Author: Brittny

The Career of Motherhood

On Wednesday Hilary Rosen, a Democratic strategist, made a comment on CNN about Ann Romney saying that she “has actually never worked a day in her life,” referring to the fact that Ann has spent her adult life as a stay-at-home mom rather than as an employee of another corporation. While the Obama campaign has indicated that Ms. Rosen’s comments do not reflect the position of their campaign I felt the need to address this line of thinking in general in the world. It’s something that was on my mind before this came up and I had considered writing this post anyways, but now I have a very good excuse to not procrastinate doing so 🙂

First, you ought to know my work history. I graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor’s degree in Linguistics with a minor in Computers and the Humanities. In my life I have worked as a babysitter, software quality assurance tester, accounting clerk, department store customer service representative, theater technician (spotlight operator, stage hand and stage manager), web developer, and stay-at-home mom. Most of those jobs would be considered part time jobs that I held through high school and college. When I was a theater technician I was part of a touring theater group and most days would consist of waking up early (generally 7am-ish), driving to a theater, moderate manual labor all day (unloading/loading a truck full of theater equipment, setting up props, speakers, lights etc), doing a show, loading the equipment back up and finally leaving the theater late at night (generally 11pm-ish), going home to a host home and doing it all again the next day. As a web developer I held a traditional 9-5 salaried position with a local advertising agency which I commuted to on the bus, and came home to make dinner, drive it across town to my husband and only get home in time to go to bed before doing it again the next day. Suffice it to say, no one could say that I’ve “never worked a day in my life.” However, of all the jobs I’ve held, being a stay-at-home mom FAR surpasses any of my previous positions in difficulty and general amount of work that I do.

It amazes me how our society doesn’t look at full-time motherhood as “real” work. I know it may seem that those of us who have chosen to make our family our career just have it easy – getting to stay home and play with kids all day – but anyone who thinks that has obviously never tried it. As a mother I am on duty 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. When I worked at my traditional 9-5 job, even though my days were long (starting around 6am and not really getting home until nearly 9pm), when I went to bed at night there wasn’t a baby in my bed who expected to be fed at 2am. My clients didn’t call me at 3am because they’d had a nightmare and needed some comforting. Except in rare situations, I had my weekends completely to myself. As a mom I get excited when I am alone for long enough to go pee without my boys trying to climb on me or get into something. Every aspect of my life revolves around my children. Sure I had to grocery shop, cook, do laundry and dishes before I had kids, but now I do those things while carrying around an 18lb child, or trying to referee the two kids so they don’t kill each other while I try to accomplish some task. Everything I do takes twice as long because these children require my attention at all hours. There are naps to be taken, joy school, bedtimes, playdates and a host of other activities that weren’t part of my daily life before parenthood.

I know that some people are thinking, “yeah, but the work isn’t very difficult.” Au contraire mon chere! One of the most difficult parts about motherhood and running a household is that in all my educational experience leading up to this career choice I didn’t receive much training that actually taught me how to do what I’m doing now. There wasn’t a single class in college that taught me how to keep a house clean with toddlers in it. I didn’t get a degree that qualified me for treating fevers or successfully baking bread (a skill I have yet to gain).

The hardest and most frustrating part (in my opinion) is that the work of a mother is never done, and it’s the same work over and over and over again. I can spend all day working on laundry, getting it cleaned, dried, folded and put away; but at the end of the day we take off the clothes we’re wearing and there’s more laundry to do. Every 3-5 hours throughout the day it’s time to prepare another meal, convince my kids to eat that meal (which takes far longer than just eating on my own) and then all the dishes that come afterwards. I change diapers only to have to change them again within a few hours. As fast as I can pick up all the toys, clothes and other stuff in our house our boys seem to make different messes just as quickly.

For the past several months my status message in GMail has said “I feel accomplished in a day if I complete one thing that won’t be undone by day’s end.” That pretty well sums up my life. To me, that’s the biggest difference between my career as a web developer and my career as a mother. As a web developer I would be presented with lots of problems – broken pages, new pages to build, typos, loading issues etc. But as soon as I solved the problem, it was done and I could move on to the next problem. The only reason I would have to revisit the same problem is if I did something to mess it up again, or if it was on a different site. As a mother I am constantly re-doing the same things, not because I did them wrong the first time, but because they are things that need to be done over and over again.

