Friday confessions

And once again, here are my weekly confessions

1. I blew my morning breath in P's face

2. I actually adjusted my bra in front of a group of people

3. My shorts were giving me a major wedgie at the gym, and I kept picking it.

4. I'm blogging from work

5. I ate 5 caramel eggs in less then 5 minutes.

 

Fess up peeps

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An ode to eggs, the chocolate and caramel kind.

An ode to the egg.

O sweet egg, how I love thee,

But alas you are no good for me.

Sweet chocolate so tasty so nice

And salty caramel, I want to eat it thrice.

You only come out but once per year

So many months I long for you my dear,

You are no good for me this I know,

But I don't care, and that's fo sho.

 

I have just reached an all new low. I know this.

These caramel eggs are delish, and I cannot control myself during Easter season, because its the only time they come out. They are the greatest thing I have ever eaten. Nothing else can compare. Not Rolo's, not any candy bar. Nothing.

Last night P and I went to the store specifically for these. I went to the shelf and they were gone. I ended up pouting and walking around the store mad.

But, right before we left, I walked on the back side of a display and saw the last remaining few. I grabbed a bunch with two hands and literally ran through the store trying to find P so I could show him my delight.

We bought our hooch, and once I sat down in the car i tore it open and took a bite, and it was perfect. When P asked for some, I kinda wanted to slap him, but I gave him half.

I proceeded it eat five of them in record time. I then went into a massive sugar high, then crashed really hard. I am feeling a bit hung over today from my sugar binge.

My mother in law described me as a predator of those eggs. Ouch.

What's your favorite candy?

 

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Friday Confessions, in pictures this time.

Here are my weekly confessions, in pictures this week. Don't ask me why I decided to add photos, just go with it.

1. It takes me six containers to pack my lunch most days.

 2. This is all the food I had to throw out this week because it has gone bad.

 3. I washed our shoes and put them on the porch to dry, 2 weeks ago.

 4. I foam roll in the office.

Financial Guilt

I will come right out and say it.

Financially, this is the best P and I have ever done.  These past two years, we have been blessed to do very well financially, and are on track to do even better this year. None of this financial success has come easy. Its come with lots of hours, lots of weekend work, and lots of sacrifice. We are doing so well in large part to P's job. My job is salaried, and my steady income covers most of the basics. P pulls in a small salary, but the majority of what we have brought in has come from commissions that P brings in. He works very hard. I think he has worked only 40 hours a week once in the past two years. He works long hours, and he works hard, but he has been rewarded for his hard work.

Because of our hard work, we have been able to buy a home, take a vacation, give to others, and save every single month.

Should I feel bad about our financial success in light of all the suffering around me?

In this economy, there are a lot of people out of work. There are so many people under employed. In some areas of the country, the economy seems to be stuck in 1st gear, while in others, like where we are in Texas, it seems to be in the fast lane.

For some reason these days, it appears to me that we have started to villainize success. We have started to shame those who are doing well financially. The media, and some sections of the mass culture appear to frown upon financial success. Businesses are critcized for making money. The wealthy have been ostracized for their wealth.

Why are so many Americans willing and quick to criticize and blame those who have been successful financially? Why do we blame those who have made smart financial decisions?

I don't believe wealth is a bad thing. I don't believe that being a good steward of our finances is wrong. We fought to get out of debt, we scraped together an emergency fund, and we are working to pay our home of quickly. We both have smart phones, but our companies pay for those. Every vacation we have taken has been on the cheap. The most expensive meals we have eaten have come from mid range restaurants. We live in a very modest home in a blue collar neighborhood. We borrowed only 1/2 of what we were approved for. Our computer is 5 years old. The fanciest thing is my closet is from Banana Republic. We rely on coupons to stay under budget every single week.

We did not take part in the excesses that abounded prior to this recession. We did not participate in that culture of buying more than you can afford, on credit. In fact, we went in the opposite direction. We cut up the credit cards, paid off the student loans, and learned to live frugally, while so many others around us partied like there would be no day of reckoning.

We did not escape this recession unscathed. There was a job loss for P when his company shut down. We moved out of our home, lived in 4 different places for 2 months, including an extended stay hotel. P worked as a laborer for a farmer for months while he was looking for a job. Nothing was beneath us. We both knew how to sacrifice when necessary.

Now that we have come out on the other side of this recession and have been seeing success, we are given a message that success is wrong, that success is bad, and that the only way we can be successful in this economy is at the expense of others.

How have you been faring during this recession? Have you heard those same messages?  Do you think Americans have criticized financial success?

Friday Confessions

Here are my weekly confessions

1.I ate 4 Cadbury Caramel Eggs in my car, in under five minutes

2. I ran 2 yellow lights this week.

3. I have resumed dumping my junk on the couch.

4. I took 5 baths ins 2 days last weekend.

Ok peeps, fess up.

Growing grass, just not the smoking kind

 

Just call P and I the Yard Dawgs, whoof whoof.

 

For the second weekend in a row, P and I have been out in the back yard working out buns off.

