Image via Wikipedia

Apparently today is have fun at work day. Hopefully where ever you work, you have fun no matter what day it is. I think it’s funny we have a day for almost everything. Actually tomorrow (which is Saturday) is the real day. But who works on Saturday. Saturday should be a fun day - especially if you get to stay at home. If you’re at home then you should definitely be having fun.

Below we’ll have some links for some fun things you can do today.

One thing you may be able to do is to tell your boss they need to treat you for lunch. After all it is a “national holiday” of sorts and you’re having to work… maybe that will work and maybe it won’t work.

http://www.playfair.com/fun.htm

By the way there is an international, have fun at work day, so if you want you can celebrate both days.

Some of the ideas I like from that page include:

Bring your dog to work - as long as it isn’t too big and you’ve trained it not to poo on your desk.
Everyone brings a photo of your pet and you try to decide which pet goes with which owner.

More ideas can be found on this page - http://behindtheleasingdesk.com/2010/01/25/national-have-fun-at-work-day.aspx

Nerf is always fun no matter where you are or what you do… so I really like that idea of having a nerf battle in your office.

Now it’s time for me to have some fun at work - hope you have a wonderful day!

Just wanted to remind everyone this weekend you get free admission to the National Parks.

Details about the free admission can be found here -

http://www.nps.gov/findapark/feefreeparks.htm

Some other good news there are a bunch of other dates as well for the free admission.

January 14-16
Martin Luther King Jr. weekend

April 21-29
National Park Week

June 9
Get Outdoors Day

September 29
National Public Lands Day

November 10-12
Veterans Day weekend

One of the recommendations we have if you’re thinking about spending the weekend, if you have family nearby why not stay with them.

It saves on the hotel bill (the kids probably won’t like not having a swimming pool) and your relatives will be happy to see you.
When I was younger most of our vacations revolved around staying with relatives and we still do that as well. My daughter has a ton
of fun as she gets to do some things she can’t do at home - like drive a Rhino through a corn field.

Enjoy your day.

Image by Striking Photography by Bo via Flickr

If you didn’t spend as much as you like for Christmas – hopefully we did help you save some money. Now is the time to start changing that.

Now is the time to figure out what you want to spend for next year. I still am a firm believer that you should cull your list as much as you can. We did this and it saved a lot of money. This was for extended nephews / nieces and people we didn’t really see very much during the year anyway. I think this year we want to spend more on our immediate family and friends. Not that we didn’t get some nice gifts this past year, but I think with a bigger budget we can do much better.

I’ll be sharing my adventures with you. So we want to make a budget and then we want to find good deals throughout the year. There are some nice deals in January / Feb and the summer time. Merchants need to sell stuff all throughout the year. We’ll work on finding some good deals for you.

I know last year we had a list – so let’s think for a bit about how much we want to spend. Think about your weekly / twice a week or monthly pay check. How much extra do you have? If you’re like most people the answer to that is not very much. I work for myself so I don’t really get a ‘pay check’, this makes it even harder.

So how do you find savings when you think there aren’t any… I’m glad you asked and we’ll talk about that next time and figure out what our budget is going to be.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I had a great time with family and friends. We had a great turkey… my wife is such an awesome cook. Hope you had a joyful time as well. I didn’t do any Black Friday shopping. If you did I hope that you got some great deals. Somebody was doing some shopping since they had record sales.

We have two gifts to go on our gift list -

Left to buy for -
Nephew - 5 year old- Bubble Lawn Mower - $14.99
Niece - 8 year old -Simon Flash - $9.99

Today Amazon is having an awesome toy sale, so we’re going to get something for each of them.

Bubbles and A Lawnmower - how can you go wrong and who doesn’t like bubbles. On sale for $14.99 or 10 bucks off the normal price.

For my niece I found Simon Flash for 20 bucks off the normal price.
More Cyber Monday Toys

That completes our gift list… Yippeee.

That makes our total spent about $130.00 and we saved over $70.00. We’ll take that $70 and look for some deals for stocking stuffers for the kids (which we will of course share with you if we find some good deals). If we don’t find any good deals we’ll just give them some cash.

Hope you had fun with us.

We’re about to wind down our Christmas shopping list - I told you we could do it. After today’s gift we’ll have two left people left on our shopping list.

Today’s gift is for Lisa’s Mom - it is from Daily Steals and is a Women’s Clutch purse - http://luxury.dailysteals.com/

The purse is $2.99 - with shipping it is $7.98. Again we hit our mark.

Total spent - $111.10
Total saved -  $47.83

Left to buy for -
Nephew - 5 year old-
Niece - 8 year old -

–> On Weds we’ll work on getting our Survival guide to Black Friday.

Enjoy your Monday.

Image by dixiehwy via Flickr

Happy Vets Day -

Deal of the Day is running some awesome specials today - they have 4 different products for 5 bucks - and today shipping is free. http://toys.dailysteals.com/

I could actually use all of those as a present for somebody, but since we only get to buy one gift a day, I’ll choose the

New Pack of 2 As Seen on TV Over the Door Wonder Hanger with 10 Hanger Slots - Folds Down to Save Space. I’ll get that from my Mom.

One thing I’ve been noticing is stores are definitely not waiting for Black Friday this year, in fact I think it is turning into Black November. So the real question is should you wait for a better deal, or should you buy things now. Again that is something you’ll need to figure out for yourself.

