A case of the winter blues

I have a case of the winter blues.  It takes a lot more effort to bring my camera out and catch life when I am not feeling amazing.  Nonetheless here are snapshots from the past few days.

18/365 My sweet baby lounging during family movie time :)

20/365 My favorite ladies and I at the murder mystery party with church.  The theme was Mad Men and it was so fun!

21/365 The new shelves are up in my office and they give me so much space on my desktop!  I also love having a bunch of books lined up filled with topics I love :)  

22/365 Laura and I took a lunch time trip to a local antique mall and I found this tray for $9!  I am going to use it as a magnet message board in my office.

23/365 A few of my great grandmother's handkerchiefs.  I plan to frame a few in our kitchen and bathroom and I cannot wait to have them on display.

Pray for the blues to go away.  I love every one of you!

The Girls Are Back In Town

Classes started back up today!  I only have one seated course this semester so it did not feel very different to me, but it did mean that both of my office friends were back :)  Last week was really quiet so it was nice to have company.

I'm nervous about this semester but excited at the same time.  I am taking more classes about family development, but the classes are going to push me.  It is good but scary.  Pray for me please :)

Day 14 of 365

Two scoops please

Today will have two picture posts because I failed to post last night.  We celebrated our friend John's birthday last night, and like the old lady I am, when we got home (at 10:45) I went straight to bed ;)  I love when birthday's come up because it is a night where we are guaranteed to see and hang out with our friends which can be really hard to do in the hustle and bustle of life.  Last night a group of us topped off the birthday dinner with delicious Braum's and it was wonderful :)

For anyone with a goal for the new year to participate in a daily devotional I came across this verse the other day that is serving as my motivation to take time out daily to spend time in the word and converse with God.  Maybe it can serve as motivation for you as well!

Colossians 3:10 "Put on your new nature and be renewed as you learn to know your creator and become like Him."

This new year is a chance to make a commitment to God that I will get to know Him better and let Him transform me through His word and teachings as I discipline myself to meet with Him daily.  I am excited to look back next January and see what He has accomplished in me!

Happy day 5 of 365 (a day late)

Run lady. Run!

I busted out the sneakers for my first run in the new year.  It was cold and my nose was running by the end, but it felt good.

 Now we are cuddled up on the couch watching MIB3... even Duke is in on the action ;)

Enjoy Day 4 of 365

Thankful November

What a lovely weekend we had here in the Calef house!

photo shoot with my favorite family

date night

spur of the moment bonfire with friends

and trying out a new church

This weekend I was so thankful for the relationships that I have.  I have a loving husband, great friends, and the opportunity to meet new people and create new relationships.

Today I am thankful for the right to vote.  I know that a lot of people are telling you that today, and they do because it is important.  We live in a democracy where we have the right to elect individuals to public office.  How cool is that?!  People through around the phrase "it is my right" a lot, and not always are they correct, but voting is a right that we need to exercise.  Beyond the fact that it is a right, voting provides me with a high like no other and I always leave wishing the next election would be here tomorrow so I could do it again (minus all of the political campaigns... those can go away).

My goal for the month of November is to write something that I am thankful for everyday.  Some days they will make it on to the blog with a story or lesson that I am learning, other days they will be documented in my prayer journal.  I want to go through this month remembering that God has blessed me in countless ways.  My life is beautiful and there are days when I am trudging through the mundane pieces or the midweek blues and begin to lose sight of that fact.  I hope that through intentionally working towards a thankful attitude I will allow God to transform my heart and see my life the way that He sees it. 

Here is to a Thankful November!

Bathroom Update

Happy Wednesday!  I am back with another room in our house to share where we have come from, what it looks like now, and what our future plans are.  This week is the bathroom, which when we moved in was a very white, but not sterile space :/  There was a single wire pantry shelf above the toilet that served as the only storage option beyond the medicine cabinet and creepy vanity.

Unfortunately I only have two very bad photos of the space before that do not show much detail (hindsight is always 20/20!), but the vanity is old and not a place I would store items beyond cleaning supplies, and the medicine cabinet was also gross with country knobs that were not my style.

The first thing we did was take down the weird wire rack (it got used when we redid our closets) and pulled off the medicine cabinet to replace it.  Someone had used the medicine cabinet to cover up a giant hole in the wall (explains why it was off-center) so we made sure to find a much larger medicine cabinet that would adequately cover the hole and caulked all the way around to create a good seal.  We also changed up the paint color to a beautiful dark grey, hung up towel racks for functionality, replaced the light, and brought in temporary shelving.

The little white cabinet outside of the door serves as more bathroom storage. It holds extra contacts, toilet paper, lotions, and hair care products.

As you can see from this shot of the temporary shelving we need more space for storage... like yesterday.

The new light is a lot brighter which is necessary in a space with only one light, and the medicine cabinet is significantly larger than the previous one.  Yay for more storage!

That is where our bathroom is currently at.  On the list of future improvements in artwork for personality, and white floating shelves that wrap around the wall beside and behind the toilet.  We hope to do two that wrap and one on the very bottom that floats just below the light switch.

Thanks for taking a peak into our bathroom!  I'll be back Friday with an easy recipe!

Fear

Happy Monday!  I had intentions of sharing a quick fruit dip recipe, but I started reading my book and felt guided to share some musings.  Fruit dip recipe can wait a few days ;)

I am currently reading "Making Room for God in Your Hectic Life" by Keri Wyatt Kent.  I bought the book a while ago, but have really started getting in to it this past week and felt so rejuvenated by the topics and encouragement that is part of each chapter.  

The chapter I am currently on is called humble and it is discussing the inner struggle between living simple and honoring God's wishes and living in a race with everyone around us.  It discusses reasons that we feel a pull towards competing with those around us, and one of the biggest is fear.  Lately I have had a strong fear that I have no skills and will graduate with my masters no better than I was before.  I fear never finding a job that I am excited and motivated to go to, and that truly makes a difference in my community.  I look around at the success of friends and classmates, and wonder what I am missing or am doing wrong.

At the time when I needed it God used this book to set my worries straight and encourage me to continue following Him.  God placed me at Missouri State again and he provided me with a graduate assistant position.  I have to trust that he placed me where I am and that he is going to use my education as a catalyst for the future he has planned for me.  I do not need to compare myself to others because God created me to be an individual and he has a specific plan especially for me.  Why would I want someone else's life if it means I miss out on the blessings God has planned for my own?

Matthew 6: 33-34

"But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own."

Please pray as I work out these fears and work on following God and listening for His voice as he directs my path.  If you are going through something similar let me know!  I would love to pray for you as well :)

Living Room Update... Finally

We have lived in our house for almost 5 months!  I honestly cannot believe it has been that long, and when I look back at pictures of how our house first looked I am blown away.  We have done so much work to make this house our home and I am so proud of it.  I thought about doing an entire house update in one post, but then decided that I would break it up by rooms in order to show more pictures and details and make the fun last longer!

If you want to look back at all of the pictures from when we first moved in here is my initial post.

Our living room when we moved in was dark, dirty, and in need of TLC.  The walls were a dark hunter green, the trim was painted over with dark, muddy brown, the ceiling fan was brass, and the wood floors had seen better days.

 

We spent two weekends with my amazing in-laws working to paint the house and work on the floors.  They even came back while we were gone on vacation and polyurethaned the floors in the living room and bedrooms!  It was a long process but the end result in the living room is the perfect living space for us :)

We chose the color "Blue Lagoon" by Behr for the walls and LOVE the color as well as the paint.  It took us ONE, yes let me repeat one, coat to cover over the dark hunter green!

The floors look so much better after a good scrub and a coat of polyurethane.  If I was redoing floors in my permanent home I would have sanded, re-stained, and covered the floors with a couple of coats of poly, but this worked great to make the floors look clean, be more durable, and we were able to do all of the floors in the house with one can.

This shelf had a makeover and now acts as my "mantle".  I love it for showcasing sweet mementos during the year, and I am really excited to dress it up for holidays!

The hutch looks so good up against the blue walls!  I love how well all of the bold colors pair with one another in the space.

This is a lamp that we DIY'd out of a fun lampshade I had to have from Target and a pendant light from Home depot :)  It helps to define the "dining" part of the space.

It is hard to see, but behind the door we have a coat rack for purses, school bags, and jackets. You have to get a little crafty when you don't have a coat closet!

We also tackled the ceiling fan during our living room makeover.  It used to be brass, but one day we took it apart (part to paint and mostly to clean) and spray painted all of the metal parts with oil rubbed bronze.  It looks so much classier!

There is the tour of living room!  It has been a long time coming so thank you for being patient :)  There are still blank walls that I would like to have photos on, and I am still on the hunt for the perfect curtains , but it definitely looks and feels much more like home!

Grocery Sunday

Today is one of our grocery shopping Sundays!  I always love these Sundays because I can dream up new foods to bring into my kitchen, and the cupboards are once again stocked :)

Here are the meal plans for the next two weeks:

I have several meals I'm trying from Pinterest, and I have marked that on the meal plan so that I can find the recipes.  If the meal ends up being something we like and would like to incorporate as a staple I will transfer the recipe to a recipe card and put it in my box.

Here are the receipts from our trip:

The total came to $106.20 when the $10.16 from last weeks chicken purchase is added in.

I thought I would take this Sunday to share how I keep receipts organized from week to week and where I keep my price check list.  I keep a special notebook that has dividers and I use the first section to keep a running price list of items we usually have on the grocery list so I can remember which place has the best price.

Keeping a running price list also helps me to recognize when a place is having a good sale on a specific item.

I also keep the receipts for all of my shopping trips stapled together and taped into another section of the notebook.  Having the dates helps me to realize when sales on items last took place so I can begin to identify what a specific store's sale rotation is.

I hope all of you have a wonderful Sunday relaxing and getting ready for the week ahead!

Grocery shopping revelation

Happy Sunday!  Sundays are bittersweet for me.  I love sleeping in, amazing worship at church and hanging out with my hubby all day, but also have the knowledge of the week ahead and the things that are due.  Happily that is not the case this weekend!  Today it is just the sweet :)

Today I wanted to share with all of you what I have started doing to watch how much Cameron and I spend in the grocery department.  When I had my job with Lilly Cameron and I worked to be diligent with our money, but never had to be super watchful of our spending.  We wanted to use our money wisely, put some into savings, and make a dent on my student loans thanks to what we learned at Financial Peace University (a class that I could write an entire post praising), but being super watchful was not a requirement.  Fast forward to now and we are both in grad school working to stretch every dollar of my GA stipend.  Oh how times have changed ;)

I believe that this change is good, because we should be intentional with our money and how we spend.  My view is that the money God blesses our family with is not our own, it is God's provision and we should spend it wisely and bless others with it.  To do this I decided we needed to be more watchful in all areas of spending but especially in our grocery spending.  Before we would go grocery shopping once a week and stock up on necessities, but I found myself stopping at the grocery store most nights on my way home because I needed to grab one or two items for the dinner that I decided I was going to make that day in the car.  And inevitably when I stopped to pick up those one or two items I ended up spotting a "good deal" or something new that I impulsively wanted had to try.

Six weeks ago I changed up how we operated when shopping for food and it has made a big difference in my time spent shopping for groceries, time spent planning meals, and the amount of money we spend on groceries.  I now grocery shop every other week on Sunday.  Each Sunday morning I sit down and plan out meals for the next two weeks.  For the hubby and I this usually equates to 4 planned meals a week with the other 3 days reserved for leftovers, frozen pizza, sandwiches, or every once in a while going out to dinner.  I have found that the four days planned and three days open works for us in making sure our fridge stays cleared out of leftovers and gives me the option to have "break days" where I am too tired or crazy busy to plan a proper meal.

Here are the meal plans for the next two weeks:

We have a rotating group of staple meals that we both like that get incorporated into the weekly meal plans and I like to try one or two new recipes from friends or pinterest each time to see if new staple meals can be found.  I create a shopping list with all of the necessary items for dinners that week along with items for lunches and breakfasts.

My biggest trick to getting our shopping bill low is first stopping at Aldi to get as much of the items on our list as possible.  Aldi has most items for quite a bit cheaper than even the generic brand at other super centers or grocery stores.  Once I have gotten as much off of my list as possible I will head to Walmart to finish out the list.  I also include a stop on weeks that we need red meat to a local grocery store called Harter House.  We had a friend that worked there and swears by not only the quality but the price of their meat.  The one located in Nixa has great deals too.

The best of changing up how we grocery shop is the saving of resources.  I only shop one day every two weeks, it takes me about an hour and a half.  We spend $100 or less on groceries for every two weeks, which is a large improvement for us.  This method has also got me in the habit of trying new recipes and getting creative with our meals :)

Here are todays shopping totals:

Things to note.  I highlighted items on the Aldi receipt because I think they are an incredible deal.  I took off the price of the chicken on the Sams Club receipt because this week was not the rotation to buy it, but it was a great deal at Sams that I did not want to miss out on.  I plan on adding the price to the total two weeks from now.  

Total for all four stops was $106.73.  I was a little discouraged because I was almost $7 over my goal, but then I reminded myself that I bought 2 lbs of coffee that will cover us for over a month, 3 lbs of boston burger because it was a great deal, and a 2 1/2 lb roast.  The goal of this is not to freak out if I go over, but to encourage the good habits of meal planning, not visiting the grocery store every day, and shopping smartly :)  Mission accomplished!

My plan for Sundays from now on is to share my shopping totals and meal plans, share new recipes that I am trying, and share my price checking notebook.  If you have questions about any aspect of this let me know and I will incorporate the answers into my Sunday posts.  Now I am off to spend the rest of the day with my hubby and puppy and not stress about school because tomorrow is another Sunday!