A little treat

Tonight my husband and I were able to celebrate our 8Th wedding anniversary, sans our daughter (thank you to my parents) at one of our favorite restaurant's, Malee's Thai Bistro in Scottsdale. Of course it was as delicious as usual and we got to enjoy some yummy cocktails and each others company. We don't often get to go out just the two of us so it was of course a wonderful treat. I tried the Seafood Medley which was a mixture of shrimp, scallops, oysters, calamari, and white fish in a red curry sauce. It was amazing.

Prior to our reservation at Malee's, we hit Scottsdale Fashion Square for the sole purpose of my getting to shop at Lush. Lush is a handmade, organic beauty products seller and one of my favorite indulgences. There only store front is located in Scottsdale Fashion Square. Since I prefer not to pay shipping if I can avoid it I wait until we head out to Scottsdale to stock up on their delicious products. I got myself several bath bombs, a facial mask, and some solid perfume called Karma which is just delightful. Since I still consider myself a hippie at heart, I simply adore these organic, cruelty free products. They are so great for my skin and great for our environment. The scents are so light that even someone like me, who unfortunately suffers with asthma and chronic allergies and sinus infections, can enjoy them without any repercussions. I just stepped out of a bath with the glorious mud bath bomb and I feel fantastic! I also purchased the Comestic Warrior mask made with garlic, tea tree oil and china clay. The smell was so fantastic and my skin is glowing! I could go on and on about this wonderful product, I really love indulging in it!

I cannot wait until I get another lovely night out with my husband - OR until my next shopping spree at Lush. What an evening of special treats!

Undertaking

My sister is developmentally disabled.

This has been a prominent factor throughout my life. My family didn't like to discuss it, but its there, like an elephant in the room. Our world is both cruel and beautiful. I understand the preference to pretend its not true. The truth however, cannot stay hidden for long.

My sister got married and went out on her own. Her husband also developmentally disabled. What we hoped and prayed would be two simple people helping each other make their way in the world turned out to be a toxic event. The rapid decline that my family saw my sister take has been difficult.

Its now five years later, they are divorcing (which is for the best) and I'm taking on the task of getting my sister the assistance she needs. We aren't going to brush her condition under the carpet anymore. We are going to face it head on and get the help she needs. This is quite the undertaking, and I hope that we achieve the desired outcome. I'm doing my best to stay positive, but at times I waiver and wonder if we will be met with resistance and closed doors. All I can do is remain persistent and hope that finally I will be able to get her the help she needs and set her on a path that will help enrich her life. Perhaps I can also suppress the guilt that has been inside me, knowing that she can't do all that she is "supposed" to do as well as take the burden off my mom. I hope this is all leading up to a chain of events that will provide peace to my family.

For now, I need a little luck on my side and a lot of persistence.

Las Vegas!

I finally went to Las Vegas! I had been a few times for work, but was flown in for the day and spent it working at the convention center. We decided not to take a "big" vacation this year and have a few mini-vaca's scrawled across the calender. This was our second one of the year. It was a nice three days, and three days is about all you need in Vegas. Not sure I would have enjoyed it had we stayed any longer.

I had been looking forward to seeing Vegas at night. We took a day and spent 9 hours walking around the strip. Above is a shot of the lights and of my husband and I taking a little break in the evening. The next day was our main event, The Avett Brothers! What a reat show! I love their music and it was so great to catch them live again. Any chance I would have to see them, I would take it!

Vegas was a great time!

Rawson Money Management 101

I have so many ideas for this blog and I unfortunately have not been keeping up with my goal of blogging at least twice a month. This entry I have been meaning to do for awhile.
I get asked frequently for money management advise. I do work in finance, but long before I started that career I was always very conscientious of budgeting and making the most of my money. There were a lot of things I had to begin paying for myself at an early age and I learned to think twice before engaging in frivolous spending because we can't have everything, so its important to prioritize.

