Dave Ramsey is the man with the plan!

        So I have never been that great with money. I mean I have always paid my bills on time but as for saving money... nope never! The thing is, I'm stubborn, I get it from my mom. If I want something I will get it and I will work hard for it too, but I should be saving the money instead of buying so many clothes, shoes,wine, etc. There was a time in my life where I was always in the negatives by the time it got around to being paid again, and this lasted for several months! I even had a picture taken of me with my thumbs up to my bank account that was pulled up online when my account finally got into the postives! 


Now, if I look around at my life I'm pretty blessed. I don't know a lot of 24 year olds who are married and have a nice car, and a nice house filled with pretty nice furniture. However, to get there we have dug ourselves into a little bit of debt. Since I'm trying to get into a program to become an x-ray tech that will pretty much leave me working only a few hours a week, we have decided to buckle down and get out of debt to lower our monthly expenses. Dave Ramsey's plan is what's helping us get there! 


                                                                    




His plan involves saving $1000.00 emergency fund first. Then you create a budget using his only program and stick with it. When you budget you use the envelope system. For instance, if you give yourself $200 for groceries a month, then you put $200 cash into an envelope marked groceries and when the money is gone you are done. You can't put anymore money in or take from other envelopes. This helps you stay on track and paying with cash as much as possible instead of a debit card helps you realize how much you are actually spending. Then there is the snowball effect. When you start paying on your debt you start with the smallest item first. Then once it's paid off you put however much you were paying on that card and pay that much more on the second card. All while just paying minimums on everything else. He has this little debt calculator online that shows you exactly what to pay first and it shows you if you stick with the plan what month you will become debt free! So far Adam and I have paid off 4 cards and we have 5 more items to go.... including my car, and we have only been on this plan for a little over a month.The debt calculator says that if we stick with it we could be debt free by December of next year! I'm so stoked! Adam and I have never been more excited to do finances and doing them together is new for us since it used to be only me! It's a great feeling knowing that you have a plan and we push each other to do even more. 


Since we are now on a budget we each only get $50 a month to spend on whatever we want and that includes, drinks, going out to eat, clothes, music stuff etc. So don't be surprised when I say that I can't go out with you because I'm probably just broke. I will be watching more movies at home and buying my wine at the liquor store instead of at a cool  bar where I have to tip and pay $7-12 a glass. So feel free to invite yourself over to my house and if you know of any cool free stuff to do in Nashville let me know!! And if you would like to start The Dave Ramsey plan yourself let me know if you have any questions and I will be happy to talk about it with you or check out his website! 

All Natural.... with a little mousse!

          So I'm not even going to make excuses for not posting in forever because the truth is I just didn't care. I mean honestly it's not like any of you were just chomping at the bit to read my next post... lets be serious.... I'm not that interesting! But sometimes I just like to post on here the things that I'm thinking, things I've been up to or just post something silly to fill up some time in my day. I actually have a bunch of things I would like to post about right now so there should be more frequent postings for a little while anyway. 


           Anyway, today's post is about hair. I need help. I hate my hair so much and I always have. In high school my hair was a disaster!!! I honestly can't believe I actually had boyfriends. It was always so fluffy and feathery looking. I didn't even learn what a straightener was until my junior year in high school and then it became my best friend. 









I actually have naturally wavy/curly hair and its fine hair but there is a lot of it! I never know what to do with it so I just straighten it all the time... not healthy! I always have these little flyaways on the top of my head that look ridiculous! 


                                                         

It kinda looks like the top of this dogs head, except I don't make it look that cute. So I've decided if I'm 

going to get my hair healthy I'm going to have to were is natural more frequently... be prepared to be 

  

scared! Here is a quick photo shoot of my first attempt to go with my curly hair in quite sometime! 

Seriously!!!?!?!

I'm going to scare people! I'm even scaring myself! 

Well whatever... I guess this is what I got to do...  

Just own it girl! lol

Back to School, Back to School .... sing it with me now!

Okay so I haven't been posting and there is a major reason why... I'm back in school FULL TIME! The semester only has about 5 1/2 weeks left and boy is it crunch time. I am really liking it so far and the lowest grade I have gotten in any of my classes is an 82. I feel like I have time for nothing though and nobody for that matter. So, if we are friends but I haven't been around lately I'm sorry I'm really wish there were more hours in the day. Soon summer will be upon us and I can go back to having so what of a life for a little while.

My first day of school photo:)

I know I'm a nerd.....

The reason I went back to school was in part because of this blog. I started this blog because I wanted to stop living life on the sidelines. I had gotten in the habit of always doing the same things and it was a boring rut that went on for too long. My thinking was that if I had a blog it would hold me somewhat accountable for getting out there and trying new things. Which I have and some things have just piled up and I haven't even been able to write about them yet. Anyway, it made me think about everything in my life. What else what I sitting on the sidelines for? This was HUGE! I had been wanting to go back to school for so long but there were so many things deterring me from doing it. For example, I didn't know what to go back for exactly, cost, afraid of failing and plain laziness. This had to end. The next step in Adam and I's life is children and I really want to have school behind me when that happens. That in itself was enough motivation for me to get my act together and get on with it. I now attend Volunteer State Community College in hopes of getting into their Radiology Technologist program! Wish me luck!

SLAMBERLY!!!

Hey all,

So, I completely forgot that I didn't post about my adventure with the Roller Derby Girls. Let me tell you... it was an experience. I loved it! For clarification, I was not trying out for the roller derby team. I just went to a roller derby practice with girls who were wanting to try out for this season. Every year if you are interested in joining the roller derby you simply attend these practices that are held 2-3 times a week and they go over some of the basic moves and help you with form. Once you've gone to multiple of these practices there is a Skills Test, in which you have to preform the basic skills in front of leaders on the team and you they decide if you get to be on the team or not or if you need more practice.

Anyway, so I went to one of these practices out of curiosity and ended up really enjoying myself. When I first walked in I was super nervous, but one of the girls kindly took me under her wing and helped me get dressed with the gear and I was off. We did drills to learn different ways to fall and different ways to stop. Both of which are very important and its very important that you can do both very quickly. I felt like I was one of the best of the new girls which really got my adrenaline up. I am lucky in that usually when I learn a sport I catch on quickly and I'm usually pretty good. This was one of those things. I signed up for the email list to learn more information because I had such a blast. However, I did walk funny for about a week afterward because I was so sore. It may be fun but it's def. a lot of work!

One of my favorite rituals of being a roller derby girl though is your name that comes along with it. One of my co-workers came up with the perfect name for me.... Slambery! I love it! Unfortunately, once I learned more about the time and money I would have to put in to be on the team it just didn't fit. I hope that at some point during my life it ends up working out where I could be on the team but just not right now. I am so thankful for the experience though. It is one that I will never forget!

Yazoo Beer at Tribe!

First off I would like to say that until I met Courtney, I had never been to a gay club in my life and now... I LOVE IT! It's perfect. Tribe is a gay bar in Nashville and it's amazing. It's not overly packed, the drinks are delicious, the music is amazing, and you never have to worry about a guy hitting on you or trying to rub on you if you are a single straight lady. Not to mention that they hosted Yazoo Beer Night!

Yazoo Beer Night was only $5 to get in and it was unlimited tastes of 8 different beers brewed by Nashville's own Yazoo. Not only were they delicious, but ONLY $5!!! Included in the $5 admission was access to the free snacks that were provided by Suzy Wong's House of Yum, and boy were they YUMMY! Speaking of snacks, Adam came with us and loved it! If you know Adam, then you know how much he loves snacks! It was Adam's first time to Tribe and he was a little nervous I think at first, but once we got there he really liked it too. He likes the fact that you don't get all the losers you can run into downtown, and by losers I mean tourists with an attitude problem or boys who feel like they need to compensate for something.

All in all it was a great night with great friends! I hope to do it again soon!

Adam turns 30!

So a couple of weeks ago Adam, my husband, turned 30! He was a little nervous about it for awhile but now that it's here and gone he's completely cool rocking the fact that he is no longer in his twenties! I mean he's got a smoking hot young wife, what else could he want!?..... just kidding! So, to celebrate we went to Florida! My parents have this awesome time share deal where we end up getting great deals on our vacations as well, so we decided to take advantage and take a short little trip to the Sunshine State. Since we booked a two bedroom condo we thought it would be nice to share our trip with another couple so we took our good friends Jason and Kristy. We had a blast! Yes, the drive was long, and yes, I got car sick part of the way, but it was all worth it!

The first day there we decided to just relax and check out one of the many outlet malls and go to eat at Adam and I's favorite pizza place, Uno's, which we sadly do not have in Nashville. It was just as good as I remember if not better. If you have ever had the chance to eat here you know exactly what I'm talking about! Their pizza's have the best crust ever. They also have our favorite dessert which is a chocolate chip cookie baked into a personal pizza pan and served with copious amounts of vanilla bean ice cream, whip cream and chocolate sauce! YUM!

Once we got back to the hotel we decided that we and our food babies wanted to relax in the hot tub! Since we had hit Wal-Mart up earlier I already had my wine cooling in the fridge! The perfect ending to our day!

The next day was Adam's birthday so we were bound to do something fun and we all decided to head to Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. Adam was the only one who had been there before and we were all so excited to explore it together!

We started with Islands of Adventure which was smart because they had a lot more rides! The Hulk was our first ride and probably my favorite! With its twists and turns it had my heart pumping and I was laughing because I looked over at Kristy who never even opened her eyes!

Next we hit up the Spiderman ride! SO MUCH FUN! I am not usually a fan of 3D rides but this took it to a whole other level. I was dodging bricks and enemies. It was like they were reaching out to grab me, it was so fun!!! Just walking around the park was fun! Just seeing all the little details in every different area of the park was cool. My favorite even though there was only a water ride was the Jurassic Park area! It was cool to hear all the noises and to feel like you were in the jungle!

After Jurassic Park we headed to the NEW HARRY POTTER WORLD! Now, Adam and I have never read the books or seen the movies so we didn't really think we would be that into it, but it was so so cool!!! It was so detailed! I've seen the movie trailers and it looked just like it! I was actually inspired to read the books! I can't wait to start!

After we had seen all of Islands of Adventure we headed over to Universal! It was so neat! It felt like we were on a movie set! We even got to see the Back to the Future car!!!

At Universal we got to ride the new Simpson's ride and the E.T. ride. Adam and I also hit up The Mummy which was amazing! Another 3D ride that blew me away! I hope we definitely make another trip back soon! So much fun! After a day of walking around it was time to go back to hotel so Adam could watch The Vikings game and the rest of us could rest our feet in the hot tub! I slept so good that night!

The next day was our last:( We decided to just take a day and relax. Kristy and I even got to schedule hour massages in our room which felt amazing! We got to hang out around the pool and even have races down the dueling water slides. We decided to take some paddle boats out on the lake as well!

That night we wanted to check out Benihana the Japanese Steak House right down the road. It was so delicious! Nothing like some fresh Japanese food and some late night hot tub action to make our ending to our vacation perfect!

What are some of your favorite vacation spots?!

Slip Slidin' Away!

Think slip n slides are just for kids?..... Think again my friends its for a group of young adults who have had enough liquid courage to throw on a bathing suit and throw themselves down a slippery slope! Which is so fun... until you wake up the next morning and you realize that your entire body hurts and you may have a bruised rib!

For Labor Day a group of us decided to have a big cookout and do a slip n slide. In my back yard we have a little hill that worked just perfect. A week before the event I was looking up how to make a slip n slide which sounds silly because you would think that its really easy. Which it is but there were some tips like, don't use tent stakes, that came in very handy. There were also so tips on what to use besides water to make in slippery, which I chose Blueberry scented kids Bubble Bath! It worked great!

This day was full of laughs, food, drinks and friends and you just can't ask for much more!

Even Abby had fun!