Our own little celebration at the wedding

Hubs and I shot a wedding last night and we've earmarked a portion of the wedding money to pay off our last student loan.  I've been telling him for weeks that as soon as the wedding is over, we're debt free.

We were pretty busy with other things all night obviously and were across the room from each other during a slow part of the reception.  The first chords of Baker Street, which is the Dave Ramsey theme song, started playing and I turned around to see my husband with a huge grin on his face as he pointed at me.  Just awesome.

Oh, and WE'RE DEBT FREE!!
$22,000 paid off in 14 months.

Bruce Wayne

#projectlife365 #graceful

Two days after getting back from our honeymoon, the girls called me up front at work and said that we just took in a stray Italian Greyhound from the strike zone and they thought I would be interested.  The strike zone was the main area of the tornado damage that had gone straight through town less than two months prior.  We still weren't back to normal yet in the shelter or our day to day lives.  Curious, I had checked the lost reports and came up blank.  A little bummed, I put the book away and headed to the back.

It was all over before the door even closed behind me in the holding room.  This pathetic, convulsing, skinny dog stared up at me from the bottom kennel.  I say convulsing because this dog shakes on a good day when he's happy but he was terrified.  Putting the dates together, I assumed that he gotten himself picked up because fireworks had startled him and he couldn't find his way home.  Cursing the girls for telling me that this creature existed, I called my brand new husband and that was that.

For such a beautiful, graceful looking dog, he is the most awkward animal alive.  He doesn't particularly like to be touched unless he's doing the touching.  He can reaaaach up and scratch you across the face just to say hello.  He can jump from a standstill so you can make eye contact without bending your head.  He once, to my horror, jumped and dropped a lick on the face of a pregnant friend while landing his front feet on her belly as she was walking in our front door.  He pees on his front legs because he's so uncoordinated and his legs are ridiculously long.  He won't lick your hand but you better believe he'll lick the roof of your mouth if you yawn in his presence with your guard down.

He also, in a moment of my wondering what the hell I had gotten us into, looked up at me and then laid his head on my chest and closed his eyes.  Life is better with a dog.  Or three.

Resolutions

I do not usually do New Year’s resolutions.  I do not really believe in waiting for a specific day to start making changes to your life if it needs changing.  My main goal for this year is just to be a better version of myself.  I have a wonderful husband, a beautiful home, and three dogs that make me crazy on a daily basis.  I would love to be more patient, quicker with an encouragement, and ready to handle anything.  I have been working on some of my "resolutions" for months but wanted to write them all down together to keep myself accountable. And that accountability is to you, dear internet strangers.

Last night, Hubs and I laid in bed way before midnight and whispered to each other what we thought this year would look like for us.  Our finances will be settled hopefully by my 26^th birthday in May.  After that, we are going to see what life looks like as responsible adults for a few months and then see about trying our hand at being parents.  Our plan has been to be debt free before we started trying to expand our family and we are nearly there.  It seemed to be a much longer trek on the other side of paying everything off but now that we are on the downhill slide, it does not seem that far away.  It does not seem as scary as I expected either. 

Even though we are not there yet, I am excited.

Happy 2013 Everyone.  I hope you get everything you are wanting, find everything you are looking for, and be the person you want to become.

Project Life 365 #Resolution

·         Be debt free (except the house)

·         Have 3 months of expenses saved

·         Go to the gym twice a week.  Quit focusing on the number on the scale and go for myself.

·         Read.

·         Answer emails within 24 hours.

·         Go see a movie with Corey every month.

·         Write even if it’s not very good. Especially if it's not very good.

·         Be a better version of myself.

Another One Bites The Dust

The theme of this year in our house is sacrifice like crazy so we don't ever need to again.  We're living entirely on one salary and the other goes straight to paying off debt.  We don't have any crazy debt story or anything.  I lived the crap out of the time that I was in college and had no idea what a budget was.  I'll take a year of super frugality in exchange for being in the right mindset to find my husband when I came home from a student loan funded study abroad trip in Italy.  But it sucks to pay off later.

