Ugh. Life. It has been getting in my way of doing things. Things like this blog and searching out coupons and having fun.
I have a lot to recap for you. Lets start with February. Mid-February I got off of my game to some extent. Three weeks in a row I forgot to get the Sunday paper. That meant few new coupons for me to use. I was still searching out deals at the grocery store. I bought some canned vegetables for pretty cheap a couple of times, but nothing like the barn burning "Cantastic" sale of January. I continued to use food that I already had on hand to make meals, and make those meals stretch. There were a lot more trips to the grocery store, though. I didn't plan as well as I could have.
Also, with February being a short month, and the weather being horribly bad at times, we had a little less income coming in on my husbands end. That's not his fault, just the way it goes sometimes. I was only able to pay off 3% of our mortgage with the payment that was due in the beginning of March. Three percent is still something, but I know I could have done better had I done a better job keeping my eye on the prize.
March brought us a new home improvement project: new carpet for the second story of our house. The old carpet was the same as was there when my husband bought the house 14 years ago, and wasn't great back then. The kids also switched rooms at the same time. This meant that we had to repaint the walls, freshen up the trim and purchase a few incidentals to make the switch successful. Before you roll your eyes, I did a really stellar job (in my opinion) of keeping costs down during this big project. I gave my son a headboard I had been hoarding in the basement for years and repainted a desk and dresser to match so he would have a fresh "new" bedroom set. I used paint we already had leftover from the living room to paint the walls in his room. I gave him a comforter we already had but is still in great condition and is super comfy. I made new art for his room and recycled a lamp from the basement too. For my daughters room we bought paint and a new bed frame for her which I got for cheap from Craigslist. I repainted another dresser we already owned for her new closet/dressing room. I also made some new decorations for her room which cost me a total of $15.
All in all, I think we did the best job we could have not spending extra money on the whole shebang, and, we got a huge bang for our few bucks. It looks really great up there now! Oh, one more thing, a majority of the money we spent came out of our savings which won't impact our plan to pay off the mortgage.
At the end of February/beginning of March we also had to spend some money getting an old car we own up and running again for our oldest. Thankfully, it was a fairly cheap fix! And my husband got to have the opportunity to teach him how to drive a stick shift. I'm surprised we didn't incur some medical expenses in that process. :)
So now that everything in my house is back in it's place I can focus on the task at hand. Today's Sunday which means I need to remember to get the paper.... ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment