Last time I left you with my daughters bedroom redo/update it looked like this:

And now, half way through the process of growing her room all up, it looks like this:

With this on her wall – nearest her bed.

I know the walls are bare otherwise. I have plans for them, but after Aaron got home from SXSW I needed a break from running around like a madwoman.

I’m refinishing 2 dressers (one for her room, one for her brothers) like this and when those are complete I’ll reveal the other views of her bedroom thus far.

There’s been lots of talk of a decal on the facebook page and YES! there will be a decal, above the dresser – but above the bed, I’ll be doing espresso cork board in a funky frame and changing the art as she grows.

Where did I see those squares of dark cork board? I saw them, I know I did. But google isn’t helping me remember where.

The headboard was SOOOOO easy.

I did, at one time, have photos of the process, but then my camera ate them. So. No photos. BUT! I found the frame to use for the project in our attic – so … free! I borrowed a staple gun from friends (Thanks Dave and Tracy!) and bought the batting and fabric needed to make the headboard.

Pretty much you just lay out the batting, staple on, then lay out the fabric and staple it on the frame as well. Make sure you tug on the fabric so it’s taught.

And there you have it! Easy peasy fabric head board.

Here’s the inspiration for her room, once again:

And our version of that is:

How are we doing?

It’s easy! And super cheap.

You’ll need:

2 pieces of wood – Use what you’ve got or buy some rods like this from your local hobby store. These cost me $2.49 each. Cheaper, I’m sure, from a hardware store … or you could cut your own. You could. Yes, you could. Also, some clothespin hangers.

And paint. I chose spray paint because I like it. You can use left over paint – in any color you’d like. I have a small store of paint in my basement.

Then I just laid out my wood on some cardboard in a well ventelated area (my garage) and went to town with the spray paint.

I put a couple coats of paint on it – over a day or so … and then brought them inside and powered up the glue gun.

This is me planning ahead. I measured out and marked where I was going to put the clothespins so I didn’t have two very different looking Art Hangers on my daughters wall. Originally I was going to put them both in her bedroom. (Those plans changed though.)

Glue on your clothespins … I did every other one facing up and then down.

Repeat a bunch, until both rods are full of clothespins and wait for them to dry.

This next step is elective depending on your hanging method – I wanted to nail the Art Hanger into the wall so my daughter couldn’t potentially take it down and use it as a princess sword. You think I’m kidding.

I got out my drill. I own one. I bought it for myself all by myself. The folks at Lowes kept saying things like “What does your husband want in a drill?” and I kept on saying … A vagina. It’s for ME.

I digress.

So I got that bad cord-powered baby out of it’s little case, it’s adorable. All tools are adorable. Like little muffin clouds with rainbows and bows. THEY DON’T SCARE ME … any more. How many men did I just assault? Like naming your member Princess Sophia. We all learned that lesson from How To Lose A Guy In 10 Tens, no?

I continue to digress. Any way … I pre-drilled the holes for the nails and then hung it on the wall without breaking anything or ruining the plaster beneath.

And Viola!

I would use super glue instead of a hot glue gun if you have it – one of the clothespins fell off right away and I’ve re-hot-glued it on more than once. And then I decided to only hang one in my daughters bedroom because it was pretty busy with her art on the wall, so the other one proudly hangs above the shelves I built in our basement … ready for all the art projects and proudly displaying a few already.

The cookie monster was in our house recently.

These peanut butter cookies are gluten free. And there are only 3 ingredients. Oh, oh yes you can.

1 egg
1 C. Peanut Butter
1 C. Sugar

Mix well, plop by spoonfuls on baking sheet and bake in oven at 350 for 8 min, cool on wire rack.

Here’s the play by play on twitter, I only annoyed a few people with my rapid tweets … I think.

Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5, 6
Step 7
Step 8

I used this recipe from Gluten Free Goddess, if you haven’t already been to her site in search of answers about becoming gluten free or how to bake some cookies – you totally should. She is my mecca right now.

Also? Let’s be honest, here. This, first try, loaf didn’t look as pretty as I was envisioning.

But it tasted just fine. I think my issue was the size of pan I used. Her recipe calls for a 1.5 pound loaf pan, and really? I have no idea what that means. I just grabbed one of the 3 (two of which are Ikea pans … and probably weird 8 oz pan sizes or something) loaf pans I own and went for it.

I have a Fearless Kitchen. It’s liberating. I encourage you to forget the rules and add some cinnamon. You’re SO allowed.

Now. Baking gluten free is scary if you’re new to it. There isn’t one flour you can frivolously throw into the mix and get something to rise or not taste like stone. So get to know your GF flour mixes first.

I’ve used Pamela’s Baking Mix with wonderful results. We make our pancakes and waffles with this religiously and LOVE it. Pretty sure you can use it to make breads, scones, cupcakes, birthday cakes, muffins etc etc as well.

I just bought some Red Mill All Purpose GF flour to try out – a trusty GF friend said she felt this mix held up better to an egg replacer.

That’s as technical as I’m getting. If you have questions as to what the heck I’m talking about, leave them in the comments, I will respond to them all.

So – let’s make some bread. For this Tutorial I followed the recipe to a T, I do not have a bread machine so I used her instructions farther down on the page to tell me how to prepare the dough manually. But because those instructions were farther down on the page then the actual recipe, I compromised and came up with this so I wouldn’t get lost:

These are the “wet ingredients” you’ll need:

And the “dry”:

I started by proofing my yeast like so:

Add 2 TBSP Honey to 1 1/4 C warm water …

I missed, oops! But once it’s in the water you’ll have this.

Now stir to dissolve the honey:

Add 1 TBSP Yeast to Honey/Water mixture and stir it up, then forget about it …

Now in a clean bowl we’re going to mix the dry ingredients together – we’ll start with the Sorghum Flour:

You need 1 Cup of this bad boy.

Now we’ll add the Potato Starch, not to be confused with Potato flour.

1 Cup of him, too.

Check your yeast at some point, it’s starting to get happy.

Next, to your dry ingredients, you’ll add the Xanthan Gum. Weird.

2 tsp of it.

Then the Millet Flour:

1/2 cup of his badself

Aaaand the sea salt. Her recipe says “fine sea salt” but I had coarse – throw caution to the wind people! DARE YOURSELF TO UNFOLLOW RULES. Sorry, something came over me.

About this much is fine. The recipe calls for 1 1/4 tsp.

Stir up the Dry Guys

How’s the yeast?

Vondervil!!! Now add the proofed yeast to the dry ingredients

Add 3 to 4 TBSP EVOO

Then the 1/2 tsp white wine vinegar.

In another clean, small bowl quick whip up your egg replacer – 1 TBSP Egg replacer with 4 TBSP warm water until frothy.

Add your “eggs” to the rest of the dough batter

And mix it up, stir stir stir

Until it looks like this

Find yourself a 1.5 pound loaf pan then oil it, WELL. I must have skimmed on the oil part because that’s half the reason my loaf fell apart – I couldn’t get it out of the pan. So … Liberal use of oil.

Plop the batter into your loaf pan

Use a wet finger to smooth out the top of the dough before you set it in a warm place to rise for one hour.

Ready to rise!

I put my loaf to rise underneath a towel on the preheated stove since my kitchen is uber drafty. No chances here folks. I need a warm nest for that bread.

An hour later – here’s the difference:

Bake at 350 for 45 min to an hour. Just knock on the bread, if it’s hollow, it’s done. Cool on a wire rack.

We had BLTs for dinner that night. YUM!

Last night I spent some time clicking around from site to site and I found some gems. Some days I totally “get” the internet and have a blast wondering down the so-called-aisles of spectacular and some days I wonder why I even bother.

Yesterday was not the ladder.

Printable Easter cards for kids, adorable. You have to create an account with Scribd in order to download them, but I have already linked to some sites where you need this same ability. It’s a straight up link, I’m not getting a referral or a kickback for saying that. FCC, how am I doin?

Fluffy fun Easter bouquet – Oh my goodness I have so much yarn as I used to crochet like a madwoman … so I’m doing this. Can’t wait to have my daughter in on this fun.

Feed Your Soul, free downloaded art – so I want to share this with you because FREE ART is amazing and these artists are even better … but I also don’t want to share this with you because it’s so amazing. I want to keep it for myself and decorate my walls with splendor and pretend I spent a fortune on amazing original art. I digress. Check it out, you will not be disappointed.

Gift bags from envelopes – A) This is genius. B) Who doesn’t have a drawer full of misc. office supplies that makes you cringe but not clean out because it’ll one day be useful? Now it is. You’re welcome.

Eggcelent Eggs – decorating Easter eggs with the kids is messy, but very fun. Except your left with brown eggs because they didn’t understand that using ALL the colors at once doesn’t automatically guarantee them a rainbow egg. Also? You can buy brown eggs, so thanks kids. Now you can “pre decorate” the eggs with Awesome and let them dip to their hearts desire. At least now you’ll have brown eggs that kick ass.

Make your own gallery, template – Wow. I plan to use this template on my kids’ art. So so so much finger painting and coloring and writing of their names for the first time … I want to keep it all but it doesn’t feel right sticking it all in a box to hand to them once they’ve graduated college. Now I can enjoy it too.

Se7en – this is just a cool website I stumbled on … we have a very eager 5 year old who wants to know/learn everything and this site seems to (at first glance) do quite a bit of sharing in those terms. She’s a homeschooler mom of seven + 1 … I’m excited to dig in the archives and figure out some experiments we can do together.

Make your own Ampersand (&) – I’ve already emailed this link to half my family and they’re all planning on making it soon. My mom will be making one to put in there soon to be brand new bathroom at the cottage. This is the new shower curtain for said new bathroom, so the Ampersand will go swimingly with it.

Mini-wreaths – Ok, so I would need to spend some money for this one, but the butterflies wreath is just adorable. And if you’re into Dumpster Diving I’ve known people who can find AMAZING stuff in the dumpsters of Michael’s, Hobby Lobby etc … stickers like this even. So if you wait for it, you might be able to pull this one off for free. I’m just saying.

Easy felted flower – I have buttons and some felt that I bought while I was pregnant with my son to make booties that I never, ever used. Huh. 2+2=ACCESSORIES! So excited to try this one. I might make some small add on’s for hair clips for my daughter. She’s kind of fancy like that.

Headband tutorial, bows – Awesome. I’ll try this for the little fashionista in my life as well.

There you have it for today. Get inspired, people. Start trying something, then come back here and tell me about it – I want to hear about your adventures.

I’m working on an Easter Round Up as well – I’ll be going off of what I plan to do for the dinner we’re hosting, but it’ll be difficult to divulge all the information because I have some surprises up my sleeve and my guests read this site (Molly! Mom! Erin! Jill! Hi Sisterlie’s and Mom!) so I’ll have to be stealth about it. However, if you have some Easter ideas – please let me know and I’ll add them to the list. Or an etsy shop you want me to link to, maybe your’s or your mom’s, bestfriend’s, boyfriends’ sister’s?? I’m all over it.

In the meantime – you can stock up on your Easter candy now thanks to Savvy Chic Savings for the heads up on coupons this week/month.

I think Easter is my Christmas. That’s fair warning, right?

Along with having to be super careful about what I eat because of the whole “you’re probably diabetic” thing – I can’t really have alcohol either. Except for red wine … once in a while.

For a while, after I read that Red Wine helped slow down the digestion of insulin in ones body that it was actually beneficial to a diabetic to drink a glass, I was having one with dinner most nights.

Then I read about diabetics and blood types – and how my blood type has low stomach acid and should avoid caffeine and alcohol … well, I haven’t had hardly any … alcohol … coffee in the morning is a harder one to let go of. But I’m a tea drinker too. I’m transitioning.

And tonight I had a glass of wine because today was crazy. Because it sounded good. Because I have a box of it in the fridge. Oh, yes, I do.

Then I proceeded to silly-email friends on facebook and giggle to myself about it, out loud. But after the past few days, which were total emotional wringers for me, a night like this. A light night. A happy night. A night with a little buzz. (Sorry, Grandma!) It just fits.

In other fun news – the results to our little poll on the next Cooking Demo topic are in!

So … it’s a tie for Healthy cooking and Cooking over the fire (which is a total surprise to me!) but I “test voted” once to make sure it was all set up and working and I voted for Cooking over the fire – so technically Healthy cooking wins this round.

There you have it! Details coming soon about Healthy Cooking – Cooking Demo.

Insert tiny print here: And Oh My Word, you should not read this and think I’m condoning alcohol use in any way, because please … I do not have that much power, but I know I’ll get emails about it … so just stop right there.

The Cooking Demo yesterday was a ton of fun!

I came home exhausted and completely full of good food but even better – full of good life. Good conversations, good friends, good experiences.

I was a little worried about doing something like this at first – once everyone was there they kind of just sat there looking at me waiting for me to start. Which is when I said – uh … please don’t stop talking. I have no idea what I’m doing!

