Wedding Shower for My Cousin

I hope everyone had a great weekend. My went bye in the blink of an eye.  Saturday was a blur of cleaning, cleaning, and more cleaning. But then we did may some time to have a few friends over for dinner. It was a great night. However, the more exciting day of my weekend was on Sunday when I went with my mom to Michigan to go to my cousin's wedding shower!

Even though it was a 3 hour drive to get to the shower, it was great to celebrate this special occasion with this very special girl!

One of the best shower games we played involved making a wedding dress out of toilet paper on each on the bridesmaids.

 

Then Anna's job was to pick a winning team that was the most creative and looked most like her wedding dress. Needless to say our long sleeved traditional dress didn't win. Oh well.

After the shower my mom and I went to dinner with my grandma and uncle Dave. I mean a trip to Michigan can't happen without spending a little bit of time with my grandma!

 

It was a great weekend, but I have a very busy week planned being that school start next week. So if I'm not around much this week it's not that I forgot about you guys- I'm just trying to make it through week with my sanity!

Price Comparing Project

In the past few weeks I been better about meal planning, which has help with our food spending. However, I have only been going to Aldi and Jewel for my weekly food. Aldi for my main staples, and Jewel for my name brand items. In a normal week I would say I typically we spend $80-$100 on food. However, I would like to get our weekly spending down even if it's just $10-$20 a week less, because it does add up over time.

So yesterday a packet of weekly store ads had come in the mail .This is the first time in a few months that any ads have come in mail, so I figured it was time to really start price comparing and try to get my money saving plans put in action.

 

Shamrock thought he could help me with this project. 

So I started with look through all the sale ads- 6 of the ads/stores are within a 15 minute drive of my house, those were the ones I started with. Then once I started looking at what I would need or want to buy, found 3 stores that really best deals. So my plan for tomorrow is to hopefully hit all three in one shot. Here are some of the deals I'm hoping to take advantage of-

At Berkots-

• 4/ $8 boxes of Kellogg cereal (I miss my Cocoa Krispies but I don't like to spend more than $2 for my cereal)
• $.39 Dannon Yogurt (It's Sam favorite and I try not to spend more than $.50 a cup on yogurt)
•  5/ $1 Sweet Corn (My favorite summer time side dish)

At Brookhaven-

• $1.99 gallon of Milk
• $.29 per pound for Bananas
• $.69 per pound for Nectarines
• $.59 Vitamin Waters (Sam really like these and they can cost on "sale" normally $1 each- so I'll be stocking up because they don't go bad)

Then to Aldi (which also is running some good prices on things I normally buy there- bonus!) to get the rest of our typical food. I'm hoping if I can spend less then $15 at the other two stores,  and I think I should also be able to leave Aldi spending less then $40 dollars. So the goal is to spend less than $70 this week while still trying to buy health(ish) things. Wish me luck! I'll be sure to let you know how it goes.

Why is it so hard to be motivated to blog?

So I know I haven't blogged much over the past few months. I do think about blogging often because I read other people blogs almost everyday, but to sit down to write out my thoughts- well that is not happening as much as I would like. So the question I keep asking myself is - Why is it so hard to be motivated to blog?

Think my blog motivation has waned for a few reasons-

1. Working later hours in the summer meant less time to write blogs once I got home.
2. I've been more motivated in other parts of my life. Mostly my weight loss goals and meal planning.
3. Other then working out/ trying to lose weight- not much else is going on in my life.

However, there are other reasons why I want to get back into a better blogging habit-

1.  Because it can keep me accountable for the goals I set for myself.
2. I like being able to go back and see how much has change in my life over time.
3.  There are things going on in my life even if they don't seem that exciting. As a people we are always growing and changing, so blogging can document that. 

Over weekend I spent a good chuck of Saturday cleaning (again- the boring parts of my life) and I found an old school project from when I was in eighth grade. This is the same year I moved to Illinois and I was still struggling with adjusting to my new "life".

This project was called "All About Me!". This was an assignment to write out who you are, where you came from, and what your dreams are for the future. Here are some of the things I found really interesting about my 14 year old self...

"My favorite family member is Grandma because she picks up Karen and I to take us back to Michigan for the weekend."

"Katrina is my best friend because we like the same things and we get along."

"My TV hero is ALF because he is funny."

"If I could be anyone in the world, I would be JC from N'Sync because he has had so many great adventures in his life."

"One day I hope to be honored for finishing high school."

"Ten years from now, I will be 24 years old. My career will be a dolphin/ whale trainer at Sea World."

"This is what I would wish for... to be a good singer."

I spent about half hour just reading though all the pages and I really enjoyed getting reminded how much has changed in my life in 13 years. For this reason, I have to remind myself that blogging isn't just about how many other people read and enjoy your blog- it's about doing it for yourself and preserving your memories. And hopefully that is enough motivation to keep the blogs coming.