Even the things that look to others like leisure activities aren’t quite what they seem on the surface. Yeah I watch a lot of TV, but it’s mostly Super Why or Ni Hao Kai Lan that I put on for my kids so that I can try to get some dishes done without my almost one year old climbing into the dishwasher. I’m on Facebook a lot, but it’s usually because (like right now) I’m stuck at the computer with a sleeping baby in my lap that refuses to sleep on his own. I’m relatively active on Pinterest but mostly to find ways to save money, clean better, cook new things, find good educational activities for my children or generally researching how to be a better homemaker. Playdates look like fun and games, but between getting kids prepared to leave the house, behave appropriately at someone else’s house, and getting them back home (not to mention the disruption to their routine which can be very unwelcome, even with the fun of a playdate in mind) – it’s a lot more effort than you might think.

Please don’t take these comments the wrong way. I love being a mother. My life right now is completely devoted to what I consider the most important endeavor I could embark on – raising my children to be good, productive, smart, responsible members of our community. It requires long hours, patience, organization, creativity, wisdom, endurance and most importantly hard work. I wouldn’t trade it for the world, and I feel so grateful for my wonderful husband who shoulders the burden of providing financially for our family so that I am able to spend my time focused on running our household and raising our children. But just because I don’t receive a paycheck doesn’t mean what I do is any less work. Hilary, I daresay that you don’t know what it’s like to have worked a day in your life until you’ve been a stay-at-home mom.

12 April 2012
Easter Thoughts

Over the last few days I’ve been reading in our New Testament reader to Sam about the last week of our Savior’s life, His atonement and resurrection. It has given me a chance to ponder on these events for myself and think again about what Christ’s life means to me. I had one quick thought that I wanted to share.

The thing that struck me was that as Christ was on the cross he said “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do“. I’ve read that a million times but this time what stuck out to me was not just that Christ forgave the very people who were killing Him, but that He did so while they were in the very act of doing so. He didn’t wait for them to realize what they’d done wrong, or to feel any remorse. They had beaten and humiliated Him, cast lots on His clothes and nailed Him to a cross, and while they were yet reviling Him and watching Him suffer and die – He forgave them. It made me think once again that I have zero right to withhold my forgiveness from anyone. “… The Son of Man hath descended below it all, art thou greater than He?“

I know that Christ loves us. He suffered for our sins and sorrows. He died on the cross and rose again on the third day. I know He lives, and because He lives again I will be able to live again after this life too. I am forever grateful for this knowledge and love our Savior. I would invite everyone to view the video above. It’s just 7 minutes long and depicts the final week of Christ’s life and His resurrection. Just take a moment to think about what His sacrifice means to you and how you can be a better disciple of Christ. Happy Easter 🙂

8 April 2012
Thoughts from General Conference

I can’t believe that another General Conference has once again come and gone. The weekend went by far too quickly, particularly since I spent most of it sick and with a sick baby. I’m still fighting through the symptoms (although I think they’re allergy related now) and my baby still has a lot of congestion and is really cranky so it’s taken awhile for me to write up some of my thoughts from the weekend. What a blessing to be able to listen to the prophet of God and be with my family.

I think my favorite talk was Elder Holland’s talk about the parable of the vineyard. The talk immediately caught my attention because that parable had randomly been on my mind earlier in the week. I hadn’t been reading about it or studying it but for some reason it had come to my mind during the week. I’m glad that it did catch my attention because it was something I really needed to hear. Elder Holland paraphrased one of the scriptures by saying “Why should you be jealous if I choose to be kind?” It was a good reminder to me to not judge those who haven’t been fully faithful to the gospel. It doesn’t harm me at all, my blessings from living the gospel are so much greater than their perceived happiness from failing to do so. Why should I begrudge them the Lord’s mercies to regain later in life what they could have had all along? It doesn’t diminish from me at all. I always love Elder Holland’s talks, he has a way of speaking that is straightforward and deep at the same time. I always come away with something profound from his talks.

I was also very moved by Sister Julie Beck’s talk. In the Saturday afternoon session Sister Beck was released as the General Relief Society President (meaning she was in charge of the organization of the women of the church on a worldwide level, but will now be stepping down to allow someone else to fulfill that post). When she was released I turned to Eric and said, “I bet she’ll cry through her whole talk this weekend.” I was wrong. Her eyes remained dry through her talk, and I sobbed. It wasn’t so much the talk itself that touched me but reflecting on the leadership this wonderful woman has given to the church. I so admire her boldness in defending women and their roles in creating families and homes. She has helped me to gain a true vision of the power of women and the unique, divine abilities that we’ve been given. It is not a popular time to be declaring that women should be protectors of the home and doing what they can to fulfill that role, and I am so grateful for Sister Beck’s leadership in standing up and defending that order. My testimony was strengthened that the Lord sends the leaders we need in our time. I think Sister Beck was uniquely qualified to fill this role at this time and will miss having her at the helm of our Relief Society. That said, I know that Sister Linda K. Burton, who was called as the new general president of the Relief Society, is going to be marvelous and that she will bring something to the table that we need now. I hope I can grow up to be like these wonderful women.

Another talk that really touched me was Elder David F. Evans’ talk. I had been thinking just that morning that I wished I could be a better missionary. I love the gospel of Jesus Christ and want to share it with the world! However, I live in Utah, a state where the majority of citizens are already members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As a stay-at-home mom I’ve found that most of the people I know are other stay-at-home moms. Since my children aren’t of school age yet the other moms I know are the women I meet at church. So my day-to-day contact with those who don’t share my faith is extremely limited. But Elder Evans reminded me that it’s important that our missionary experiences be current. Also that just living the gospel daily is a way of sharing the gospel. I also thought of a particular friend who I felt might need some lifting up. As I was thinking of this friend Elder Evans said that when we receive promptings of people who needed a message of the gospel that we should “act without delay”. So, I stopped listening to his talk and quickly composed an email to this friend 🙂

There was another moment that really moved me. President Uchtdorf spoke on Sunday morning and as he began his talk he related that he had received a letter from a mother who told of her children who had a very strained relationship. This mother asked President Uchtdorf to talk about how they could fix their relationship during General Conference saying that she knew their relationship would be healed if he were to do so. So, President Uchtdorf did just that saying that he prayed for these siblings to be reconciled as their mom had faith they would be. I was so touched that with all the things that are going on in the world President Uchtdorf took the time to listen to the concerns of this individual mother and to pray for her children and address them in General Conference. The talk itself was wonderful as well, but the example he set of taking time for the one was more impressive to me than any of the words he said afterwards.

There were many other amazing talks, but those were my particular experiences with conference that I wanted to record and share. I’m excited to get to go back and study these talks for the next 6 months and continue to be uplifted and inspired by them.

4 April 2012
Come Listen to a Prophet’s Voice

This weekend is one of my favorite holidays – General Conference. For those of you who aren’t members of my faith let me give you a little bit of background on what this is. We believe that our religion is a restoration of the original church founded by Jesus Christ during his ministry. That church fell into apostasy (as prophesied in 2 Thessalonians 2:2-3). As the apostles died out there were none worthy to replace them and so the authority to speak and act in the name of God was taken from the earth. In 1830 our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to a young boy named Joseph Smith Jr. and restored that authority to the earth. He reorganized the church under the direction of Jesus Christ to reflect the organization that existed in Christ’s original church. In particular we believe that God speaks to prophets and apostles today just as he did in ancient times. Twice a year, in April and October, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gathers its members together for a two day conference. During this conference we are given the opportunity to listen to those who are called to be prophets and apostles today. The conference itself takes place in Salt Lake City, Utah however it is broadcast via satellite, cable, internet, radio and a host of other technologies to its over 14 million members worldwide.

I call it a holiday because during these weekends we stay home as a family to watch the conference proceedings. Generally we make fun food, stay in our pajamas and just sit around watching the TV all day. When I was younger I mostly looked forward to staying in my pajamas and not going to church on Sunday, but now I most look forward to hearing the words of God given directly for the people today. God loves the people on earth today as much as in ancient times and it only makes sense that He would give us guidance and direction as He did to those in ancient times. I’ve already started to plan some of the fun foods I want to make this weekend and put them on a Pinterest board. I’m going to try my hand at making a Blooming Onion, which I think is what I’m most looking forward to making 🙂 If that turns out good I have a feeling it’s going to be a frequent addition to our menu! Eric’s family had a tradition of each child getting to pick out 1lb of bulk candy that they got to eat during the weekend, so we’ll probably let Sam go get some candy too to continue that tradition 🙂 Eric has also borrowed an extra TV and set it up in our bedroom so we can just all snuggle in bed while we watch together. I’m excited to get to spend this weekend at home with my family enjoying some together time and listening to the words of the prophet.

