Things that make me happy these days

Beaches

Guacamole

Cooking with my husband

My dog

A breezy day

A pretty dress

Flowers

The feeling you get after a good workout


Sleeping in

Solving a problem by myself


What makes YOU happy?

"How's married life?"

I get that question a lot since I just got married. Two months ago today, in fact. My married life is a lot like my engaged life, or my living together life. John and I have lived together for about two and a half years now. We have a house and a dog. Our life isn't really that different now, except I like to constantly remind John that there are no takebacks. And I changed my name.

It's funny how things turn out sometimes. When I graduated from college, I applied to jobs all over the country and didn't get any of them. I took a job in San Antonio at a magazine as an assistant and then found another job at a nonprofit. I wound up staying in San Antonio when I was trying so hard to leave.

But San Antonio is where I met John. It's where we live and have friends and dinner parties and get to wear flip flops all over town. It takes 30 minutes to drive 20 miles. We both have jobs we like in a town largely untouched by the recession.

And we have each other. He is my partner and my best friend. He makes me laugh with his dancing. Even when I'm mad at him, I tell him "I love you, but I don't like you right now." Because it's true - I always love him, even when he doesn't do the dishes.

Here's to two months of marriage, and many more to come.

Holy guacamole!

I love guacamole. Avocados are one of my favorite things to eat. I recently started making this guacamole, and it is so good.

2 large avocados
2 Roma tomatoes
cilantro
1 red onion
2 limes
fine sea salt

Dice the avocados, tomatoes and onion. Roughly chop half a bunch of cilantro and combine with veggies in a non-metal bowl. (Metal makes the avocados brown) Squeeze the juice from the limes over the mix. Toss together, sprinkling with sea salt. Eat!

I cheated :(

I went to Houston this weekend to visit friends, and I cheated on my spending hiatus. My name is Lauren, and I'm a cheater.

I bought this.

Cute, no? It was on sale. There were a lot of things I wanted to buy, cute summer shirts mostly. But I didn't buy them. I told Amanda that if I was going to buy something, it would have to be something really cute. I think I succeeded.

But my point is, I did cheat. What did I learn from this? That the best way to not cheat is to not tempt myself. Going shopping thinking that I just won't get anything doesn't work. I should just not go at all.

The good news is that I've made it almost a full month now on my hiatus. I'm still on it, even though I cheated. I'll just have to try that much harder for the next two months.

That is my PSA for today.

Cheap wedding bells

Since this blog is supposed to be about saving money, I thought I'd talk a little about how John and I saved money on our wedding.

-The dress. I bought it online for $230 and then had it taken in, taken up, and a lining put in, all for about $120. So I came to about $350 total. Considering what David's Bridal and other stores charge for dresses and alterations, this is a bargain. I wanted something that wasn't big and froofy and tulle. So this worked out well.

-The shoes. Bought em at DSW for $35.

-Jewelry and headband. Bought on Etsy.

-The guestbook. My friend Kate had the brilliant idea to use a cookbook for our guestbook, since John and I love to cook. We loved it! I bought a bunch of sharpies and people left us their "recipes" for love. This is fantastic because we can use our guestbook and read peoples' messages all the time.

-RSVPs. We went to Hawaii last year and picked up vintage-looking postcards for the RSVPs. They cost like $30 total. Then we had my friend Ryan do a graphic of a piece of coral for us for our invites and accommodations cards. We hand wrote the RSVPs.


-The officiant. Neither of us is religious, but we didn't want a JP either. So we asked John's dad to officiate our wedding. We got him ordained online. He wrote a great speech for us (about wine!), and it was so amazing to have everyone involved in our wedding like that.


-Favors. Ok, we didn't really save any money on favors. We found these half bottles of wine at World Market. It was Primus, one of our favorite reds. So we bought one for every family/couple and wrote notes for everyone on them. Not cheap, but infinitely better than impersonal gifts.

Things we didn't do for the wedding:
-A program. Everyone knows what happens at a ceremony. Why do you need a program?
-Save the dates. We got engaged in August and married the following March. By the time we'd booked everything, it was too late for Save the Dates.
-Linens. We just used the ones the location had.
-Full bar. We had wine, beer, and delicious prickly pear margaritas. I heard no complaints.
-Stupid chair drapery things. They are my nightmare. I don't get them.
-Big centerpieces. I had the florist give me big peonies to float in water in the center.
-Placecards. We only had 70 people at the wedding. We let everyone sit where they wanted.
-Menus. The location provided them for us.
-A DJ. We asked our friend Sam, Kate's husband, to be our "DJ". We set up the iPod with all the mixes and he just made sure the right mix was playing and all.

Wedding slideshow

John and I opted to get a wedding photographer that included things like a slideshow and rights to all of our photos. So we saved some money and got this cool slideshow! (Ok, I was trying to make this about saving money, but I really just wanted to post the slideshow.)

You can also see this on my facebook profile.

Ha!

Things I would buy if I weren't on a spending hiatus

This cardigan from Anthropologie. It's like the cardigan I bought right before my spending hiatus, but coral. Coral is one of my favorite colors.

This dress from J Crew. I love dresses, strapless dresses, jersey dresses, summer dresses, and sweetheart necklines. This is all of those things!
A neti pot. If you live in Texas, you know why I need this.

This recipe organizer. I have recipes in all different places, and they get really dirty. This would be nice to have to store and sort them all.

But alas I can't get any of these things. Unless you good people would be willing to get them for me. :)

Mother's Day!

My mom got her Mother's Day gift yesterday. Here's the email she sent me:

Hi Lauren!
Your "bottle of memories" made me laugh and cry at the same time!! I had no idea that you learned anything worthwhile from me! I am so glad that you have such good memories of your childhood and I am especially happy with how close we have grown in the last couple of years. This is the best gift that a mother could ever want and represents a lifetime of love. I think I'll make a scrapbook with my memories! Wish I had pictures to go with each one!

Thank you for making my year!
Love, Mom

Introducing Buster

I realized in the last post that I haven't properly introduced Buster to you (unless you've met him before. If so, you can skip this post. Or read it, you might learn something new.).

Ahem.

Buster came to us one cold January day. John and I moved into our house in October 2007. John has always wanted a dog, but I told him we had to wait for a house. And then when we got the house, we had already planned on being out of town on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and we were going to have our first houseguests in early January.

Then, on January 3, John got an email through his company listserv about someone who had found a mother dog and her 7-week-old puppies, about 8-10 puppies total. They were giving the puppies away. I told John we would look at them and if we liked one, we would go get puppy supplies and pick up the puppy the next day.

We went home with a puppy that night.

When we got Buster, he looked like this. He was cute and small and cuddly. He looked like a tiny bear. He was so small that he couldn't climb up on the couch. When we first got him, he was so calm and docile. This was a Thursday. On Monday, we took him in for his first vet appointment and found out he had worms. Lots and lots of worms. So we got him dewormed. We found out that the worms were making him calm, because he turned into a crazy ball of energy after that.

We got him all the food and bones and stuffed animals. His pal the porcupine there looked just like him, weirdly enough. We don't let him have stuffed animals anymore, because he devours them in minutes and strews stuffing all over the house.

Here's how we found out what breed Buster is: He had mange once, so we took him to the doctor. She said there are two treatments, oral and a wash. The oral is cheaper, but it can be fatal to collies and shepherds. Buster's mom looked kinda like a shepherd, so we didn't know if he was. We had no idea what he was. We couldn't give him the oral treatment until we had him DNA tested to find out what he was.

The test came back with only this on it, "smorgasbord." Ha, not really. But the vet did say that he is the salad bar of dogs, because he has a little of everything. He doesn't have any really strong breeds in him, but has traces of akita, chow, rottweiler and saluki (kinda like a greyhound).

Sometimes, Buster gets really riled up. Like when we give him baths and dry him off with a towel. Towels make him go crazy. And things that move, like the stability ball. Things that crinkle on their own are also terrifying to Buster, like plastic bags. In fact, if you're at our house and Buster is bothering you, you can just wave a bag at him and he will go away. Sam and Kate did this once, and it totally (partially) worked.

If you are sitting on the floor, or doing yoga, Buster will try to lick your face, or sit on you, or jump on you, or find a bone and eat it on top of you. It's one of his talents. Here he is "helping" John do yoga. See? He's helpful like that. Also, when you are cooking in the kitchen, he will sit right behind you so when you take a step back, you step on his paw. He will then yelp and scramble on the tile, causing you to drop a scalding hot pan of oil. That's Buster's way of helping.

He's a pretty smart dog. The picture at the top of this post is Buster's most awesome trick. He will balance a biscuit on his nose until you tell him to drop it. He'll sit there forever, even if you leave the room. If the biscuit falls off his nose, he'll stare at it forlornly until you let him eat it. He also knows the word "walk" so don't say it around him unless you're prepared to walk him.

Here's my favorite picture of Buster ever. Like master, like dog.

Alas, Buster is not a good guard dog. He is too gosh-darn friendly. He wants to be friends with every animal and person he sees, and he can't understand why they don't want to be friends with him. He doesn't get why everyone doesn't like his kisses. I've tried to tell him that you shouldn't get so close to people so fast, that not everyone likes French kissing so soon, but he doesn't understand. Probably because he's a dog and doesn't speak English.

When Buster gets up in the morning, he's really calm. He just wants to sit in my lap and sleep some more.

Buster has the grossest farts I've ever smelled.

But he's an all-around good dog, and I wouldn't trade him for any other.
P.S. Top and bottom photos are from our awesome wedding photographers, Bend the Light! They deserve many, many shout-outs. They totally were on board with my ideas for engagement photos, including the ones in our house.

This post is a joke (kinda)

Even my dog Buster is into this spending hiatus. He loves to recycle and reuse things. The other day, I was in the backyard with him, and he was running around with something black in his mouth. He spotted me and threw it at me. It turned out to be a dead bird.

See? Buster finds dead things and makes them into toys! So clever!

Yesterday, John told me that Buster found a dead lizard/killed a lizard and was playing with it. I've seen him do this with insects. He'll chase them around and pounce on them until they die. Buster is trying to be a conscientious consumer by making new friends and playing with them even after they're dead.

(OK, so I don't really think Buster is trying to recycle. But he does play with dead things. True story.)

My ass hurts

I did something yesterday that accomplished two goals of mine: spend less money and exercise. I went to a free workout at lululemon, a fitness clothes store in the Quarry. My friend Kate sent me an email about some yoga classes, so I thought this was a yoga class. But it actually was a hip-hop bootcamp class.

It was HARD. We started with some running outside, some stairs, squats, lunges, jumping jacks, all in 95 degree heat. This was in the Quarry, where the crowd eating orange beef at Firebowl had the pleasure of watching us sweat. Then we went back inside to do lunges, burpees, pushups, side planks, and abs.

Today, I had to make myself take the stairs, because my ass hurts so much. My abs scream when I laugh, and my thighs just want to die.

I was going to post a photo of myself here, but I was too gross and sweaty looking. I don't think you want to see that.

But am I glad I went? Sure! It was free, and it was a good workout. I might not do the bootcamps again, but lululemon offers yoga classes too that I might try. As long as they're not as hard as the bootcamps.

Mother's Day gift

Here's my mother's day gift! It cost $0 to make. The jelly jar is an old jar from my fridge and the paper I had lying around the house.

On the slips of paper I wrote memories of my mother, things I learned from her, and questions I wanted to ask her.

I wanted to do 365 slips of paper, and tell her to read one every day. But the jar isn't that big, so I just did about 100. I'm going to include a card with this jar telling her what it is and what to do with it.

I love it! And I'm sure my mom will too.

What I did today instead of spending money

-Went to the Pearl Farmer's Market this morning. We bought lamb chops, beets, kohlrabi, onions, blackberries, spinach, leeks and peaches. I've eaten two peaches today, and we roasted the beets, cooked the lamb chops, and ate the spinach and onion in a salad. We're going to eat the leeks tomorrow. Clearly, we don't believe in delayed gratification.

Also, this doesn't count as spending money, because John paid for it. :) Hey, if I don't spend it, it doesn't count, right?

-Cleaned out my closet. I made a pile of stuff to give to Goodwill and rediscovered clothes that are cute but I don't wear them. It's like having new clothes!

-Organized the pantry. It is a crazy unorganized mess in there, but I straightened it.

-Cleaned off John's "work bench" aka his table in the office. (I'm beginning to realize most of my day sounds like what my friend Christine would call "married stuff." Mostly domestic crap.)

-Finished my mom's Mother's Day gift. Pictures to come. I like this idea so much, I'm going to do one for my dad for Father's Day!

-Thought about going to get ice cream, opted instead for pudding I had in the fridge.

-Cleaned the kitchen.

-Played with Buster. He's our 1.5 year old mutt. He's a good dog. I'll have to write a post on him someday.

Crawfish Boil

Have you ever been to a crawfish boil? It's basically a big backyard party with lots of live crawfish, who get boiled and eaten. Very popular along the Gulf Coast. My husband John and I went to one recently, thrown my a coworker of his. About 40 people where slated to come, so there were 5 pounds of crawfish per person, which is about right. Crawfish are mostly shell. You have to twist the tails off and shell the tails to get to the meat.

My parents are both from the South and they met in college in Louisiana. I've heard a lot of stories about crawfish boils, but my favorite one is the time that they put all the live crawfish in a kiddie pool in the backyard and then they (my parents, not the crawfish) started drinking. In the drunken melee, all of the crawfish escaped into the woods. My parents and everyone else drunkenly tried to catch them, but they were gone. That is my favorite crawfish story - the one where they got away.

The crawfish boil John and I went to didn't have any such mishaps. It was afternoon of crawfish, corn, sausage and brownies. Good times.

The last things

Here are the last things I bought before my spending hiatus. I used a friend's discount at Anthropologie to buy a bunch of clothes recently, which is what sparked my spending hiatus. I returned half of the clothes, but kept these. My husband didn't like any of these clothes for various reasons, which just shows you how crazy he is.

Who wants a new hobby?

What should I do with all of the time I won't be spending shopping? Not that I spend hours and hours at the mall every weekend, but I feel like this is a good opportunity for me to start some new projects.

-Reading The Watchmen. My friend Sam lent me this awhile ago and I haven't started it yet.

-Clean out my closet. Since I won't be buying new clothes, I need to take a look at the old ones, give away all of the things that don't fit, and start rewearing all the things that do.

-Take more photos. I bought my husband a Nikon D60 as a wedding gift. It's a pretty cool camera and way better than the point-and-shoot I carry around in my purse.

-Making crap. I said before that I'm making my mother's day gift this year. I worked on it last night and I think it will turn out well.

-Cleaning the house in general. I don't think John and I are messy people, but the house quickly falls to filth if we don't clean it every day. I'm not talking major cleaning, just picking up and wiping things down. We've let it get messy since the wedding, and now is time to clean it up.