Nikki
Amazon
On Blogging
I’m dedicated, however slowly, to a few blogs that I love. I feel as though I know the writers personally and like I’m looking in through a window on their lives. This idea draws me in two very different directions – are blogs reducing and/or changing the ways in which we engage with others or are the allowing technology to reduce geographic challenges? and – I would like to create that sort of environment for friends and family we don’t see often to keep up with us (other than just through pictures on Ben’s site).
So, is this a good format to engage? If so, what would you like to know about? Daily activities, struggles, what direction our family is headed, something else entirely?
Goals Update
It’s been a while, and Casey and Ben have been keeping us very busy. They’re fabulous, and exhausting! I did draft a post late March, but I just found it today, so I thought I’d start over and give the whole big update.
– finish the guest room
I think it’s gotten more junk in it recently, but we’ll get there. The new throw pillows for the couch are on the bed, waiting on the seam of one to be fixed, the mirror for the new dresser in our room is waiting to be installed, and then there’s a pile of boxes that are empty and a pile waiting to go into the attic. Sometime in the next few weeks, I’ll change Ben’s clothes out and the pile to go to the attic will move out. Maybe I’ll get sewing stuff out at some point and fix the pillow, hem the couple of pair of pants, and such that needs. As for the lamps and the picture… no progress. I’m still hopeful for having this back as a functional guest room by the end of the year. The pile of boxes of hand-me-down items are also in need of going through and finding homes. I don’t want to talk about that though.
– learn to coupon
I don’t regularly get the paper, but I do pay attention online to grocery sale ads and when the coupons in the paper are extra good, so I can pick them up. I have learned several things though, such as, we’re a couple of brand specific people, the things we buy most, we like in our brand of choice, so couponing is a challenge. Also, buying brands just because they have coupons and not because that brand is your favorite is dumb, i.e. diapers. I did some math a couple of months ago, tried some different store brands (after determining that my preference between huggies and pampers depended on where Ben was in growth related to the size of the diaper) and decided that I like target brand diapers just as well as any, and when not on sale, they’re the cheapest. Unlike many store brands, they do go on sale, and I get 5% back when I buy them online with my debit card (which I now do, unless, like last week, I can get 10% back on a store gift card). So, I have definitely learned about couponing and shopping sale ads, including when to forget it and buy the store brand instead. Also, when I buy formula, wipes, and diapers online, I do get about $10 back a month, so I consider this a success!
-find a church
This is a hard one for us. It’s hard because we like to hang around in our pjs on the weekend and because it’s hard to get a puppy out, exercised, fed, and back in her crate, while trying to get two adults and an infant presentable, fed, and ready to leave the house. Also, this is just a hard thing to find a good fit on. All of that, combined with our goal of listing our house in March to transplant across town (closer to Adam’s work), means that this is even harder. We did actually talk about it some this weekend and since we were able to, without hurry or stress, leave the house by 9am on Sunday, we’re planning to start looking for churches near our hopefully new side of town (so we don’t have to do it twice, and because we’ve had no luck on our attempts on our current side of town).
-lose the baby weight
Done. By the grace of God alone, I managed to fit back into most of my pants when Ben was about a month old, and about the time he was 10 weeks old, I finally lost those last few pesky pounds. My new goal is to hit and maintain my end of first trimester weight (which, yes, is lower than my pre-pregnancy weight – thank you lots of puking, not). I’ve hit it a few times, but maintaining it is a different story. It would be helpful if I’d jump on the treadmill more than once a week. My current goal is twice, then I’ll work back up to three times a week. August wasn’t a nice month to my schedule, but September is looking up.
So, only a few months left, combined with several holidays, birthdays, and too much else I’m sure. We’ll make more progress, and hopefully I’ll finish the guest room at least. It’ll be one less thing to do before the March listing date.
Goal Progress: May 12
Here is the quick and easy progress report:
The CNC Router and finding a church projects have fallen down, and they can’t get up.
I ran most of a 5k about a month ago. My overall time was about the same as my training run speed. I walked a lot of it, so that means that I ran faster than I thought. Big thanks to my brother in law Andy for running with me!
As for the Internet marketing… Well I had a great April. I made a little over $250 total across all my sites! Most of that was due to a how-to I wrote on my main site. It was a really good feeling seeing those commission reports.
Now I just need to do it harder 😀
Goal Progress: March 11
Full Stop.
Well, not full stop. I’m still running. Kinda.
Our son was born on March 1st. Since then, it’s been a little….hectic.
The CNC router has had absolutely no progress in the last two months. We haven’t even thought about churches since we went to that Nazarene one back in February. I’m still trying to train for a 5k, but missed about a week and I can’t get to the end of the training run without hitting my maximum heart rate, so I have to stop early.
And see how I stopped updating this blog? The other ones are worse. I think I made $8 in February across all my sites.