If you want to hear a prophet speak today, or if you’ve ever wondered what we Mormons really believe I invite you to join us. The banner at the top of this post will direct you to a site that will give you more information. The sessions will be at 10am and 2pm MDT on Saturday and Sunday. Usually our prophet, President Thomas S. Monson, gives his keynote address (for lack of a better term) as the last address on Sunday morning, starting around 11:30am. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir usually does all of the music for that session so it’s worth tuning in for that as well 🙂 Next week I hope to post some of my thoughts from this conference as well, so stay tuned!

27 March 2012
My Thoughts on SOPA/PIPA

Since I blacked out my site today in protest of the SOPA/PIPA bills in congress right now, and spent a good amount of time today linking to related pages on the subject, I figured I ought to write my own thoughts as well. Also to give a bit of an explanation of *what* it is about these bills that is so terrible as to cause as much upheaval as it has.

First of all I feel that the most important thing for me to note is that I am VERY anti-piracy. It is my opinion that if you wouldn’t take it off the shelf at Best Buy and hide it in your backpack, you shouldn’t be pirating your friend’s copy or bit-torrenting non-free software/videos/games/music etc. I know that is an unpopular stance among my peers, but just because something is in a digital format and it is easy to steal doesn’t make it any more right to steal it.

However, even while I believe that intellectual property rights do need to be protected and that piracy needs to be addressed, the SOPA and PIPA bills that are in Congress right now are totally the wrong way to address these problems. I hope you’ll indulge me while I illustrate my oppositions with two major scenarios that this bill would make possible that should not be a reality in a free country.

Scenario 1

Suppose on an international-domain website I were to be selling t-shirts and I had a competitor t-shirt seller that had decided I was taking away too much of their business and wanted to get some of that business back. Under the laws that are being considered, all my competitor would have to do is file for an injunction that I had copyrighted material on my website that did not belong to me. Whether or not that claim was true, or even if the material in question was put up there by me (as opposed to a commenter on my website or some other 3rd party) the granted injunction would go to all US-based search engines and payment processors who would immediately be forced to sever all connections to my website completely. No chance to clear up the misunderstanding or warning to me. Now my website is down until I can go through the process of disputing that claim. This means no one can easily access my site or buy my t-shirts and my competitor is stealing all of my business. My credibility would be ruined among my customer base and my whole business is sunk. For a claim that wasn’t difficult to place, and might not even have any veracity.

Scenario 2

Sometimes I like to use Google Talk to have a video call with my parents. It’s a nice way to show off the kids and enjoy feeling close to family even though they’re 704 miles away (yes, I did just check 🙂 ). If I were to have some music playing in the background while on this call and someone were to report me for it I could face felony charges and a 5-year prison sentence. Not a misdemeanor or a speeding ticket-esque fine, felony charges. You know, like they hand out for rape, murder, grand theft auto? Somehow forgetting to turn of your stereo just doesn’t seem worthy of those consequences (even if my mom didn’t like the music I was listening to 😛 ).

Now, the writers of these bills would say “that’s not the intention of these bills” or “nothing like that would ever happen”. Which is a nice thought, but if that’s not their intention then they need to write better legislation. The whole point of laws is that they’re a contract between citizens and government that outlines the expected behavior and the consequences of not living up to that behavior. If the contract doesn’t include internet censorship, or felony charges for minor infractions, then the contract needs to be written up differently. Like I said, I’m all for intellectual property protection, but they need to do it correctly, and not by putting people in harm’s way who don’t deserve the harm.

If you agree with these sentiments and haven’t already taken action please go to http://americancensorship.org/ and contact your congress people and let them know that you do NOT support SOPA/PIPA legislation. I’d also recommend reading Eric’s post on the subject.

