Making lists

Like any mom/working mom/person in the world, I have 8 million things to do, an hour to do it, and I'd really rather be drinking beer and watching the Real Housewives of...well...anywhere but here.

The past few days I've really been plowing through those things to do thanks to some really adorable to do lists my dear friend Lisa gave me. I couldn't find the lists for sale online but they are designed by Mary Kate McDevitt, who has a great etsy shop that sells some chalkboards that are very similar to the notepad I have:

I don't have these, but they are super cute too:

What's your go-to for to-dos? A mix of systems or something you use religiously?

Swimming

Things haven't been so good around here lately, my ex took off again and isn't coming back anytime soon. We've all been feeling really sad and I decided that keeping the kids busy and happy was the best use of my time and money, so I got a family membership to the YMCA so we could go swimming! It's very exciting. I did a one month membership to make sure that we actually have the time to go enough to make it worth it, and I negotiated with the membership manager for a lower monthly rate based on the fact that I a) have one adult in my "family" and b) work for an organization that gets a discount on YMCA memberships. By asking a lot of questions and politicking for a lower rate, I saved 24 dollars a month and can easily afford the cost of the membership.

So now we can go swimming pretty much every night and every weekend! It's so exciting, and a great way (emotionally and health-wise) to spend our time and money.

Success

Maybe it's the inspiration of watching The Social Network (which I'm doing right now), but I finally sat down and figured out how to merge the two blogs. I've added the posts from the Building Villages to the Year of Frugal Living and plan on finishing out the project right back here where I started.

This is the year I do it. This is the fourth year, but this is the Year.