But small victory!  We paid off Hubs' truck yesterday.  I called him to say, "Hey guess what?!"  He answered with a "Guess what" of his own.  Within the same hour that I sent the payment off, he realized that he had a gaping hole in one of his tires and was extremely lucky that he happened to have his air compressor in the truck so he could make it home.  Such is life.

They may not be new, but they're paid for.

Our Debt Snowball:

Discover Card

Best Buy Card

Bank of America Zeta Card

Hubs' Student Loan

Hubs' Truck

My Student Loan 

And then there was one.

Wish him luck

Hubs has been having an identity struggle where his job is concerned lately.  He works really hard.  Goodness knows that he works hard.  He feels like he's being taken advantage of at work and the stories that he brings home makes me wonder if they're churning out gossipers more than product at his company.

He found an electrical lineman apprenticeship program that really has gotten his attention.  A lady that he works with has a husband in an apprenticeship and he loves it.  My sweet husband who would barely call to order a pizza because he was too shy when we started dating has been reaching out to anyone that he can get a hold of.  He's taken his coworker's husband out to talk to him, reached out to bloggers, and buried himself in forums to try to give himself everything he would need to try to get accepted into the program.

He officially applied last month.

Off it went!

He got a letter in the mail within a week scheduling an interview.  He tells me that he's read that this program only does interviews every 4 months so we are waiting very patiently until January to see if this is a road that we're going to go down for the next years of our life.  

He's so excited.  And it makes me so happy to see him get so excited.  He's a dang good husband.

Charlie the graduate

Charlie graduated from his beginners obedience training class!  We're proud parents. :)

Choices

That was quite an unexpected hiatus from blogging!  Between Blogger having an issue and figuring out life choices, I haven't been writing much.  I really should have been since we're in the middle of some decisions and my mind hasn't worked through everything yet.

Hubs wants to be a lineman and officially applied to an apprenticeship program about two weeks ago.  Within 5 days, he had an interview scheduled so I am super excited for him.  If he gets into the program, our lives are going to get very interesting for a few years.  His interview isn't until January since they schedule them every 4 months.  I think we missed the interview slots by about a week this time around.

I was thinking seriously about going back to school for a radiology program and am just feeling totally paralyzed from making a decision to go forward with it or to walk away and find something else.  We have talked about expanding our baby family in about a year and a half.  If I go through this program, that will get pushed back about 7 years based on getting accepted into the school, actually working the program, and then working a few years to save up.

Some days, I'm totally for going back to school but on others, I can't imagine waiting until 34 to have a baby.  

I think I just figured out my answer from writing that last sentence.  I guess I need to write more to figure out what to do from here.

40%

Hubs and I got serious about paying off all of our debt back in March and we're officially 40% of the way to the finish line.  Our small little victories are keeping us motivated and making the cheese/peanut butter sandwiches that I take to work a little more tolerable.  We made a decision that assuming nothing crazy happens, we won't seriously start a conversation about kids until we can get our financial stuff cleaned up.  I just don't want to be at a disadvantage by bringing kids into a house where we don't have the option to buy or do things for our family because that money belongs to someone else before it even comes in.

Trust me, we didn't have anything crazy stacked against us but we had three low level credit cards, two student loans, and a truck stacked against us in March.  Just looking at the total felt like we would never have it paid off.  Six months later, we're down to just the truck and my student loan.  

It feels really freaking good.

Did you set any goals for your family before you started thinking about having kids?  I'd love to hear that we're not the only people. :)

Homemade Snickers

Corey loves Snickers and I found a homemade recipe online.  With his birthday coming up, he's been begging hinting that he would really like me to take another shot at it.  I made it for Valentine's Day and he flew through the whole pan in less than two weeks.  He says it tastes just like a Snickers ice cream bar.

This incredible recipe is from www.howsweeteats.com.  She explains it so much better but I just wanted to share her awesome recipe.  She has some amazing stuff over there.

Ingredients:   

Bottom layer: 

1 1/4 cups chocolate chips

1/4 cup peanut butter

Melt everything together until it's smooth.  Pour in your completely greased pan and let cool.  I pop it into the freezer until the next layer is ready.

Nougat layer:

1/4 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup evaporated milk

1 1/2 cup marshmallow fluff

1/4 cup peanut butter

1 1/2 chopped salted peanuts

1 T vanilla extract

Melt butter in a pan.  Add in sugar and milk and bring to a boil.  After 5 minutes, stir in the marshmallow fluff, peanut butter, and vanilla until smooth.  Take it off the heat and add in the peanuts.  Pour over the bottom layer.  Pop it back into the freezer until it's completely cool.

Caramel layer: 

1 14 oz bag of caramels in the candy aisle

1/4 cup whipping cream

Melt over low heat.  Don't rush this step.  It took the longest both times that I've made it.  Pour over the nougat layer and back into the freezer it goes.

Top layer:

1 1/4 cups chocolate chips

1/4 cup peanut butter

Same steps as the bottom layer.  Back into the freezer and you're done!

I put it back into the freezer overnight and then it gets to hang out in the fridge to stay cold.  We both like them better slightly chilled.

Corey's birthday isn't until Friday so he wasn't expecting it yet and was thrilled to pull it out of the freezer after work.

Turns out that we were on the same page because he brought me a treat while he was out too.  Happy anniversary weekend to us!

Check out those layers.  Mmm.  The happy husband isn't bad either. :)

Our first anniversary

Corey and I celebrated our first anniversary today.  We had a gift card that we've been saving since Christmas and went out to eat dinner.  He humored me by taking a few pictures afterwards.  He's such a good sport.

When we got married, people said that the first year of marriage is the hardest.  I took that with a grain of salt and now I'm just confused.  We didn't have any major struggles.  No screaming fights.  No storming out and staying at my parents until I cooled down.  We just had another lovely year together and took everything in stride.  

I asked him what he learned in his first year of marriage and he said that everything we do is a team effort.  As long as we communicate, our little issues don't become big issues.  He said the biggest thing for him being a husband that all of his decisions were for two people after the reality after the wedding kicked in.  He respects me enough to know that if he has to ask himself if I should be involved in something, I should probably be involved in it.  I'm his biggest cheerleader so it usually just gives him a boost of confidence to do whatever he had on his mind in the first place.  Jobs, goals, whatever.  I'm on his team.

If I had a tip for a newly wed couple it would be this: do not ever say something in anger online or to anyone that you are not married to about your relationship.  It's okay to get angry about things.  It's normal to get annoyed once in awhile.  You cannot take those things back once you calm down.  When people on Facebook bash their husbands online, it makes me really uncomfortable.  It just shows a huge lack of respect for your husband.  Maybe talk to him about whatever you're upset about and boom.  Problem is solved.

Our "1" prop found a new home on our gallery wall in the dining room.  It's just a cute reminder that we're already onto year two and the challenges that it might bring.  We're both ready and very happy to have the person we picked by our side.  I'm a very lucky girl.

What's For Dinner?

Corey and I have been doing the once a month cooking thing since February and we love it.  He is off work almost two hours before I am he just picks a zip lock bag and throws it in the crock pot or on the grill and dinner is ready before I get home.  We used to eat out a lot because we were too tired to cook a real meal after a long day at work.  

When I posted this picture on Facebook, people had a lot of questions so I figured I would walk you through how my mega cooking day works.  Corey and I make a list of what we want to do for dinner and fill in the empty spots with meals with similar ingredients.  We usually hit Aldi, the Meat & More Outlet, and Harp's to get all of our ingredients and I pick a day to cook.  It is a completely ridiculous undertaking the first time you do it but don't get discouraged.  It gets easier once you figure it out for your family.  

Our food budget is $200 a month and we haven't hit it since we started budgeting in March.  We barely have any food waste anymore either.  The picture above was $142.00.  We'll really only have to go back out for milk and bread.

I don't have a picture of every meal but I'll give you the recipes.  Some of the recipes are pretty self explanatory.  I'm sure you can figure out some sides to serve on your own.  We love homemade fries and serve them with a big chunk of our meals.

Our July meals:

Pizza Bagels - 2 meals

Baked Ziti - 2 meals

Salmon Patties & Mac & Cheese - 2 meals

Meatloaf - 3 meals + leftovers

Hot Dogs - 3 meals

BBQ Chicken - 2 meals

Hamburgers - 2 meals

BLT's - 2 meals

Buffalo Chicken - 2 meals

Spaghetti Chicken - 2 meals

Chicken Alfredo - 2 meals

Popcorn Chicken - 2 meals

Chicken Sandwiches - 2 meals

We eat plan to eat out 3 times this month.

I put an entire bag of chicken breasts in the crock pot on high, throw a load of laundry in and take a shower. By the time my hair is dry and I'm ready to go, they're on their way to being thawed.  This next step is the most important part.  

Crank up the music and pour yourself a glass of wine.  You're going to earn it.  We're taking it easy on our air conditioning so the ice cubes were a must this time.

 

Pizza Bagels:

Bagels

Pepperoni (or whatever topping you'd like

Mozzarella cheese

Pizza sauce - I used spoonfuls of the sauce from the next recipe in the list before the meat was added.

Cut your bagels in half, add sauce, toppings, and cheese in that order.  I added the toppings last on the first batch and they didn't hold on as well.

Baked Ziti:

1 lb. ground turkey

1 can of pasta sauce
Noodles

Brown the turkey and stir into sauce.  Let cool for a few minutes and divide into two gallon size zip lock bags.

The day you're having this for dinner: Prepare your noodles and warm up the sauce.  Combine everything together and serve.

Salmon Patties:  Recipe here however, I really need to get the one from my mom.  We grew up on these.
1 can salmon, drained and flaked
2 eggs, beaten
1 T black pepper
3 TBSP vegetable oil.

Mix everything except the oil together and shape into about 7 or 8 patties.  Heat the oil on the stove and cook each side for about 5 minutes.  Let dry on a paper towel.

 Meatloaf:  I modified the recipe from this site.
3 lbs. ground beef
3 lbs. ground turkey
3/4 cup bread crumbs
6 eggs
1 cup BBQ sauce
6 T worcestershire sauce
4 T garlic salt
Ketchup

I find that it's easier to make this amount in two batches.  Let everything thaw completely and mix together in a large bowl.  Separate into two loaf pans.  Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.  Let cool completely and I just cover the pans with foil and find a place for them in the freezer.

The day you're having this for dinner: cover in ketchup and cook for 20-30 more minutes at 350.

BBQ Chicken:
Chicken Breasts
BBQ Sauce.

Put chicken breasts in a gallon zip lock bag.  Pour BBQ sauce over to marinate.

The day you're having this for dinner: Grill or crock pot.  Your choice.

Buffalo Chicken:
Chicken Breasts
Ott's Buffalo sauce

Shred chicken breasts with two forks.  Put into gallon zip lock bag and pour buffalo sauce over.  We've tried other sauces and the Ott's brand is our favorite.  You can find it at Walmart.  It's the only thing we buy there anymore.  This is my husband's favorite meal and it is EASY.  This makes two meals for us.

The day you're having this for dinner:  Stove or crock pot. Your choice.

Spaghetti Chicken:  Found recipe here.
Chicken Breasts
1 package Italian salad dressing mix
4 TBSP. melted butter
1 can cream of chicken soup
8 oz. cream cheese
1/2 cup chicken broth
Penne noodles

Mix everything but the chicken and noodles together.  If you're like me, the mix WILL look funny to you.  It'll look lumpy and you're going to wonder if you really want to eat it.  When it heats up, everything will be fine. :)  Don't prepare your noodles if you're just getting everything ready on your cooking day.  Cut your chicken into bite sized pieces and separate into two gallon zip lock bags.

The day you're having this for dinner: Prepare your noodles and warm up everything on the stove.  Mix noodles, sauce, and chicken together and serve.

Chicken Alfredo:
Chicken Breasts
Jar of alfredo sauce
Noodles

Cut chicken into bite sized pieces and separate into two gallon zip lock bags.  Pour your sauce into the bags.

