Easy Budget Tracking

Good morning!

Guess what today is? BONE SCAN DAY!!!

I am excited and nervous, yet relieved that it is finally here after 6 long weeks! I am hoping that my pelvic injury comes back normal. If it doesn’t I will be pretty upset because I have stayed off of it for these past 6 weeks. Apparently it will take 3 hours. A 1/2 hour to inject me, then I leave for 2 hours (I’m either going to drive back home or stay in the area and window shop or something), and then come back and have the actual scan which is only 1/2 hour or so. Fun times!

I thought I would share with everyone this neat little budgeting trick I put together the other day to help Eric and I track our spending.

I took an empty tissue box, cut out the plastic on the top, and wrote on it RECEIPTS. I placed it by the garage door where we always enter with our purchases.

I made this because I was always forgetting to put the receipts in one spot once we were home. The receipts were getting lost and left in bags, they were with Eric, or we accidentally threw them out making me have to check the credit card statement online to see how much we spent.

This trick will be MUCH easier! We get home, empty out purchases, and the receipts go right into the box. :D

At the end of the week dump it out and add it up! Remove the receipts at the end of the week and file if necessary or toss. On Sunday or Monday (whatever day you choose is fine) start fresh with an empty box.

I thought others might benefit from this trick if you too are keeping track of your spending habits!

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Wow I can’t believe that it is Day 5 of Crap Free Week already!

I can’t remember when the last time was that I have gone without sugar for this many days in a row! It is a great feeling. Spring cleaning if you will. :) It actually hasn’t been that hard to be honest.

I think I owe a huge thank-you to my green monsters because I honestly believe that they help control sugar cravings and regulate my blood sugar.

On that note…

I had my all veggie green monster this morning. And boy was it veggie!

Look at those huge kale leaves!! They were massive.

The contents:

• 1 cup Low fat soy milk
• 1 Tbsp flax
• 3 ice cubes (thins it out a bit and makes it more frothy)
• 2 huge organic kale leaves

There was nothing sweet about this green monster!

That is ok though. I have actually trained my palate over the past couple years to appreciate less sweet things.

I get lots of questions asking me how I did this. So I thought I would tell my own experience…

How to train your palate to be satisfied on less sugar:

1) Last year, I decided to give up artificial sweeteners. As you have probably heard, artificial sweeteners are so powerfully strong and sweet, they actually make you desensitize to the taste of REAL SUGAR. This means, fruit no longer tastes as sweet when you eat it plain. NOT GOOD. Before I went off of it, I was eating so many foods that were sweetened with splenda and they were VERY SWEET. At the time I didn’t notice it because I was addicted to them! Only when I weaned myself off of it did I realize how bad they were for me and everything (unsweetened with Artificial sweeteners) tasted plain. I knew I had to get off them!

2) I started off by using 1 teaspoon of real sugar in my tea instead of Splenda. The tea tasted so bland and boring! Over time, I used less and less sugar (this was over the period of several months) and now I don’t put any sugar in my tea at all. I have learned to appreciate it as it is. I also love Celestial Seasonings Dessert tea because they are sweet and don’t even need sugar!

3) I often cut sugar fom recipes and don’t even notice! Recipes often have way too much sugar in them and you can often cut it by 25% and not notice any reduced taste.

4) Yes, things will taste a bit bland when you start to wean yourself off of sweeteners, but eventually your body DOES adjust and you find yourself enjoying the taste, and *gasp* even craving it!

5) No, my all veggie smoothie isn’t sweet. But I have learned to focus on the wholesome and creamy taste. I remind myself that not everything I put in my mouth has to be very sweet. And that is ok! :D

Have you ever weaned yourself off to sweeteners or tried to use them less? What was your experience?

The lovely Mara is giving away some amazing chocolate– run, hop, skip, and jump on over there to enter!

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Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success.”
– Thomas J. Watson

Gosh I love that quote!

Have you ever made a mistake that turned out to be something great??