Today after a lovely lunch with my family we went home to color Easter eggs and not just any Easter eggs but Dinosaur eggs!!! Be jealous! lol :)
First boiled the eggs! Its been so long I had to google how long to boil them
While waiting I took some pictures of the pretty spring blossoms!
We have tons of these already too! :-(
This is from our pear tree
Then I got to work on our new flower pot for the deck.
Yesterday Kevin and I went to Lowes to buys some flowers but I was none too hopeful because my front beds get no sun so I cant get any fun colorful flowers like I want. So I decided to get a planter for the deck so I could have some color since its all sun in the back of the house.
All done! Its a accent plant in the middle surrounded by 4 Hyacinth bulbs, and Ivy. The hyacinth smells amazing!
I found our turtles we got last year at the home and garden show. They were hidden in the garage all this time! Now i got them in the front flower beds.
Decided on keeping it in the corner!
The colors are ready!!
Does it look like Im forcing him into this??
Naw not at all! :-)
I had alot of fun but im not to patient I hated waiting for my egg to dye!
The T-rex ate his finger! This is dangerous business!
One of mine
All of the gang!
Kevin's T-rex
some of our more "artistic" efforts!
and funny ones!
mmmm! can you smell them!
the ivy
Ferns are a shade plant so we found out! I got two and put them in the two pots in the front!
Yay!
Then I had an egg salad sandwich after an eventful day mmm!
I so wish I could take credit for this adorable project but alas it was actually Kevin that found it on a blog and sent it to me. You can find it here . It seemed so easy so after we got home from our motorcycle ride with the family I gathered up my supplies: Old picture frame, white paint, wire, staple gun.
The finished product! It took two coats of paint and I like the weathered look.
This will be hung in our office so that when Im done making a design it will have a safe place to go (right now sits in a pile of other earrings on my desk) Plus it will make a nice piece of "art" hanging in there! :-)
Im thinking about making a few and selling them on my new TweaKs Jewelry website.
The stud earrings can also go on here by piercing the wire and fixing the back on to keep in place.
Here is a smaller 4x6 version that I will hang in my bathroom to store a few that I wear alot. Maybe call it a mini Vanity size or something
Well it finally spring! Got up to 70 today and though it was gray and a bit rainy, the sun came out later and It was so nice! It was Anna's bridal shower today as well and I picked up Aunt Judy and Nette, Mom, and Kari and we all had a great time! The games were fun and so was the company!
Earlier Kevin and I got the keys from our previous tenants today and to my relief the house was immaculate! No issues and very clean. We put out a "for rent" sign and one of our neighbors said they have someone in mind already! We are praying for tenants that were just as good as the Deckers. It will be ready in May.
Recently I also was able to get the domain I purchased transferred to my host so now I can debut my new online shop for TweaKs Jewelry! I decided that I wanted a little more exposure and the ability to customize my shop a lot more and that's why I went with a website. We will see how it goes. This has also inspired me again to work on some new designs. I first completed some earrings since I dont have a lot of those, next will be necklaces. Here are some pictures!
made of champagne briolettes, silver spacers, matching crystal bicones.
This is the earring cards I make that the earrings are displayed on when they arrive to customers.
Red coral earrings
made of shell, and faceted crystals.
Red pearl drops, mommy has a pair similar to these. I love them and will make myself one too!
made of shell and faceted crystals and glass and silver spacers.
I love the detail I can capture with my 10x macro lens!!
Well I will have more later next week! Im hoping to debut my new site in a few weeks as well I will keep you posted!
Have a good week everyone!
P.S. What do you think of new look? I found lots of blogs dedicated to providing free html codes to use on you blog for fun backrounds and headers/footers. This is from Shabby Blogs.
Here are the Certificates of completion and also a special recognition from the class leaders for our "FPU attitude, paying cash for a new car, and being an inspiration"
As most of you know Kevin and I have been attending Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University the past 13 weeks! Today we just completed the course and I just wanted you all to know what an impact it has made on how we think of money and how we spend it, how it has impacted our relationship with each other, and some of the goals we have set. I hope this will spark your interest and maybe inspire you to check out the FPU classes in your area so you too can start to dump debit, build wealth, and Give.
We started this class mostly wanting to know a smart way to invest our money for our future (ie. starting a family with me staying at home, retirement, paying off our mortgages). We learned so much more! the first of the 3 main things that impacted us was the way you view money and how you spend it. Normal these days is to be in debit and lots of it and the challenge is to commit to "live like no one else, so you can LIVE like no one else." this means that if to be normal is to be in debit then we dont want to be normal. We learned that if you dont put a name on every dollar you earn then it doesn't fulfill its purpose in your financial goals, you must manage your money or else it will manage you. This is why a budget is essential in managing your money. tell your money what to do! Not the other way around. Also instilling "old fashion values" of money like if you dont have the cash DONT BUY IT till you have saved up the money. We were able to do this with our new car. (dad taught me that one tho!)
The budget was also instrumental in managing money but also help within our relationship. Kevin and I like so many couples would bicker about money and finances almost weekly. He has always been great with saving and budgeting but I never wanted to spend the time on it and didnt always feel i had any input on where the money was going. This put a lot of pressure on Kevin to make sure we weren't overdrawing our account and that our bills were paid along with everything else he does. The class taught us our personality types and how we can better communicate with each other and do the budget together. This allowed me to have a say in where the money flowed which made me more on board with the budget and sticking to it. And Kevin didnt have to do it alone anymore as long as his budget meetings lasted 15 min or so and not a whole weekend! My budget attention span is very short! Since we got the basic budget hammered out (which took about 2 months to really work for us) we were then able to figure out what "baby step" we were on in the program, and set goals for our finances. After all if you aim at nothing you will hit it every time! We are on step 3! First baby step is $1000 emergency fund, second baby step is "debit snowball" where you pay off all debit except your mortgage (on average this can take 1-2 years but a couple in our class have been doing it for 4 and will be debit free next month), Third baby step is 3-6 months of expenses saved in an account. Once we get that then we start working on putting away 15% of our income into retirement(mutual funds, 401k) and we are 3/4 of the way of getting there!
Ultimately our goal is to be debit free so that our household income can be free do what we want as well as give to those in need, and support Missions and sending teens from our church on missions trips each year.
Later in life when we retire we are going to use our retirement for ourselves to go on missions trips and travel if it is in the Lords plan.
Our last lesson today was about Us being managers of Gods money and that "stuff" doesn't fulfill you, you need to give of your wealth to those in need. Imagine your monthly income, and then imagine you only had to tithe and pay for utilities, now imagine what you could do with what was left over! I long for the time that i can just write a check out to someone in need right then and there on the spot! My heart is for kids and missions I would love to support an orphanage in Africa, or help people who need help with the costs of adopting a child. Just something to think about.
Anyway I really hope that you will check into what FPU is all about and hopefully start your journey toward financial peace. Here are a couple videos to get you started:
