A Sweet Song

As a teenager, I was a die-hard Celine Dion fan :) I know. She's not for everyone. The general consensus seems to be, you either love her or you hate her, LOL.

Over the years, my taste has run less 'diva' and more 'subtle', but I've kept this song on my iPod because I've always found it uplifting. It wasn't until a couple of months ago that I really began to listen to the lyrics. Play the clip, and close your eyes, LOL.



I'm Your Angel
Celine Dion & R. Kelly

No mountain's too high for you to climb
All you have to do
Is have some climbing faith

No river's too wide for you to make it across
All you have to do
Is believe it when you pray

And then you will see
The morning will come
And every day will be bright as the sun
All of your fears
Cast them on me
I just want you to see

Chorus:

I'll be your cloud up in the sky
I'll be your shoulder when you cry
I hear your voices when you call me
I am your angel
And when all hope is gone, I'm here
No matter how far you are, I'm near
It makes no difference who you are
I am your angel
I'm your angel

I saw your teardrops and I heard you cry
All you need is time
Seek me and you shall find

You have everything and you're still lonely
It don't have to be this way
Let me show you a better day

And then you will see
Morning will come
And all of your days will be bright as the sun
So all of your fears
Just cast them on me
How can I make you see

Repeat Chorus

And when its time to face the storm
I'll be right by your side
Grace will keep us safe and warm
And I know we will survive
And when it seems as if your end is drawing near
Don't you dare give up the fight
Just put your trust beyond the skies

Repeat Chorus

Have a nice day everyone :)

Cheers,
Lizzie

Ouch....and Stuff

Good morning all! Today's plan of attack is as follows:

* Pray, pray, pray for the elimination of this vice-grip headache that has been a permanent fixture of my day for near on two weeks now. Don't worry, this is normal for me, especially in the last half of The Month :P Hormones suck!

* Crank up the stereo. I'm home ALONE today. ALONE PEOPLE. As in, with NOBODY ELSE HERE. This happens so rarely I'm a bit beside myself. A couple of months ago I was looking to buy one of those desktop speaker sets for my iPod and was grumbling about having to fork over $100+ from my own personal stash - until Hubs, technical wizard that he is, showed me a $17 cord in a store that connects the iPod to our surround-sound system via the socket you normally plug the earphones into. Woohoo! Not only did it cost me pocket change (comparatively speaking) but the sound is awesome and I don't have to bother burning CDs anymore.

* I should probably put on some laundry.

* I should also probably whip round the house and neaten up a bit.

* There's something in a pot in oven. I put it in there 'temporarily' last night when I ran out of bench space and forgot about it when I was doing the dishes later. Ick.

* I need to ring my course co-ordinator. She was meant to get back to me last week in regards to one of my assignments and never did. Sheesh.

* I will study. I WILL. Stop laughing.

* I've got an article brewing in my head that I want to get down in note form by the time the weekend is over. Then slap it all together, add punctuation, and post it.

* Try out my new laminator. Each time I do a new version of the kids' chore charts (or anything else that requires laminating) I have to wait for the next time Errands Day rolls around and have it laminated at the newsagents for $2 a sheet! Figured it was worth the money in the long run (about $25) to have my own.

And that's plenty, thanks!

P.S. Oh, and in the process of including all those links below, I've come to the conclusion that I may have just done a great many people (okay, the five of you who actually read the blog!) a bit of a disservice. My Favourites folder on the computer currently holds 45 blogs. A pittance for some of you out there who use Bloglines, but I can barely keep up with ten or fifteen. All that wasted time! I'm seriously considering deleting the below post and just keeping the 'top ten' list. If you're one of the people who have featured prominently on my blogroll for a while, don't take your removal to heart :) I know I personally get so distracted when I'm online and following a Bloggity Brick Road and lose whole chunks of my already busy day. I'd hate to be the cause of that for you, too! Just now, I sat down for 'five minutes' to check my email and now my cup of tea is cold and I've forgotten what I was doing before! 'Nuff said!

Cheers,
Lizzie

For Your Reading Pleasure...

In an effort to cut down on 'page clutter' on Lizzie's Home, I'm re-organizing all my blog links. There'll still be a section on the home page, maybe something along the lines of a 'top ten', but there are just too many good ones out there to limit it to that. For those who want to delve a bit deeper into Bloggityville, here's a list (semi-regularly updated) of blogs and sites I visit on a regular basis. And by 'regular', I mean maybe once every few days, not EVERY day...ouch!

Blogs:

Home Living Helper - Lady Lydia's wonderfully feminine ideas on living.
Keeping The Home - Candy has some great info on Home Management Binders.
A Wise Woman Builds Her Home - Beautiful thoughts on the role of the homemaker.
BooMama - Hilarious. Love the sarcastic wit.
Big Mama - If you like BooMama's wit, you'll find a home at Big Mama's too.
I'm An Organizing Junkie - Menu Plan Monday host and container extraordinaire!
Rocks In My Dryer - Works For Me Wednesday host, and she has a great craft blogroll.
Like Merchant Ships - Love Meredith's wonderful frugal tips - especially the decorating stuff.

Making Home - I discovered this one recently and there are some good discussions going on.
Joy in the Journey - A missionary family living in Indonesia.
A Chelsea Morning - Barb lives in Colorado and recently survived her daughter's wedding!
Life in a Shoe - Seven girls and one boy...how does she do it?
The Lazy Organizer - Smart Habits Saturday host and strangely organized.
Making a House a Home - Southern Pastor's wife.
Notes From The Cookie Jar - We share so much in common ;P
Pearls of Wisdom - Angel Mama's take on biblical womanhood.
The Homemaking Cottage Blog - Shiloah's blog for parent site The Homemaking Cottage.
An Help Meet For Him - A great site dedicated to devotionals about marriage.
Cherish The Home - Beautiful womanhood and homemaking.
From Under The Laundry Pile - Seven kids....SEVEN, people...(LOL)
Looky Daddy! - I laugh every time I read this stay-at-home dad's blog.
Mrs Catherine's Making It Home - The woman whom I credit for the only pizza dough recipe I've ever made that actually worked.
Muffins, Buns & Biscuits - Good stuff on this one.
Renaissance - Another beautiful homemaking site.
The Homespun Heart - Two words...Icecream Sundays. She has my vote.
The LPM Blog -
The Simple Life At Home - Another site I discovered recently that I'm really enjoying.
The Sparrow's Nest - Mrs Wilt's lovely blog.
A Day in the Life of Elle - Another Mum I can relate to :)
Amy's Humble Musings - Mum of five, wife of a rocket scientist.
Michigan Mommy of Many - Okay, she wins. FOURTEEN KIDS.
An Ordinary Mom - Another new site I discovered. Good stuff.
Graced By Christ - Wonderful Christian site...and an awesome painter. Wow.
At Home With Kris - Follow her links to her other sites - she designs some great graphics.
Keeper of the Home - Titus 2 lady.

Check back often for updates! Just look for the link in the right sidebar :)

Cheers,
Lizzie

Apparently, We All Need To Eat (Grocery Budgets)

Good morning everyone!

Today I'm pottering about the place doing a few little chores. The kids are outside enjoying a brief run of sunshine and - gasp! - I may even hang out some clothes. My sweet little Miss Moo just brought me some flowers (flowering weeds!) from the lawn. Clearly, it is time to mow ;)

Some randomness:

Tomorrow is grocery shopping day. I normally pay for my groceries with our credit card - don't fall over (LOL). We budget almost exclusively through our credit card and pay it off in full each month (never paying interest). If you're disciplined, this can actually be a good way to do it - with less cash on hand, there's less temptation to fritter away change. For the undisciplined, however, this can spell disaster, with no physical connection to the money you're spending. But for us, it works well. When the credit card bill comes in at the end of the month we have a handy reference as to where our money went. We do withdraw cash occasionally to have in our purse/wallet though. It's a bit of a hassle to pay for a sandwich with a credit card! The 'credit system' also works for us because the longer we keep our money in our transaction account, the better. This account is linked with our home loan and the larger the balance on the transaction account, the less interest we pay on the loan.

The one exception to the 'credit card budgeting rule' always seems to be groceries. Hubs, God bless him, has always given me free reign on the grocery spending. He says (and he means it, weirdly enough!) that he doesn't matter what I spend (!!!) at the supermarket so long as the meals are good, and there's snackfood on hand. I'm grateful for two things with this - that his job provides a comfortable income for us to NOT have to watch every grocery penny, and that he leaves it all up to me. Any grocery budget I might mention from here on out was one I gave to myself, LOL.

Speaking of budgets, when I quote a figure, remember that it is in Australian dollars. I absolutely bow down to any housewife who is able to provide wonderful meals at much less than what I spend, but I know from trial and error that there is a sort of 'point of equillibrium' with our family, and going past that in order to save a few more dollars becomes less important to us than variety, interest and convenience. Yes, I said it. Sometimes 'convenience foods' aren't dirty words!

Having said that, we only eat takeaway as a family once a month. But I do buy things like frozen chicken nuggets (and other assorted chicken 'snacks'), frozen oven fries, sometimes cans of soup, individual boxes of sultanas (raisins), individual tubs of chopped up fruit for the kids' lunchboxes, and boxes of muesli bars (granola bars) and fruit bars - amongst other things. Yes, I am working toward eliminating a fair chunk of the processed food and I try out new recipes to do that (last month's homemade chicken nuggets recipe bombed big time!), but in the meantime, I'm just not stressing about it.

So, the grocery budget. I've decided to do it like this:

My Household & Grocery Budget is $300 per week. I know, but Aussie prices. Of that, $50 will be put into a baggie as Household Petty Cash. This is money for things like excursions, pocket money, etc - the little expenses that pop up that you need cash for. If I don't spend it all, I just top it up the next week, keeping a 'float' of $50.

That leaves $250 for groceries. Yes, the idea is to come in well under that. But this amount allows for everything - all toiletries, paper products, household items (lightglobes, toothbrushes etc) AND food. With the price of dairy, fruit and veg and meat these days, the total rises FAST. It also accounts for quick trips to the store for extra milk and bread. Everything.

So along comes grocery day. My cart is filled, I go through the checkout, and I pay with the debit function of my ATM card instead of the credit function. I also take the 'cash out' option and round it out to the full $300.

When I get home, I peel off $50 and stick it in a baggie for Household Petty Cash. Then whatever is left over is Grocery Petty Cash (also put in a baggie). If I need to go to the store during the week, I take cash from this baggie. If this money runs out, too bad - n0 more till next grocery day. If I end up with extra money at the end of a week, I'll transfer it to a tin, or jar, or something. I'll probably earmark this money for a short term expense, like replacing small household items. Oh, and takeaway comes out of this money too. If there's not enough in the jar at the end of the month, no takeaway :) Having a fast-food meal at KFC or McDonald's usually tops $25 for our family of 5 (with three kids). Pizza Hut is about $12-$15 for two pizzas.

I'll report back in a few weeks to describe how I went :)

Cheers,
Lizzie

Smart Habits Saturday ~ August 4

My Smart Habits for this week are fairly simple:

1. Make this coming week's menu, incorporating more vegies in. Then execute it - consistently!
2. Shop for groceries on Monday with a budget in mind (I need to concentrate on this!)
3. Put in an hour's worth of decluttering in both the 4th bedroom and the main bedroom.
4. Finish that last assignment!
5. Handwrite two letters - one a thankyou note to family we stayed with on our recent trip away and the second to my sister, using my new letter writing set.

Next week I'll be back with an update on the above Habits, and a new list. I'm limiting myself to just five a week, LOL. Oh, the pressure! Some weeks will have 'carry-overs' from previous weeks.

Hope everyone is doing well with their own Habits :)

For more information about Smart Habits Saturday, head on over to The Lazy Organizer.

Cheers,
Lizzie