The day you're having this for dinner: Prepare your noodles and warm up everything on the stove.  Mix noodles, sauce, and chicken together and serve.

Tips:

• Make this as easy for yourself as possible.  
• Pick your meals before you even go to the store.
• If you're wondering if you have enough space in your freezer to do this, know that we have the "cute" sized model refrigerator from Lowes.  If we have room, you have room.
• Change it up.  We never have the same list of dinners two months in a row.
• Try something new.  I find at least one new recipe every time we do this.
• I'm still not kidding about that wine.

Let me know if you try this and how it went!  I would love to hear about it!  Send awesome recipes over to me too.  It's not to early to start thinking about August's dinner plans.

Proof that I am crazy about my husband

I feel like I'm getting closer and closer to being a real adult.  Apparently there's more to it than just hitting a certain age or checking things off a list.  College?  Check.  Married?  Check.  Life insurance?  Dang.

I've never had to deal with life insurance before but now that we're married and have the house, it's really important to make sure that he wouldn't have anything to worry about if something were to happen to me.  We're young so it's not  likely that anything would happen but it's better safe than sorry.  I found a policy that sounded good and went for it.  Hubs isn't on board with his yet but I'm sure he will knock it out eventually.  I had to have an exam to qualify for it that I knocked out this afternoon.

Officially worth more dead than alive.   Awesome thought.

If you've ever had allergies or asthma, you might have been enlightened by a scratch test back in the day.  That's where a doctor basically draws a giant grid on your back and had tiny vials of purified allergens.  Then, in each box, they prick your skin with a needle of it to see if you have an allergic reaction.  It was basically the worst day of my childhood to the point of where I still remember what outfit I was wearing and it's been almost 20 years.  Another time, I had my wisdom teeth removed and the nurse was so bad at placing the iv that I had four inch long bruises in both elbows because she couldn't find the vein.  It's fair say that I get anxious around needles.

This insurance policy required me to willingly give a blood sample.  The good news is that I survived.  Hubs informed me that I make a involuntary noise when I'm nervous like when I'm having some stranger draw blood at our kitchen table.  I'm a little disappointed that my subconscious noise wasn't a "shazam" or a tiger growl.

Battle wound.

The things I will do for that man to make him know that I adore him.  

25% of the Way

We ran the numbers and we are officially 25% of the way through our debt snowball.  Woo!  Corey is thinking about getting a second job because he is determined to knock this thing out as fast as possible.  I'm so proud of him for jumping into this with both feet.  Having him on the same page is incredible and we'll get this knocked out that much faster.  Since we've only been doing this for three months, at this current pace I think that we'll definitely be on track to be done in February/March of 2013.

Out of State Wedding

One of Corey's track friends from college got married last weekend and we decided to make the trek down to Conway to see him get married.  Since we're on a budget, we wanted to stay as close to our goal of $150 as possible.

Corey likes to look up Man vs. Food locations whenever we head somewhere new and ended up falling in love with this place called Cotham Mercantile.  It was down some random highway and our GPS got very confused.  If we hadn't seen the front of the building in the MVF episode, we would probably still be out there looking for it.  They're known for their Hubcap burgers.  It's basically a burger the size of your entire plate.  Or your husband's head.  He was very happy.

We booked it back to Conway to get ready and on the way to the wedding.  Their processional music was an instrumental version of Skinny Love. My heart was a little broken to find out that Bon Iver would be performing at the Little Rock River Walk on Sunday evening and we had to head home to get me back to work on Monday.  Sigh.  We were so close.

As their slideshow was going on before the wedding, it was wonderful to see them grow up together essentially through their photos.  Nine years together is astonishing.  Corey and I are exactly one month shy of our first married anniversary in this photo.  Why yes, I am drinking out of a mason jar in Arkansas too.

The happy couples.  Check out my sweet ankle brace accessory.  I'm just about done with that piece of healing from last week's tumble.