But I think it went good. We kept the conversation going, I hope I said something that made sense during the whole time. It was so very nice that I knew most of ladies in attendance ahead of time. Made me WAY more at ease about acting like I have anything important to say.

I wasn’t sure if I should narrate everything I was doing ala Rachel Ray on TV or if I should just whip stuff out and answer questions as we went along. I didn’t know if I should focus on what I think about being in the kitchen (Keeping things simple, use substitutions, get creative!) or if I should focus on what the ladies knew and felt and go from there.

All in all, it was a fun time. I would totally do it again. In fact, I’m already planning the next one. I think instead of going through a whole meal I’ll pick something (like fish or desserts – but not together!!) and focus on that.

I felt like most of the attendee’s were really interested in the fish yesterday, what I did with it, how I did it and how I went about cooking it. Which didn’t even cross my mind when I was planning it – thinking that I should focus more on one thing than another.

I also didn’t man the camera very much and many thanks go to Rebekah for taking some photos along the way. I’ll have to be better about getting in there and taking some photos next time.

And like I said yesterday we had some pretty awesome sponsors to help it go that extra mile:

Kitchen Stories offered me a wonderful discount so I could send my attendee’s home with a little something-something. I just love her quote right off the bat – “I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond.” - Mae West I mean, how can you not want to hang out with this wonderful lady?

I didn’t have the budget to gift an apron to each of my guests … but you have to see these. The Pretty Ditty etsy shop is to die for.

Those aprons would have come in handy while I was mixing up the guts to the cake …

Which we devoured.

Like I said, though, it was fantastic. I felt comfortable (once I got over myself) and I can’t wait for the next one. I think I’ll wear a wig though … then I can pretend I’m PW or something and maybe I’ll feel more comfortable being all “And then you add some salt, just a pinch.” Weird. Weird weird weird.

Let’s meet the attendee’s:

Donielle came along with one of her Peanuts. Isn’t she adorable? I got to hold her for about 45 seconds while Donielle strapped on her trusty carrier for her Peanut to rest in while she demonstrated Kefir to the group (and let us try it!) and my uterus started screaming at me.

You can see why, no?

Rebekah came after spending the morning antiqueing with Michelle (another attendee) in Saugatuck. SO FUN!

And here’s Michelle – Hi Michelle! Love your name

I was going to have all the recipes written out for each girl and wrapped all nice but then I had a sick husband, remembered that I have 2 kids and had a broken car in one week … so … you know. They had to transfer them over to a recipe card themselves, but I think they forgive me.

I didn’t capture a great photo of Candace, but you can see her here:

Candace and I go way back. I’ll just leave it at that. She’s a texture girl, just like me, as far as food goes. She wasn’t too hip on the Salmon but that’s ok – she tried it! They all did, which was the best part for me.

Sitting down with everyone after making all the food and just getting to know each other. That’s what this is all about for me. You. All of you.

While we were all standing in the kitchen Donielle demonstrated Kefir to us …

It was so interesting and I took some home to try out on my kids … they both LOVED it. It’s like fizzy juice, or pop … which is exactly what Jessica called it once she tried it. I was starting to look at doing this so now I’m glad I know what it’s supposed to look/taste like and I think I’ll go ahead and give it a try.

What a day! But it’s not over.

Red Bird Ink etsy shop wants to give you a chance to win a letterpress print from their shop in the name of cooking. Amen.

They’re offering up one of their Cow Parts No3 Prints to one of my lucky readers!!

To Enter:

Click through to their shop and leave a comment back on this post telling me your favorite print, stationary or coaster they have listed.

That’s it! Please give them some love, I have an addiction to letterpress and I LOVE their shop.

***Contest ends Tuesday evening 10 pm EST March 2, 2010, winner to be announced Wednesday March 3, 2010***

The Cooking Demo is happening today!! I’m pretty excited to see some blog friend faces and hang out. We might do some cooking while we’re at it.

Here’s the difference between me and Martha: Ms. Stewart would be hot-gluing butterflies and stars all over her handmade gift bags and then handwriting, caligraphy style, each attendee’s initials. Inside that gift bag would be more handmade goodness. Probably a small parcel filled with sweets, all handmade of course, and wrapped in cheese cloth. I’m fantasizing that she’d have her apron on, her make up done and an outfit pressed and ready to impress. She’d probably wear a fancy flat or heel.

Me?

