Navy Update

Hubby just left the recruiters office, body fat %age should be where it needs to be by the end of the month.  We're actually ahead of schedule.   Approximently 15 pounds to go.

New Floors

This is amazing so I have to share.


I want hardwood floors. I need a new kitchen floor and the carpet in my living room is ruined b/c my ex-roommates evil dog decided it was the potty. I bought new flooring for the kitchen and have started tearing up the floors that are in there so that I can lay the new laminate...I also went Sunday and bought the laminate boards similar to these

Sunday night I was pulling the floor in the kitchen up and took up the little bar that connects the vinyl kitchen floor to the carpet in the living room...There is hardwood under my carpet! So yesterday I returned the laminate I bought and when I am off work for Christmas we are going to pull up the carpet in the living room and bedrooms and refinish my BEAUTIFUL hardwood floors (ok, so they probably aren't beautiful yet, but they will be after we refinish them!) I’m hoping to have the new tile down in the kitchen by Saturday but I'm pretty sure it will be next week.

1 weekend down, 1 to go

Assuming hubby survives tonight/tomorrow we are half way through the hell of him working both 3rd shift and 1st shift.  He suprisingly came home this morning between shifts and rested on the couch until I got up so I made eggs and bacon for breakfast to give him a relativly healthy high protin energy rich start to his day.  He is hoping to get off this afternoon early enough to get at least 4 or 5 hours of sleep before going to his 3rd shift job then it's 1st only until Friday, 3rd all weekend then he will be mine every weekend from now until he goes off to Navy world :)

We are planning a trip over halloween, maybe we'll go here for their murder mystery weekend.  It sounds like fun to me!

Count your blessings

When it came to saving money on our wedding I was truly blessed. My mom was kind enough to pay for it (I'm her only child so that wasn't really a surprise) however my father passed away on September 11, 2008.


So for a little less than a year she had been paying off medical bills (he was very sick) and taking care of funeral expenses and settling the estate all while adjusting to a very much reduced household income.

My mother is one of the most amazing resourceful women in the world. Whenever I needed money to go on a trip or buy a uniform for dance team or go to summer camp she did her best to figure out a way to pay for it. Only once did she ask for help and that was for a hellexpensive trip I took to Washing DC my senior year of high school, after going to New Orleans, Governors’ Scholars, and DC the summer before and when planning to go to NYC on spring break for my Senior trip...Needless to say I never went without even though she did.

Somehow as she always does my mom asked me how much a wedding cost (I guessed that we could do it for around $8,000 if we cut out non-essentials) and she simply said OK no questions asked.

We were actually able to do the wedding for closer to $6,000 because of the joy I get in finding a good deal :) of course this is a problem since I also can't turn down a good deal and have therefore accumulated a lot of junk over the past 6.5 years that I have been out on my own (including college)

Some of the ways we got lucky in planning the wedding included:

My dress came off of the clearance rack (the alterations were as much as the dress) $500 total though!

I was a music minor in college so I have a lot of friends who are very talented musicians. One of my closest college friends normally charges $500-$800 to play organ at weddings if they are not at the church where he is on staff (then he has to charge their rate) plus since my wedding was about an hour out of town he would have normally asked for an extra $20 for travel reimbursement. My total rate after the extra I threw in since he gave me such a good deal? $300

I made my own veil...it was surprisingly easy and I couldn't find one I liked at any of the bridal stores in town. They were all either the wrong length or too fancy for my dress. Total cost (including the waste of money pattern that I didn't even use) $30

We got married in the church where hubby was raised. They just ask for donations so Mom made a donation to the church for the rental space. Plus my minister was my dad’s best friend, and actually complained that my mom paid him at all after making two trips to the church for the wedding plus a trip into our town to meet with me and hubby and buying us dinner! (Total driving time was probably somewhere around 7 1/2 hours over the course of 2 weeks)

My dad had a 1976 Cadillac Convertible that is in AMAZING condition. We used it for our get-away-car (I INSISTED on it but probably had more fun driving it around all weekend since I had to leave my car at my moms when I went to pick it up than we did on the actual wedding day) The car led to a lot of great photo ops too!

 

Probably the biggest cost savings was the most unexpected. We had our reception in a BEAUTIFUL historic old school building that is currently being renovated into a community center. We expected to pay a discounted rate since it isn't completed but the owner let us use it for free! (which is my FAVORITE price tag) :)

As you can see my photos were beautiful and very well done. My photographer was another friend from college who is just starting his own free lance work. He did everything for a flat rate then gave me a few disks with EVERY picture he shot and signed a waiver for the rights so that I can go print them whenever and wherever I want to.

The amazing luck I had with my photographer is the point of this post. I just ordered my wedding pictures from a web site I have ordered from before. It isn't a "professional" level site but their results are still really good and great for snapshots and such. Their quality is higher than Wal-Mart or Meijer but lower than you would get from a portrait studio. I'm getting one of those fancy photo-books (not the hardcover coffee table one but one of the simpler ones) a 4X6 of every picture that I want for my scrapbook, some small pictures for our mom's, a couple of 5X7s and 5 college prints for our moms, his sister, my grandmother, and us and after shipping and everything it was just over $50. I was floored at how cheap it all was. The 4X6s alone would have been at least that much at Wal-Mart or Meijer.

Now just to figure out what pictures I want to order from the professional level site that my photographer recommended to me for our fancy frames we received as presents!

I really just ment to brag about how cheap the pictures I just ordered were...I would appologize for the legnth/wordyness of this entry...but if you didn't want to know you didn't have to read it.... :)I totally didn't plan on this being a entry about the wedding being cheap!

US Dept of State - Women 'Soon' Will Serve on Submarines, Navy Secretary Says

This has been in the news for a while now and I know a lot of people have been talking about it but I thought this was important to share...
Ray Mabus was on the Daily Show!
Jon Stewart was talking about Don't Ask Don't Tell and Women on Subs. 
PLEASE!!! if there is anyone reading this, PLEASE be respectful of others opinions if you decide to comment. 
Don't Ask Don't Tell starts at the begining of the second segment, approximently 9minutes in.
Women on Subs/Ray Mabus is in the third segment, around the 12:30 mark.
I haven't watched the whole thing yet, hubs was just telling me about it this morning, he watched it last night

Day Shift--Day One

Today is hubby's first day working day shift in a long time.  He starts his new job in about 45 minutes.  Hubby just walked out the door and it was so cute, he looks at me and says "why do I have to leave for work before you are even dressed, you have to be at work before me!"  Which is true, I usually try to get into the office before 8:30, lucky me tho my commute is all of 2 miles and that includes the drive around the ENTIRE complex to my parking lot...Takes 5 minutes, 10 if I stop for coffee which I very well may do today!   I hope that his first day goes well.  We went to bed around 11 last night so that hubby could be well rested, he had been up for over 24 hours at that point so that he would sleep last night...about 12 he got out of bed b/c he couldn't sleep and when the alarm went off at 6 this morning he was still up.  The next two weeks are going to be killer with him working both jobs.  I can't waite until he gets into a normal schedule that involves actually sleeping when it is dark outside!
Weight loss update, as of today hubs has 18 pounds until he is where he thinks his recruiter wants him, and I've lost another pound, that puts me at 19 more pounds before Christmas, and 29 more pounds before Derby! (I have to set small goals, I don't do well saying I want to lose 40 pounds by Derby, I do better with 20 by Christmas then I'll start on the second goal.)
Guess I should get dressed and head to the office.  Izzy the puppy says hi, she just jumped on the laptop trying to get me to play.  She was REALLY confused when hubby went out the door this morning she's been lying next to the door scratching at the bottom of it but now shes on the couch cuddled up with her mommy :)

Quit your night job...please!!!

Hubby got a new job to hold us over until he goes off to basic training/Navy world. He works 3rd shift currently and it was getting to be a real pain in my ass. Luckily a friend of his sister needs some help days and can promise enough money that we will have to cut minimal corners to survive comfortably for the next few months until he leaves. The best part is my husband will be in bed with me at night,  working days, and since it's only part time he has agreed to be a partial housewife which means that I won't have to do dishes, dust, mop, clean the bathroom (ok I’ll still do that one b/c I don't think he does a good enough job) or any other house work that I am currently trying to cram into my obnoxious schedule...All I have to worry about is work and school and loving my husband and puppy!!!!!!!!!!!! Totally worth the temporary pay cut. It's not like we were used to having a combined income yet anyway and I make enough to cover all of the bills, his money is just for food and fun and we can still have plenty to eat and go out with less! :)