Total Money Makeover!

It's Dave Ramsey's method of creating financial peace and living like no one else today so you can LIVE like no one else someday.  I've listened to the CD's, read the book, and even started the transformation, then I quit!  Now I'm getting back into it!  The good thing is when I first started this a year ago, I did get all my credit cards, student loans, AND a car paid off.  I will admit I still have another car loan though, shhhh.... don't tell Dave!  I've also increased my mortgage by quite a bit with the purchase of our 2nd home.  This won't be such a big deal soon as we start getting rent money for our 1st house.  Here's the baby steps to get outta debt!

1.  $1000 Emergency Fund- Sold our truck, got this one covered
2.  Pay off all debt using the Debt Snowball (excludes mortgage)-Since I've done this before I only have 1
     car loan totalling $9,858.55.
3.  3-6 months of expenses in Savings-This is a scary amount of money to sum up!
4.  Invest 15% of household income into IRA's and pre-tax retirement-currently investing 5% of every
     paycheck in my retirement plant.  My employer matches 4.5%
5. College funding for children-Something I fell is very important, but my husband not so much (can ya tell
    which of one of us WENT to college!), but that's for another post! 
6. Pay off your house early
7. Build Wealth and Give!  I can't imagine making it all the way to this step!!!  I am determined to get there
    though!

Another important part of this plan is the weekly budgeting or in my case every 2 week budget.  It involves organizing your money into cash envelopes.  I found this handy little folder to organize my cash in.  I also throw my coupons right in to the appropriate section.  I don't tend to use coupons often, but that's a whole other story too.  I pay most my bills online or write checks for them still, I sit down and figure out how much I will need to leave in checking for bills each month, then about how much I will need for other things, such as food, clothes, bathroom necessities, gas, etc.  

My poor little folder has a rip in the cover ALREADY, but I'm not taking cash outta my budget for a new one! LOL

Shutter Priority

I've been trying to figure out the shutter priority mode on my camera. I can't quite get it, my pics are either totally blow out or way too dark. I'm not sure if it's the lighting I'm in when I use it. Maybe I'm just not doing it right when I adjust the shutter speed. Any help would be appreciated. In the meantime here's a few pics I took with shutter priority, adjusting the ISO in each one. Sorry I don't remember what my settings were for each pic!

Learning Aperture

I'm just starting out learning how to use all the settings on my new DSLR and it's soooo fun exploring what I can do. Here's a few of my favorite pics using the Aperture priority mode:)

A friend of mine's daughter at the parade.

My FIL's Plymouth Fury III station wagon (DH owned this in high school and we took it to prom!)
Cheesecake I made from the Pioneer woman's blog:)

New Camera!

I got a new camera! I've REALLY been wanting a DSLR camera and did lots of research and played with them trying to decide which one I wanted. I started saving up cash from my extra jobs to pay for this camera, THEN my IL's decided they wanted us to go with them to Tulsa for their 30th wedding anniversary. They said they'd buy our room and gas just so we'd go, since this was right before we signed our new mortgage papers. The place we were staying though just happened to be a casino and ya know once you turn your money into poker chips it's just really hard to think about it as money anymore. I had a TON of fun, but also lost all my camera fund money since it was all we had to gamble on.

Last week my husband decided to sell his truck! He paid off the lumber yards we had balances at due to our big remodeling project then put the rest in savings. We've been having an argument about buying a car that requires a loan. This lead me to bring up the fact that I haven't been able to buy my new camera after wasting it on HIS parents anniversary. He told me for a couple days just to go buy it. I kept telling him I wasn't gonna go buy it just so he could get a car. I still ended up winning and getting my camera and NO car, meaning NO loan. Here's what I got:

Photo Contet: Water

I'm still here! I just put an entry in for Pioneer Woman's Photography assignment. The assignment is water. I just happened to take the kids to the pool tonight and Ryan actually enjoyed it. He's usually not that into it, but tonight the water was so nice and warm:) I edited this shot with picnik and decide AFTER I'd already posted it that I wish I wouldn't have softened it, too late now! Wish me luck, Ree gives out amazing prizes!

