Today is Leonard Cohen!!!!!! I'm so excited and I can't wait.

I have much to report today. It has been a busy time for us! In summary...

• I wrote the test. It was hard. Very hard. It seriously just focussed on asking questions regarding policy and legislation. There was also an essay question. I am confident that I passed...but I am not confident that I will be one of the top 10 test takers that they are going to interview (there were about 75 people taking the test). Even if I don't get an interview I am glad that I took the test. I learned a lot about the Public Service Employment Act and what happens surrounding appointments and what my rights are as an employee.
• The Dept I work for is making a ginormous pool for candidates for a higher up classification. I am going to apply for that I think.
• I have accepted a 'temp' position at my previous church. It is a very different position from the one I was doing before. This position is focusing on intergenerational worship for families. I have a fabulous relationship with the minister and I will be involved in the creation of the position. It's for 16 hours a month and at this point for about $175 a month. In the fall the position will be posted and I will need to apply for it (mostly to ensure that all qualified applicants get to apply & because my mother is the chair of council and my uncle is chair of M&P) but that's okay. I might find it too much to continue on with...or they might not like my style. I am pretty laid back. I feel much more at ease and excited about this project then I ever did at managing the Sunday School.
  
• I continue to take my anti-anxiety meds. It is helping. My OCD issues though are always constantly in the background waiting to spring back up. This is a bad time of year for me and my mental problems. It's always a struggle.
• We continue to save and I am enjoying it still.
• Husband went for a job interview today. It sounds like a good job and if he gets he will be ecstatic. If he doesn't get the job we have decided that we are going to try something a bit different. We have been tossing around the idea of husband staying home full time with Andrew and having me continue to work full-time. A big chunk of our budget is eaten up by daycare and a big chunk was devoted to debt repayment. We have eliminated quite a bit of our debt by re-financing the mortgage and if we could get rid of the $400/month daycare payment our budget is not short by that much. The idea would be that husband would work part time (1 or 2 shifts a week) to make up the difference. Anyways...we have asked daycare if we could pull Andrew for the summer months to do a 'trial run'. Basically see if it is something that we could feasibly carry-out. The trial run was husbands idea and I think it is brilliant!
• I am still working on my Round Ripple Afghan. It is getting to be HUGE! I really love the pattern and I love that I am using up yarn that I have had forever. When I finish this one I am going to make another one out of scraps for Andrew. He keeps asking where his blanket is.

That's about it for me. Busy and busy as per usual. I'm off to tuck Andrew into bed and watch Biggest Loser Australia now.

Cheers!

PS. Northern Living Allowance...I never connected with that reporter. I sent her an email...but she never responded. Oh well! Them's the breaks. I have been working on another post for Gails Success Blog...maybe I should finish it and send it off to her.

On a lark I applied for another position within the govt that is a couple steps up the pay scale. I was quite pleased when I got an email inviting me to go for a test on this upcoming Tuesday...my present office? Not so pleased, but that's okay.

The invitation had some links that 'I might want to study'...well, the links turn out to be policy, after policy, after policy. About 300 pages printed. I know this because I printed them all and now I'm reading them all. That's my big weekend plans. Learning about employment equity, official languages, and Dr. Mario. Oops, did I say Dr. Mario? I meant area of selection. Yeah, that's right. Area of selection.

Anyways, I keep plugging away and making notes and highlighting. The nerd in me must be coming out because I am actually finding some of it interesting.

Wish me luck!

I realized I hadn't updated my sidebars in ages. Check them out!

82% on the way to our camping trip! 59% towards our first goal of 1K in the emergency fund! 6.26% paid off of that darn LOC!

My Christmas fund (not on a sidebar) is sitting at $19 bucks! Not bad for just pennies, nickels, and dimes for the most part. The house and car fund are sitting at $11 and $14 respectively (also not on a side bar).

I am really enjoying seeing my savings amount rise every week. Saving really is addictive for me. I keep thinking of new funds to start and trying to think of new ways to save.

My glasses broke last week. The frames snapped right at the seam where the arm meets. It wasn't a surprise. They weren't the sturdiest of frames and I'd already replaced the frames twice before.

I'm so glad that I have health insurance through work that covers glasses. I've never had any insurance before this job so I'm quite happy. I ordered these glasses from Superstore (see how pretty they look on the model) and they arrived last Monday.

They were having on lenses (50% off) and the frames were only $79. I upgraded the lenses and got the anti-scratch, anti-glare, anti-everything package. I love them and I'm quite pleased that they were only $171.

I haven't had new glasses in over 5 years....so this is big excitement for me!

PS. I'm halfway through the last Harry Potter book...I can't wait to have my life back...

I want to wish everyone a very Happy Easter. I took a break from church goings this year and while it has been a little odd it's also been nice not having multiple services to attend and events to volunteer at. We went to my family's Easter Dinner last night. The food was good and Andrew behaved...for the most part. We've just been taking it easy. I have tomorrow off as well (the beauty of being a Public Servant) and we're planning on doing our grocery shopping tomorrow morning.

That's about it. I've not been very interesting lately...We each opened our Tax Free Savings Accounts yesterday at PC Financial. I was not too impressed with the interest rate...only 1.45% regardless of the balance.

PS. Probably part of the reason I've got nothing interesting to post about is because I have been steadily and avidly re-reading the Harry Potter series. I started the final book this morning...so in a few days I should be back to my old self blogwise.

It was exactly 1 year ago that I resurrected the Blog and started posting on a regular basis again. Time has really flown! In that post I wrote about how there were 3 big things going on in my life...

1. Getting Finances Back on Track. Never should 2 spenders marry. NEVER. It leads to financial disarray. It leads to 80% of our income being spent on dining out, booze, and smokes. The last 3 years have been carefree and fun...but alas the party is over. WE ARE ON A DEBT DIET.

2. All Things Crafty. I'm a crafting machine. I like to think about it. I like to do it. I like to talk about it. I like to write about. I'm feeling the craftiness.

3. Discerning a Call. There's this squiggly, niggly feeling at the back of my head that I should be (need to be) doing something different. Like there's a bigger plan for me.

& it's true. I've mainly focused on those 3 things for the past year and I will probably continue to do so for the next year.

I've been avoiding doing this for a few months now. I'm not too sure why. Sometimes this happens. I take a small and easy task, often one that once completed will solve many problems, and I avoid doing it. Sometimes I avoid the task because I know it will point out deficiencies in how I/we do things. Other times I'll avoid doing something because I know it is easier to have the ostrich syndrome. Or maybe I'll avoid it because I am just plain lazy sometimes. Sometimes I might be avoiding the task because there might a small aspect of it I don't understand or I'm not clear on...and instead of asking for help...I'll just avoid. Something I'm really working on is not avoiding and becoming more accountable to myself.

Anyways...today I finally made a Money Schedule. I put in every bill we pay (both manually and automatically) and the mortgage payments and the consolidation loan and when we get paid and when our savings comes out and everything I could think of that is a 'fixed' expense. I picked different colors for different types of deductions. I have even listed what bills need to be on the 1st of the month and what bills need to be paid on the 15th.

I'm printing it right now and I'm going to tape it up on our computer desk so we always see what is upcoming. No more excuses!

I'm pleased to report that we have started saving for car repairs/maintenance and house repairs/maintenance. It's small. Minuscule actually. But it's there. & I'm proud that it's there.

2 weeks ago I made a simple spreadsheet in Excel to track our savings. Everything is just going into our savings account and I was getting quite confused trying to figure out how much we had for each category. My Savings Tracker has columns for our EF, Holiday Fund, House Fund, Car Fund and Christmas (which is my spare change jar).

Currently our House Fund has $9 in it and the Car Fund has $11 in it. Small I know, but there. I've decided to start putting my PinceCone Research Checks into these funds instead of putting them into our holiday fund. I've also decided that any money I make from crocheting will go into these funds instead of the holiday fund. In the next few weeks I am going to set up automatic transfers for $5 a week and allocate that money equally into each fund.

I've decided it's fun to save and it's becoming quite addictive....

Today was grocery shopping day and I am quite pleased with our purchases. :) Our shop was smaller this week because the last few shops have been quite large and we still have lots of meat and cheese and things like yogurt. We went to Bulk Barn and Superstore and spent $80.50. This is how we did it.

Bulk Barn

Chocolate Cookies - 4.53
Muffin Mix - 2.07
Honey - 4.31
Wine Gums - 10.06 (don't think we'll get that MUCH again)
Raisins - 2.94
M&M (Bribery for the child) - 2.23
Dried Apricots - .94
Shreddies - 2.77
Red Pepper Flakes - .22
Sunflower Seeds - .68
Slices Almonds - 2.28

Taxes - 1.47
Total 34.50

Superstore

10 lbs Potatoes - 4.98
Pizza Shells- 4.99
Cranberry Pop - 2.22
Root Beer - 2.22
Tomatoes - 1.46
Oranges - 4.68
Apples - 2.49
Grapes - 1.62
Iced Tea - 1.51 (this was bought to quelch Andrews thirst and to get him to stop crying)
Cream - 1.69
Broccoli - 1.18
Salsa - 2.29
Skim Milk - 1.36
Jello - .58
Shampoo - 2.29
Canned Olives - 1.28
Juice - 3.49
Strawberries - 4.98
Blueberries - 2.98

Taxes - .99
We saved 4.03 on the Colleague Discount and our total was 46.00 even.

Tonight we're having beef enchiladas (there was even enough filling leftover to freeze a container for another meal!). I made more homemade granola bars (thanks again Saver Queen for the recipe) this afternoon too. Tomorrow I'm planning to make Banana oatmeal muffins and jello for Andrew's lunches this week.

I was also pleased to find out that we have enough PC points to get $20 in free groceries again! Yay for us!