125
School supplies $200
School picture $200
Christmas $1700
Dr, ER & dentist $200
Glasses and contacts $700
Car stickers $240
WI fee $65
Bdays $500
All other holidays $350
Tax Prep. $25
Clothes $125
Haircuts $100
4th July fund $75
Thanksgiving $100
House Fund $200
Anna's teeth $2000
Kids Graduation $200
For $8555.00

So I will be working on cutting corners on this but I thought that I would just let you know the starting point. This list always makes me so upset. It seems like such a huge bill. But I try to keep in mind that this list is what keeps us from having credit card debt. Some of the unexpected things in the year arent't so unexpected. The only thing that I'm worried about is the fact that I think we might be needing some new appliances this year. I think the frig and the washing machine are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I just keep yelling, "Look away from the light!"
Thanks for stopping over,
SonyaAnn
I won't be around today! And there will be a change in the order that everything on this list will be paid. Anna is having emergency surgery on her wisdom teeth today. Her jaw is cracking and she is having blinding headaches so they said no more waiting. The dentist had wanted to wait until this summer to take them out but that all changed. At least, we didn't have to pay for a transmission, it was just electrical problems. Having to pay for both, would have crippled us! So I won't be around much but the love is still here for you.

Wicked Wednesday!!

It's nice to know that I'm not the only one in this world that has a naughty mind. Check this one out!
Thanks for stopping over,
SonyaAnn
I wonder how many times this has happened in our purses.

Update on our Bet

I think that I need a bit of help calling this one. Back in August, Den and I had a bet. It was to see if he could quit smoking and in exchange he would keep his gym membership. I really don't know how to call this one. I think I won and I think I lost. He started using a "fake" cigarette. He hasn't had a real cigarette since August but he is still fake "smoking." It only has nicotine, flavor and water in it. It's not bad for you. Well, that is what we have been told. Nicotine is kind of like a caffeine jolt. It's all the other things in the cigarette that does the damage. Den said that the fake cigarette is kind of like being a kid when you got real close to a vaporizer and inhaled that. Anyways, we are still paying for the fake cigarette. It works out to about $2 a day compared to $4-5. So we are paying for it but it isn't as much. We were paying about $120(ish) a month for him to smoke. Now we are paying $60. So even with the $40 a month gym membership, we are saving $20 a month. But it is still a bill for the month. How do I call it?
Thanks for stopping by,
SonyaAnn

A Look Back

So this is what I wanted to accomplish in 2009! I'm a joke!

A Recap

1.) Lose a few more pounds (I only lost 4 lbs but it's better than gaining)
2.) Write 2 books at the same time
3.) Improve the blog
4.) Start generating an income from writing
5.) Knock down our debt (I will continue to make 2 extra payments on the house a year & will try to pay extra on the 2nd mortgage)
6.) Find a way to pay for Anna's college

1.)HaHa!! I think for the entire year I lost 4 lbs. But I didn't gain. This is still going in the fail column though.
2.) This sort of happened. I started a second book, while still writing the first and continued to write the blog. And then I started to get burned out from all of the writing and I decided that something had to give. And since getting rid of the family was kind of out, I stopped writing the second book. I will be going back and finishing it because I really like where it is headed but it will have to wait for a bit. I'm not upset about this failure, I really did learn from this one and I'm not going to beat myself up. Not on this one at least.
3.) Does deleting the blog and crying count as an improvement?
4.) I'm a funny girl! Even though I did get my first royalty check for $.56.
5.) Made a bit of progress. Not much but I'm not losing ground yet.
6.)This is a biggy! It looks like we will be getting some grant money and the high school is helping us look for scholarships. I feel pretty good about pulling this one off. Just remind me of this when I have a slight melt down when I get the bills!
I can't wait to see what is next! It just makes me feel lucky that you all will be with me for it. Unless I delete the damn blog again!
Thanks for stopping over,
SonyaAnn

Welcome 2010!

First off, I hope that you aren't too hung over! I've gone blind in my left eye and I think my ear is leaking. So yes, I had an awesome time last night. Just kidding, sort of!
Anyways, my first booger of the year is the first person to ever visit my blog, Jules over at Lovely Las Vegas. Jump over an say Hi.
I'm going to take a nap! I hope the rest of the year doesn't hurt like this. I've heard that whatever you do the first day of the year, you are destine to repeat for the rest of the year. 2010 will be like Ground Hogs day for me.
Thanks for coming to see me,
SonyaAnn