I've started taking part in a Spare Change/Penny Challenge on Frugal Village. While I am hardly frugal, I find their challenges and ideas awesome. I'm getting so many ideas from their threads. I think this spare change challenge is such a great idea that I've started it on another forum that I frequent.

I'm saving my spare change and pennies for Christmas presents. So far I've got $11.17 in my jar. I started on March 9. I'm going to aim for $15 a month to go into the jar. That would give me $150 for Christmas presents which is about where I want to be.

This is a totally fun challenge. I see a penny now and I get giddy. A nickel and I'm excited. A dime and I'm ecstatic. lol. I've only been putting in the odd loonie or quarter. My savings have been stricktly pennies, dimes, and nickels.

Some updates for blogland...

We had our taxes done today. We went to H&R Block...and I know what everyone is thinking, "Why would you do that? They are so easy to do yourself...what a waste of money..." (I know because I got the earful from my father). But every time I have done taxes I have made mistakes and ended up owing myself or ended up making my spouse owe money. It's just not something I'm doing myself anymore.

Anyways...We got the return it's being distributed in this way:

We paid this months (and a little of next months) Hydro Bill. That was quite nice as it was large because of the dreadfully cold winter we've had. We each are getting $100 for spending money (clothes, Wii Games, lunches out, beer, that kind of thing), we threw $100 onto the LOC, and added $20 to our EF. I will also be paying for the mistake that I made last years taxes when we did them on our own (about $260 bucks). Anyways...taxes always stress me out and I'm glad that this years are done.

Adding the $20 bucks onto the EF today brings it to the grand total of.......(drum roll)....$473.05!!!! that is sweet! I am so pleased with our progress. :) We are 47% to our first goal of $1000 dollars! Our camping trip fund currently has $43 in it or 14.3% of our (liberal) $300 goal. I have plans to start saving for a general house fund too in the next few weeks. Starting small again and building slowly.

I have started participating in a Frugal Village Challenge. It's a spare change/penny challenge. So far I have $9.11 in my spare change jar. The money I save in this jar is going to go to wards Christmas Presents. I started taking part in this challenge about 2 weeks ago. Normally I used to scrounge all our change to pay for Tim Hortons...so I'm hoping this challenge helps me to curb the Timmies addiction.

Today is my 3rd week of being a smoke free human being. I am feeling very proud of myself for not smoking for 3 whole weeks. It hasn't been as hard as I imagined it would be. I've slowly eliminated the places I smoke at and the less I've smoked the more I've noticed how gross it really smells. I've stopped smoking before for months at a time...but I've always restarted. The key for this time is to recognize situations that would make me start again and find some kind of alternative to smoking.

On the weekend I did bake. I made mini-muffins & granola bars! I was quite the Martha Stewart on Saturday afternoon. The muffins are great (they are organic oatmeal with banana).
The granola bars were yummy...although they did not stick together. I don't know what I did but I ended up with granola instead of bars. That was OK though because they were heavenly! I loved them. S gobbled them all up on Sunday night. Andrew, however, would not eat them because he 'only likes granola bars with marshmallows and chocolate in them'. Spoiled little bugger. :P So, I did achieve one goal! The other goal...has not happened yet. I've got the mailer, the items, and labels all lined up...I just haven't found her address and mailed it. I'm getting there...slowly but surely. lol.

Tomorrow we are recommitting to doing the Money Jars. We are going to do CASH ONLY for 1 month and then re-evaluate. It should be interesting. I hope we don't crash and burn like we did last time.

The big thing I have to decide now is...what to spend my money on!

& I say rule loosely.

I'm currently downloading The Biggest Loser Australia (BLA). It's taken weeks to download and it's about 50 half hour episodes. With all this waiting I'm uber excited to watch the friggin' show. I've decided that while I watch BLA I have to be exercising. Even if it's just walking in place or doing side steps. Dammit, this show is about weight loss and getting active and moving around. It's not about sitting at home and becoming a coach potato, so I'm not going to be a coach potatoe while it's on.

I feel like I should also mention why I'm probably not going to make my gym goal this month. I was sick for a while, we went out of town, once the gym was closed when I wanted to go, and a couple days I was just plain lazy. I am going to make my goal of 12 workouts, but they just won't necessarily be at the gym is all. No worries. I'm not track with the exercise.