Ok, back to the budget portion.  The hotel that they had the group rate at was $110 a night.  We went ahead and used our AAA discount to stay in a hotel that was less than half of that rate.We decided to  not buy anything new to wear for the wedding.  I found a dress that I had worn to my graduation in 2009 hanging in a suit bag in our spare closet.  Win!  We homemade a gift and gassed up the car.  We could have cut corners on the eating out by not going to the Man vs. Food restaurant but we have no plans to go back to Little Rock in the future.  We just considered it in our normal restaurant visit for the month so we're not upset with ourselves budget wise.

Our final total was $185.65.  By my calculations, we saved $134 from what we would have done if we weren't keeping a huge eye on our finances.  I'm proud of us.  This is the first time we've gone out and done something big since we started getting super serious on our budget.  It just shows that we can still enjoy ourselves and win.

Mistake

This is a conversation between my husband and I this morning.

Me: I went running this morning.  Big f*cking mistake.
Corey:  I think about running after work every day but get home and discover the couch.
Me: Soulmates.

When we went up to Kansas City, I stopped by one of my oldest frienemies.  My mother has this hateful scale in her bathroom and it calls to me.  Somehow, I always stop by this thing to check out how I'm doing.  It's not that I've ever had a weight problem but I know that my body feels differently at different weight points.  This is the heaviest period of my life at this point.  I've lots 13 pounds since Christmas when I checked in with it last.  The girls in the office and I are still working off our tornado twenty.  We were fed very well by the volunteers who wanted to make sure us Joplin folks were eating while we were rounding up the animals.  We're from the Midwest.  Eating is never something that is just forgotten.

Now you might look at that number and say, "Awesome!  Quit freaking out."  However, my husband hopped on the scale right after me and pulled up a 150.6 lbs.  The exact same as me.  He's 6' 2"!  Problem.

So last night I set my alarm and transferred some of my best gangster music onto my phone and planned to become a runner in the morning.  Apparently, it's not that easy.  About half a block from the house, my throat burst into flames.  It felt just like our honeymoon when my body figured out that if I was going to do grown up things like get married then I should have to deal with acid reflux.  HA.  Take that.  

I pushed through it and I'm not going to admit I ran the whole time.  There was definitely some walking and reflecting on life this morning.  I have decided that many people are liars.  Running doesn't feel good.  You don't look graceful when you run.  And this woman in the photo below.  I hate everything about her.  She's beautifully running through water barefoot because that's the type of person she is.  I'm on fire!

Photo borrowed from:
Woman Around Town

This is what I looked like after my run today.  I'm sure you can notice the similarities between myself and that woman in the photo above.  Oh wait.  I'm a real freaking person.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.  Shots, Shots, Shots of ice cold water is all I wanted when I got home.  I think I need new music for a new day.

Car Trouble

 

We've been working ourselves into the ground to get money earned to start to pay Corey's student loan off next.  Something got into Corey's head and he decided that we were going to find a way to pay the entire thing off this month.  That's something like $2,650 in one month.  Since that's more than our normal income this month, I've been keeping my hopes up but the numbers weren't adding up.  We made much more than expected at the garage sale, dipping our toes into the waters of Ebay was paying off, and I had a boudoir party and a wedding this month for the studio.  We actually got up over half of the balance of his loan waiting in the bank account and then we realized that we had a decent expense coming up.  Twice.

Both of our cars have been having issues lately, Corey's tires and my brakes have been making us anxious.  My car is 8 years old and Corey's is 11 so it's not a surprise that we're going to have car maintenance.  The tires that have been on Corey's truck are over 10 years old and have spent years sitting in a drive way.  Brakes break and need to be replaced.  We did some price comparisons and headed out to get new tires.  

It feels different to not scramble to figure out how you're going to pay for something and get groceries out of the same paycheck.  It's pretty nice.  Even when the total is pretty lame.

We headed up to Kansas City and dropped my truck off at the dealership that my dad works at to get looked at.  We had to replace sway bars, realign tires, replace brake pads, and other car mumbo jumbo that means that my car is in better shape now.  When I heard how much it was going to be, I was thrilled.  I mean not to pay that much but that it wasn't twice that.  We didn't have to touch our emergency fund and still have money left over to pay on his loan this month.

