Spending: Day 7

So we have had to do things a little out of the normal routine for us over the past couple days to stay true to the fast. 

Haircuts! Eric used to cut the boys hair all of the time… it was a fight and lots of tears, every single time. So when the opportunity arose to figure it into the budget, we did. It was $28 every 6 weeks or so for hair cuts.  That is around $240 a year in hair cuts (and this is only the 2 boys… yikes!) I am glad to say that haircuts went much smoother this time around… not a tear or complaint to be heard. Maybe it is because they are older, or maybe Eric is not so rough… whatever it was… I think I just found us a way to save $240 a year! :)

Brayden... Fall concert was in an hour... no pressure.

Landen... they were shaggy!

Friday night at the Kriete house usually consists of Papa Johns or Little Caesars and Redbox. None of those are on the list of 7, so we improvised. We went to the local library after school and I let the boys and girls each choose a movie, and everyone picked a new book. I let the kids choose the meal for dinner, which I was sure they were going to pick Chicken Nuggets and Mac-n-cheese (blah!), but alas they unanimously choose tacos. Sweet! Something we can all enjoy! We eat tacos a lot at our house… probably 3 times a month. My favorite thing about taco night is all the ingredients to build your own taco are on the table and everyone can just do it themselves (even the 3 year old).  All of my children’s personalities come out in their topping choices. Everyone uses sour cream, but then you have Brayden with lettuce and cheese only, Landen is a meat and cheese only, Addi is a meat, cheese, and lettuce, and Eleni is a little bit of EVERY SINGLE THING on the table (even if there are 3 different salsa options… all three are on there). Even though I love watching this every single time… my all time favorite of taco night is watching the boys. Without fail, they do it every single time we have tacos… they pretend to film each other making their tacos. One will create while the other “films” (like with the old time hand crank projector in hand… it is hilarious to watch). The person that is creating will be narrating how he makes his “meat-a casserole-a” (said in an Italian, not Mexican accent) even though Brayden’s doesn’t even actually contain meat :) while the person filming uses words like “action” and “cut” with one eye closed looking though the imaginary projector, a.k.a their hand. They have been doing this for probably well over a year… I really need to get it on video. So it was family dinner and a movie as usual, just no money spent. I think I might have another way to save $20 a week…

Saturday was the craft fair…sigh. :( This was a tough one. I love the Union craft fair. I went with my friend Tiffany, and we had an enjoyable day. I haven’t got to hang out with Tiffany in a long while, so it was a great day… regardless of the cute/yummy purchases passed up.  There were several things I probably would have purchased (sadly… once again, most of them were food) but I left my purse in the car as to not even be tempted to spend the money. Lots of cute crafts, hair bow, soup/dip mixes all calling my name… but not on my list of 7 locations to purchase. I saved myself a good $50-$100 that day, and might have to have a crafting day in the near future. I saw a sign with a saying that I loved… it was toward the end of our craft fair tour when I was starting to get kind of huffy that I was not getting to buy anything…it quickly reminded me of the fast… and I thought, “I can do this. Depriving Me of something that I desire in order to grow closer to God is not a sacrifice, it is an honor.” 

LOVE! I think I might need to create something with this phrase on it!

 Don’t get me wrong… fasting is hard. It feels like a sacrifice a lot of the time. And the closer you become to God, the harder, more often Satan attacks. But the benefits of the fast, far outweigh the difficulties. It is an incredibly journey… thanks for joining me on it!