…checking it twice…

I’m really looking forward to Christmas this year.  Now that Hailey is 2 and understands a little more about what is going on I think it will be a lot of fun with her this year.  Of course she doesn’t care at all about what kind of presents she gets, as long as she has some to open.  And she does enjoy opening her presents and takes her time doing it.

Anyways, I have some ideas for some things I think Hailey would enjoy getting for Christmas.  Since she is so easy to please it shouldn’t be too hard to pick out gifts for her.  I love this Wooden Family House over here on the right.  Hailey loves to play with all of her little people- she piles them all in the school bus or puts them all in her farm.  So, I’m pretty sure she’d be excited to have a little house to play with too.

For those people out there who want to get started on their Christmas shopping, but don’t want to use their credit cards and end up paying a bunch of interest you may want to consider using the Kmart Lay-Away plan.  You can pick your items you want to buy and put some money towards them.  Then pay some each week until you have paid off your item.  You’ll have all of your Christmas bills paid before Christmas is even here!

I have been making a lot of preparations lately for the month of September.  When September arrives I am going to be starting a sort of preschool with Hailey.  All of our activities will be fun- and to her it will seem  like we are just playing and making fun things.  But, I know that she will be learning letters, numbers, colors and shapes.  So I have been working on my plans as to what we will she will be learning and the fun activities I will be using to teach her the information I want her to learn.

Here’s the problem I’m having- all of the stuff I want to use for our fun activities- it’s expensive.  I do have a lot of stuff from when I was teaching pre-k, but still- it’s expensive.  So I’ve been doing a lot of researching and checking out other people’s sites to see how they are using things they already have to avoid spending a lot of money on teaching supplies.

Today I was also looking at bills.com where you can get help with your finances.  They offer money saving tips, which is just what I need right now- ideas to save more money.  They also offer Debt consolidation tips and Debt help- which is what I am trying to avoid.  I do not want to need Debt relief in the future so I am being very careful about the supplies I am getting.

Here is my attempt at a haiku about our situation:

We need school supplies
I don’t want to spend a lot
How do you do it?