Happy New Year, What To Expect From Us in 2013 and Where in the World Was The Pre-Thrifty Couple

As it is the last day of 2012, we thought we would send a quick greeting to you to say…..

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Since Christmas Eve, we have done minimal posting here as we have enjoyed a holiday vacation! Today we are taking the train to the big city with the kids for an early New Year’s Eve celebration before the sun goes down.  They love riding the train to the big city, it is quite an experience on a double-decker train with 5 little kids, so that will be enough excitement for one day for us 🙂

But Alex and I will be ringing in the New Year tonight and prepare to start off a great 2013 and we want to take you with us!

Earlier this month, we shared our thoughts about the direction we are going and so we are super stoked to be having a new Thrifty Couple with focus on real life changes and whole life frugal living.

We are going to have a theme each month with daily, weekly and monthly challenges to help set yourself, your relationships, your family, your home and your budget on a path of efficiency, effectiveness and growth.

There are many little things we do throughout the day, week and month to help us stay on track and so our site is about wanting to share what we do to be The Thrifty Couple.  Plus we will be offering challenges throughout the year that will encourage our own growth from things that we think are a good idea but that we haven’t fully implemented yet.  This means you get to join us with this journey and we hope and pray that 2013 is the year of change and growth in you and your family’s lives.

What we hope is to see growth in all of us and that you can join us on that journey.  We want to get to know you more, we want to share your struggles and your successes as we embark on a New Year!!

We will have Facebook Groups that you can join for each new month’s theme and challenges so that we can communicate, provide extra encouragement and work out the kinks. As a sneak peek, you can request to join January’s group on on Facebook HERE (more details to come about the theme and group too, but January will be all about making small changes personally for a more organized and increased daily efficiency!)

Tomorrow, we will introduce January’s theme that will start on Wednesday, January 2nd.  But know that each month, the challenges are designed to improve your life in some way (personally, relationships, home, budget, finances, etc.)!

As far as what will remain of the old The Thrifty Couple, well, we will still be doing just a few deals here and there (with an attempt to be unique and not found on other places): diaper deals, restaurant deals, retail, and of course our grocery store section will still be in full affect throughout all of 2013! And not only are we going to have monthly themes with challenges, but you will find many more new fun, exciting and personal posts that we will be starting to now include in the new year!

So stay tuned and watch for the new January 2013 theme and a great kick-start to the New Thrifty Year!

And now for a bit of fun as we try to share more of our personal lives with you! The top picture is a New Year’s Celebration 2012 in an international city.  This city and area was a mission ground for Alex and me 14 years ago in the summer 1-year before we were engaged and married.  We went on this 2-week evangelical and medical mission with a group of 8 others from our local church.  We did Vacation Bible Schools and brought medical supplies, art supplies, toys and many things we take for granted in America and was a luxury to those in this country.  We spent as much time as the government would let us in the state run orphanages. We wanted to take all of the babies home with us.

We have always talked about how we would love to take our children there one day and in fact, our oldest daughter is named (the American version) after our interpreter.

So if you can’t get it from the first picture, here’s a few others to help provide clues…..

A famous government building in this city

And finally…… last clue…..

This picture was a very popular picture this year as it went viral all over the internet.  It was a picture of a wedding dress with the world’s longest train to try and beat the Guinness World Record.  The picture was taken in the streets of this city.

We were more on the outskirts of this city and more out in the villages and smaller towns for our mission trip, but these are fun pictures from the area 🙂

Any guesses??? Leave a comment below with your guess!

Photo Credits: Boston.com, ABCNews.com, NYDailyNews.com