A Childhood Dream Came True and I was so Mad

Every since I was a little kid, I have wanted a fireplace.  I remember asking my parents to put in a fireplace.  We already had a chimney so I thought it would be easy to do.  Well, we never got a fireplace.  The only time I ever got to enjoy a fire was going to my grandparent's house in the winter time.  I loved it!

Ever since my in-law got an electric fireplace about 10 years ago, it sparked my interest again.  So, I have hinted to my husband several times over the years about getting a fireplace, and let's just say he didn't get the hint.

This year, I decided that with my Christmas money, I would purchase a media center fireplace. I love Menards, and that was the first place I looked to scout out models and prices.  I found a model that I really liked, and their website said that they had one in stock.  Come to find out after calling them, it was the display model.  I was bummed, but they steered me in the direction of another model.  It was a little more pricey but after comparing the two the more expensive heated 1000 sq. ft. vs. 400 sq.ft. of the other model.

So after visiting the store and seeing the different models in we came home with the model the Menards employee told me about over the phone.  Even though it was a little more expensive, Menard was having their 11% storewide rebate, so I will be getting a little of that money back.

So you are probably wondering why I was mad?  Well you see, while Ryne and I were working on putting this bad boy together,  the kids got in the packing styrofoam.  All we hear is its snowing.


Not only is the toy room a disaster, but they broke up the styrofoam and were throwing it in the air.  Keelie was making snow angels.  They had it ALL over themselves.  I was on the verge of tears.  I had worked so hard to organize their toys and cleaned the floor, and then I see this. Tears!

So instead of enjoying
my fireplace when it was all put together.  I have the joys of cleaning all the "snow" up.  Let me tell you it is not easy because those little buggers have static cling.  So I had to blow on all the toys to get the "snow" off and then vacuum it all up because it would just cling to the broom and dust pan.

To make matters worse, while I was vacuuming I sucked up a sock.  Typically with our Shark vacuum I can take it apart and have no problem getting out whatever got stuck, but with this sock, it got stuck in the handle.  So, Ryne spent like 15 minutes trying to get the dang thing out.

After a hour and a half of cleaning,  I finally got to sit down and enjoy my fireplace.  The girls that night had to fall asleep by the fire.  Jeter like to sit and watch the flames.

Christner Gingerbread House Making

Last night, the high school basketball games got canceled due to weather.  Roarie was so excited in the thought of going.  She kept asking the kids in her preschool class to raise their hands if they were going to go to the basketball game.  The preschool teachers didn't have the heart to tell her that game was canceled, so they left that up to me to do.

When I broke the news to Roarie, she got a bird perch of a lip.  I told her that if she asked daddy real nice maybe he will let us go to Dollar General then get a gingerbread house kit.  Her face lit up like she would rather do that anyway.

We ended up going to DG to get a couple of kits.  I decided that I might as well get two just to eliminate the fighting, plus, I thought that Keelie would eat the candy and there wouldn't be any left to decorate.  The kits cost $10 each.  

Both kits had five different candies, one large bag of candy, 2four walls to the house, two pieces for the roof, and a piece of cardboard for the house to sit on.  I didn't think that there would be enough frosting, but when we were finished, I actually had some left over.

Roarie and Keelie had so much fun.  I was the one to put on all of the frostings but they helped put the walls and roof pieces together, and they put on the candy where ever they wanted too.  I was very surprised that Keelie did not eat any of the candy.  She licked her fingers a lot because she would get frosting on them.

The frosting was pretty good in consistency thickness ( and taste) It really didn't take long for the frosting to dry up to get the walls to stand and for the candy to stick without sliding off.
The girls did a great job with their gingerbread houses.  The whole project took us about an hour and a half.  Keelie's is on the left and Roarie's in on the right.

Christmas Budget

I don't know about many of you, but we created a Christmas budget. Last year, we spent about $1,200 on Christmas, everything from a new tree to presents. We decided to put everything on credit cards instead of pulling it straight out of our bank account. This was not the smartest things for my husband to do considering the interest rates to accumulates. So in the long run, we ended up spending more than $1200. This ended up taking us 4 months to pay off. 

This year we created a Christmas budget. Every month we set aside $100. We put it in a place where we would not be tempted to spend it. When November came around, we had $1,100 dollars that we could dabble with. This was nice because when it came to Black Friday shopping, I didn't have to stress or have the guilt that I was spending money that we didn't have, which in turn would get us into debt in the long run.

 Well, this Christmas, it was nice having $1,100 to work with; however, my daughter broke one of our iPads. So this was an added expense that we wanted to replace. So on Black Friday, we ended up getting two new iPad Airs to replace our Apple iPad IIs. This consumer $600 of our Christmas budget. With them being under the age of 5, they don't understand the concept of money, so we ended up buy more gifts, smaller ones because of the amount we have already spent. But purchasing these, made us go over our budget. So, back to our credit card debt...ugh!

 Four changes that I will make to our Christmas Budget for next year:

 1. Set aside $125 every month. This will hopefully help eliminate any overspending based on the amount that I spent this year.

2. Make a list of everyone that I need to purchase for. I will make a list of everyone in my family, family grab bags, teachers, co-workers who have made an helped me throughout the year.

3. From this list, put a price of how much I am going to spend on each person and budget it to my $1500.

4. Lastly, when I go Black Friday shopping bring a cash, which is a risk but in my area, there aren't many muggings. Another option is to get a pay-as-you-go charge card (caution: most of these have some type of monthly fee).

 I am not saying that there won't be flaws or that this will work for everyone. This is what I plan on doing with my Christmas budget for next year. Hopefully, it works because there is nothing that I want more than to get financially stable and pay off out debts.

Roarie's First School Winter

Tonight, Roarie had her first winter concert at school. The school put to get her their concert in the manner of 4-year-old Preschool school thru first grade.  Being a small school they have all three grades singing all at the same time and all the same songs.  This makes it convenient for the kids, parents, and teachers.  The concert from beginning to end lasted about 25 minutes.

I curled Roarie's hair.  We borrowed a dress from a friend.  And of course, we had to wear make-up.  When I was a little girl, the only time my mom would let me wear make-up was when I had a concert and sometimes when we to to church.

If you give a Roarie some make-up, a Keelie is gunna want some make up too.