I’ll be wearing slippers. I didn’t fire up the glue-gun but we do have gift bags and if I get around to handwriting the attendee’s names … it’ll be just that. Their name.

All with love though.

I’ve been picking my mom’s brain as I’m planning this Cooking Demo, trying to get her advice on when to start which dish … maybe I should talk about this, or that … just bouncing ideas off of her and I doubt it will come as a surprise that if my mom were planning this and throwing the Demo it would be a very different afternoon. Not in a bad way!! It’d be lovely. But it’d be to impress, to dazzle and sparkle … to inspire.

My mom is Betty Crocker and she taught Martha everything she knows. My mom is amazing.

I’m just messy.

I don’t mean to bring my mom into so many of my posts lately, but she’s FUNNY! She’s so starkly different from me and she’s my only reference point for how I got to be me. I mean, I am her clone … I will be her in 30 years physically but that’s about where the similarity stops.

A recipe for my mom is a guaranteed A, another four-point-oh mark on her transcript. A recipe for me is a suggestion. You can see how our demonstrations would be like night and day, no?

SO! Not to scare you, my lovelies, we’ll be having a recipe-following afternoon full of conversation, desserts, fun and laughter.

And we’ve got some pretty awesome sponsors to help it go that extra mile:

Kitchen Stories offered me a wonderful discount so I could send my attendee’s home with a little something-something. I just love her quote right off the bat – “I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond.” - Mae West I mean, how can you not want to hang out with this wonderful lady?

I didn’t have the budget to gift an apron to each of my guests … but you have to see these. The Pretty Ditty etsy shop is to die for.

I have a couple more surprises up my sleeve, but I want to wait to announce those to my attendee’s.

Can’t wait!

As a side note – this entire Cooking Demo is sponsored by me. No one is paying me to say I love their product or to use certain ingredients in the recipes I’ll be making today and posting about later.

I’ve been on quite the journey to be a more healthy person, inside and out, over the past 4 years. Lots and lots of credit goes to Jill Tanis and her understanding of food and our relationship to it.

One of the biggest take-aways I had was to eat MORE MORE MORE dark, leafy greens. So I did. I love kale and beet greens – we’ve tried endive, we eat tons of spinach, broccoli rabe (or rapini) and romaine, I’ve taken a gander with dandelion greens and I even juiced rainbow chard a few weeks ago. But eating swiss chard? No, no thank you. Have not had the bug in my pants to try this one until recently.

Here it is. You’ll need: EVOO, salt, pepper, swiss chard, and garlic.

Start by pouring some EVOO into a pan on the stove.

While your oil is heating up, chop up some garlic … and this I love to do. You get to get a little rough with the garlic. Knock it around a bit. Get a little frisky. Get angry, even.

Start with your cloves and a knife that would scare your grandmother.

Take one clove and set your large knife on top of it, like so…

Then SMASH it.

Success. You should be able to peel the skin off the garlic now and set it aside to chop after you’ve smacked around the other cloves of garlic.

When you’ve smashed and skinned all your cloves, chop them up. Be fearless.

Then toss them in the oil.

Add some salt (I forgot about the pepper)

(Missing photos)
Chop your swiss chard, I only used 5 or 6 leaves for this saute. They’re big leaves and being the first time trying it, I wanted to take it easy.

One you’ve removed the vein (stem) from the swiss chard (it’s bitter) chop up the swiss chard and toss it in with the garlic, salt and oil.

It doesn’t take long for it saute down.

Add to your dinner and try it … maybe you’ll enjoy it. Who knows!

We did not. It was a little too bitter for my liking and my very adventurous children spit it out. Can’t blame them. So I tried it again – only the next time I tried it … I added it to soup (substituted the spinach in the recipe for swiss chard and kale). Much better flavoring for me. I’ll keep taking swiss chard out on dates until I find the perfect fit. Why? Because it’s beneficial and worth the leg work to make it a part of our diets.

That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.

Here it is – this isn’t based off any real numbers and it’s pretty basic as far as figuring out a families needs go, but hopefully this outlines a budget and how it works well enough.

I’m going off of an income of $40,800 gross yearly for this Budgeting How To.

Jessica’s 2nd birthday present, her very own piggy bank. Circa 2007.

If you’re gross income is $40,800 that boils down to $3,400 a month and $2,550 of that gross monthly income would be take home pay (assuming a 25% tax bracket).

