Happy 2013!

Happy New Year everyone!  I had a lot going on during the New Year...Christmas parties, cleaning the house, and watching my cousins (can't call it babysitting, they aren't babies anymore!).  We played Headbandz, watched a movie, and ate popcorn.

As for New Years resolutions, I suppose I made a couple.  I made the typical eat healthier/exercise more resolution that I make every year, but this year I'm getting married and really want to look and feel great in my wedding dress and in a bathing suit on the beach on our honeymoon (just booked our hotel in Atlantic City!!!).  So I joined the LoveYourBody series on ToneItUp.com.  It's great and I love it!  They post printable workouts and videos of them, calendars, meal plans, recipes, etc.  It's a fun motivating tool for me to get serious about getting in shape.

My other resolution is to be more organized this year.  We moved in to our house at the end of August and there are still boxes that have yet to be unpacked.  I want to get everything put away and organized in our house so that I can start tackling some other projects I have in mind...such as painting, moving the "laundry room," and some other DIY projects.  I have so many ideas of things I want to do, but I feel like I need to everything put away and organized before I start making more of a mess doing projects.  I found a great site to help with getting organized called Home Storage Solutions.  They are doing something called The 52 Week Organized Home Challenge that I am going to try to keep up on.  They give you weekly things to clean/organize in your home.  It doesn't seem too overwhelming and I think it will be a good way to stay on task.

Of course, I'll end with some adorable pictures of The Admiral and Nera over the past week:

 

This is how I can tell they are related....they both like to sleep on their backs.

Christmas Re-Cap

I know I'm a little late with this post.  Ok.  A LOT late.  But things were so crazy busy over the Christmas and New Year's holidays, that I decided to wait and try to re-cap everything when it slowed down a little.  I'll do Christmas and New Year's in two separate posts so I don't overwhelm you ;)

Kevin and I went to our parents for the entire 4 (5 for me) day weekend of Christmas. His brother was in town and my sister was in town, so we spent all of our days off spending time with family and going to Christmas parties.  And guess what?  I forgot my camera!!  So the only pictures I have are from my phone.  If you follow me on Instagram (erickamarie87) you might have seen some of these already.  My mom and sister had their cameras, so I'm tagged in some of their pictures on facebook.

Friday we had a Christmas party at work, and there is a contest for "Most Creative Holiday Attire."  The girls on my floor decided we would dress up like Christmas Trees...needless to say, we won the contest:

I painted my nails green and red with a hint of silver for Christmas, and did a very sloppy job of it:

On December 23, Kevin's family had a bridal shower for me.  One of Kevin's Aunt & Uncle are living in China right now, so this was the only time that they would be home before the wedding, so they decided to do the shower when everyone could be there.  Here is a picture of all of the WONDERFUL gifts we received!

My Dad, sister, and myself took a trip to the casino Christmas Eve morning...and we all left winners!!!

On Christmas Eve we celebrated Christmas with Kevin's Dad's side of the family and then Kevin came to my parents and opened his gifts from my parents and my sister.  My parents got Kevin two Nerf guns...have I ever mentioned he is just a kid trapped in an almost 25-year-old's body?  So we spent part of the night trying to shoot an empty beer can off a chair with the Nerf guns:

Admiral and I on Christmas Eve:

On Christmas day, I opened presents with my parents and my sister, then went to Kevin's dad's to open presents, and then to my Grandma's for our family Christmas party.  Kevin had to head back to our house after that because he had to work the next day.  I took the day off to go shopping :)

I did go shopping the day after Christmas and got some good deals, but nothing too exciting.  I was so excited to go shopping and then when it finally came time to go, I was so worn out from the busy weekend, that we only went to three stores and then I was ready to be done!

Random: Admiral loves sticks.  He loves to carry them around and he loves people to chase him to try and get the stick.  My parents have a wood burning stove to heat their house.  So Admiral went in the basement to help my dad load the fire, and he came up with this.  He was very proud.

Kevin's brother and his wife are currently on vacation in Hawaii (late honeymoon), so we are watching their puppy, Nera.  She is actually Admiral's sister, just from a different litter.  We took her back to our house with us after Christmas and will have her until the 14th.  Her and Admiral have so much fun playing together, they tire themselves out and love to nap together.

And that is my Christmas in photos :)  I'll post my New Year's re-cap later this week!

Bubbles

First off, I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year!  A holiday recap post will be coming eventually...but until then, here is a fun little money saving wedding post :)

Kevin and I decided that we want to have the little bottles of bubbles to hand out to people after the wedding, so they can blow bubbles at us as we walk out of the church (instead of doing bird seed).  One day, I was just randomly browsing wedding stuff on craigslist and saw an ad for someone selling 191 of the little bottles of bubbles for just $15!  Want to know what's even better?  They were PURPLE bottles!  In case you didn't know, purple is our main wedding color.

I emailed the girl and she still had the bubbles, so we met up and I bought them.  The girl had an outdoor wedding, but it rained, so they didn't use the bubbles, although she thinks some of the kids may have taken some bottles to play with, hence 191 bottles instead of an even 200.  

When I looked up the cost of purchasing bubbles, it would have been about $25 plus tax and shipping to order them online, so I think I got a good deal.  If you are looking for cheap wedding decorations, don't rule out craigslist as a resource...you never know what you might find!

Saw It. Pinned It. Did It.

Today I am doing my first link up!  I am linking up with Katie and Steph for Saw It. Pinned It. Did it.


I have two super easy holiday decorations for you.  The first is just finding a cute printable, printing it, and framing it!  I saw this super cute printable on Pinterest one day and knew I wanted it in my living room for Christmas.