18 January 2012
2012 Resolutions
I know I’m a little late to be just making my New Year’s resolutions, but I’d rather make them late than not at all. The New Year itself isn’t necessarily a magical time for making goals, just a good reminder to make some and to see how you did on the ones from the year before. Sadly my resolutions from this past year never made it into blog form. Probably because we were in the middle of moving into a new house and getting settled, so I’m not going to feel too bad about it. Anyways, here are my goals for this coming year.
- Add 1 new vegetarian meal per month to our family’s meal plans – I’d really like to find ways to make our family’s meals more nutritious and less meat dependent, but I have a very difficult time finding reasonably simple, yummy looking, vegetarian recipes (any recommendations for good recipes would be VERY welcome!)
- 100% Visiting Teaching
- Attend the temple at least once a month
- Plan to have at least one couple over each month (excluding family) – Eric and I have become hermits, and while we love our hermetic life we really need to get out of our shells and have more social interaction. I exclude family from this goal because we aren’t too bad at having family over and just need to increase our interactions with those *not* related to us.
- House clean enough for company before church each Sunday – I’m an abysmal house keeper. But if I can have the house totally cleaned up at least once a week then everything else seems manageable.
So there you have it. Nothing real fancy but those are the things I would most like to accomplish this year in terms of things that are quantifiable and achievable. Ready, set, GO!
10 January 2012
Testimony

Today was our ward’s fast and testimony meeting. As I was standing bouncing our baby during the sacrament I decided that I would like to get up and bear my testimony today. However, before the sacrament ended I had to take that baby out to feed him and the line on the stand never dwindled enough for me to feel like I ought to get up. So I promised myself that I would at least come home and share my thoughts here.

December 31st marked a major milestone for me. It marked the end of the first year since 2002 that I had began and finished in the same ward. Over the previous 8 years I had been in 10.5 wards (I’m counting Eric’s BYU singles’ ward as a half since the semester we were engaged I attended with him more frequently than not, even though my records remained in my geographic ward). For me that was a very difficult thing. I like to think of myself as a friendly person, but the truth is that I am seriously shy and it takes me awhile to adjust to new situations. During those 8 years it would take me about 6 months to start to settle into a new ward. which we were then in for about 3-6 months longer before moving on again.

As I was standing in our ward’s chapel bouncing our baby I was able to look around and I realized that I actually *knew* most of the people in our ward. Not only that, but they are people that I like and feel privileged to be around. They’re the same people that I see at the park and in joy school or at the grocery store. I’ve served with them in nursery or primary or at least served with their children there. I can honestly say that I love our ward and can’t think of any place I’d rather be.

I feel so blessed to know that our Heavenly Father loves us and is watching out for what we need, and what will make us happy. When Eric and I were engaged we decided that we could live anywhere, but we really didn’t want to end up in Utah. Five years later Utah is (of course) exactly where we are and we don’t have any intention of leaving (except to go to China for awhile if the opportunity should arise 🙂 ) . I thought about some of the other plans we’ve made that I’m so glad didn’t work out for us. Growing up I was adamant that I was going to the University of Utah – but going to BYU was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. When Eric and I got married we said we were going to wait 3 years before we started to think about having children – 8 months later we’d changed our minds and less than two years later we had Sam. As we were getting ready to settle down we tried desperately to get out of Utah. When we realized we were staying we set the criteria for our house that we wanted to be close to everything – if you’ve been in our neighborhood you know that we’re far away from just about everything.

I’m so grateful for personal revelation. I’m grateful that the Lord can help us know the things that will be best for us, and not just let us have the things that we want. I’m grateful for the wonderful place that we’ve ended up. Left to our own devices there’s no way we would have chosen the place we did, but we couldn’t be happier with it.

I know that our Heavenly Father loves us and is watching over us. I know that He hears and answers our prayers and that if we follow his guidance and commandments He will lead us to the best situations for us. I know that the gospel taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true. I’m so grateful for it in my life.

9 January 2012
Choose Your Love, Love Your Choice

Today in Relief Society we had a lesson on Eternal Marriage. I love talking about this topic in the church because marriage is something that I think is often misconstrued in the media and the world. Our marriage relationships are of utmost importance and maintaining them is by far one of the most important things we will do in this life. I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, and not all of them necessarily connected to the lesson we had today. This post is actually one that I started back in April but I finally decided to get it posted today. I had some other thoughts that I’d like to put together on other marriage related topics, but I think for now this will suffice.

