Photo of the day: something I love

I have a love hate relationship with budgeting. I really enjoy knowing exactly what we spend and where our money goes. But, after making our monthly  budget, we have to stick to it. Unfortunately it rarely includes shopping sprees at Target.

We use the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University method to budget. Alex and I both have commission based jobs, which makes planning very difficult (our paychecks are rarely the same month to month). Which means we have to update and change our budget monthly- yes, the mortgage and typical bills stay the same, but we allow for fluctuations in our envelopes. We have cash envelopes that we use for all of our day to day spending and we budget down to the last penny. We've been doing it for about 8 months and we've paid off Alex's student loan (woohoo!!) and are working on the car now.

That being said, we have made sacrifices and have to be pretty creative. We have given up Direct TV and replaced it with Hulu and Netflix which saves a lot. We don't eat out often and we (try) to plan everything (weekends, holidays, gifts, etc.) down to the last detail. There are still some surprises we can't plan for and that's part of life, but this budget has been really great for us. There are a lot of different programs and ways to budget and this may not be the best way to budget and plan for everyone, but it works really well for us.  

Today's picture is our table on budget day, "Something I love."

Photo of the day: birthday cake

I originally put "birthday cake" on the photo list because Alex's birthday is the 27th, but we celebrate about 10 other birthdays this month too. So, this picture is of the "cake" I took to work for a coworkers birthday. She requested a cake with strawberries, so I made a Strawberry Shortcake Trifle. It was very good and very easy. 

My loose interpretation of a birthday cake. Happy birthday to all of our October born friends and family!! 

House Update: Master Bedroom

We have almost lived here for a year and we've done a lot of updates and still have quite the list to do. Apparently that's home ownership. We're working on finishing the basement now (pictures to come). But, I realized that I've not updated pictures of our bedroom since we painted and rearranged. We took our head and foot boards off and flipped the bed around beneath the window. We added a bench at the foot of the bed and now the room feels a lot bigger.  

The paint is a shade of gray (surprise!) called "Cinder Block" by Valspar. The green side table is from a garage sale, spruced up with a coat of spray paint. The lamp, wooden side table, plum curtains and grey quilt are all from Target. I made the throw pillows, the chair in the corner is from my parents basement and... 

Viola! our bedroom is complete (for now)!

Photo of the day: lazy Sunday

Happy lazy Sunday afternoon...for me and Moose at least. Alex is painting while Moose and I are watching old Gossip Girl episodes and playing on the iPad. Happy Sunday!