I’m a strong believer in having all your money (as a married couple) together, in a joint account, working together on things, no matter how much you each earn. But I also believe that we each need to have some spending money all our own.

Steps To Success:
1) Set up your own accounts to transfer your spending money into for the month (this step also helps if you are trying to surprise your spouse with a gift…that way they can’t see that you speant the money!)

2) Decide how much you can afford to give yourselves each month. Like your date money, you want to be able to go out and have fun and buy yourself something nice every once and a while.

3) Be realistic. You might have to tighten things up for a while to reach your goals, but you can always change your amount when things are better

4) Have consequences. Like your date money if you over spend then you have less to spend the next month. This is your own money, your own responsibility. If you over spend it’s not your spouses responsibility to bail you out.

Happy Budgeting!

Amanda

Captive Creativity

I am slowly trying to become a better cook and keep family recipes alive and when I was a child chicken paprikash was one of my favorite meals from my Hungarian side of the family.  So I decided to put my hand to it and was really happy how it turned out since this was the first attempt at it.  One day I hope to get my butt to Hungary and pick up a few more cooking skills from them.

This recipe truely is easy to make and pretty quick considering you make your own noodles!

Ingredients For Chicken Paprikash:

1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts
1.5 cups sour cream or cream
6 cups chicken broth
1 onion
3-4 tablespoons Hungarian paprika
2 tablespoon garlic
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ginger
2 bay leaves
corn starch (or preferably potato starch, if you have access to a health food store)
olive oil
fudgesicle

Chop up the chicken breasts into small pieces. (You can also use legs or drumsticks for this and leave them as whole)

Put the chicken and garlic in a pot; sautee in olive oil.

Chop up the onion into small pieces.

Put the onions and some chicken broth into the pot. For now, use just enough broth to keep everything submerged, but don’t flood it. You should have some broth left over (maybe around 2 cups); the remaining broth will be used below.

Stir in the other spices (paprika, salt, black pepper, ginger, bay leaves).

Simmer to let the chicken and onions cook thoroughly. While it’s all cooking, eat the Fudgesicle. (This is my favorite part of cooking!)

When the chicken and onions are fully cooked, add the cornstarch as a thickening agent, by mixing it into the remaining broth and pouring it into the pot. Remove from heat and let it thicken.

Finally, mix in the sour cream, and it’s ready to serve over spaetzel.

Ingredients For Spaetzel (Noodles):

0.5 cups milk
1.5 cups flour (Sapphire brand is preferred)
3 eggs

Bring a large pot of water to boil.

Mix the milk, flour, and eggs in a bowl. The resulting batter should be a little thicker than cake mix: a tiny bit stiff, but definitely not “dough”.

With a spoon (I used a knife), drop small blobs of batter into the boiling water, and let boil for about 20 minutes. Then you may fish out the spaetzel.

Be advised that you need to keep the water at a high boil for this to work: the surfaces of the blobs really need to cook as soon as they hit the water. Then they magically don’t stick together.

Also be advised that the blobs will expand as they cook (mine are to big!), so try not to make them very large. One way or another, you’ll probably have to chop them up with a spatula when you’re done anyway.

Try it out and let me know what you think! Happy Cooking!!!

Catching up on A Photo A Day is always fun for me because it gives me a moment to sit back and remember all the good memories that where captured in these pictures.  Paul and I did not to any research on the Falls before we left and we’re a little surprised that it was not the romantic get away that we thought it would be. It is more like a Disneyland or Vegas which simply doesn’t work for Paul and I who really are the non-touristy kind of people.  The great part is past the tourist part lies a beautiful national park.

Day 86 – Unexpected tourist trap!

Day 87 – My love and I finally at the Falls.

Day 88 - We had to get throw all these people to get to…

Day 89 – these beautiful falls & rainbow!  This picture was submitted for The Get Perspective Project with the theme being ‘gone’. It even got picked up for Green April Blog Post!

Day 90 – And the park I was talking about with mini falls. Well worth the visit to get out of the crowd and recharge your calm.

Day 91 – Such Beautiful creatures.

Day 92 – Leaving the Niagara. I just had to throw in a lens flair picture because I am really loving it.

I hope you loved the pictures as much as I loved being there!

Where are you going this summer? Any special trips or out of city excursions you would like to pursue?

So I know it has been a long time since I have put anything up here other then my photos but I have been very busy with my intensive French class (which I am loving!), working on a music video with Paul and a secret project I am uncertain when i can reveal to you.  I know that is mean but in due time, in due time!

What I do want to share with you is my love for writing! I think there are few things better then receiving a nice thoughtful hand written letter and decorated envelope in your mail box.  Now I know I have said this before in a few post that I use to have pen pals as a child and let me tell you I loved it! I had shoe boxes full of all the letters, stickers, magazines, stamps and random things I collected over the years from my pen pals all over the world.  The sad thing is with all my travels and moving, those boxes are gone.

The good news is I am going to try and find myself a pen pal (or maybe 2 or 3) I have signed up for Swap-Bot which is not only a great place to join people in swapping snail mail items but to find pen pals as well. So with that said I have been doing a little shopping around for some super cute stationary.  I received a package in the mail today from Julie at We’ve Got Paper and I believe that Etsy sellers that go above and beyond deserve to be celebrated!

Now Julie is closing down her current online shop to open up a new & improved paper shop made with eco-friendly papers and dyes, so watch out! But in the mean time she is clearing out some of her awesome current stock where I snagged these cute Panda Girl Note Cards and got some pretty sweet surprise goodies! (See Picture Below)

If you need some cute stationary or notecards I highly recommend checking out Julie’s SHOP & for updates on her new online shop check out her BLOG!

What are your thoughts on snail mail?

Did you or do you have any pen pals?

As you’ve started deciding your date money, spending money, gift fund, and emergency fund amounts you’re going to need a budget sheet to enter them into to keep track of things.

You can go online and download a spread sheet that works for you, look for ones that give you a good idea and create your own or you can email me and i’ll spend you a template of the one I use (like the one detailed see below or you can go to my blog and see a snap shot).

Steps To Success:

1) Enter all the “must haves” into your budget (making rows on the left of the spread sheet):

1) Groceries
2) Hydro
3) Rent/Mortgage
4) Insurance
5) Date Money
6) Emergency Fund
7) Gift Fund
8 ) His money, Her Money
9) Car Payments
10) Gas
11) Etc.

2) Add all the things specific for your family:

1) Kids Clothes
2) Makeup Money
3) Tool Money
4) Credit Card Debt
5) Loans
6) Giving (To your church, Sponsor Child, Fav Charity etc.)
7) Savings for a trip
8 ) Saving for your wedding

3) Create formulas to total all your expenses

4) Create a section over to to the right for your incomes that you can change every month if it is different (Amanda’s income: $XXX.XX, Marshall’s income $XXXX.XX etc.). This will help you adjust your budget accordingly if your earnings are lower or higher.

5) Create another formulas that takes your expenses out of your earnings. What you have left should always be in the positive, if it isn’t you need to adjust your budget until it balances. The goal is to always have some left; that being the amount you put into savings.

6) Create another section over to the right listing your different accounts (gift fund, emergency fund, savings, etc.) that you can update every time you add to them.

7) If you do a lot of your spending on a credit card create another section to the right where you enter each of your purchases and when they will be paid for. This will keep you from over spending, and see what you have already spend from each area in the month

8 ) To the right of each item in your master budget enter notes to help you know what you have done (e.g. Gift fund: Transferred, Groceries: Spend $44.45, Hydro: Paid with Master Card, etc.)

Being this detailed isn’t for everyone, and I know that. But if you are struggling with your finances and you’re wanting to get a good grip on things, and really figure out where you are going wrong this might be a good step for a while. It will for sure help you get a handle on what you’re really putting where.

Amanda

Captive Creativity

Well summer is here and it is keeping me busy doing summer things like sweating in the Montreal humidity, road trips and concerts! That’s right the past 2 weekends we have been out of Montreal and wondering around the east. I realized that I did not post a weeks worth of photos last week so here we go. Paul and I went up to La Pocatiere, Quebec to have the first of many summer dinner’s (I hope) on Paul’s parents beautiful terrace which over looks the St-Lawrence River and the onto a mountain range.

Day 79 – Like father, Like son.

Day 80 – Looking on the bright side of things.

Day 81 – Mirror image.  I ♥ this image because it is a park bench and you can see Paul and I plus across the river.

Day 82 – Lens flair how I love you!

Day 83 – After our walk by the river we saw the largest, brightest rainbow Paul and I have ever seen. Being the children at heart that we are, we chased that rainbow and even made it home right on time for dinner!