I’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there.
However.
My son is about the coolest thing in the world.
So, after the showers were over there were still several many things that we wanted or needed before the baby arrived, so we added more things to the registry (like the rest of the furniture we wanted, because we had a 10% off registry completion coupon) and went. We did buy the dresser and a chest of drawers that day, so that’s added in the total, but it started at $770, YIKES!! Luckily my math said we’d spend at least 700, so this wasn’t too shocking (the worst/best part – we didn’t have anything over $30 in our buggy, aside from the furniture – it was literally a ton of smaller stuff). Then I handed over my coupons totaling $60!!! ($42.90 for registry completion, and another $17.99 in manufactures/store coupons on specific items) Then I handed over my several gift cards (thank you friends and family!) and cash (we did some minimal grocery/other shopping while we were there and paid cash for that $40 worth of stuff) and the total came to right under $550.
The best part? That was Saturday…on Sunday, there was a lovely sale paper, as usual. The loveliest/worst part? The dresser and chest we’d just bought the day before were in it for a total of $50 less than we paid for it. I went in, while the ad was still good, and asked for a price adjustment. With just my receipt in hand, I was given a gift card for the difference (I could have gotten part back on my card and part back on a gift card, but I was already planning $30+ in purchases, and expecting to spend most, if not all, of the $50). Thank you Target for making it that easy! So, the total of the trip was only $500! AND we got a dresser and a chest of drawers, which accounts for over half of the total we paid! After that, and a minor (less than $80) amazon shopping trip (with our 10% registry completion on amazon items coupon), we were ready for the baby to come (as far as the stuff is concerned at least). We won’t discuss the process that was putting the dresser together (or that the chest of drawers is still in the box behind the door). We’ll just say that the dresser is a great size, we’re happy with it, and it’s already full (aka why we also got the chest of drawers).
Note – This does not count towards my coupon goal, but as it is related, I’m still excited about it. Also, neither target nor amazon did anything to get mentioned in post, aside from providing us registry completion coupons, just like the do everyone else with a registry.
Goal Progress, Month 2
In case you spied the January pt 1 on my last update, I had the best of intentions of updating progress twice a month…oops. Things got busy, or stayed that way, and I didn’t. Now that it’s 6 weeks later, I’m going to make my new goal once a month and if I can easily make that happen, perhaps updates will become more frequent.
Guest Room – all most of the extra stuff is out, except for a bag of back up Casey amusements for the dog sitter and a late birthday present for the baby nephew, oh and 3 boxes and a basket of magazines, but all of it is much more out of the way than the packing for brunch/shower or packing for the hospital stuff (which is now out of the way) was.
Learn to coupon – I’ve continued to use coupons each week. I had $3.65 last week, and only spend $60 on the trip (aka didn’t buy a whole lot). I still need to blog about my shockingly awesome couponing trip – where we bought one of everything in Target’s baby section and them some (or at least it felt that way).
Find a church – we went to one. We decided which one to go to next, as the first wasn’t quite it. We appreciate that we have friends there, but it’s more Nazarene (not that there’s anything wrong with that, we had a Nazarene wedding) than community (which is really what we’re looking for). Now, to get to the second one…
Lose the baby weight – still gaining…just made cookies because I wanted to eat cookie dough…oh well. I haven’t had any cravings like I’ve heard others describe (of the “someone’s going to pay if I don’t get x” variety), just my normal stuff…chocolate, cookie dough, ice cream, and at the normal capacity really.
I’m progressing on all 4 counts for now! Better than half at the last update! (yes, I count still gaining baby weight as progress, since the baby isn’t born yet, it’s just what I’m supposed to be doing.)
Blogging for work
Oh hi!
CNC Router
I got the x and y axes built on January 15th, but I haven’t touched it since
Affiliate Website
Bad news. I made a concerted effort to promote several products as an Amazon Affiliate. Like, I’m really proud how much work I did. I even got linked by much bigger blogs a couple of times and my traffic was about double my normal weekly traffic.
I made $2. In the last two weeks. Suck.
I’m not really sure what to do about that. That was pretty much the perfect storm and it totally cratered.
Run a 5k
I did a couple of things toward this in the last two weeks. First, I bought a ru, running shirt. I also increased the distance that Casey and I walk by another 600m, bringing to total to a little over 4km. I also tested out a Couch to 5k app on my phone just to see what it would do. The dry run worked out pretty well and I plan on taking my first run this afternoon.
Finding a church
On January 22, we went to church with some friends of ours. The church bills itself as a community church based on the Nazarenes, but we walked away feeling like we had just attended a service at any Nazarene church. It’s not really our style, but at least we made an effort.
This week, we were planning on attending a church that is within walking distance to our house. Unfortunately, we had a family emergency that took precedence. We’ll get back on that next week.