I'm still waiting the arrival of more pics to scrapbook, they should be here any day now! I am so impatient when I have to wait for something in the mail! I ordered the Pioneer woman's cookbook last week and musta checked my front porch a million times in the 2 days I had to wait for it to arrive! It's a great cookbook by the way, but I wouldn't tempt yourself with it if you're looking for low cal recipes. I however would spend a couple hours at the gym just to enjoy some of her wonderfully delicious meals and it would be well worth it!

Last summer I helped my sisters do a little scrapbooking, neither of them had done any before. We set up a couple tables in my mom's garage and spread out all our stuff for the weekend, it was a great time. I was checking out my baby sister's facebook pics today and came across these picnik edited photos. I couldn't help but think that she should be scrapbooking! I think we need to set up another family scrapbooking weekend:)

Somehow I ran out of pictures to scrap this week!!! I know I have plenty of pics somewhere, probably over at the old house. We haven't completely finished moving and I just don't want to even think about the mess that is waiting for me over there! I'm expecting a nice orange shutterfly envelope to arrive this weekend:)

So here's a little pic from my mom's 4th of July BBQ. Marissa learns WAY too much from her Aunt Hannah.

Big Slide, Little Girl

This is what I did today while the kids BOTH took naps at the same time! This does not happen near as often at my house as I would like. During synchronized nap time I often have a hard time doing anything besides sitting and listening to the absolute quiet and peacefulness. Today I managed to pull myself away from the peacefulness and make a little trip to my basement.
I think this might be my favorite of all my layouts. I felt like I was neglecting Marissa's book until I mae this today. The picture really doesn't do it justice.

I used all CTMH product, except for the textured cardstock I cut out my letters with. The letters were all cut with George and Basic Shapes on my cricut. This is made with the Cherry-O Kit. d

Catching Up!!

I seemed to have found lots of opportunities to head down to my scrap room this weekend! I've done one or two pages every day. My weekend has been wonderful, I got to cuddle up with my girl and watch Toy Story last night. We'll be getting Toy Story 2 from the library this week so we can prepare to go see Toy Story 3!!! She is definitely a Buzz fan, her poor brother may have to fight her to get his Buzz Lightyear toy back, although as long as he has his tractors he may not care. Here's some more layouts:

My XYRON

My Xyron- Yesterday I was happily scrapping away and using my brand new xyron 250, I pulled a few cricut letters through it and was totally IN LOVE with this thing. So as I'm happily cutting out more letters I'm thinking to myself how TOTALLY AWESOME this little handy thingy is and about how I'm going to blog about it to make all my scrappy friends jealous. (Sorry Sarah) THEN, I start pulling my next set of letters through and it BROKE!!! Ok, so not exactly broke, but the knobby thing wouldn't turn and I have to actually pull the paper through now instead of just turn the knob, which means if I use the cutter on the xyron there is not enough paper to pull on the next time I use it! Tonight as I was adding a button to a page I remembered that I tried to put a button through my xyron a couple days ago and it didn't work that well. I think my problem is I shouldn't be pushing the poor x's limits with buttons. Hopefully when I put a new refill cartridge in everything will be resolved. Now onto what ya really came here to see=)

Organization

My camera has been found!!! I was pretty sure it must be in the basement, since we spent an ENTIRE Saturday cleaning the entire house in preparation for Ryan's 1st bday party. I found it laying under my scrap desk. Thought I'd share the mess that I create when I'm scrapping! I'm curious how every one else keeps their workspace organized while they're scrapping?

Still no camera here, but here's another layout! I'm on quite a roll this week:) I have another to finish up. I started working on it while I was waiting to go to the movie Eclipse at midnight the other night! I'm surprised to say that I actually REALLY enjoyed the movie! I had read the first book and seen the movie and didn't care for it. I only watched part of New Moon, but when a coworker asked me to go to eclipse I agreed. Now I'm going to be anxiously awaiting Breaking Dawn, I might even read the book if I ever find enough time! Ok, I'm off to search for that darn
camera:)

First Christmas Layout

So I'm a little late with posting my promised layout. I have somehow misplaced my camera!!! So, this pic was taken with my blackberry and not of very good quality:( I upgraded to a better phone and lost the flash feature of my camera phone! Of course it may have helped if I just would have come up from the basement and found some better light too. I also need to find the rest of my xmas pics or at least order another one of DS to complete this.