We have four very simple money rules that we abide by in our household:

• Create a monthly budget and actually review it monthly so that you can manage variable bills such as car tags, home warranty renewals, and planned parties. I have a notebook that I use and I take about an hour or two a month to review the monthly bills and any variables that may need to be included for the month. I then coordinate the bills with our pay periods. This is very simple and I strongly suggest it be adopted by anyone who feels that their money management system is inefficient and they are not ending the month as planned. Also, always make sure to budget for saving, pocket money, gasoline, and some entertainment or else these items end up causing the budget to be off and often times these expenses go on credit cards.
  
• Create a spreadsheet in excel/numbers/quick book's that allows a big picture view of your total household income vs monthly bills. When you do this for the first time, if you are in the red, you will have all the items in front of you to review so that you can see what can be cut and what needs to be tackled first to help relieve the situation. I create this spreadsheet annually and review it whenever we get pay raises (or unfortunately pay cuts, which was the case for us last year) so that we can review our savings potential and see where we are spending our money and make a realistic monthly budget
  
• Shopping is usually planned. We shop sales, use coupons, do price comparisons for special events and travel. I clip coupons for groceries and cross check the ads. Department store savings are such a money saver (gotta love when I get a 30% off at Kohl's!) these are great times to invest in new wardrobe pieces or the new season of clothing that my daughter needs. I despise paying full price!!
  
• Once you have hit your budget, you are done! Unless its an emergency, stop spending. We all find ourselves over budget at times but continuous overspending creates a snowball of debt that only becomes increasingly difficult it tackle. Eating out for $45 when you have already hit your budget is careless. Cook at home then eat out next week when you can afford it and will enjoy it more. Now, we all do need to live a little, so at times (like our recent vacation when I hit the Coach outlet!!) we do overspend, but we have the cash to cover it. Believe me though, I'm already plotting on how to plan the next months budget so I can make up for my indiscretion :) As long as we keep track of our spending and stay in budget , say 90% of the time, we aren't scrambling to figure out how to take care of our monthly obligations and we are also able to enjoy life more by eliminating a major stress factor. I have plenty of things that stress me out, I need to do my best to keep a handle on what I can.

All pretty simple and easy. Nothing is fool proof, as the saying goes, shit happens. We do our best to live a full and happy life within our means. Budgeting our money and planning our shopping takes very little time for the pay off it provides in the end.

Take a risk, play it safe

Here we are, considering buying another house!

This is very exciting, yet also stressful. We cannot sell our current house because we would have to take a loss, if we take a loss, we would loose the loan that we have qualified for. Therefore, we have opted to rent our house and become landlords. This is a coin toss situation. While we will do our best to choose the best tenant, you never really know what could happen. This part is the biggest risk.

On the flip side, we could get a larger home for an awesome price and be settled in a better spot to further extend our family and also know that we are buying a house that we do not intend to move from until we retire and would like a small 1000 sq ft home to manage.

So what do we do...well, we are still getting our ducks in order and looking at options for finding the best tenants (i.e. do we hire a management firm, find our own tenant, who will help review the credit checks). Since I have worked in credit management for 9 years, as well consider my self fiscally conservative and responsible I hope that I will be able to extend that judgment to this situation. We have also started to looked at house listings as well as viewed some homes with the realtor we have started working. Yes, this is getting serious and its for real...

Do we take a risk and hope for the best and get the larger home we have been wanting for the past few years, or do we wait and see what happens as the market slowly recovers and hope that we will get a good enough price for our house to assist us in a future purchase. While I have always been a play it safe type of person, I think the risk of getting the home we want and renting our current home is the risk I would like to take. I feel that ultimately, this risk will have the best pay off in the end. Though I may waiver at times and prefer to play it safe and not pursue it for the potential stress factor, ultimately, I feel that once we have all the info we are currently seeking and find the home we really want, everything will just fall into place and we will be happy we did it.

Not everything is easy right, sometimes we have to be uncomfortable for a period in order to get what we want long term....

Books...

Book Recommendation

The Friday Night Knitting Club

By Kate Jacobs

I read The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs as a recommendation from my mother-in-law. She had previously read a book I had really loved and recommended to her and it was so much fun discussing it with her. I thought that even though this book didn't seem to appeal to me, I wanted to read it so that in the very least I would get to have a lively and enjoyable discussion over literature with my mother-in-law.

