My husband and I will celebrate nine years of marriage later this year, and while I've written previously about what a good financial decision that has been for us personally, partnering up really can have a larger financial impact than we give it credit for. In my day job, I spend a lot of time…
I think back to summers in the Pacific Northwest when I was growing up, and they were filled with glorious sunny days that rarely reached above the low eighties. Summertime is idyllic around here after the long months of gray and wet, and everyone takes full advantage of the few short months of perfect weather.…
I had been toying with the idea of starting to share a few guest posts on this blog when my friend Budget Epicurean reached out to me with the post she wrote on her journey toward zero waste. It was an absolute perfect fit for this blog and solidified that I absolutely wanted to start…
Again I packed way too much into this week, both during the weekend and on the weekdays. Even during weeks where I don't have a lot planned, we seem to have very few days where we are just hanging at home. For the most part, that's the way I like to do life - purposefully…
To cut to the chase, July was our most expensive month to date. There were a lot of reasons for this, both voluntary and non voluntary, but the fact of the matter is we spent considerably more this past month than we have any other month this year, including May which saw us on a…
Wednesday night was hot again (surprise, so was the rest of the week), so I decided that we should do something fun with the evening instead of wallowing in the extended heat around here. A big perk of working less than full time is that I get home by early afternoon, so my son and…
Zero waste conjures images of someone who has completely streamlined changed the way they live and has just a mason jar of trash to show for a year of living. I may do a pretty good job of reducing my waste compared to the typical American, but I am far from zero waste. We have…
It rained this week!! We had an abnormally dry July so it has been very welcome to see some precipitation to start out the month of August. While not everyone will rejoice to see rain return, albeit briefly, for even a few days, I've been over the crazy heat for a while and my garden…
We went to Hawaii for the very first time last November, and I have to admit, it wasn't somewhere that was ever on my bucket list, but once we went, I was hooked. The opportunities for outdoors adventure are endless, and once you figure out how to cover the plane tickets and lodging, a trip…
It's been ninety or close to for almost a week now, so I feel like I can complain about how stupid hot it is outside. While that may not be noteworthy in a lot of the country, around here it gets us heat advisories. A lot of our discomfort comes from not only the heat…