By Walking Away

Tag: budget

let’s try this again… shall we?

September 13, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Hi there!

First of all, my mom made it!

She came out of the hospital on March 1, 2022. It was a long road, but we made it and we thank God for her everyday. Her recovery has been a long one, but if there is one thing I know about her is that she is determined.

What did I learn? Don’t take those you love for granted. Every day is a gift from God and we should live our lives without regrets. Hug your loved ones. Don’t end a conversation with anger or frustration. Every time I am able to say, “Hey Siri… Call Mom” I thank God for being able to do so.

So, what’s new?

I’m currently sitting here waiting for jt to finish recording a video for one of his tutorials so that I can begin to edit. We started a website where we will host some of his classes and hopefully be able to at least pay for the new laptop we bought.

I also started an Etsy shop. Anvil and Pier – Handmade Goods. I currently have wreaths in there. Haven’t made one sale – but the Etsy shop is there. I’m trying to figure out if I want to keep going, maybe find a niche with the wreaths. But we’ll see. I don’t want to give up on it. I truly enjoy making wreaths and I would love to be able to make some extra income with it.

The main thing that we are working toward though… Buying our first short term rental. There. I said it. So now it has to come true, right?

Really though, we are truly passionate about this new journey. So we will begin to document that here. We are in the saving money phase. Not quite there yet to buy our first one, but it doesn’t stop us from dreaming. And with us documenting our journey, we will try to be as transparent as possible.

The facts:

  • We both work full time W-2 jobs
  • We are approximately 10k in credit card debt
  • We have a 20k car loan
  • If we were completely debt free, one of our incomes could be fully discretionary
  • We spend way too much money on food/groceries
  • We like Disney too much and find any and every excuse in the book to go to the parks
  • We just got a new puppy… lol

So there we have it. Our lives in a nutshell.

Ship it.

-Vanessa

Tablecloth… Curtains?

August 26, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Curtains, curtains, curtains. Why are you so expensive?

One of the biggest expense when you move in to a home are the window treatments. Thankfully, the windows to our home came with 2″ faux blinds, so curtains for those windows could wait. The sliding door window though, that one was left out. What are you supposed to do with sliding door windows anyway? Thaaat’s a project for another day… we needed some privacy ASAP.

In the past, I usually give up on finding long enough curtains that barely “kiss” the floor because they’re hard to find and expensive. This time, I was determined to find a better and inexpensive solution. Even if it was just for a season or until our budget allows. And, nobody wants their windows to look like they are wearing high water pants!

While I was on my quest of finding inexpensive or DIY curtains in white, we put up adhesive wall hooks and hung what we had on hand, which were a set of typical 84″ curtains.

If you’ve ever looked up DIY curtains, you are probably familiar with drop cloth curtains. I was excited to try them out. So I followed a tutorial on how to bleach and whiten curtains. Off to Harbor Freight I went. I bleached my curtains for a few hours… and they came out looking the same. Turns out, the drop cloths at Harbor Freight are not 100% cotton. The drop cloths have to be 100% cotton in order to bleach. Oh well.. I put them up anyway. But, they were too close to the color of the wall for my liking. So I left them up anyway while I found 100% cotton drop cloth.

This was our lovely setup for a few days:

Until… I was browsing around at Target and found these!

$18.99 for a white tablecloth that is 60″ x 104″. Yes please. I bought two of them.

All I needed was the curtain clip rings, which I already had.

Before I hung them up, I measured them and gave them a wash.

Before wash width
Before wash length

After a wash they did shrink about an inch in each direction. The second tablecloth was two inches shorter. In the end I was left with two panels that were 101 and 99 inches, so they don’t match exactly in length. In the future, I will probably buy the next size up, which is 120 inches long and I will hem the ends. This will make it look a lot better once they are up anyway.

I ended up leaving the drop cloth as well. I thought the added texture served this window well. I’m excited to have the rest of the curtains up. Next up, bay window curtain rods. Oy vey.

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