Day 84 – This just takes my breath away.

Day 85 - Our cat Caramel just loves jumping in the bags with our groceries, thank goodness we put them away before he climbed right in.  How come cats are so sweet?

What did you think of these pictures? I am trying to practice different techniques so if their is something you would like to see in A Photo A Day, let me know.  I am always up for the challenge of something new.

Stay tuned I have a whole lot of pictures from last weekends random trip to Niagara Falls!

The past 2 weeks I have been inspired by things that are simply not connected but I would like to share them with you either way.

Bad Religion turned 30 years old this month that is a long time to be a band if you ask me.  One of my favorite songs, it keeps me in check when I feel depressed of things of the world.

Something Left, Something Taken- Full Version from Tiny Inventions on Vimeo.

This is an amazing video which mixes different animation techniques.  To see the making of which is equally interesting if you are a bit of a nerd like me that likes to know how things are created you can check that out on the Tiny Inventions Blog.   If you don’t have to watch the full thing now come back it will be worth it.

I don’t know about you but I am great at wasting time.  Well I like to see it as doing things I want to do not what I should be doing.  This wonderful collage comes from Chicago based artist Chad Kouri.   This is not just any collage you can get it as wallpaper for your computer here!!!

Brandi Milne new art show ‘My Heart Shall Not Fear’ opened this past Saturday at the Corey Helford Gallery in Culver City, CA.  Now if you had a chance to glance at A Photo A Day 75 you will see I have 2 small original cards of Brandi’s and one day I will own an original. Above is from her new show.

Now this might just look like normal artist book but it’s a coloring book!!! What is even better about this book is that it is the same carriage template on every page but the creations on each page are from over 100 happy doodlers from all over the world!

If you want to pull out your crayons just by looking at this gem get it in your hands here.

If you are married this budget step would be your date money. If you are single this would be your spending money for going to movies, out with friends, shopping etc.

Often we spoil ourselves a little bit too much and don’t put a limit to our spending and by the end of the month have spent way more then we realized and often don’t even know where it all went.

I know for me if I overspend and don’t know when it went I really don’t appreciate the money spent and the time it took to earn it; I’m not grateful for the chance to even get to spend that money on myself, I take it for granted. So this area of the budget has been a huge help in getting us to really spend our money where it’s important because when it’s gone it’s gone.

Steps To Success:

1) Decide how much you want to give yourself each month

{desktop collage calender from Tabitha Emma}

Well summer is here! It seems like it just came way to fast. My July Wishes are simple because I want to give myself the time to have fun outside, when the weather is good that is.

♥ Start & Finish The People Of Paper for The Slow Readers Club although the report is only due August 15

♥ Spend time  practicing my French outside of French class

♥ See my friend Mel at least once. She is prego with her first child!

♥ Plan something really awesome for Paul’s birthday. Any suggestions?

♥ Finish all my unfinished sewing projects. (I have 5)

♥ Take pictures & post of all my finished sewing projects (I have 4)

What do you wish for this July? Any big plans or inspirations?

While spending a little more time this evening/morning because I couldn’t sleep I did some much needed blog surfing plus planned an unexpected trip to Niagara Falls for the weekend, Road TRIP!!!

While blog surfing I got a chance to have a good look at the first collection from Squid Whale Designs out of Philadelphia, PA.   I found out  of Squid Whale through Sarah Hunt and her amazing vintage shop and then I saw her mice pins and I was hooked.  But Squid Whale is a brain-child of two divergent minds of Elizabeth J. Smith (the squid, fine artist and textile designer) and Sarah L. Hunt (the whale and fine artist) and they have come together and created something totally unique.  Which I think you will really love!

This collection is inspired by French 1890′s Turkey Red fabrics, the designs of Richard Hofmann and the short story The Yellow Wallpaper.  Truly a collection after my own heart, with such amazing designs and color!  The collection is complete with Turkey Red mice pins, a beautiful upcycled vintage embroidered mice and black eye susan’s doily and of course pillows!

I highly recommend that you have a look at their Flickr set for more pictures of this beautiful collection!

Also check out their:

Blog for how this collection came to,

Etsy Shop to purchase these amazing items,

Twitter to hear of upcoming things,

&

Be friend them on Facebook

Lastly a treasury I created inspired by Squid Whale’s collection.

Click the image above to go to the treasury!

Have a wonderful and festive long weekend everyone!