Well, Hello There

This is how we do life. Some people seem perfect. We are not them, but we have some things figured out...or, at least we would like to think so. Either way, we are having a great time.

So, who are we?

I'm Pam, he's Corey. We are a couple of people that met and fell in love in 1998. We were married in 2000. (Mainly, so he can count the years we have been married easily). Okay, not really, it just happened to fall on that year. We live in suburbia with our two daughters and two dogs and try our best to walk that fine line of having the most fun we can while saving our money and learning and teaching our daughters how to grow up to be good people. It may not be how you do it. But, this is how we do life.

Since we focus quite a bit on them, our theme of this blog will be DIY Home Improvement, Cooking and Finances; with the occasional gardening, auto mechanics and music thrown in for color.

Don't worry; this is probably the longest post we'll ever do (we hope!)

We are starting out 2011 with a goal that may be a little different than others: Simplicity. Things in life have gotten too difficult so we are trying to get back to basics. We don't want to buy goods we don't love nor keep things in our house that we don't love. We will get back to growing our own food, making things from scratch, and not spending money on things we don't need or adore. We had a good go of it in 2010 and want to show you some of what we did to our house to love it more, but for now I just want to make a few statements: We are taking our lives in our own hands. We are doing things our way. We will have fun doing it! What more could we want?

Home Improvement

One or our passions has become home remodeling. We just can't get enough. Last year Corey decided to just go for it and start moving around our kitchen. And when I say moving around, I'm not talking moving furniture! I mean ripping out windows, bustin' out the U-shape countertops and cabinets and adding a huge custom island, and so on. Again, we will address this later. (Are you intrigued to come back later yet?) Anyhoo....... we will continue this first and foremost. We spent part of New Year's Day watching the show 'Rehab Addict' and realized we were addicts, too. DIY is a sickness of ours that we do not want to cure.

Food

What started out as a way to organize the way we shop for groceries and prepare food has turned into a slight obsession for cooking. About 5 years ago, before we even knew what the heck La Creuset* was, we decided to make menus for the 5-day workweek, starting with some popular websites that send out dinner menus for a small cost. After a while, we realized we were comfortable enough to do the menus by ourselves.

How many of you got home...exhausted everyday from work ... and still had to try and plan a healthy meal for you and your family ...and did not want to trudge on out to the local grocery because you did not have anything put together.... and then just said forget it we will eat out...just this once???

I know some of you do I'll raise my hand because I know what it was like! For REAL!

Anyway, fast-forward to today, it is not uncommon for homemade bread to baking in our oven on a weekly basis and our recipe binder overflowing with great proven recipes. Match that with local grocery sales and Boo-yah: Dinner all planned out. We will be posting our weekly menus to show you how easy it is just to jot it down and get it done. I will write out some of my favorite recipes or point you in a direction of what we like on the interwebs and tips and tricks we have found while learning. One of my goals is to, by mid-2011, sign up for The Daring Bakers' Challenge and post pics & the process here.

The first step of a thousand mile journey: In our case it was planning our grocery shop. The way we made it work was that Corey hated doing the shop so he figured out a way to do it efficiently (and fast). He made a spreadsheet with the categories of stuff in the order of our grocery store. More on that at a later date - but the point is: organize to simplify!

Money, Money, Money, Mon-ay!

He spends, I save. He’s the supply, I’m distribution. We have our roles that help us work together. What makes it work is honesty. Be honest with each other, with yourself on your goals and their specificity and your self-discipline. As you can tell, we take a practical approach to everything, money included. What works for us is having goals and working as a team.

But most importantly, you have to know where you stand with your finances. Take responsibility – its your money! Blame the government for taking taxes, blame your boss for not paying you enough, blame the dog, but in the end YOU have the final say on how your money comes in and where it goes. We try our best and will share what has worked for us and what hasn’t.

Now that you know a bit about what we’re up to, go do something! Find inspiration wherever you can! You know those perfect people we mentioned above? They don’t exist. It’s you, me, and all of us moving forward. Learn something, do something, adapt something your own way.

We just hope we can be some part of your inspiration.

Oh, and BT-dubs:

*La Creuset: