Switching things up

Hi everyone

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth...lol. The past few months have been super busy. I've spent so much time working and the holiday season is always crazy. I also like to bake over the holiday season and would take a day or 2 off, just to bake all day long. I baked around 20 dozen cookies just before Christmas. DH who doesn't care for sweet things, would eat cookies at 11 am. His friend stopped by while I was baking and they started eating the cookies before I had a chance to decorate them. They said the cookies taste great without any toppings. We still have a few dozen that will be frozen, since I don't use the oven during summer.

I normally make traditional South African treats and I've never decorated cookies before, because we don't eat much sugar. Well my friend started doing decorated cookies, so we all jumped onto the bandwagon. So this is what my cookies looked like.

Sugar cookies (some with chocolate and some with cream cheese frosting)
Almond coconut cookies - DH's favorite
Hertzoggies (traditionally filled with apricot jam & coconut, but we prefer the caramel/cream filling) My favorite SA treat
Romany creams (SA treat) - Chocolate coconut cookie filled with mint chocolate
Lemon cookies

Now, as you can see, I'm not good at cookie decorating. I can work wonders with cakes, because I have the tools to do so.

So, on to switching things up. I have some big financial goals for this year. In order to reach those, I have to work more. I sell online and have decided to expand so I can earn more. This means less time for other things. One of those being point earning sites. While I still enjoy doing those, it's just not worth the frustration and energy since things haven't worked well since Swagbucks took over Mypoints. My encraves (my favorite way to earn) are hit and miss. So while I'll still try to earn some gcs, I'm not going to make it a priority. This means there won't be any month end money posts either. I'll continue to sell our old things though. I'll try to post whenever I can. Some weeks there might be one post and others 3-5 posts. I'm just trying to be as productive as I can, so I can reach my goal. If I fall short of that goal, then I at least know that I've tried my best.

I will post the remaining 2018 numbers though, so you can see how we fared last year. We did come in under budget for Christmas, so I'm happy about that.

I didn't do much after Christmas shopping, since we didn't need anything. My only plan was to head to Meijer at 6am (when they open) to pick up holiday baking supplies. As I was getting ready to head out, our local news channel was reporting from my Walmart that the store had just opened and the parking lot was empty. So I switched gears and headed to Walmart instead. This was the first time my Walmart was so empty. I did hit the motherlode with Hickory Farms. We used to buy Hickory Farms for years, until they got to expensive. I remember we used to get really big boxes of sausage & cheese for $20 back then. One year someone posted that HF had the sets for $8, so I stocked up and froze quite a bunch. Well, I was pleasantly surprised to find several boxes at Walmart at 50% off. I got 5 boxes at $10 each and 2 at $7.50. The sausage are frozen. The cheese won't last long, cause we love cheese. I got a few baking items, cause there wasn't much to choose from.

Then I headed to Meijer who had even less clearance. No baking stuff to be found. Thank goodness for the news channel, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten those Walmart goodies. I just picked up some Ziploc containers. I have Pyrex, but I've always loved these small round Ziploc ones. They're so easy for storing my coffee beans and other small items. These were $1.74 per set. Not the best price, but I needed the items. I also forgot to check for coupons before heading out.

I'll try to do another post this week.