New Goal: Saving Money

In general I am a thrifty person- I pride myself on my ability to find great deals on things.  I never pay full price!  But, that doesn't mean I still don't spend.  I just tend to get more for my money.  I've decided that I need to try to curb that spending for the next couple of weeks in preparation for the holidays!  I know I will be going out more, buying gifts etc, so my goal is to save as much money as possible and or make some extra cash.

Here is my plan:

1.  Keep posting on my blog- as when people visit and check out the ads I make a small commission.

2.  Collect all my spare change and cash it in to coinstar for Amazon.com gift cards or something similar.

3.  Sort through my clothing and sell things I don't wear that are in good condition to either Clothes Mentor (Plato's Closet for adults) or consign them.  - Please let me know of any good consignment shops in the area.

4.  Use coupons, shop for groceries, and avoid the fast food places.

5.  Avoid going to the mall.

6.  Use ebates.com when shopping online so that I can earn cash back on everything I spend! Seriously, I was dubious at first but all you have to do is sign up and use their site as a portal to all the normal places you shop online (Old Navy, Shutterfly, Macy's, Groupon etc) and they give you a percentage back in the form of a check every 3 months.  My first check from them was less than 10 dollars, but I don't do a lot of online shopping.  I do have plans to order some gifts from Shutterfly though so Ca-Ching, it will be a little more money in my pocket.

What are your best money saving/making tips? Oh- and help me out- visit one of the ads!

March- My Goal Progress

First of all I must apologize, I never fully recapped my February of happiness.  So I'll leave you with this there were only 7 or 9 days that I didn't do anything outside of work or hanging alone that I didn't do anything the entire month.  Some days I did two or three things.  I found myself quite happy at the end of the month- and am still writing down what makes me happy every single day. 

This brings us back to my March goal of preparing for Job Search 2011.  Today I decided I had to stop postponing things and requested letters of reference from a ton of people I work with.  I'm still at a loss as to what to do about my cover letter and resume.  I need a basic body for my cover letter that can be tweaked if there are any major differences in my job.  But how do I show how AWESOME I am at teaching in a short letter or on a one page resume?  Is it possible?  I know I'm good, great even.  I LOVE teaching, it's important to me, and I cannot wait to find myself in front of my own classroom again getting kids to learn and maybe even like literature- from the classics to new inspiring young adult lit. 

It's been hard to be inspired about teaching as I keep hearing acquaintances, some friends, and the media talk about teachers in a somewhat negative way.  There are perks to being a teacher too- but there is a lot of things that we do that no one ever recognizes.  The extra hours before and after school, the original worksheets and assignments that we create specifically for classes, the hours and hours of grading on the weekends, the money we spend so that our students have pens, pencils, and paper.  The general public doesn't know that even when I'm sitting on my couch watching The Office, I'm also googling lesson ideas, printing out worksheets, researching teaching methods and more.  At my current job I get spit on, cussed at, and am at risk of injury daily.  In fact one of my coworkers recently got a concussion.  This isn't to complain- I like my job a lot, it's to point out that we go through a lot more than people realize, and I think deserve to be treated with a bit more respect because we are well educated professionals, just like private sector employees. 

Anyone with any ideas on how to translate my passion into words and put it into a cover letter please let me know.  Even as an English teacher I sometimes struggle with finding the right words to get my point across. 

Are you searching for a job too?  Any tips or tricks?

March- A New Month, A New Goal

I will do a final recap of my February goal soon, but today is the first day of March so I feel the need to get a new goal down in writing. 

While at work today I thought about this a lot... what do I need to change in my life.  I came up with several thing I think I could work on, but I think some are more pressing than others.  So here is my goal for March:

Prepare for Job Search 2011

Unfortunately this has to be a more serious goal than perhaps my last two have been.  Yet the reality is my job is in jeopardy for next year, and right around now is when job postings start popping up for area school districts, and I have to be ready.  I'm tired of searching for a new job every spring.  I graduated college five years ago, and this certainly isn't where I thought I'd be career wise.  So this time I'm coming out "guns blazing."  I'm starting from scratch. 

Instead of just updating my resume I'm redoing it now.  After last year and this year's positions I have a lot more real world experience to highlight.  I'm rewriting my cover letter from scratch. (Does anyone else find cover letters super awkward?)  I'm creating a website that highlights my experiences and skills as a teacher- an online portfolio if you will. 

I know that I am good at what I do.  Now I just have to convince everyone else of this.  If any of you have creative ideas to make me stand out from the crowd please let me know.  Any tips, tricks, and suggestions are very very welcome!

Do you have your dream job?  If so how did you find it?

Flowers Make Me Happy

 

Flowers, in my favorite color, definitely make me happy.  As did the great company and live music that followed.  

