My roomies and I are going to send out a “family” Christmas card with a picture of all of us on the front. We put our Halloween decorations away and I guess we’re feeling the Christmas spirit early this year because we’re putting up Christmas decorations today! I know, crazy huh?
Usually we wait until Thanksgiving, but hey…it won’t hurt. So we’re going to pose in front of this really pretty decorated Christmas tree we have and have cards printed out at Costco.com. I think it will be fun.
I think I’ve decided what other job I’m going to get. I’ve probably mentioned to you before that my roomie is a realtor and so is her mom. The housing market is really shitty right now, but even so, they are still getting an average of one deal a month and they both only work part time. If I could do that too, it would more than make up for the slowness that’s been going on lately.
So I think tomorrow I’m going to sign up for online real estate courses. I’ll have to join some associations and blah blah, so it will cost around $1500 to get started, but hopefully I’ll make that up pretty fast. My roomies will be out of town for a week while they’re on their honeymoon in Vegas, so I’ll have plenty of time to myself to study and do the course.
I feel like I’m starting a new period in my life. I’m not with Erin or the boy anymore, I’m exploring things other than phone sex for a career and I’m actually doing ok. We’ll see what the future holds, but I feel kinda like I’m getting a fresh start right now.
I think I ask this every year and never get any responses, but I’ll ask again anyway. I’m starting to think about the holiday baskets that I do every year and this year I want to do something different. I know that some of you must have family recipes that either you or someone in your family makes every year during the holidays…something so awesome that every time someone has it, they’re like “Holy cow, this is awesome!”
Please share!??!
hahah last year I filled our giant baskets with chocolate chip, peanut butter kiss, chocolate crinkle, oatmeal butterscotch and white chocolate chunk macadamia nut cookies…tiny loaves of pumpkin buttescotch, zucchini pineapple, carrot cake and banana bread…chocolate and caramel covered pretzels, fudge and rice crispy treats.
I will have a riot on my hands if I change out TOO many items, but I wanted something new at least. I have a couple of cookie only cook books and damn if there weren’t some yummy looking ones in there that I will try, but a personal recommendation is always better.
My check engine light came on a couple of days ago and my car started driving funny. I took it in to a shop though and it only cost me $145 to get it fixed…so yay! I had visions of thousand dollar repairs dancing through my head. That would have been NO BUENO.
Final thing I will mention for this post is that I’m having a holiday gift card drive. I’ll send out an email about it soon, but here’s my plan…I have a few hundred dollars in Amazon gift certificates saved up and if I get a few hundred more dollars, I can buy all of my Christmas presents there and not have to come out of pocket with anything!
HERE is the link for them, you can send as little as $5. Any amount will help. In these tough times, I’ve become insanely thrifty, and I will cut back on spending for Christmas, but there’s no way I’d be able to or even want to cut it out completely.
Speaking of thrifty, my roomie and I have actually been having a lot of fun staking out the sale fliers and getting the weekly paper to clip coupons so we can save money on our grocery bill. We’ve gotten some INSANE deals and cut a TON of cash off of our weekly food budget by doing it. Granted, we did have to make 4 stops the other day and it took us almost all day, but we were lolly gagging and Christmas window shopping at the same time. I’m amazed at what kinds of deals you can get when you watch for them. I can’t believe we didn’t do this before.
What’s funny is that I can imagine being this way for the rest of my life and when our economy comes back into line, my grandchildren will wonder why I’m so damn thrifty. “I remember when we had to wear our clothes more than once and we actually kept a cell phone for a year!”
Anyway, I’m home now and ready to talk, so give me a call!