Day to Day in January

Well, there really isn't much to report on our end right now. I cannot believe how fast January passed by and here we are into February! Although I do admit I am quite eager for the next few months to pass by!

In my continued saga of trying new things with Malachi, this week we made homemade finger paints.

I haven't been brave enough to open the jars and let him at them, but I did take the eztra paints and put them in a ziplock bag so he could play with them. It kept his interest for a couple minutes :)

In other fun news, I was able to buy a rug for the "playroom" that I have had my eye on for quite some time. A year ago, we tried to use those foamy ABC blocks for the floor, but Malachi was an expert at pulling them up so it never worked out. So I decided what we really needed was a big ole rug! Big ole rugs are expensive and not something we have room for in our budget, so I started saving up my survey taking money and we were able to purchase the perfect one last week!

Our playroom is nothing more than our formal dining room, but it works out just fine for us. Like we needed a formal dining room anyway! We have decluttered a lot of stuff over the last week and I am loving how the house looks and feels! We may have hit the spring cleaning a littler early this year and it has been so worth the result!

Another area we are focused on this year is budgeting. I was really looking forward to starting fresh and staying focused in January. Well, murphy seems to hit our house just about every January, so we should have expected his visit this year - but oh well. Can I just say how happy I am to be in a new month, with a new clean budget! The areas we had control over in January we did pretty good, but it was the added, unanticipated expenses that really added up. From our first expense of the entire year having to do with a car repair to getting hit at the end of the month with an unexpected emergency vet bill. Oh well, that is why Dave Ramsey preaches having an emergency fund in the first place - we just never want to have to dig into that Emergency fund. So we start fresh in February and should still be on target to meet our yearly goal of completing Baby Step #3!