Being happy is proving to be pretty easy this February!

Sara Dating Tip for Men: Flowers while not necessary are ALWAYS appreciated by a woman and may just win you some bonus points!

Be Happy: It's working

Update:
2/3 shopping and dinner with my mom
2/5 "Dress Up Your Heart" cocktail party and fashion show at Around the Corner
2/6 Superbowl at my parents
2/8 Dinner at my girlfriend's with her and her daughter
2/9 Made dinner with a friend and watched a movie at their place
2/10 Happy hour at Cleats in Parma
2/11 Happy hour at The Winking Lizard in Lakewood
2/11 VIP Party at Spin Bike Shop in Lakewood
2/12 Breakfast with my mom at Diana's in Lakewood
2/16 Middle School Basketball game with former coworker
2/16 1.77 mile walk with good friend R and her puppy
2/17 Happy Hour at the Ice House in Parma with coworkers (Review coming soon!)

And with 10 days left in the Month I've reached my goal.  I'd like to see if I can do let's say 5 more social activities, because it really is helping me be happier.

I've also started writing down in a notebook several things that make me happy each day.  I'll share a few with you soon.  What are you doing to make yourself happy?

Be Happy: Update!!

Here's an update on my attempt at going out at least 12 times in the month of February:


2/3 shopping and dinner with my mom
2/5 "Dress Up Your Heart" cocktail party and fashion show at Around the Corner
2/6 Superbowl at my parents
2/8 Dinner at my girlfriend's with her and her daughter
2/9 Made dinner with a friend and watched a movie at their place
2/10 Happy hour at Cleats in Parma
2/11 Happy hour at The Winking Lizard in Lakewood
2/11 VIP Party at Spin Bike Shop in Lakewood

It's been a busy week a you can tell.  8/12 accomplished!! And it has been making me happier!!

Being Happy- The Power of Positive Thinking

At my job we do yoga with our students a few times a week.  At the end of each session we all repeat the following meditation:

May I be filled with loving-kindness
May I be well
May I be peaceful and at ease
May I be happy

After saying these words I always feel so calm so I'm hoping I can remember to repeat these words every morning and every evening to help center myself and to remind myself to be happy!  


6/12 social activities have been attended!  Well on my way to my goal!

Being Happy- One Week In

The first week of February is drawing to a close and I'm happy to say I've made some progress on my February goal!

On Thursday, I went shopping and had dinner with my mom.  It was nice to spend some one on one time with her, and I found two awesome dresses for SUPER good deals!  Gotta love 70% off!

Then, on Saturday I helped set up and volunteered at a great charity event.  A group of lovely ladies from Lakewood put on the, "Dress Up Your Heart" cocktail party and fashion show at Around the Corner.  We featured designs by Valerie Mayen (from
project runway) and had a grand ol' time.  The event raised money for the Go Red For Women campaign and I believe, was a success.  (I'll do a bigger better post on this later.)

Tonight I'm going to my parents house to watch the Steeler's LOSE the Superbowl, and to see awesome commercials. 

Tentatively I have dinner plans for Tuesday and Wednesday lined up. 

Looks like by the end of this week I'll have at least 5 out of my 12 social events completed for the month!  And you know what, this keeping busy is definitely helping me with my mood.  Let's hope it continues!

Be Happy via Etsy!

It's officially February so operation Be Happy is in full effect.  Let me tell you, the weather this morning made it very difficult to be happy!  But, one thing that I'm doing that's making me happy is getting my Etsy shop up and running.  I have two sets of note cards listed so far, and while I haven't sold anything (it's been less than a week) I have been featured on another user's list!

If you want to check out my shop, One Touch of Nature please do!  I hope that people find my prices fair, and my products high quality!  If you have any ideas for other nature inspired things I can make and sell please let me know.

Here's a sneak peak at some of my products:

Textures of Nature- $6.00

Scenes of Tahoe- $4.50

Will be for sale soon!

Beautiful Blooms- $7.00

Which set is your favorite?

Don't Worry, Be Happy

It's time for me to consider what my goal/resolution for the month of February should be.  Upon some  reflection I've realized that I have not been very happy recently.  I've felt stressed, lonely, worried, and a host of other not so pleasurable emotions. My natural instinct when feeling like this is to just wallow in it and not really make any changes.  So I have decided I need to make an effort to BE HAPPY.

A lot of what has been weighing on me is completely out of my control, so I have to stop thinking about it, stop worrying about it, and just find ways to be happy in other aspects of my life.  In October I was feeling a little down and out and I set a social activity goal for myself, and it worked out really well.  I'm going to do that again. 

