The last few months have been a cycle of getting to see blogger friends in person - either again or for the first time - likely because now is probably the best time of year to visit the Pacific Northwest, plus the kiddo and I made a visit down to Portland happen to celebrate Uriah's…
This week was a pretty exciting one for me on a non financial note. About a month ago, I had been invited to apply to an unpaid public appointment position in my city, and I was selected as one of six to have an interview for the spot. To my complete shock, I got a…
We’re now solidly into January and another month of tracking our spending to the penny. Thanks to the awesome long weekend we had to celebrate my husband‘s birthday and our monthly Costco trip yesterday, we are just over halfway as far as expected spending for the month, so we are going to have to be…
Since I decided to jump into a No (Low) Spend November without any kind of preparation, I’m going to have to get a bit creative this month. We are going to Hawaii in a week, so I’m going to be doing my very best to spend as little as possible while we’re home so we can spend a little…
Friday again! This week flew by between Halloween falling on a weeknight and the neighborhood dinner we attended last night. For those of you who are new, this idea to celebrate frugal wins for the week came from Katy at The Non-Consumer Advocate. 1. My son wore the same Halloween costume (Toothless from How To Train Your Dragon!)…
Over the weekend I had a friend in town for a short visit. She now lives in Oregon but didn’t grow up in the northwest, so she’s spent very little time in Washington. Since we only had until early afternoon, I decided to show her around our downtown. Next time she comes for a visit…
So I know it’s November this week, but it’s still technically October for now, so it counts that I finally got to planting the rest of my garlic, right? Since it’s been abnormally warm and dry, I was hesitant to plant garlic early (like late September) like I have some years, but then October arrived…
We went from 80s and sunny to 50s and rain in a week flat and suddenly fall is here. The days are getting shorter and Christmas is now somehow only two months away. I had gotten off to a good start on making presents back in July but then life got extra busy and I hadn’t done…
When I was young, my family had a large garden for a short time - I think only for a year or two. We grew potatoes, carrots, lettuce, beets, tomatoes, all the standard vegetable garden fare. While we eventually got to busy to keep it up (4 kids and competitive sports take up a ton…
Last month, we went to our neighborhood block party and met a bunch of new families with young children like us. When we first moved into our home six years ago, there were really no young kinds around, but fortunately that's really started to change in just the few years since we've become parents. At…