2019 Goals

2019 Goals

Family

-Focus on being present in the moment & not being distracted by social media/phones or tv; spending quality time as a family

Financial

-Pile up money to purchase a new car for me (thankful for family to borrow cars in the meantime)

-Build back our emergency fund; we used a big chunk of the EF to make a larger down payment on our new home

-Start throwing more money toward our mortgage balance to knock some years off & interest total

-Use money wisely, thinking about purchases instead of making them with a "just because" attitude; Thought: Will this item make us happier? Will I still be happy I bought this item in six months? Could the money be better used elsewhere?

Professional

-Erin: continue to be the best teacher I can be, but having a good work/home balance as well

-Bret: continue to be a leader and example on the deputy team he works (9Side); adjust sleep schedule to new working schedule to maximize time with family

Surprise: We Bought a New House!

In my mind, we weren't looking to buy a new home at this point. I thought we would be in our Spruce Street house for another year or two. We were working on paying down the mortgage to get it under $100K. Bret started looking around at homes and we talked with friends of ours whose home we have always loved. There were three more plots on their street; thinking we could possibly build a home and move next year. We tried to contact the builder, but never got much information from them (come to find out, they were folding their business). But, as luck would have it, a house on that sames street came up for sale! We went to an open house and fell in LOVE! We got in touch with the realtor Bret's sister worked with a couple of years ago. He's also a Jayhawk and I know his wife through Bret playing rugby at KU. We went and looked at some other homes for sale in Gardner and back to the one on our friends' street. Nothing compared to it!

Since we had been playing down our current mortgage so much, and had quite a bit of savings, we were able to put a lot down for a down payment & afford a good offer on the house. Before we knew it, we were signing lots of papers and the house is now ours. This all happened in the span of 3 months (open house to moving day!)

new playroom!

always a helper

our NEW home

Of course, moving out of our house couldn't be easy. The night before moving, there was a tornado warning. Bret and W slept in the basement til the all clear was given.

Shed Building

Bret ordered (from Costco) a shed for our backyard. I am excited for it to be finished so that we can use the sub-basement as a playroom for William! Bret's dad has been helping him finish.

9/4

9/7

And, with the roof, it's complete! Although, Bret still wants to paint it.

William's Nursery

Picture overload, William's nursery is done (for now, at least!)

40 Bags in 40 Days

I know Lent has already started, but I found this 40 Bags in 40 Days and I want to see if I'm up to the challenge!

White House Black Shutters

 I have made my list, only got to 30 places to clean so far. But I'm thinking I can find 10 more to declutter!

Kitchen Upgrade: Dishwasher

We have wanted to upgrade our kitchen appliances for a while now. Since we are on the Dave Ramsey life plan, we don't go out and buy whatever we want, whenever we want. We opened a Home Improvement account and have been saving a little each month. When we had enough saved, we headed out to find a new dishwasher. Installed Saturday and we are in love! It matches our clean steel fridge and runs so very quietly, there's even an 'Eco' setting. Next on the upgrade plan: stove & microwave :)

Paint Updating

We updated our kitchen/dining room/stairwell. For the last four years, since we moved into our house, we have has blue-gray walls. It took a while to decide what color we wanted. We narrowed it down to three teals, see the picture below:

 

I'm in love with the teal (#1) we chose. I'm thinking we are going to add wainscoting along the wall in the dining room. Final products (for now):

 

Happy Friday - Car Troubles

This is the call I received when I got from work today: Come get me, I just broke an axel in my car! Oh jeez. We had just made plans to go out to dinner with two other couples and had to push those plans back a bit so we could get a tow truck to take our car to the repair show.

Hope your Friday was better than ours!

Organizing in the New Year

After having time off work for winter break, I thought I would tackle organizing under my bathroom sink/drawers. I have many lotions and hair products as well as BirchBox product samples. I headed to Walmart to get a plastic drawer organizer. Each drawer is for a different product: hair, face, lotions.

Before:

 

After:

Dave Ramsey - Inspired!

Now that I'm on summer break, I try to listen to Dave Ramsey each morning. He's on in KC from 9-11am on AM710. The advice he gives and the stories people tell (the good and the bad) are so inspiring to me. I get all motivated to move along the baby steps! If you aren't familiar, here they are

My husband and I are currently on baby steps 4 & 6. Baby steps 4, 5, & 6 are done simultaneously and because we don't have kids, we are just on 4 & 6. When we started off, we didn't have a terrible amount of debt and we were first married. The biggest thing was paying off the student loan debt we had from college. Once we got that finished, we piled up money to have our 6-month emergency fund completed. That was such a huge accomplishment for us, as I am a teacher and my husband works at an early education center (read = we don't make a ton of money).

We are putting any "extra" money we have toward our home mortgage. Whether that is $15 or $80, every little bit means that we will own our house outright sooner and we won't be paying any more interest to the bank than we need to. To tell the truth, I can't wait for Baby Step 7, to be able to bless others with our wealth, but it will be a while!