Here's my Happiness Plan:

1. Accept all reasonable invitations to do something.  In October my goal was to do at least 15 social activities.  I'm going to aim for 12 in February due to the shorter month.

2. Start a new "happy thoughts book."  In high school I had a book that I, and many many friends, all wrote down lists of things that made us happy.  I still have it and my tastes have changed, so I think an update is in order.

3.  Be proactive.  Whenever something is bothering me I will deal with it as directly as possible. 

Hopefully by the end of February I will be in a great mood all the time! Well, at least most of the time!

What makes you happy?

A Little More Green part 2

I think I did a good job of getting off of a lot of snail mail lists in January, but really only time will tell.  I have failed majorly on the using reusable bags when shopping, and I never got around to researching composting.  Maybe I will in the next three days- we'll see.  Obviously as 2011 plugs along I will keep trying to maintain the drive to be more earth conscious. 

Stay tuned for my February goals!

January Goal Fail...

I went grocery shopping and forgot to take any reusable bags.  Green Fail :(

I did encourage more recycling at work this week though!

Getting Rid of Snail Mail

Step 1: Getting rid of credit card offers- for at least 5 years that is.  

If you go to this site: www.optoutprescreen.com you can opt out of getting pre-screened credit card offers.  Since there are plenty of sites online to check out if and when you want a credit card or new credit card this seems like a no brainer.  There was an option to opt out of life but it required printing things out and mailing them in and frankly, maybe in 5 years I will want the offers again!  I'll let you know in a month or so how this worked out for me. Oh, and make sure you read the fine print- it did not require me to put in my SSN or my phone number despite the misleading red text next to the fill in fields. 

Step 2: Getting rid of pretty much everything else:
Start at this website: www.dmachoice.org.  This site provides you the tools needed to rid yourself of unwanted snail mail.  While they have a section for getting rid of credit card offers it just directs you to the site mentioned above.   Here is an excerpt from the site describing what they do.

DMAchoice™ is an online tool developed by the Direct Marketing Association to help you manage your mail. This site is part of a larger program designed to respond to consumers' concerns over the amount of mail they receive, and it is the evolution of the DMA's Mail Preference Service created in 1971.For the purposes of this site, direct mail is divided into four categories: Credit Offers, Catalogs, Magazine Offers and Other Mail Offers. You can request to start or stop receiving mail from individual companies within each category—or from an entire category at once.

If you go to the catalog page or magazine page you can go to the bottom and click a button to remove you from all lists.  There is a disclaimer about whether you've bought from these places before- but I'm not going to worry about that till I see if this changes my mail intake at all.  It may be helpful to have a list of the catalogs/magazine offers that you receive that you don't want any longer, because you can look them up individually to find out what you have to do to be removed permanently.


The same option listed above is available for "other mail offers" which includes things like charities and more companies.  If you've donated to a charity and receive mailings from them it says you will have to contact them directly to be removed. 


Step 3.  Getting rid of RedPlum coupon mailers

The amount of these that I get is ridiculous, and most of the products that they have coupons for I do not use.  Also you can go to www.redplum.com to get the coupons and that way you can just print what you need.  Here's a direct link to the form you need to fill out to be rid of these unwanted mailers: http://www.valassis.com/1024/Contact/consumersupport.aspx.



Almost all of these solutions say they will take at least a month to take effect.  So I'll collect the rest of my mail for January and then compare it to what I collect in February to see what if any change I see.  I will also continue to look for other places to unsubscribe from!

How do you cope with junk mail?

A Little More Green

Inspired by a good friend of mine I've decided to have few to no year long resolutions and instead focus primarily on short term goals.  Granted these short term things may turn into long term habits, but it takes some of the pressure off to being with looking at things just a month at a time.

Here's my goal for January: Be A Little More Green

If you were to ask me I'd describe myself as a treehugger.  I'm concious of how things affect our planet but I'm still a bit too passive about it.  Now I'm not the type of person who will be obsessed with it either - nothing against those people, I just don't have the willpower, the drive, or frankly the desire.  But I can make small reasonable changes that could potentially have a big impact.

Here are some of the things I'm going to try to do:

1. Get off as many snail-mail lists as possible.  The amount of paper I get in the mail is ridiculous and highly unnecessary.  Bonus benefit: This will decrease the amount of times I have to take my paper recycling to the curb.

2. Use the few reusable bags I have when shopping.  And continue to refuse bags when they aren't necessary.

3. Buy things that come in the most eco-friendly packaging when possible.  This may mean buying in bulk or even buying a different brand.

4.  Research composting- sans worms.  I'm not sure winter is the best time to start composting but if I know a bit about it, I'll be ready to go come spring.

5. Hmmm... drawing a blank... what do you suggest?