7.2.13

Artwork

1. "To Me You Are Perfect"//2. Steak//3."For Like Ever"//4. Embrace//5. Dishes Will Wait


Artwork. This is something that was strongly lacking in my last apartment. We had white walls that went on way too far for your average NY apartment and yet between having to agree on pieces and wanting to save money and basically losing interest I think we ultimately hung a total of 4 pieces of art (including one in the bathroom and three on one wall....) So now I go about decorating my new apartment and I have so many ideas and so many things that I want to do but again the issue will be execution and money.

My biggest issue is of course finding frames that don’t break the bank. Then of course finding the pieces that inspire me and also go with the decor and with one another (this is made slightly more difficult by the fact that I have a red couch).

6.2.13

Personal Expenses

With the big move behind me and the full apartment decor ahead of me I decided it was time to start budgeting again. I don’t know about you but when I was fresh out of college and making minimum wage I lived exclusively by my budget tracker. I recorded my grocery purchases weekly, I declined dinner invites after looking up the menu online and ultimately treated my wallet like the very delicate and fragile thing that it is. Until I got a higher pay rate. Paying almost no attention to the fact that as my pay went up so did my expenses I have long trailed from the days of tracking my spending. *Ironically I remember thinking to myself that the best thing I could possibly do would be to continue to live sparsely and happily as I was and put the rest of my increased paycheck in savings.... what a thought.

So finally I sat down last night and made up my tracker - and to be honest it wasn’t too hard and it doesn’t look too bad. What I like most about tracking is watching how quickly things add up if you just decide to spend only $10 a month on this or limit yourself to 100 dollars every two months there suddenly you see the total at the far right of your excel grid is so much bigger. I mostly love allowing myself free spending money - its like a christmas gift from a grandparent - mine to spend wherever I want!

What about you- do you keep an expense tracker? Do you keep up with it? Or do you think they’re a waste of time?

Moving: Storage


So I’m officially moved! It was a brutal day of unloading everything out of our old apartment into one too-small truck unloading the majority of items into my new apartment and then taking the rest to my ex-roommates parents house. Needless to say it was a very VERY long day. But at the end of it I have a new apartment and it was so worth it. Immediately I set up my bed, bedside tables and living room but other than that I am completely living out of boxes. My kitchen is a wreck and my clothes are getting wrinklier and wrinklier every day that I dig through the boxes rather than take anything out and put it away. The problem you see is that I have ZERO storage space in my amazing nearly perfect apartment. Thus I have taken on a full-time job of searching for the perfect storage pieces.



My wish list: