Welcome to my land of shoes

Okay, let me be honest with you. I enjoy purchasing clothes and shoes (especially when it is an amazing deal!). Just like some people invest in video games, books, and so on, I choose to invest in amazing clothes and shoes every once in a while. But I would never say that I am a shopaholic.

In light of Tom and I simplifying our worldly items, I went through all of my clothes and shoes and filtered out the items I never wear. I was going to take them to Buffalo exchange (a shop that buys used clothes and re-sells them) and goodwill. So I went through all my clothes and purged the unnecessary items but was too tired to go through my shoes. I don't have that many pairs of shoes anyways so I didn't think twice about holding on to them for a little longer. Well, one day I receive a text message from Tom....

When I got home that day I immediately went through my shoes (it was a lot easier than I had expected because I already knew in my head which shoes I did not want any longer. Tom said that I had to get rid of at least 5 pairs. Well, guess what?! I got rid of 25 pairs of shoes!!!!!!! It was an amazing feeling when all my shoes fit nicely in the closet instead of piled on top of each other.

Do you know how many pairs of shoes you own? I didn't think I had very many until Tom laid them all out of the floor. I encourage you to try this, whether it be with shoes, belts, pillows, whatever it is. Give it a shot and let me know how it goes.

The liquid that saved my Monday

We all have our vices. You know, those things that get us through the trenches. Mine is coffee. It is a little six letter word that has improved my mornings for years. I look forward to my cup of jo every morning. The best mornings are those that I programed the auto brew button the night before. As I lay in bed trying to wake up I get wafts of the coffee brewing.
Anyways, I could go on and on about my love of coffee but that is not the point of this blog. Most mornings I make my coffee at home to save money and because it is better than the coffee at work. We were gifted a coffee machine when we got married a few years ago and I love it. For awhile we were not using it because we had purchased an espresso machine and so we had my parents take the coffee machine to their home to store. At some point, we missed our coffee machine. When my mom returned it to us, she included a reusable filter. It's genius!!! It is effortless and you save so many coffee filters.

Source

After you brew your coffee you dispose of your grounds or save them for your garden or compost, you simply wash the filter out and it is ready for the next batch. There are of course other ways to avoid using paper filters.
You could use a french press . I prefer french press coffee but it takes too long for me to make it in the morning and I am not willing to sacrifice those minutes of sleep. I save the french press for weekends and days off.
Another valid choice is this awesome cloth filter. I am not sure if you can purchase these but if you click on the link it shows you how to make one yourself. I may need to whip one of these up and test it out when I have some free time haha. There are many coffee/tea making choices that don't use paper filters. My hope is that after reading this post, all you coffee drinkers will consider switching to a more environmentally friendly choice.

I took a trip to the moon and now I'm back!

Why hello lovelies!!!

I have missed all of you while I was gone. The past few weeks have been a whirl wind and I felt like a ninja chopping through every situation like a pro.

Unfortunately, I have not had any time to blog. I promise this wont happen often. I do have some awesome projects in the works to tell you about so watch for the upcoming posts. In the meantime, Tom and I have been working on two amazing, life changing, and humongous endeavors.

First, on March 8, Tom and I purchased the truck that will soon become Mac N' Dash our mobile food cart!!!!

Isn't it beautiful and fantastic!!!!! We are so excited about this opportunity but also a little nervous, as any new business owner should be right?! I will occasionally post updates about the process. The next step is to get the truck to Spokane so Tom's dad can work his magic on the truck.

Second, today we found out that the offer we placed on our first house was accepted!!!!!! We have been looking at homes for the past two weeks and never thought the process would go so fast. It is unreal how quickly we were pre-approved for a mortgage, found an amazing realtor, and found a spectacular first house. We really feel like grown ups now! I will post pictures of it as soon as we close and the property is ours. We are trying not to get too attached to the house just in case something shows up on the inspections. See haven't I been a busy bee?

Stay posted for more insightful posts!!!!!!!!

xoxo

Needing a laugh...

... caution may cause extreme belly laugh teehee

Some friends of ours showed us these videos and I am now addicted. Check out SlurpyJ on Youtube for more videos.

Oopsie daisy

Source

So in attempts to be honest with you, my readers, I feel obligated to tell you about my big mistake today. The past two weeks I have had the word "frugal" on my mind. I have been trying to have a frugal mindset and make conscious decisions. Well today I failed. Tom and I have been collecting documents for our mortgage broker because we are trying to get pre-approved for a house. Anyways we collected our pay stubs, W-2's, and investments and e-mailed the broker about dropping them at his office. He replied that he preferred them mailed or faxed. Well I was definitely not going to send all that personal info in the mail so I headed to Fred Meyers to fax the 36 page document. Freddy's charges $.10 per page so i wasn't worried about the cost. So I hand the large stack of papers to the customer service rep and ask her to fax it. I then began to wait for what feels like eternity. The rep comes back and explains that she can only fax 7 pages at a time so my wait has really turned into eternity. When she places the last 7 pages into the machine, she walks over to me and says "You know it is $1.00 per page right?!" "Um, WHAT?! No I did not know that but I wish you would have told me when I handed you 36 pages, are you crazy?" I thought to myself as I begin to scan the signs to look for a posted fax price. I don't see any. I respond to the woman like I knew they charged a bazillion dollars for using their fax machine- "um, yeah I knew that but I had to fax this so I guess that's the price I pay for not trusting the mail system" . So needless to say I had to pay $36 to fax my monetary history to a broker I barely know-AWESOME!!!!
Five steps forward for frugality and $36 backwards.
Happy Monday! Xoxo

Weekly photo

Photo of the week: foodtruck planning, sunshine, document collecting for mortgage preapproval, local tulips, HOBY organizing and blissfulness. Hope you have a lovely weekend!