In last April General Conference I was listening to the Priesthood session and was struck by President Monson‘s talk. President Monson said that the saddest part of his week was reviewing the cancellations of temple marriages. His remark was that most of those marriages didn’t have to end that way. He had two thoughts that I thought were particularly poignant “Choose your love, love your choice” and “Commitment in marriage is absolutely essential”.

For those of you who know the story of how Eric and I got together, you might be surprised to find out that neither of us believe in “the one”. Meaning, neither of us believe that there is that one and only person out there that you are destined to be with and can’t be happy with anyone else. Now, this might be surprising because the short version of our story is this – Eric asked me on a date on Sunday, we decided to start dating on Thursday, we went on that date on Friday (no I don’t have those two out of order), I met some of his family on Sunday, he met my dad on Friday, he asked me to marry him on Sunday, we were married 6 months later and we’ve been happily married now for 4+ years. So, the question that begs to be answered is how do you decide to marry someone after just 9 days of dating them without feeling like you have an unshakable conviction that they are “the one”? Easy, after 9 days we knew each other well enough to know that we loved each other and we were willing to do whatever it took to make it work.

If you watch Disney movies or any chick flicks you will see lots of examples of people having these “fairy tale” romances, where they find this perfect person and when the movie ends you are left to believe that “they all lived happily ever after.” While that’s a nice thought, I believe there’s no such thing as “happily ever after”. What comes in the “after” is lots of work. Good work, enjoyable times, love, laughter and LOTS of good things, but work. Marriage is not, nor was it ever meant to be, sunshine and rainbows and romance. What I’ve come to realize is that the most important element in a marriage is not that fluttery feeling when you look into each others eyes, but it’s the commitment that you made to weather any storm together that you made on your wedding day. Quite frankly, it doesn’t even matter if you don’t even like your spouse in a particular moment, the important thing is that you committed to one another that you would love them and work together with them no matter what. Love is an expression of caring for another person above yourself and you can do that even if you don’t like the person at the time. Of course, it is best if you can like your spouse as well, and a lot of that comes down to attitude. Obviously, there were lots of things you liked about your spouse when you married them, and it’s important to focus on those things that you do like rather than letting temporary annoyances get in the way.

I want to close this post with an awesome quote from Dallin H. Oaks’ talk from April 2007 conference. He says simply pretty much what I wanted to say:

“In all of this, we should realize that a good marriage does not require a perfect man or a perfect woman. It only requires a man and a woman committed to strive together toward perfection. President Spencer W. Kimball taught: ‘Two individuals approaching the marriage altar must realize that to attain the happy marriage which they hope for they must know that marriage . . . means sacrifice, sharing, and even a reduction of some personal liberties. It means long, hard economizing. It means children who bring with them financial burdens, service burdens, care and worry burdens; but also it means the deepest and sweetest emotions of all’ (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball [2006], 194).”

23 October 2011
Quiet Books Anyone?
So I’m thinking of starting a project for a Christmas present for Daniel. I want to make him a quiet book for church. I’m thinking though to keep the project a little bit easier I would see if anyone else wanted to do it with me. If you’re interested here’s how I’m thinking it would work –

Each person will make two pages. I’ll buy fabric for each person’s pages this week and get it cut to the right dimensions and distributed to whoever is interested. Then each person duplicates their pages 16 times (assuming there are 16 people who want to participate) and returns their completed pages to me. I will then redistribute the pages so that each person gets 16 full spread pages, or 32 pages for their quiet book! Then all you need to do is sew a cover for your book, sew the pages together and sew the pages into it and you’re done!

I’ve even already found a bunch of great ideas for quiet book pages so you don’t have to come up with your own ideas, just make some pages! Here are some of the ideas I’ve found –
If I get enough people who are interested by this weekend then I can get the flannel while it’s on sale and it would only cost each person <$5 for the pages themselves plus whatever you spend on buttons, felt pieces etc to finish off your pages. Ideally I think I’d like to find 16 people who are interested since that makes the fabric buying easy. Here’s the guidelines I’ve come up with (although I’m open to suggestions depending on what people would like to do):
- Each person will get page spreads that are 10.5″x16″ to work with, please make your page spread include two separate pages that don’t need to be facing one another (i.e. You will need to split up your spread into two 10.5″x 8″ pages, but those pages might be pages 1 and 32, or 7 and 25 depending on how the pages get sewn together)
- Leave at least a 1 inch margin in the center of the spread (dividing the pages) to ensure enough space to sew the pages together and onto the cover
- Leave at least 1/2 inch on the edges of your pages to allow space for binding
- All pages should be returned to me for assembly no later than December 1st
- Each page should have some sort of interactive element – i.e. buttons, snaps, velcro, shoelaces etc.
- Ideally it’d be nice if each page was gospel themed in some way. It doesn’t have to be real specific, but like there was one page I saw that had roads and a car, if the destination was like from home to church or the temple that’d be nice, or even something simple like adding the words “I’m grateful for seasons” on the top of a seasons page. I figure these will mostly be used at church so keeping a gospel theme would be nice 🙂
- Each person will be responsible for making their own cover so feel free to do whatever you’d like!
If you’re interested just leave a comment. So far there’s at least two people planning on participating (my sister Taylor already said she wanted in). If you even know what you want to do for your pages then post that too (I want to make sure we don’t end up with duplicate pages!). Also, if you want a different color flannel for the background of your pages then go to this page and tell me which of those colors you’d like to use, otherwise I’ll just plan on getting something basic like white or cream, or maybe black or brown for the pages (let me know if you have an opinion on that too!) Any other questions, comments, suggestions – leave them below!
18 October 2011
Mint.com

My dad is a CPA, as such he taught me early on the importance of tracking your spending and reconciling all of your credit card statements etc. He and my mom always used Quicken to track all of their spending. I remember every month when my mom would get have to go through and make sure they had entered all of their transactions and reconcile their credit card bills. So, when I got old enough to have my own computer it also came with a copy of Quicken and I started to track my own finances as well. I think i did pretty well through at least the first few years of college, and then when Eric and I got married I kept meaning to get us all set up with Quicken and never did.

Finally, after we’d been married for about a year I went online to see if I could get an updated version of Quicken. It seemed like in the 5 years since I’d first installed Quicken there was probably a version that at least ran faster. I was in for a surprise! Not only did they have newer versions of Quicken, but they had an online version that could be used for free! Since I’m a big fan of things that are online and free, and Quicken is a brand that I trust I decided to check it out. I fell in love. All I had to do was enter in credentials for our various bank accounts, 401ks, credit cards etc. and all of my transactions were imported instantly. No more reconciling statements, my statements were imported, and categorized automatically! I was thrilled.

Within a few months Quicken bought out a company called Mint.com and started having them take over their online financial tracking solution. What was already awesome got even better, better budget tracking, setting up goals, better algorithms for automatically categorizing transactions etc. I immediately started telling my family that they needed to get set up with Mint.com. My brother and sister did so and also loved what they found. I actually thought that my mom had switched over to Mint from their desktop Quicken solution until a few weeks ago. I had spouted off to her many many times about how much I loved Mint and how wonderful it was, but apparently she hadn’t entirely believed me. A couple weeks ago my mom called me up and said “Why didn’t you tell me how easy and useful Mint is?!?” The answer was… I had 🙂 She had fallen behind on their Quicken tracking and it was time to either start over with Quicken or switch to Mint. She decided to give Mint a try and was instantly hooked. She had it all set up in less than an hour and was able to look at their budget in a whole new way!

So why do I love Mint so much? Here’s a basic overview of what Mint can do:

Spending Trends – Have you ever looked at your bank balances and wondered where all of your money went? Mint provides easy to read graphs that break down how your money is being spent. When I first got this set up I was shocked to see that we had spent over $400 one month on eating out. Granted I was working full time and pregnant and sick with Sam at the time, but I was appalled to see how the nights that I hadn’t felt up to cooking added up.

Budgeting – So, now you know how much you spend, how to fix places where you’re spending too much? Mint makes it really easy to set up a budget and stick to it. They even suggest amounts based on your current spending so you don’t have to guess what a reasonable amount is. You can set up budgets that occur every month, or on any sort of schedule during the year. You can set up your budgets to roll over each month or not. They also keep track of whether your budget amounts exceed your monthly income. Plus you can set up your account to email or text you if you go over budget in any category.

Goals – We all have financial goals. Whether it’s paying off credit cards, saving for a house or building up your emergency fund there’s something that you want to do with your money. Mint makes it super easy to track these goals and help you make a plan to achieve them. Just decide what kind of goal you have, pick an account to associate it with and then make the plan. Mint will help you decide how much you need to budget each month to achieve your goal and tell you if you fall off track.

