A heart-shaped locket would be lovely, and shouldn’t be too hard to find at this time of year.

What about a Pandora Bracelet? He can buy a charm every year they go.

Thank you!  We decided upon a Pandora necklace, adding a bead each year.  I appreciate your responses!

I do - I use the “Any Store” plan.  But one thing you might think about, is once you have a few weeks menus stored (I print mine out and put them in a binder) just pick and choose the meals you and your family like.  Since the meals are numbered, and the shopping list is cooridinated with that, it’s easy to pick out the stuff you need for any particular meal and transfer it to another list.

I used the Publix meal plan. And there are often meals I choose not to serve my family either because I know they won’t eat it, or I feel the cost for that meal isn’t worth making. I crossout two or three meals from each menu that I don’t think will work for my family Also crossing off the ingedients on the shopping list. And I replace it with a meal that my family loved from a previous week or I will just serve a simple soup and sandwich or we’ll have pizza night. Since we often eat at a family’s house or church function once a week too, we only use 4 or 5 of the preset meals a week. I highlight the favorite ones and keep the menus in a binder to reuse. I think I signed up for a 3 month subscription and that one subscription gave me enough great meal ideas to last 6-8 weeks. I just repeated the menu. I didn’t have to renew my subscription every three months, saving me even more money. I renew it every 9-12 months just to get some fresh ideas for meals. Oh, and I use the shopping list only as a reference the second and third time around. Since I can predict a few weeks ahead what meals I plan to make, I look for the ingredients to go on sale and pick up a few meals worth then. When I make my shopping trip for the week I glance at their list and make sure I have everything. Usually they are all part of my basic shopping list anyway.

Prayers for you, Tired of it! I hope the day has calmed down for you. If it makes you feel any better (from the perspective of solidarity in suffering!), we’ve spent the past week with everyone sick, vomiting, baby teething, messy (and small!) house…Hang tight and offer it up. This season will pass!

I have a friend that’s really good at organizing and people are starting to ask for her help so she’s making money with that.  Get really creative! You could get creative with any skils you have.

What’s you’re current job? Can you find a place to contract or wah with those skills? My sil is in marketing and found a job that only works her 3 days per week, only one in the office.

I do do a MLM WAHM business and though now I make a good amount imo, it was really hard to get myself organized and motivated (and find time!!) while at home with a little one (poitn being it took time to get to that income level, though I know other poeple who got to that in 1 month) . It is possilbe, but if you do do a multi level marketing deal find something that people can use and a company whose ethics you agree with and one that you’l have lots of support with.  I wouldn’t have made it withouth my upline support.

Definitely hard to say without knowing where your talents lie, but don’t give up! And don’t underestimate how much you can save by staying home-gas money (and car insurance, if you can give up one of your cars), wardrobe (and makeup etc, which you don’t have to wear at home with a baby, lol), food (usually sandwiches at home are way cheaper than what most people take to work, and if you are home you will be able to cook much more from scratch-once the initial newborn period is over-than if you come home exhausted from work!), plus you can potentially then avoid daycare costs, formula/bottles/pumping equipment (barring any medical conditions that require those things). I’ll say a prayer for you to find something that works well for you!!
PS if you have student loan debt, they may be willing to reduce your monthly payments if you explain the situation to them. They lowered ours for a year while I was staying at home with the baby and my son was a barely-employed grad student, and now we pay the full amount again now that he’s graduated and has full-time employment.