Budgeting for the Future

It's Monday which means back to work for me. I love that my university offers us to take Fridays off in the summer, but I did miss working my normal work hours. I know normally I have a weekend recap for you, but the truth is that I didn't taken many pictures this weekend, so I don't have much to tell you about. Here is the short of it-

• Friday- Caught up on True Blood (I love that show). When to Bloomington IN to bring my friend Alison some furniture.
• Saturday- Came home from Bloomington. When to a graduate party. Hung out with friends.

• Sunday- Went to church- twice.

Those are the highlights.

Over the weekend, I kept coming back to this idea that Sam and I really need to sit down and work on a family budget. Between talking with my friends about home improvement projects we want to do, to going to church and hearing a whole sermon on budgeting; I think it's time to do this.

I have always prided myself on being good with money, but since graduating from college I feel like I've lost control of my money sense. My living expenses have been all over the place since graduating. First was living at home, working only part-time, but saving for a wedding. Then getting a full time job, but saving for a house. Then it was buying a house, and paying for home "stuff". Now that we have been living at the house for almost a year, I really want to start to budget better. We aren't going into debt, but I feel like I want to have a better understanding of where our money is going .

So tonight we'll sit down and really start taking a hard look at our finances. My goal is to know-

•  What we could be doing better with 
•  What we can cut out
• What projects/ vacations/ events/ big ticket items do we want to save for

Wish us luck!

MyFitnessPal Check III

Happy August Everyone! Being that it's been 6 weeks since my last "MyFitnessPal" check in so I thought it was time to update you on my progress. At my last check-in here is where my weight was at...

Since then, here is what the scale has been reading...

(A random low weight in "fluke"- low for that week at least)

 

Again I'm excited to report things have been going pretty well on the weight lose front. I have to say the camping trip two weeks ago didn't help my weight lost goals. That week were no weight was lost (but there wasn't gain either- so that's good).

Here is a look at MyFitnessPal weight lose chart...

Again like last time, I still haven't logged in the lower weight because I don't trust that the scale won't be higher the next time I go to the gym. So far this week I haven't made it to the gym expect for Monday (under no fault of my own- by that is a whole long story), so I feel like it's smart to "save" a few pounds off my documented progress just in case I have a bad week.

If anyone else is using the MyFitnessPal app, feel free to "friend" me (username- ssdarke). It is nice to a support unit to encourage you along the way especial on a weight lose journey that can easily get derailed for many different reasons- good times, bad times, lazy times, sad times, etc. Also, I like to think the app helps me be more accountable for my actions (or non-actions as the case maybe). If you are thinking about losing a few pounds, I encourage you to try MyFitnessPal (or whatever counter you want to use) because it has brought me more success than anything else I've done in the past.  

Good-Bye July

I can't believe it's the end of July which means in my mind it's the end of summer. Being that I work at a university, one of the busiest months is August because all the students come back to campus and there are lot things that need to get done before school starts. So please keep in your thoughts this month because life is about to get CRAZY!!!

However, I'm going to enjoy this last day of July and give you a recap of the wedding shower fun I had this weekend! This weekend both the hubby and I attended our friends Joel and Casey's wedding shower.

I'm not sure was is up with my hand in this picture. Casey said it looks like I'm holding an invisible beer, and Joel said it's the "pregnancy" hand- neither are true but I can see both of those options.

Their shower was at Arlington Race Track. It was a pretty cool place for a shower because it was a great way to encourage guys to actually come to a co-ed wedding shower. Plus the cost seemed really reasonable because you can actually bring in your own food so you don't have to pay a high catering bill that most reception halls would change you. I think I may keep this place in mind if I have to throw a shower for any of my friends.

Typically Sam isn't one to do too much gambling, but he figured he would try his luck and surprisingly it didn't go too bad. From the race that is pictured above, Sam won $33. However, he kept betting and started losing. In the end he walked home winning a grad total of $1.10. Well at least he won right?

So even though I know August is going to a crazy month, September is going to start off awesome because it starts off with these to two kids getting married! So let hurry up August, I got some important things to do in September!

Camping with Friends

Being that I can't seems to motivate myself to write regular posts, here's a recap of the fun that was had last weekend.

I have to say three day weekends throughout the summer is pretty awesome. I love having Friday to myself filled with my own plans, but last Friday Sam was able leave work early so we could start our weekend plans. So off to Wisconsin we went...

 

The weather was prefect! Also, we were staying at our friend Lindsay's dad's house, so that was nice because it meant the trip was happening on the cheap, which is always nice. However, the best thing was that he has property right on a river so we could really enjoy to beautiful weather in the water.

 

Once we got there we got right into our swimsuits, we grabbed our chairs, a drink, and headed out to the sandbar in the river to start our vacation out right.

The next morning we had plans to tube down the river back the campsite. In true "float trip" tradition, we start off with some shots. Here before going on the river...

 

Here is the an after...

 

Oh how I love my friends. They are always so entertaining and make for a great time!

This weekend we are out to a co-ed wedding shower for these two lovely people at a local horse track. 

Here's to another great weekend with great friends!