My Chaotic Home

It Never Fails

2012-01-27T19:53:00.000-05:00

We may be destined to never ever catch a break. If you're a regular reader (love you guys!!), then you know how excited I've been that our tax refund is being processed and will be here between the Feb 1 and 7. I've been budgeting where that money is going to go so none of it gets blown, and also our regular paycheck budget. While we wouldn't be debt free this year, we'd be a lot closer... but.

How I do our budget in 2012

2012-01-25T05:46:00.002-05:00

(Sorry if you got an alert on this posting earlier, I forgot the pictures, doh! ) I've done several posts on budgeting, probably most of them have been on how bad I am at sticking to one! I've made a really nice budget book I was so proud of, and hoped that it looking nice would encourage me to use it and actually stick to it. Yeah that didn't happen. Oh it did at first, but we were never able

Actually excited about money!

2012-01-25T03:54:00.000-05:00

Hello y'all! I have filed our tax return online already and the IRS site says we'll have our refund (over $3000 yipee!) back by Feb 7th. I was kinda bummed cause the H&R Block calendar said if I got it in by the 25th, I should get the refund by Feb 1st... but whatever, it's ok. Still really quick. so I'm happy. The very first thing we're doing with the money is putting $500 of it into the

And now this...

2012-01-17T22:47:00.002-05:00

I hope I don't get into trouble for posting this on Blogger... but that's kind of the point of it really. I work on the internet and I know if certain laws were to take effect, my job may be gone forever. Besides that, I am very pro freedom. So, please go to this site: http://sopastrike.com/ and just take a look and maybe read up on stuff if you don't know what it's all about. This blog

Free Organizing Book from Amazon! (legit)

2012-01-17T07:38:00.000-05:00

I saw this posted by my cousin on Facebook and checked it out. I did indeed get the free book, and it looks like a really good one. We all love organizing books, and this one won't add to the clutter yay! http://www.southernsavers.com/2012/01/free-kindle-book-organized-simplicity/ I love Southern Savers too and get their emails myself. So, I don't mind linking to their site, so they get the

Insanity! I rearranged the KITCHEN

2012-01-17T06:42:00.001-05:00

To be honest, I really did it at first out of curiosity, but then it was kind of cool, and by the time I was done, I loved it. I didn't get before pics of course, but here's some old ones that basically show where everything used to be. The sideboard - this doesn't show nearly as much stuff as eventually ended up on it. See the ugly deep freezer with the tablecloth hiding it. Also see the

Got the Fake Slim Fasts, and Winter is Here!

2012-01-13T00:57:00.000-05:00

So, I really did get up early today and go run errands on Christopher's lunch break. I didn't get to bed til after 9am and got up at 1:00pm when he called. I felt bad not doing my makeup and dressing better than I did, but at least I wasn't going into his store, just Walmart and a thrift store or grocery store. So, I got 4 boxes of there: I really do hate shopping at WalMart, but KMart doesn't

More on those 2012 Goals

2012-01-12T03:34:00.000-05:00

I apparently missed some emails or something because I did not realize I had so many comments on my Goals for 2012 post, a couple posts back. I appreciate y'all so much and am touched that people out there in blog land are concerned I may have too much on my plate. Lord I don't know if I'd know how to act if I didn't have too much on my plate. It's just kind of what life is like around here.

2012 Goal number 12. Weight Loss

2012-01-11T23:44:00.000-05:00

Ok, since I promised y'all I was gonna keep it real on here, there is no need hiding numbers. When we got our new scales around Christmas time, we all weighed ourselves that day. I was 237.2 lbs. I have been keeping track of my weight though not actively trying to lose currently. During the week that we were low on groceries in the house, I got down to 231.4. After Christopher got more milk

My Goals For 2012

2012-01-05T02:03:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone!! I've gained some more followers! How cool is that?! HI NEW PEOPLE!! Ok, so the thing going around Blogville right now is "To Do" lists for 2012. And I can't help it, if I see a bandwagon, I feel the urge to jump on. Besides, it'll be nice to link back to this throughout the year and see how good or how badly I did. THINK POSITIVE!! These are not really in any order, just

Campbell Family Christmas

2011-12-28T22:17:00.000-05:00

My nephew got the photos from his camera (which is uber nice by the way) and sent me this one on FB. (I'll add more if/when he posts any more.) I even don't hate how I look in it! WOOHOO!

Photos from Christmas

2011-12-28T06:56:00.000-05:00

Hey y'all! I was looking at the stats for the site and I got tons of hits on Dec 26th. What's up with that? Anyway, I promised y'all pics of my tree like forever ago, and I Took Some! *gasp* Also got some pics from our family gift exchange on Christmas eve as well as the extended family on Christmas day. There are pics out there somewhere of the big get together we had with my side of the

Concert and parade pics and deciding not to let anything get to me til January.

2011-12-20T02:48:00.000-05:00

Hello all you lovely people who come here and read my blog! If you follow me on Facebook ( http://www.facebook.com/pattycampbell ), then you may have already seen these photos plus many others. But I'm posting here for all to see. Nothing major, but I'm proud of my girls and I'm gonna show 'em off! Also, finances remain less than perfect, but we've decided to do whatever it takes to make

Inspired to not let my Failure get me down.

2011-12-08T03:56:00.001-05:00

Tonight I had a couple minutes to just browse my blogger dashboard, and I came across this post. In it, she says she'd been a failure at something she'd planned on kicking its butt in December. But she didn't. Just like I did with our finances this month. She wrote the word FAILURE in her daily journal, then at the prompting of a friend, wrote GRACE all over it in red. I can get a feeling of how

Budget goof, bad spending habits are hard to break.

2011-12-06T00:35:00.000-05:00

Hey y'all. So we stuck the budget very well for the first month. However, December is already messed up, and we've gotten a ton of overdraft fees due to sheer stupidity really. I KNEW there wasn't any room in the budget for extra shopping out of this check. We'd done too much extra shopping last paycheck, which had to be compensated for this time, which meant we had to stop the extras... well

Our living room and Thanksgiving spread.

2011-11-24T22:37:00.000-05:00

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. If you're going shopping tonight or early in the morning, be careful and have fun! I finally have taken pics of my living room after having moved stuff around AGAIN and also of our Thanksgiving meal. If you remember, we pulled up our carpet back in August, and planned on getting tiles as we could afford them to finish the new flooring, but life

Happy Thanksgiving!!

2011-11-24T02:05:00.000-05:00

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday with friends and family and lots of great food, maybe followed by football and shopping! Sorry I've not posted photos, I'm such a bad blogger. We moved things again! LOL We decided for the big holiday meals, we needed the bigger dining table back in the living area, so we moved the round table to my bedroom as my desk and moved the big table back out there.

The budget is working!

2011-11-15T02:48:00.000-05:00

My gosh you guys!!! We're sticking to this budget and this spreadsheet is making it SO easy to use and tweak. it's even fun to move around things to make it all fit like a jigsaw puzzle. This week we have two paychecks, mine on the 15th and my husband's this weekend. Then we don't get more paychecks for 2 weeks, so it's a good time to get it right. The one for my check is about all checked

Rearranging, Menu Planning, and Squeezing the Budget

2011-11-10T01:42:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone! It's been a MUCH better week around this chaotic home. I worked and worked the budget and planned when we'd pay what and how much. Like I had a budget of $103 for groceries and I hit it right on the nose. Yay for menu planning, making a good list and cell phones with calculators! Also, I knew we'd have overdraft fees, but I made sure we controlled what went to overdraft by when

No Place to Go, But UP

2011-11-02T03:06:00.000-04:00

As I posted earlier, we were informed that our only good working vehicle (and only one we actually make payments on) was going to be repossessed. This was right on the heels of finding out our stuff in the storage unit we'd been renting and were 3 months behind on rent for ... was sold. Other recent happenings were: I found out a storage tub that was supposed to go to the storage unit, but it

Something Good

2011-11-01T02:12:00.000-04:00

My recent posts have been pretty big downers I know. But I felt like I wanted to share a happy thing that's happened too. Well, happy for me anyway. My Mother In law asked us this last week, which pieces of furniture we'd like. She said she wasn't being morbid and listing things for after her death or anything... turns out her husband is tired of so much stuff in the house and has decided her

Ok, NOW we've hit rock bottom.

2011-10-31T17:46:00.001-04:00

As lasting repurcussions from my being in charge of the money while in my *down* period (which of course means not giving a damn if bills get paid)... we've lost everything in our storage building. They auctioned it off and we didn't find out til I finally called after coming to my senses to tell him I'd be in to pay the late amount Then today, I got a weird text from the guy who sold us the

First Few Days of Giving Up Financial Control, Grocery List, and Menu

2011-10-29T03:52:00.000-04:00

So yeah it's been a few days since I handed over all my debit cards and the check book. Poor Christopher. He didn't know where to start. He went online to find budget software and tried Mint, but ran into the same problem I did. Mint has no clue what our bank is. So no good there. Besides I don't like entering all that information on another company's servers. He found another simple budget

It's Alive! It's Alive!

2011-10-24T23:23:00.000-04:00

So, yeah. Here I am. Still breathing, still living day to day. Those of you who have been with me and my blog for a while probably know that when I disappear for a while, it's either due to illness (like the flu) or depression. This time it's been a bit of both. My house is a total disaster area... well... ok maybe not ALL of it... mostly just my bedroom. We do tend to get and keep the

I'm still around

2011-09-25T15:29:00.000-04:00

Hello all! I want to thank everyone for being awesome! I have gotten such great comments and emails asking how I am and saying they missed my posts. Y'all have no idea how awesome that is. Thank so much! I have been sick and my sleep schedule got all screwed up. It started with a day of jury duty that lasted from 8:45am til 9:30pm and then had to go back at 8:30 the next morning. I ended up