Goals Update: June

My husband and I took time to make goals for ourselves for 2013. We tried to be specific and will hold ourselves to these goals. After three months, we have begun 11 out of the 13 goals, with 4 fully accomplished!

1. Plan a vacation for just the two of us. Save to pay for it up front! - no plans made yet, savings are building - We are visiting my sister & her family the first weekend of June and I am surprising my husband with a day at Disneyland!!
2. Pay off 100% of student loans!
3. Save and buy a "new" vehicle - $3,284.50 saved as of May 31, 2013
4. Save 100% of emergency fund - 98.3% as of May 31, 2013--> put together two saving accounts; plan to be done in June!
5. Get basement and garage ORGANIZED!
6. Floor the attic (more storage) - still haven't thought about this at all, too far down on the list to do anything
7. Bret to purchase the firearm of his choice
8. Organize a Legacy Drawer  - About 90% completed! Need to write legacy letters & think of funeral plans --> sad to think about, probably why we are putting it off!
9. Make wills for each of us
10. Build a 72-Hour emergency kit (here and here) --> haven't even started this, slackers! We were at Bass Pro this week and saw some survival supplies we need to get
11. Be intentional about finding opportunities to give to others --> I have tried to find opportunities for random acts of kindness
12. Plan our meals by the week - so far, so good! We do this on Sunday night for the following week
13. Keep communication open and loving between us --> We have been trying to pray together at least once a day

Pinterest Plans for the Summer

One of the perks of being a teacher is having summers off. I have been on Pinterest finding some things to try this summer. Here is what I'd like to do!

Prayer Wall


 Light up planters with glow-in-the-dark paint

Laundry room update

Love these turned baskets for storage


Tackle box with first aid supplies


Shower storage


Car emergency kit

Goals Update: May

My husband and I took time to make goals for ourselves for 2013. We tried to be specific and will hold ourselves to these goals. After three months, we have begun 11 out of the 13 goals, with 4 fully accomplished!

1. Plan a vacation for just the two of us. Save to pay for it up front! - no plans made yet, savings are building 
2. Pay off 100% of student loans!
3. Save and buy a "new" vehicle - $3,284.50 saved as of May 1, 2013
4. Save 100% of emergency fund - 96.3% as of May 1, 2013--> put together two saving accounts to get to our goal faster
5. Get basement and garage ORGANIZED! - May garage sale was successful and none of our stuff came back into our house (yay!)
6. Floor the attic (more storage) - still haven't thought about this at all, too cold to get up there and do anything
7. Bret to purchase the firearm of his choice
8. Organize a Legacy Drawer  - About 90% completed! Need to write legacy letters & think of funeral plans --> sad to think about, probably why we are putting it off!
9. Make wills for each of us
10. Build a 72-Hour emergency kit (here and here) --> haven't even started this, slackers!
11. Be intentional about finding opportunities to give to others --> I have tried to find opportunities for random acts of kindness
12. Plan our meals by the week - so far, so good! We do this on Sunday night for the following week
13. Keep communication open and loving between us --> We have been trying to pray together at least once a day

Goals Update: April

My husband and I took time to make goals for ourselves for 2013. We tried to be specific and will hold ourselves to these goals. After three months, we have begun 10 out of the 13 goals, with 3 fully accomplished!

1. Plan a vacation for just the two of us. Save to pay for it up front! - no plans made yet, savings are building 
2. Pay off 100% of student loans!
3. Save and buy a "new" vehicle - $1,804.21 saved as of March 19, 2013 --> this was said shuffling from Goal #2
4. Save 70% of emergency fund - 43.9% as of March 30, 2013
5. Get basement and garage ORGANIZED! - garage still organized, basement is being worked on (waiting on that city wide garage sale in May to clean it out!!)
6. Floor the attic (more storage) - still haven't thought about this at all, too cold to get up there and do anything
7. Bret to purchase the firearm of his choice
8. Organize a Legacy Drawer  - About 90% completed! Need to write legacy letters & think of funeral plans --> sad to think about, probably why we are putting it off!
9. Make wills for each of us
10. Build a 72-Hour emergency kit (here and here)
11. Be intentional about finding opportunities to give to others --> I have tried to find opportunities for random acts of kindness
12. Plan our meals by the week - so far, so good! We do this on Sunday night for the following week
13. Keep communication open and loving between us
1.  Books to read: Unglued  
2. We have been trying to pray together at least once a day

Cleaning Grout

What do you do on Spring Break?! I clean and cook!

Today, I tackled the grout in our front entryway. I looked online (read: Pinterest) for some homemade cleaner ideas. They just seem so much safer than all those chemicals in store-bought cleaners. I found one recipe for cleaner on Vintage Restyled and decided to try it out!

I used:

• 1 cup hot water
• 1 cup white vinegar
• 1.5 tablespoons baking soda
• toothbrush to clean
• two cleaning cloths: one to wipe on the solution & one to wipe it off

Be sure to mix this in a tall container as the baking soda bubbles up as it is mixed. Also, add it slowly so you don't have a bubble attack.

 pre-cleaned grout

 check out that difference!

so fresh and clean now