Here’s our list

Lisa’s Mom - $10
Lisa’s Dad - $10 - Ratchet Set $5
My Mom - $10 - closet organizer - $5
My Dad - $10- anti slip mat - $3
Sister - $10 - Travel Set - $9.98

Nephew - Teenager - RC Helicopter $14.98
Nephew - 5 -
Niece - College - Juicer - $20
Niece - Teenager - Camera $14.98
Niece - 8
Niece - 2 - Sing a Ma Jig. $7.39

Aunt 1 - Bamboo cutting board $4

Aunt #2 - 6 Snap Caps - $2.79 boy nephews - Aluminum Wallet - (each) $8

2 girl nieces - Stainless steel water bottle - (for both) - $7.98

Total $200 - Spent $103.12 ($46.83)

Image via CrunchBase

Falling back wasn’t too hard. I did enjoy that extra hour of sleep Sunday morning… however it’s hit me pretty hard this morning. Although I think that springing forward is definitely harder on the sleep cycle.

Today we have some gifts for the kiddies. We’re going to get a Sing A Mi Jig from Amazon for my niece. Amazon has this particular one on sale for $7.99.

Mattel The Sing-A-Ma-Jigs - Rose

Amazon is starting Black Friday early and has a ton of toys on sale - you can check the whole list out here - More toys

And a Recap of the List.

Lisa’s Mom - $10
Lisa’s Dad - $10 - Ratchet Set $5
My Mom - $10
My Dad - $10- anti slip mat - $3
Sister - $10 - Travel Set - $9.98

Nephew - Teenager - RC Helicopter $14.98
Nephew - 5 -
Niece - College - Juicer - $20
Niece - Teenager - Camera $14.98
Niece - 8
Niece - 2 - Sing a Ma Jig. $7.39

Aunt 1 - Bamboo cutting board $4

Aunt #2 - 6 Snap Caps - $2.79 boy nephews - Aluminum Wallet - (each) $8

2 girl nieces - Stainless steel water bottle - (for both) - $7.98

Total $200 - Spent $98.12 ($41.83)

Image via Wikipedia

Hope your weekend is going well. Today we found a remote control helicopter for about $15 - http://1saleaday.com/family/

We’re going to rearrange some things on our list - we’ll move the camera to teenage niece - and use the helicopter for the teenage nephew.

Lisa’s Mom - $10
Lisa’s Dad - $10 - Ratchet Set $5
My Mom - $10
My Dad - $10- anti slip mat - $3
Sister - $10 - Travel Set - $9.98

Nephew - Teenager - RC Helicopter $14.98
Nephew - 5 -
Niece - College - Juicer - $20
Niece - Teenager - Camera $14.98
Niece - 8
Niece - 2

Aunt 1 - Bamboo cutting board $4

Aunt #2 - 6 Snap Caps - $2.79 boy nephews - Aluminum Wallet - (each) $8

2 girl nieces - Stainless steel water bottle - (for both) - $7.98

Total $200 - Spent $90.73 ($29.22)

Image by Falconne007 via Flickr

Good morning to you - yep very early morning here. Today there are a few nice gift ideas. We said in the beginning we would just do one a day… so that’s what we’re going to do.

First daily deals has a nice Juice Extractor. My niece is in college and is on the health food kick and I think they would really enjoy it. So I’m buying the extractor for her.

You can find the deal here - http://www.dailysteals.com/

Costs with shipping about $20.

Extras –>

Also of note daily deals has a nice cd set for the youngsters and a nice razor.

One sale a day also has a free sock stuffer. It is a credit card protection thing - http://1saleaday.com/wireless/

Again that one costs you nothing except for a little time friending their facebook page.

Enjoy your day and here is our list -

Lisa’s Mom - $10
Lisa’s Dad - $10 - Ratchet Set $5
My Mom - $10
My Dad - $10- anti slip mat - $3
Sister - $10 - Travel Set - $9.98

Nephew - Teenager - Camera $14.98
Nephew - 5 -
Niece - College - Juicer - $20
Niece - Teenager
Niece - 8
Niece - 2

Aunt 1 - Bamboo cutting board $4

Aunt #2 - 6 Snap Caps - $2.79 boy nephews - Aluminum Wallet - (each) $8

2 girl nieces - Stainless steel water bottle - (for both) - $7.98

Total $200 - Spent $75.73 ($24.22)

Hey it’s November… we’re starting to get into crunch time. I think we’ve done pretty well so far on our ‘list’. Today’s treat is a Polaroid Digital Camera. Note I found this camera on Amazon for about 30 bucks. It’s available today from http://1saleaday.com/wireless/ for $14.98. My nephew I think would enjoy it… so we’ve marked another one off our list.

Lisa’s Mom - $10
Lisa’s Dad - $10 - Ratchet Set $5
My Mom - $10
My Dad - $10- anti slip mat - $3
Sister - $10 - Travel Set - $9.98

Nephew - Teenager - Camera $14.98
Nephew - 5 -
Niece - College -
Niece - Teenager
Niece - 8
Niece - 2

Aunt 1 - Bamboo cutting board $4

Aunt #2 - 6 Snap Caps - $2.79 boy nephews - Aluminum Wallet - (each) $8

2 girl nieces - Stainless steel water bottle - (for both) - $7.98

Total $200 - Spent $55.73 ($24.22)