It’s Friday!!

Top Three Favorites from this morning’s blog roll:

1. This awesome personality test from Two Martinis. Here’s what it had to say about me:
Independent Thinkers are analytical and witty persons. They are normally self-confident and do not let themselves get worked up by conflicts and criticism. They are very much aware of their own strengths and have no doubts about their abilities.
Have a little fun with us and see what this test has to say about you {click here}

2. This customizable calendar from Young House Love. You can download it from their site & it’s formatted in 8.5″x11″ so no special printing needed. Then just attach your 4×4″ photos to the grey box or grab the photoshop format & print it all at once.

3. Book Club – starting January 2014. I may only join in for a couple of the months, but the list is out for the year from Life of Bon. I’m going to start grabbing the books I’ll be reading now, so that there’s no excuse when it’s time to read it.

Want your blog to be on my blog roll? Simply leave a comment & share the link to your blog.

It is time to spill the beans

Our family has grown.

Growing up my family has always had dogs. Not just one or two, at least three & sometimes 5 {or more when my parents were breeding the dogs}. So when my dad asked if we wanted to take in Blue, the Italian Greyhound, it caught me by surprise. The husband & I have wanted a dog for a little while now, but we were being picky & it wasn’t that all the dogs we saw were mean, but we wanted a certain breed & personality. To hear that my parents, who only once in my life had given a dog away {we had dogs from when they were puppies until they passed away}, were needing a new home for one of the dogs shocked me. At first I didn’t think he was serious. It wasn’t until this past weekend when we spent some time with them that I realized they were.

The four of us talked about it & it became obvious that my parents needed a break. They have dogs for 33 years with at least 20+ years of multiple dogs. They are ready for a break.

So, in two weeks we will be taking in Blue. He’s a sweetheart. He came to our family a few years ago. We had just put my dad’s dog, Wishbone, down a few weeks prior. My mom was at the store, my brother was out doing his normal weekend things & my dad left quickly & came back with Blue. Everyone went about their business as usual, and Blue spent three hours just sitting with me watching TV.

He loves to play fetch & cuddle under the covers with you. A phrase often used to describe greyhounds just fits him perfectly, “Forty mile an hour couch potatoes.”

In time, we may end up taking in the two remaining dogs {Ginger, a short hair Chihuahua, & Brusier, a long hair Chihuahua}, but for now it’ll just be Blue.

We’re so excited. It’ll be fun introducing him to our more country lifestyle. I hope that you all will love him as much as we do.

**Update 1: While my parents are on vacation we also have their two chihuahuas. So for a little while our family has made the jump from 2 to 3 to 5. We are also considering having the dogs go back & forth between the two houses, kind of like joint custody, but on a monthly or every other month kind of thing.**

Pinching Pennies: 52 Week Money Challenge

This is the start of a new series called Pinching Pennies. Finance mixed with DIY. What a better way to start off a new series with a new challenge and a new year?

We’ve accepted a challenge from House of Rose. The idea is to save $1,378 in one year. It’s a fantastic idea & 52 week challenge printables are all the rage right now on Pinterest. So, hop on over to House of Rose and check out this awesome challenge. Plus, for signing up with your email address they’ll even send you a money dominating tool kit.

Why this type of challenge?
We’ve been just getting by for almost two years now & we’ve decided its time our hard work starts paying off. Right now we are at a point where we only have to worry about ourselves, so things can be tight & it won’t be as hard on us.

Why not pay off your debt first?
That’s a great idea, something we are working on. However, with the husband’s work schedule {he only works, and therefore only gets paid, 9 months a year} we want to be able to survive those 3 months & know if something happens we have a back up plan. Our first year of marriage we survived those 3 months on only $600 a month. Now that we are in a better financial position we want to make sure things aren’t that tight again. So, we are paying a little bit more than our minimum payments on our debt & working on building a nice savings account to back us up.

Want to sign up? Or need to know how to follow along?
First, click on the follow button on the lower right hand side of your browser & enter your email address to keep up with how we do on this challenge. Second, hit up House of Rose – 52 Week Money Challenge & check out their awesome information & printables to help you out. You can join too, just make sure to follow all of their guidelines for the extra bonus.

What bank should I go with?
For the challenge listed above you’ll need to go with Capital One, however there are many options, Ally Bank, Bank of America, your local credit union. I recommend Capital One because out of all the online accounts {we do all of our banking online, so it just made sense for this to be an online account} this one had the least amount of fees & the most amount of benefits of the things we needed. For example, it’s free to open, there’s no minimum balance required, & no monthly service fees. Click here to open your new Capital One 360 Savings account now.

**These are not affiliate links. Just something we are doing & think it’s really awesome, so we wanted to share. All opinions are ours & we are not getting compensated in any way for them. {Just to make it clear, that means we’re not getting paid for this.}**

Baby It’s Cold Outside

We woke up this morning to 20 degree temps. By time the husband got home last night around 10, the pond & pipes to our well were frozen. That means that by time we woke up this morning we still did not have water. When I went outside this morning I tried to break the ice on the pond and it was a serious layer of ice. Not just some thin layer it was about an inch – two inches thick. Now, I know there are many other places with much colder temps, but for our small town that gets to 115 in the summer 20 is freaking cold. And it only affirms the hardest decision of our lives giving our dogs away.

Before writing this post I was thinking about it and how it’d be this long post about how freaking cold it is here, but that’s just it. That’s all I have to tell you. It’s freaking cold here. What about where you live?

Black Friday Grabs

Here’s a short list of what we grabbed on Black Friday

Crock Pot: $10

It’s much bigger then the one I had from my mom that’s about as old as me and I’m getting scared to use. We actually started cooking in his Thursday night when we brought it home and it’s been fantastic.

Mixer: $15

It’s not comparable to a kitchen aid one, but for my simple baking {cake mixes, brownies, etc} it’s perfect. The mixer part detaches so it can be handheld as well.

Frames: $12
I can’t find these online, but it was a pack of 15 frames in different sizes. Last year we had bought the smaller version with the frames all attached to each other for our gallery wall in the old house. Now we have some blank spots to fill in our new gallery wall so this was the better purchase for us.

DVDs: $2 a piece
I haven’t even counted how many we bought, but let’s just say I couldn’t hold the whole stack in one hand. Some of the titles we bought were Roadrunner Cartoons, the new Batman, & the new Bourne movie {I’m getting the collection}.

2 Seasons of Big Bang Theroy: $10 each
I’m not sure exactly which seasons it was {that’s the husband’s department}, but they’ve been pretty good. At least it’s better than the ones we’ve seen 1,000 times & the husband can quote word for word almost the entire episode. It’s a huge relief to me to have new ones.

We also invest in the season DVDs and our DVD movies because we do not have cable or any “normal” television. All we have is the DVD player. To come up with $50 a month just for TV is crazy & I’ve been without since I moved out of my parents house almost 4 years ago. Don’t get me wrong we love tv, but we’ve decided it’s something we can live without. Anyway, now I’m rambling.

What about you? Have you recovered from your Black Friday shopping yet? How long will it take before we change the new to Black Thursday?