Here’s the math:

$40,800 / 12 (months) = $3,400 X .75 (assuming the 25% tax bracket) = $2,550.

Clear as mud?

NOW. Of that $3,400 gross monthly income you can find out how much you should be paying for your rent/mortgage in order to stay above water. This comes from Dave Ramsey, and I love him, so here it is …

He argues that 26% of your gross monthly income can be used for your entire housing obligation (so if you own a home that would include your taxes and insurance, which can add a couple hundred dollars to your monthly housing costs if you don’t pay attention).

Here’s the math:

$3,400 X .26 = $884 total monthly housing obligation. Not to exceed this number.

Most of us are exceeding this number. Banks in the past would qualify you for a loan regardless of your other debt obligations (speaking of the past 5 years and reason for this housing market) and they’ll qualify you for up to 40% of your TAKE HOME pay.

I’m sure rules have changed as programs have closed, stopped or gone bankrupted from this. And I am not an expert on lending or really have any idea what I’m talking about – so if you do, chirp up.

You guys, we have to be the boss of our money or our money IS GOING TO BE THE BOSS OF US.

Ahem. I may or may not have just had a dose of Dave Ramsey.

Moving on.

So your take home pay is $2,550 and your housing obligations are $884 which leaves you with $1,666 to pay bills, pay down debt if you have some and feed your stomach, possibly a family of stomachs.

Around us we have a BPW, Gas company, Cable and phone company that would be pretty standard for bills. Not entirely sure what it would be by you … some times electric is separate – for us it’s not.

Let’s pretend this fictitious family is normal and has some debt. I’ll assume they spend $400 a month on debt payments, while scraping everything extra together aggressively knocking it out.

They’re smart.

And I’m going to round and guess on some of these just for the illustrations sake:

Bills that you might be paying (insert your own numbers/scenario here):

BPW – $120 on budget plan (encompasses trash, electric and water)
Gas – $55 on budget plan
Cable – $100 because they want internet and 149 channels they don’t watch
Phone – $35 for a landline you’re not using
Cell phone – $99 on a family plan with unlimited minutes
Debt – $400

Here’s the math:

$1,666 – ($120+$55+$100+$35+$99+$400) = $857

Now you have to feed and clothe those stomachs we talked about earlier.

For a family you might need anywhere from $300 to $600 to feed them on a monthly basis, depending on size. We’ll go on the lower end of things here because we’re pretending and it’s nice to save money in fantasy land.

Here’s the math:

$857 – $300 (food for month, includes ALL eating out) = $557

Clothing … Pretend budget here sets aside $50 a month for clothes and they save up for shopping trips/needs and new shoes.

$557 – $50 = $507

Now. Here’s where you need to figure out things like insurance (cars, life, health) what are you paying a month or every 6 months. Add it all up so you have a yearly cost … then divide that number by 12. You might see that you need to be setting aside $150 a month JUST for car and life insurance.

Health insurance for a family, unless taken out of the paycheck ahead of time and paid for by a job … can cost a family $350 to $700 a month. Wowza. (and more I’m sure, remember, I’m rounding and using completely hypothetical numbers).

So here’s that math (and we’ll pretend this family has insurance provided by a job – so we’ll subtract an extra $80 from the paycheck … which I’ll do now … to cover those added costs.)

$507 – ($80+$150) = $277

And there you have it. Throw this money at your debt, in a savings account or – like so many of us – don’t do a darn thing about it and watch it leave your wallet without even saying good bye. If you don’t assign it, it’ll assign itself an exit. Most families have a car payment or two as well. Stop it. You are stupid. Buy a car you can pay for in cash and keep saving for the upgrade. You might have to upgrade 7 times before you’re driving a clean looking, yet still used, car that fits all your wants – but until you can afford those wants … cover the basics of Point A to Point B. This is my only rant. Thank you and good night.

In this exercise I’m going to say this family saved $77 – they knew tires were going to be a needed expense in a few months and put the other $200 towards the debt snowball.

***I’m sure I forgot something – but this was just meant to be an exercise in budgeting. I actually love this stuff – numbers and figuring it all out. Although, truth be told, it’s overwhelming to keep track of most of the time. So we, as a family, use a cash system because it works for us. We also tithe as a family – so our budget breakdown looks a little different than this one. Throw me some of your best ideas! How do you do it differently? Got any tips for the novice budgeters? What are you best kept budget-buster secrets? Or how about your VERY BEST money saving tip?