To my surprise, I found The Friday Night Knitting Club to be a lovely and heartfelt novel. The story of a hardworking and talented woman , Georgia Walker, who as a single mom and is determined to make a full and wonderful life for herself and her daughter doing something she loves - knitting. Georgia opens a shop in New York where knitters can purchase supplies or can order custom pieces. The shop becomes a meeting place for women of all different backgrounds and circumstances who want to knit from those who are novice knitters to old pros. Of course the point of the meetings are for the more experiences knitters to help the newbies out, but really the women come to bond and support each other.

The book is a tale of broken hearts, love, and redemption. Georgia Walker is a strong character, a women of so much strength and gumption you would want her for your own friend. The rest of the cast are all strong and likable in their own right as well. A genuinely good read from start to finish.

I'm glad I took my mother-in-laws recommendation, because as is highlighted in this book and true in my own life, there is a beauty in listening and bonding with women of all ages and backgrounds. What we learn from others helps to make us whole.

Big Day!

The Big Day Finally Came!

We had all been awaiting Sadie's 4th Birthday party at Build a Bear and the day finally came! June 26th at 10:30 we got to Build a Bear and had a fantastic celebration. The party was all we could of hoped for and my baby was just thrilled! As a parent there is nothing better than watching your child have a wonderful time. Since she will only be young once we are so proud that we are able to have such fun filled parties for her that will create wonderful memories for her to carry through her life. The photo above is Sadie just before we head to Build a Bear. Can't you just feel the excitement! Such fun!

Sadie is the leader in line as the girls all skip off to build their bears !

Happy Birthday!

Everyone came over to the food court for some pizza and delicious cupcakes made by Grandma!

Snuggling her Birthday Build a Bear!

Celebrations!

We have a big celebration coming up!

My baby girl is turning 4! She will be having a build-a-bear party with her buds and then of course will be celebrated with some more partying with her family after those festivities have come to an end.

Four years, I can't believe it! While this party is very much anticipated by myself , my husband, and our baby, the truth is, I celebrate this little girl everyday!

Since she was born my whole life has become brighter. I have learned how to love wholly, myself and others. I take care of myself so much better because it is so important that Im here to experience everything I can with her and be here for her as she navigates through adolescents and adulthood.

The passing time is bittersweet, but I'm loving every moment of it. Now that I have learned to count my blessings and celebrate, life has so much more love and meaning.

Fall down, get up

Like most middle class families, every time we get ahead, we somehow get pushed back down again.
We work hard, budget, spend conscientiously, do our best to live within our means, but inevitiably, life intervenes in an unpositive way.
There will always be hurdles, but its hard to process the disappointment of falling into a rut with a cycle of debt. All my plans and hopes sit beside me as I plan my way to get back up. It's only money is what I keep saying to myself. And while we need money and the more of it it seems the less the worries, in the end I know that what I have that is the most valuable is my family and my health.
I'll admit, the size of my bank account is important to me, but only for security reasons. We've worked so hard so we have the cushion, and sometimes we gotta draw on it, no matter how much I hate the reason. It is what it is. It's not worth me worrying so much I compromise my health or am so flustered that I can't enjoy the precious time I have with my family.

You make me smile like a sun, Fall outta bed
Sing like a bird, Dizzy in my head
Spin like a record, Crazy on a Sunday night
You make me dance like fool, Forget how to breathe
Shine like gold, Buzz like a bee
Just the thought of you can drive me wild
Oh, you make me smile

- uncle cracker, smile

This song makes me think of my daughter and all the joy she brings. Even on a difficult day, I wouldn't change being her mother for anything in the world! She makes the world brighter and makes my heart sing.

My loves!

Here we go!

Im starting a blog!

I decided to start a blog to share some of my favorite things as well as pass on tips, or maybe even give my opinion from time to time. Not sure how frequent this will be, but heck, for now, Im just gonna go with it!

My family, my heart, my life's biggest blessing is first and foremost on my mind today. I love them so much and am very blessed to have them. I really don't know what I would do without them and I thank them for their love and support.