Beesley's: Budget Wise

Well, this month (April) kicks off a new 'tude in Casa Beesley. We've kind of gotten in a bad habit of waiting until the last day possible to make our house payment. This got us into trouble in February because the last day to pay our house payment is the 16th before it's late. Well, we forgot to do it the Friday before and the 16th was a holiday and the banks were closed. So, now we have a late payment on our record and that's just bad news bears. So, we've started being thrifty. We're clipping coupons, shopping the ads and sticking to a grocery budget. We're starting fresh for April. April 1st, we're paying our house payment and all the bills we let slide because we were on vacation to Florida and spent more money than we should. Things will be tight til the middle of the month check, but we're just going to start living like things are always tight and start building our savings account back up. If something should happen (knock on wood) and I lose my job, Nick & I are SCREWED. We can make things work on my paycheck if he loses his job, but he doesn't make enough to support us on just his check.

Being thrifty is causing us to do more stuff at home. Things I'd been wanting to do and putting off because it's more fun to go shopping or out to eat are starting to get done. Our garage is all clean and organized. We still need to get some sort of storage system out there (shelving and such) and I'd still like to get a chest freezer, but at least it's organized. This weekend we worked on the office and changed it to more of a crafting room. Nick's going to find some time and hook up the extra TV we have in that room and run some cable to it so I can watch TV while I make cards or maybe actually scrapbook one day!!! :-) We even measured our backsplash so when we finally decide what we want to do, we know how much of whatever it is that we need to get (our latest inspiration is beadboard. I saw it on TV and a beadboard backsplash looks really awesome!).

I need to make a plan for our yard and start getting it going. Our maple tree out front got broken in half in a windstorm we had last year and is dead. It needs to come out. We didn't ever get our sprinklers blown out last year, so I'm hoping that if we wait, wait, wait until the ground is fully unfrozen before attempting to turn it on that we won't have any breaks. I also need to do something with our bedroom. It's blank, boring and blah. I bought a bed in a bad deal at Linens & Things when they were having their store closing specials and I hated it 2 minutes after we bought it. It's nice but it's not what I want for my room. Sigh.

Well, spring appears to be roaring in like a lion here. We've had some rain, storms, wind, and some sunshine. Not too many warm days yet. I'm hoping this wind dies off soon, because I want to enjoy our outdoor fireplace. We had a yucky windstorm move through this weekend. Thankfully our house is pretty protected by the way it sits in our cul de sac and we didn't have any problems (a couple of chairs got scattered about in the back yard, but nothing major). Nothing like this:

these images were stolen from www.ktvb.com

It's still windy and FREEZING today. brrrrrr.

Well, that's about it. More later!