Tuesday Thoughts, Thankfulness, and Totally Awesome Links

Today, I’m thankful for being in the new apartment. It is much less furnished than the other place, so it feels more minimalist and it’s more relaxing for me to be in. It may sound weird to say this, but I think even The Herd is much happier here. Callie has been out and about more often, and HoneyBun has been quietly finding her “spot” to relax and sleep in. (As I write this, she is laying down with her head on my leg. It’s a very AWWW moment.)  Max, of course, thinks he rules the roost, and Osito just loves to sleep and cuddle, as usual. And I’m feeling more inspired overall. To write, to think about my next moves, what I should do with my life. I have a better view of Lone Rock (the image you see in my blog header), so I’ve been spending some good time on my patio, reading and looking out at it.

I’m also thankful for the Passion Planner that my friend Claudia sent me. I haven’t used a planner in a while and I think this will be helpful to me in reminding me to do a little something every day to get me closer to fulfilling my dreams. Or, rather, to figuring out what those dreams are.  It’s a different kind of planner and at the end of every month, it has a lot of self reflection kind of questions. Even though I just got it, I went through the questions at the end of August, and it helped me to think about a lot of different things, like what I was most grateful for this past month, what major lessons I’ve learned, etc. You can also download extra pages and insert them into the planner, like this finance insert.  I can’t wait to start using all of these, but especially the finance pages.

In keeping with my financial goals, I’m always looking for ways to save money. I read through the book, Frugality for Depressives, and it had lots of suggestions that anyone can use.  Among them was the website, 365 Days of Slow Cooking, and it even has a vegan page! I can’t wait to try some of them out – the awesome thing is that it usually includes a lot of ingredients I already have at home.  Another good one was Gift Card Granny, which compares prices on gift cards that can be bought via a few different websites.  Right now, I’m living in a small town, but I can definitely see myself making use of it in the future for items I do use and things that I normally buy, like gas, and groceries, etc. Some discounts are better than others, of course, but any little bit I can save will be good. It’s the small things that add up over time.  I’ve been constantly reminding myself of this at work and  when I get paid this week, I’m going to make a transfer into my savings account of $2.35 for each day I didn’t buy crap at the campground store where I work. I think it’s really going to add up over the next few months. I have an idea of what to do with the money I save up, but I’m going to leave that for another post. 🙂

Anyway, I hope that all of you are having a great Tuesday – with my work schedule, Tuesday equals Sunday, so I plan on making a productive day of it. I have animals to snuggle (they are all on the bed with me as I write this, which I absolutely love!) and animals to walk at the Page Animal Adoption Agency and Page  City Shelter. (By the way, if you shop on Amazon, please consider using their Amazon Smile link and doing your shopping, as a portion of the proceeds will go to them!  It will cost you absolutely nothing.

By the way, I am taking part in a fundraiser called Strut Your Mutt in a few weeks, at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. Any funds raised by our team members will go to help the shelter with its medical bills. The shelter doesn’t get any funds from the city, and there is only one paid staff member who even comes in on her days off to take care of the animals. If you would like to support me in this endeavor, please visit my fundraising page. I will be taking little Osito with me but we will be doing more of a “carry” than a walk, since she has slowed down somewhat these days and sprained her shoulder a few months ago.  But I promise you, she will look as adorable as ever, and I will probably put her in a dress. 🙂 Laugh if you want, but you can’t look at her and not smile when she’s wearing a dress. LOL

I hope that some of these links are helpful to some of you. I’d love to hear about any websites you have found to be helpful with saving money, or following your dreams.

As always, thank you for reading!