 

This little patch of land has been the bane of my existence since we moved into our house last summer. This patch of our yard is ugly, dirty, and every time it rains, the dirt spreads to our driveway. We also have two dogs who seem to revel in that area of our yard, especially when it rains, or right after I mop the kitchen floor.

 

P and I decided we were going to do something about it this past weekend.

 

For less than $100.00 and a lot of sweat equity, we transformed this part of the yard.

Dirty Dirt Dirty

We were fortunate that we decided to plant the grass on a day when a major rainstorm was moving through town. It took about four hours total to buy the grass, pick up some compost/manure mixture, and lay the grass. Those four hours flew.

We finished up the last 1/2 of the project in the rain, but we didn't care. We wanted it done, and we wanted it to look good, and I think it does!

While P was finishing up the final touches, I reworked the stone garden around the base of the tree, and I think it looks so much better than it did before.

The best part of all these projects that P and I are doing is that its money we have been setting aside all year long. Each month we budget some money to our house fund or improvements and projects.

It is so much fun to do work at a home that is yours. We lived in an apartment for two years, and we always talked about how much fun it would be to work on our own home, to do improvements and to fix the house just the way we wanted.

How was your weekend?

Friday confessions

Here are my weekly confessions.

1. Instead of throwing all my junk on the couch, I have been throwing on the floor next to the couch.

2. We worked really hard on our garden this weekend. I have not gone out there to check on it once.

3. I had a dream that P and I got in a fight. I woke up and decided to be mad at him even though it was a dream.

4. I'm typing these confessions from work.

5. I was supposed to do a really quick three mile run today. I did the three miles but stopped more times than I can count.

 

Fess up my friends.

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Mary Mary Quite Contrary

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockleshells

And pretty maids all in a row.

I have no clue what that means, do you?

This past weekend P and I decided to plant our first garden in 3 years. Back when we lived in central Texas, we had a huge garden. We had 3 9X9 plots that we fertilized with goat poo from our neighbors. The soil was amazing.

Now that we live in the middle of Dallas, those 9x9 plots at our small house in the country are gone, but that does not mean we can't bring some country into the city.

We started out Saturday morning with a small plot of land that looked like this.

 We started out cleaning up the plot. We removed the trash, the dog poo, and leaves. We tilled the soil by hand for a bit, then realized we needed some help.

 I went to Home Depot and rented this guy for a few hours. This tiller was fast.

 (Vroom, Vroom, Vroom, I love using powerful machines.)

 After cleaning everything up, tilling the land, and leveling the space, we started planting. We planted spinach, ice burg lettuce, onions, tomatoes, squash, jalapenos, and bell peppers.

 The final product.

 The thing that I loved about the entire process was not necessarily the planting, it was being outside with P, it was starting a project, and finishing it. It was the dirt under my nails, the sun on my skin, and the satisfaction that I accomplished something that I started.

It was a break from the norm. It was something different than usual. So much of my weekends are spent "prepping" for the next week. I run the the store, I spend hours in the kitchen chopping, dicing, and sauteing. I do the laundry, clean the house, clip my coupons. This weekend, I did some of that, but not everything. We ate out 4 times this weekend because we were too busy doing the garden to cook. I did not prep a single meal for the week. Sunday night at 7:00, my floors were dirty, the laundry was not done, and I was scrambling to figure out what to eat for lunch on Monday.

And guess what, I figured out what to eat, I did a few loads of laundry so far this week, my floors are filthy, but the world did not end because everything in the house is not perfect. In fact, its been a pretty good week so far.

I started thinking that I really need to give my to do lists a break, especially on the weekends. Its ok for me to unwind, enjoy my time off, and not spend half of my 48 hours off thinking about the week ahead.

It felt great to spend all day outside. It was so nice to turn off the t.v. We blasted Zac Brown on the radio, and worked.

This was one of the best weekends I have had in ages.

When was last time you took a break from the norm?

Are you a gardener?

Dumping Ground

Hello, my name is Allison, and I have a dumping problem. Eww, I just reread that sentence, and the 7th grader inside of me cringed.

This is the love seat near the door in our living room. Every day when I come in, I throw all of my stuff on this love seat. My work out clothes and bags, my jacket, my shoes, and my left over lunch containers.

The stuff you see is everything that I have in my hands when I come into the house at multiple times a day, and by 6:00 PM every night this is what I am left with. I usually clean the mess up before bed, only to have it all end up on the love seat the next day.

This week, I am vow to y'all, P, and myself  that I will keep the love seat clean. I will put up my stuff right when I come in the door and not leave it for later.

I am going to be proactive and fix my dumping problem. (Eww again).

What do you do with all of your stuff when you walk in the door? Do you put it up right away or do you leave it somewhere like I do?

Friday Confessions

1. I ate an entire meal with my hands because I was too lazy to get up and get a knife.

2. I do planks and push ups in my office everyday

3. I put things I have already done on my to do list so that I have something to highlight as completed.

4. I met a celebrity this week, and as I talked to him, I totally word vomited on him and could not form a complete coherent sentence. After talking to him, I literally ran away.

 

Fess up y'all

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