Happy New Year!!

I just realized that it's been several days since I last posted ANYTHING! I hope you had a great New Year and ate your black eyed peas for prosperity in this new year!
I've been doing some thinking, and I've decided to change a few of my couponing ways this year to see if it makes any difference at all (mostly in the amount of time I'm spending with coupon hunting, creating shopping lists, etc.).  I don't tend to stick to New Year's Resolutions, so I'm not calling these changes resolutions (self-defeating behavior thing, I guess).

Here's what I'm going to do differently:

• I will create a monthly meal menu every month. This will help me to plan out what I should buy throughout the month so I can use all of a specific ingredient I get for a dish.  I'm really bad about buying something specific (e.g. fresh celery) and using it for one meal and then not using the rest.  What a waste!  I'm going to try to save more money by organizing what I'll need each week once a month.
• I'm going to try to look at all sales and deals on Sunday and compile my weekly shopping list then.  Hopefully I'll be able to do this in a relatively short amount of time since I'll already have my monthly menu planned and know what I'll need for that week.  Little Man gets really frustrated when I'm on the computer and we're home by ourselves.  This will be impossible for me at least once a month (due to a part-time job that takes me away one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer).  But I'm going to do my best.
• I'm going to try to actually track what I spend to make sure I'm meeting my budget goals.  I've been bad about that, too.  I can't actually tell the actual amount of money I've saved our family since I started couponing because I don't keep accurate records.  I know in my head approximately how much I've saved, but I didn't keep it in a spreadsheet last year.  I have one this year - and my fingers crossed that I'll use it! 
• I have very defined financial goals for our family this year and I'm going to write them down so I can keep my eye on the goals.  I'll put them in the blog, too.  That'll keep me a little bit more accountable!

I'll think about posting my monthly menu - let me know if you think it might help you and I'll definitely post it.  I'm also going to try to be more consistent with my blog posts.  I'll never have a following if I'm not current!

Well, I guess that's about all my hopes for this year.  Having an idea of how much couponing and watching our nickels and dimes has helped our family last year, I'm pretty excited to see what we can do in 2010!!!