Original Pin:

found here

All I did was download the picture, print it out in the size I needed, put it in a frame, and displayed it on a shelf in my living room:

Total cost of this project was $0.  I already had the frame, just had to print the photo.

The second project is also super easy.  I had seen all kinds of lanterns on Pinterest and knew I wanted one.  So the last time I was at IKEA, I picked up a black lantern for around $8.  I was just going to put a candle in it and call it good, and then I saw these super cute lanterns decorated for Christmas:

found here

found here

When I was getting my ornaments out to decorate my Christmas tree, I remembered seeing these pins, and decided to put some of my ornaments in my lantern.  I love how it turned out!  Super easy and super cute!  I want to get more ornaments after Christmas so I can fill up my lantern next year.  I'd also like to get something fun to tie on the top of it, but I'm happy with it for now!  Here's how mine looks:

Total cost of this project was about $8.  I already had the ornaments, and you could always pick some up the day after Christmas for a good deal!

Be sure to visit Katie and Steph to see more great Saw It. Pinned It. Did It. projects!

December Birchbox

December's Birchbox was another good one!  Here's what I received this month and my thoughts on each item:

ModelCo SHINE Ultra Lip Gloss - I received the full size lip gloss!  I love it!  The lip gloss has a little mirror on it, which is great for applying on the go.  The gloss gives a little color and great shine.

Juice Beauty Stem Cellular Repair CC Cream - You've probably heard of BB creams (which I love).  This is a CC cream.  I haven't tried it yet, but the sample size is decent, and I'm excited to try it.

Nick Chavez® Beverly Hills Advanced Volume Shampoo with Expansion Technology® - I haven't tried this yet either, but it is a large sample size, so I'm excited to try it out.

Cartier Déclaration D'un Soir & Cartier Baiser Volé Eau de Parfum - This is the men's cologne and women's perfume fragrances.  I really liked the perfume and have worn it a couple of times.  Kevin said the men's cologne smelled like bug spray.  I didn't think it smelled anything like bug spray, but it was not my favorite men's cologne.

Frownies® Eye Gels - I haven't used these yet, but maybe I will over one of the long holiday weekends.

Overall, I was very pleased with December's Birchbox.  Can't wait to get my next one in January :)

Christmas Tree & Decorations

This year we have our first Christmas tree for our first Christmas in our house!  I was excited to start decorating for Christmas, and then I realized that I really don't have very many Christmas decorations.  Our apartment wasn't big enough to have tons of decorations, so I never really bought any.  So this year, I am super excited to hit up some great day-after-Christmas sales to get lots of decorations for next year.  Here are some pictures of our tree and the decorations at our house this year.  Enjoy!

Of course I have to start with The Admiral.  He is wearing his Christmas shirt and collar:

 Cute Christmas printable I found here:

 Lantern from IKEA + glitter Christmas ornaments = Cute, easy, and cheap Christmas decoration!

A couple pics of the tree



Save-The-Dates

Save-the-dates are finally in the mail!  Yayy!!!  I was very glad to get these done and mailed out!  There are a few that we are still trying to get correct addresses for, but I would say 95% have been mailed.

We are trying to keep wedding costs down where ever possible, and the save-the-dates were one place I think we were able to save some money.  Here's what we did (sorry it's such a long post, but I feel like it has some good info in it):

I loved the idea of the magnet save-the-dates, but when I started looking in to them, they were more expensive than I thought.  And to be honest, who really keeps the save-the-date once they get the invitation or once the wedding is over?  I didn't want to spend a ton of money on this part.  Then I thought about doing post card save-the-dates.  We would have saved some money on stamps, but then I was worried that the post card might get ruined in the mail (you know how sometimes they get ink on them, or get wet, or ripped, or something).  I wanted to put one of our engagement pictures on whatever type of save-the-date we did, and I didn't want it to get ruined, so I decided I wanted something that we could put in to an envelope to mail so it would be somewhat protected.

I was browsing Pinterest and the web, when I came across these cute little save-the-date cards on 123Print.  They were super affordable, so I figured we'd order them and if we didn't like them, we wouldn't be out too much money.  They were nicer than I expected when they arrived, so I was pretty happy.  They had a nice glossy finish and were very clear.  We put one of our engagement photos and the info on the card.  I thought these were the perfect size for someone to stick on the fridge or put in their wallet or whatever (they are about the size of a business card).  Did I mention it was only $5.95 for 100 of them?!?  And when you sign up on the site, you get emails with discounts, so I think I ordered them when I had a coupon code for 15% or 20% off my entire purchase.  We ordered 300 of the save-the-date cards (way more than enough, but we wanted to be sure), and with shipping and my discount, it was only $21.50.  That means the cards were just over $0.07 each!

(They turned out much nicer and clearer than they look in this picture)

I also wanted to include an engagement picture that people could put on the fridge or frame or something, since the picture on the card was kind of small.  I thought this would be especially nice for family and close friends.  Since I had the rights to make copies of my engagement pictures, I ordered the photos from Walgreens and got a great deal on them...I got 200 4x6 prints for just under $16!  I checked around to see if anyone had any coupon codes (since it is holiday time) and Walgreens had the best one.  That means each print was only $0.08 each!

I purchased the stamps and envelopes from Meijer and just used plain white no. 10 envelopes.

So, in total, with the cost of the save-the-date card, photo, envelope (I think they were just under $4 for a box of 120), and stamp (I already had labels) it only cost us about $0.62 per save-the-date.  I think that is a pretty good deal!  And I don't know about you, but I love a good deal :)

Does anyone have any other money-saving wedding ideas?