If we're lucky, we'll be able to get his loan below the $2000 mark by the end of the month and I think I'm still floored by that.  Maybe next month.

City-wide Garage Sale

Corey and I are still working on our house item declutterathon and the city wide garage sale had some really wicked timing.  We just wanted to get as many things out of the house as possible and a little extra money would be nice.  We have had this old couch, loveseat, and chair that have been a major part of my home decor for years.  They had moved with me four different times since I've been on my own.  It's really hard to pretend to be grown ups with your main pieces of furniture in your house are futons.  Granted, they were really nice futons, but still.  It was time to say goodbye.  We were able to send the couch off on Craigslist but the last two pieces just wouldn't leave.  We hoped for the best and got them ready for our garage sale.  We decided that it was going to be their day.  It totally was.

I'll admit it was a little bittersweet to see them go.  When I was in college, all three of my roommates and I curled up on the couch to watch a movie and talk about what type of theme party we wanted to throw in the name of sorority recruitment.  The man who would be my husband got ambush kissed by me the first time on that loveseat.  A few years later, that same fella blew my mind with a ring and a question when I was curled up on it with sweatpants and glasses on.

We have totally respectable married people couches now and I hope the fella that bought them has some good memories with these futons too.  

25 Years Already

I was lucky enough to celebrate my 25th birthday on Sunday.  I have had rotten luck with birthdays in the past so I begged Corey for an extremely low key birthday.  With that in mind, we had a 2 day garage sale, a boudoir party for the studio, and ran non stop on my actual birthday.  My definition of low key and his are vastly different but anyhow, I loved it.  He bought me this sweet ladder for the house.  There is so much potential that I don't even know where to start with it.

We went to Steak 'N Shake for lunch and got this sweet milkshake.  

Corey writes me a letter on every holiday that we get to share together in a book so I can keep them all together.  I wasn't sure if he would remember since my book has been kept in my closet for safekeeping but he surprised me and added to it.  I didn't even have to sneakily lay it out for him.  He's so good.

I know I don't say it enough but life is good and I am totally content.

Bliss

Quiet moments in a marriage can be the most wonderful.  I'm a very lucky girl.

Project 1000

I read on Musings of a Midlife Mom that she was on a mission to get rid of 1,000 usable items from her house by the end of the year.  I mentioned it to Corey and he scoffed and said that we don't have anywhere near that much because our house isn't cluttered.  I asked him if he's been living somewhere else and not telling me.

I know how to play the game and allowed him to watch the first few rounds of the NFL draft before asking him to help me with the pantry.  Thankfully, the city wide garage sale is this weekend too so he has an extra perk in helping me to clear it out.

Welcome to our kitchen pantry!  I like to think of it as a walk in junk drawer most days.  Yes, that is our vacuum in the pantry.  Don't hate.

This is our Halloween/Christmas/Wedding/Goodwill dishes/half completed craft project section of the pantry.  I'm just thrilled that I managed to keep everything in their own box instead of just a giant pile of disorganization pushed into the corner.  I mean it's really close though.

After!  I realize that a pantry is supposed to have food but we're about to start the third month of once a month cooking.  We haven't bought groceries except milk, bread, and peanut butter since March 10.  We've  only eaten out three times so I'm pretty proud of us.  We have a plastic tub for every day of the week and when groceries get put away, they are sorted by meal.  When it's the day for that meal, you can just grab the container and take all of the ingredients to the kitchen.  It's handy and you realize right away if you have that  d'oh moment when it's half cooked and you're missing something important.

Much better!  The Halloween/Christmas/Wedding/Goodwill dishes/half completed craft project boxes have found new permanent homes.

We even went through our medicine cabinet and disposed of all of the out of date medicine.  I'm guessing those eye drops from 2007 will do more harm than good at this point.

I can safely say that 12 items are going to be removed from our house either for Goodwill or our garage sale and we filled up our city trashcan with junk.  It reminds me of when we moved in and said that we would never have enough food and things to fill the shelves in here.  988 items left to go!  We can do it!

Do you have a nightmare room that needs to get a makeover?