Nickel and diming
At the beginning of April, Darling Husband and I decided to do some CBin’ and MMMin’ — that’s Cut Back and Make More Money for those who haven’t read Confessions of a Shopaholic.
So let’s see how we did! What are blogs for, if not total accountability?
Cutting back …
Cancel home phone service.Done. Monthly savings of about $20.Cancel speciality channels.Done. Monthly savings of about $20.Look into our vehicle options.We looked into trading our Jeep for something smaller, but it would mean paying out waaaay too much. So we’re going to stick it out until our lease is up in a year.Sticking to the budget.This sucks, but we’ve been doing it. This doesn’t save money, but it doesn’t lose it, either!
Making more money …
Working extra hours.Hubby is sticking to his goal of picking up an extra $350 worth of shifts to pay off the tax debt.- Freelance. Nothing yet, but I have been working extra hard on getting my novel published. And let’s face it — that would be the very best kind of freelance.
OK, confession time! In the words of Gwen, if I was a rich girl (na na na na na naaaaa), the first thing I would retract is the “sticking-to-the-budget” item. I miss the extras like …
- Lunchtime shopping excursions where I’d pick up a top or a skirt just because I wanted it. Ahhhh.
- Buying lunch at the yummy place downstairs from my office
- Going to the movies. Somewhere along the way, it started costing $30 for two tickets, and $25 for two popcorn combos. Ouch. No, thanks.
- Buying books online. Heaven!
- Makeup-shopping. I have plenty, so I can technically stay away from the stores and not look like a wildebeest. But I just love wandering the drugstore aisles, picking up a new nail polish and new lipstick.
What splurges do you miss, during these icky economic times?
Happiness is …
Lindsey over at Like a hamster on a wheel made the cutest list of happiness(es), so I just had to do one of my own …
- Friday afternoons, when the weekend stretches out before you
- When my kitchen is clean, with shining counters
- Watching Darling Husband sleep
- Productivity, and the content feeling of having finished everything you need to do
- Falling asleep with my windows open to a pounding rain
- Long talks with Little Sis
- Darling Husband’s whole face lighting up when he laughs
- Little Dog when she cocks her head, and looks at me with big brown eyes
- When it’s snowing at night
- Watching movies with Mom
- A pile of books that I can’t wait to read
What are your happinesses?
10 ways to de-stress at the office
When things at the office are too much to handle, and I need a breather, here’s how I cope …
- Water. Getting up and re-filling my water bottle is a no-brainer. I wish the water cooler was further away from my office door.
- Pop-Tarts. Privately, I call them “anti-depressants.” I never eat them at home, but I keep a couple in my desk, and when things get reeeeeally chaotic, I spend a quiet five minutes watching it toast in the kitchen. And then I eat it. Ahhhh.
- Reading. Your blogs save me. A few minutes reading them, and I feel so much better. Thanks, thanks, thanks!
- Staring. This sounds stupid, but hear me out. I will lean back in my chair and stare at my university diploma for 15 seconds or so. It’s all in Latin, so my eyes kind of glaze over. Plus, the frame is pretty and has an expensive embossed mat.
- Drawing. I doodle ideas for art projects on my Post-Its and then shove them in my purse. When I open them weeks later, I find things like “fr. w. embro. flws” and have to figure out my crazy creative scribbles.
- Grooming. Taking a couple of minutes to freshen my nail polish = sigh of relief. If I’m really maxed out, I will close my door for 15 and attempt a fancy braid.
- De-cluttering. Having a messy desktop background is the biggest annoyance to me. I can tell when I’m really busy at work, because the whole thing fills up with file icons. It stresses me out, because it’s hard to find anything recent that way. So I take 10 minutes to file them all away neatly. Total zen.
- Cleaning. Same deal as above, except with my actual desktop. Pop-Tart crumbs, nail polish drips, etc.
- Walking. I’ll take any excuse to walk to my bank. It’s a five-minute walk down the street, and it’s nice to get outside. In the summer, this might become a jaunt to the ice cream stand.
- Whiteboards. Drawing on my Whiteboards would be unprofessional-ish. But I have a large set of pretty markers, and I will erase the messy to-do lists and re-write them neatly — usually while pretending I’m an elementary school teacher. It’s strictly boring lists and budgets, although I do manage to sneak in a daisy here and there.
How do you calm down at work?
The shop around the corner
I am dreaming of bookstores this morning. More specifically, my book in them.
Yesterday I mailed my pitch to a second publisher and to my FIRST literary agency! Let’s take a moment to just Yayyyyyyy!
I received a postcard from the first publisher about a week after I mailed my query, saying that they received it and it could take up to six months to get an answer.
While getting a “Yes” from a publisher would be beyond awesome, I also really have my fingers crossed for the literary agency. If they take on your project, they represent you, hunt for a publisher on your behalf, and negotiate your deal.
The waiting game is hard, but I feel a little more hopeful with every query I drop in the mailbox. I don’t know if it’s that every pitch increases the odds of getting a bite, or that I’m taking action towards what I want. But I’m going to keep doing it until I see my book in stores.
Hit the floor
We have been wanting to re-do the floor of our condo’s kitchen for a while now, but the cost of ceramic tile is daunting — especially since we don’t want to be there much longer.
We currently have a blah-looking white-and-beige linoleum, but I want something that looks more like stone.
Sherry at This Young House just posted a great step-by-step tutorial on peel’n’stick tile. You can do an entire kitchen for about $100!
Darling Husband, are you reading this???
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