Thrift Shopping=New Love

Lately, Peter and I have found some new shows that we are now semi-addicted to-"Pawn Stars" and "American Pickers". Each show is about finding the value of little treasures amongst people's trash. I'm thinking Peter enjoys the shows because he loves the money aspect of the it. How much something's worth, negotiating prices, etc. I enjoy the shows because I love seeing the history behind different objects and I love the idea that one man's trash could actually be another man's very valuable treasure.

Today, we've found some treasures of our own in our local Deseret Industries! We started off as just walking around wasting time, and left extremely excited by all the cool stuff we put in our car.

This bright red little TV we found for only $5.00! And yes. It works.

We aren't really sure what to call this but we think it might be a mini wine cabinet that will turn into a mini soda cabinet...
This was the only expensive one we bought. $10.00!


This is an old bread box that we are in the process of restoring.
(It looked a tad worse before Peter started sanding it and
I promise that it will look a lot better that what you're seeing now)
Only $4.00!


This is Peter's favorite! He found an old radio/tape player with matching speakers.
The antennae was sold separately but we thought it would look cool with the radio or the red television.
$8.00 for the whole set!

To other people, these items would have been decorations for their garbage cans. But to me and Peter, after a little TLC with some of them, these will be our little family treasures.

Griping followed by Gratitude...

This past weekend hasn't really been the best for me.

We should start with Friday.

I have been having some class scheduling problems to put it simply. Let me begin by explaining that I am HORRIBLE at math. Always have been, always will be. This isn't really a huge shocker to people that know me well. Math and I simply do not get along. So, of course, it only seems natural that when I'm trying to figure out my schedule for next semester, the only thing keeping me from finishing up my classes and doing my student teaching would be a MATH class. After asking a few staff members my predicament, waiting for them to discuss my problem amongst themselves and come up with a solution, they've dropped a bomb on me saying that due to my "past math history" and that I haven't completed my math testing, they believe that it would be best that they put off my student teaching til next winter. Not only was I very angry, I was so disappointed that I was going to be in school for yet another semester. My hatred for math grew at that point as well as my frustration with the school waiting til I'm this close to finishing to finally tell me this.

Alright Idaho. You win. You have me for at least another year...

Saturday was a little disappointing for me as well. I slept in a bit and was just lazy the whole day. Nothing got done. Being married I've grown to hate having a non productive day and having Peter come home from work and seeing that nothing got done.

Sunday was a tad better. But only a tad. We went to a friend's baby blessing but didn't have time to hang out with them afterwards because we had to substitute for our other Nursery Leaders this week. We showed up to Nursery only to find out that we are having another couple come in to help us on the days that we have to teach Nursery. The husband of the other couple was very nice and helpful. The wife on the other hand...I have a feeling she is not too fond of me or my teaching style, due to the dirty looks she gave me when I was with the kids and the snotty attitude she was giving me.
We'll see how this goes.

Even though this whole weekend for me was full of little, not-so-great events, I have come to discover something every time a certain unlucky event happened to me.

I've discovered how wonderfully lucky I am to have Peter.

Amidst all of the tears, dirty looks, and the frustration I have thrown at him this weekend, Peter has been so patient, loving, optimistic, and understanding towards me that I learned to just stop complaining about temporary trials and be grateful for the major blessing he is in my life. He has had some fun things happen to him this weekend (one of them being a job internship interview he got in Idaho Falls that we both hope he really gets. Keep your fingers crossed!) but he didn't seem to care about anything that happened to him just as long as I was okay. I don't know what I've done to deserve someone as wonderful as him, but I've learned this weekend that I need to stop thinking about myself and focus on what really matters to me and what I'm most grateful for- my husband.

Thanks for putting up with me these past few days, love!
I love you more than you know!

Budgets, Really Cheap Food, and Panda

Being married to someone who is a finance major, you learn a thing or two about what money really means and how much it means to you and your family. Lately, we've been, for lack of a better word, really LAZY about our spending habits. It got to the point where it was not only driving Peter crazy, but it was making me a little uneasy too. So, after much council and planning, we've called this month, March Money Madness. We want to go this whole month following just a few simple rules and see how much money we actually save. Some of the rules are as follows...

#1- No Plastic! Only Cash!- We gave up our debit and credit cards, put them in an envelope, and put them away so we wouldn't be tempted to use them at all this month. Paying with only cash helps us actually see what we spend and makes it harder for us to spend the money.

#2- Keep to a Strict, Tight Budget!- Peter loves spreadsheets. He makes them as often as he can. So of course when we decided to have a budget, he had to make a spreadsheet. He was really good at making a reasonable yet tight budget about what we should spend on groceries, utilities, gas, etc.

#3- No Eating Out!- This one doesn't seem like it should be one of our big rules, but it is a big one for us and is, in fact, the main reason we've been bad with our money. We wanted to see how much money we would save if we just didn't eat out all the time.

Starting this March Money Madness, we went to a wonderful place in Idaho Falls called WinCo. You can get a ton of food for a really good price there. We made a list of what we wanted to stock up on for the month and went to see how much of our grocery budget we could save just by taking the trip to this place. Thanks to WinCo, we only used almost half of our budget, which means we have enough food to last the month, plus some extra money to go to our local store if we need anything later!

Had to take a picture of how much stuff we got!
I don't think I've ever seen the back seat of our truck so full of food.
The picture doesn't really do it justice...

After the shopping spree, we took some of our free spending money and went to Panda Express (aka one of my most favorite food places ever!) to enjoy some good food, good fortunes, and goof around a bit.

My husband being...my husband...

I would say this is fairly accurate fortune for Peter.

Don't know how accurate this one is about me. Hahaha!

:) Sure do love this guy!

Even though it's still the beginning of the month, we're still doing pretty good on our budget so far and we're both determined to stick with this so that we'll have many more Panda Express trips to come in the near future:)