Another reason I use Mint is it helps me detect any fraudulent charges on my accounts. Back in February I was going through our accounts and noticed a charge from Match.com – which obviously if either Eric or I were signing up for was a bit of a problem. Someone had gotten a hold of our credit card numbers and was making charges to fake companies. They weren’t huge charges though so if I hadn’t been paying attention I probably wouldn’t have noticed $30 here and $15 there. But because I was watching we were able to put a stop to those charges before they escalated.

One of the major questions I had when I first found Mint is how are they making money off of this? Nothing on the internet is truly free, someone is paying for it somewhere, and before handing my financial information over to someone I wanted to know what the “catch” was. Mint makes it’s money through targeted advertising. They’ll notice if you have an old 401k account that’s charging you maintenance fees an make a suggestion for another company that won’t charge you fees. Or if you’re spending a lot in a particular category they might recommend a credit card that gives you higher rewards for purchases in that category. And of course, they’ll suggest using TurboTax when tax season comes around.

I could go on and on, I love reading their financial blog, their customer service is pretty darn good and they email me a summary of my accounts every week! But really, for you to understand how awesome it is, you’re just going to have to try it for yourself 🙂

15 September 2011
Leftover Awareness Month
So I got this idea when I used to follow the $5 dinner blog. Every so often I have what I call “Leftover Awareness Month” (she calls it “Pantry Challenge”). Basically the idea is for a month (although sometimes just a week) I try to eat only what we have in the house and go to the grocery store as little as possible. I decided to do it again this month for a few reasons:
1. Next month here in Utah we have lots of case lot sales and I want to have some extra space in my budget and my kitchen to take advantage of those sales to build up our food storage.
2. Our freezer and pantry were getting seriously overloaded with random stuff. I sometimes end up buying random things at the grocery store that never get used so this is a good chance to force myself to use them.
3. I’ve been analyzing our budget and noticing that we were spending more money each month on food than I had expected. I was trying to figure out where the extra money was going and we noticed that we were throwing away too much food because our leftovers would go bad before getting eaten. So we wanted to focus on making sure we go through all of our leftovers.
So, this month my personal challenge is to make our meals as much as possible from food already in my home. I’m going to the store for things like milk, bread and produce but the basis of our meals must come from things that we had in our pantry or freezer. Since I’m finding things in our pantry and freezer that have gone through 6 moves with us I think it was probably time…

Anyone care to join us in cleaning out the pantry?
8 September 2011
Amazon Mom

Last night we had a little baby shower for my niece (yes, somehow I’m old enough to have a niece old enough to be a mom, weird huh?). While we were there I let her in on the secret of Amazon Mom. One of my sisters-in-law was so sad that I hadn’t told her about this sooner that I decided it ought to be my first “Smarter not Harder” post. Here’s the secret – if you go to Amazon.com and go to their Amazon Mom page (or just click on the banner at the top of this post) you can sign up to have diapers auto delivered to your house, at a price cheaper than I’ve seen in any store. Plus you get Amazon Prime benefits (i.e. Free 2 day shipping) for one year after you start your membership. It doesn’t cost anything to join, they won’t auto-enroll you in an Amazon Prime membership at the end of your year or anything like that. You just order the kind of diapers that you want and they deliver them to your home. For me I’m signed up to get two boxes of Daniel’s diapers (Pampers Swaddlers Diapers Big Pack Size 1 92 Count – $17.14/19 cents per diaper) every month, and 1 box of Sam’s diapers (Pampers Baby Dry Size 4 Diapers Economy Pack Plus 192 Count – $30.73/$0.16 per diaper) every other month. You get a 15% discount for enrolling in Amazon Mom, and another 15% discount for signing up for their auto-ship program. If you don’t like it you can even cancel the auto-ship immediately after ordering. It’s awesome, not only for the savings, but also because I never run out of diapers and I never have to sit at the store wondering if we have enough diapers to make it until our next Costco run 🙂

Anyways, that’s my cool trick of the day. If you have a child in diapers you really ought to be signed up for Amazon Mom. It’s way less hassle than couponing, and from what I’ve seen couponing doesn’t give you nearly the savings that this does. Oh, and did I mention they deliver the diapers to your house?! It doesn’t get much better than that!

2 September 2011