Branching out, trying something new

One of my goals is to try new things, whether it be experiences, food, or styles. I am a very conservative person and have not experienced much because I’ve always been afraid to try something different. This is true in my diet, my music, my hobbies, and even my interactions with other people.

An easy way for me to branch out without too much risk is our food. Our menus are very limited and we get bored eating the same things day after day. My culinary repertoire is mostly Mexican and Italian dishes. I thought it would be fun to attempt apple butter today.

First I peeled the apples and quartered them. All the apples went into the Crock Pot with some vanilla. Then it cooked for eight hours.

After three hours, my apples were already starting to liquefy.

After eight hours of cooking, I added cinnamon, cloves, brown sugar, and white sugar. I stirred it all up and then let it cook for another two hours. The final product in my lovely recycled Classico jars:


I haven’t tried it yet. I was waiting for it to cool off and now I’m ready to eat a piece of homemade Amish bread with my homemade apple butter. I hope it turned out well!

I used this recipe for inspiration. I halved the recipe and didn’t cook it as long as the recipe called for because the apple butter was starting to turn dark brown and stick to the sides of the Crock Pot. Hopefully I made the right decision to end the cooking early. If not, I’ll just have to try again with a full recipe.

Poor kitties

I woke up at four am to the sound of mewing. It didn’t register at first that it wasn’t one of our cats. As I woke up, I realized that the sound was coming from outside. We opened the door, turned on the patio light, and saw nothing. It took awhile, but eventually, a tiny kitten walked in front of our patio. The kitten couldn’t have been more than seven or eight weeks old!

Hubby and I tried but couldn’t catch the kitten as it was feral and ran. While I don’t want another cat (we have three!), I was hoping to catch it, spay or neuter it, and then find it a new home. It broke my heart to see such a tiny kitten loose in the neighborhood. I left a handful of cat food on the patio and hopefully the kitten will return tonight to find dinner. Poor baby.

Quietness

Today was a very quiet day. Hubby attended a Microsoft conference this afternoon so I was home by myself. The cats were actually pretty quiet and I wasn’t sure what to do without any noise!

I was feeling a bit down this afternoon. I picked up my Bible and read a few chapters in Acts about how God kept protecting and guiding Paul and Silas. They were so focused on their mission to tell others about the gospel. I admire that drive. I wish I could say the same about myself. I’m afraid to talk to strangers about God. Chalk it up to insecurity, shyness, or fear of rejection.

Between my Bible study and housework, I’m feeling better this afternoon. When I finished reading the Bible, I tackled the kitchen. We now have very clean dishes, a clean stove, and an uncluttered counter top. I put pinto beans in the crock pot this morning and made rice just a bit ago. We’re having haystacks for dinner. Chips, homemade beans, homemade rice, tomatoes, salsa, sour cream, and guacamole. Yum!

Slow progress, but forward motion nonetheless

CC1 progress

$1,272.98 starting balance
– $6.94 Half.com earnings

= $1,266.04 current balance (20.34% paid)

I found another reason to get out of debt as quickly as possible. Blunt Money’s post on how interest rates are calculated shows that most credit cards charge a daily periodic rate, meaning that I am accumulating interest every single day. The term APR is misleading because you would think that it’s an annual percentage rate but it’s not.

Sure enough. I looked up my last statement on this credit card and they are charging interest every single day. That means that today I’m being charged interest on the interest that they charged yesterday. Compound interest strikes hard. I feel justified sending multiple payments every week if possible. It will save us money on interest because our daily balance will be lower.

We were hit hard with expenses last week. Four new tires plus alignment (which we desperately needed) cost us $416.75. Ouch! We have a $58 mail in rebate but that money can’t go to the credit card until I get a check, which usually takes 4-6 weeks. Oh, well. At least we had the money in the bank and could pay cash even without touching our savings account.

Groceries were also a big expense because we needed a few things that aren’t weekly purchases – olive oil, kitty litter, two bags of cat food, and a couple other odds and ends that couldn’t wait. We spent most of the grocery budget on staples, building up our pantry again. I’m probably going to have to use the rest of our snowball for September ($40) to buy additional food. We don’t have enough to last two weeks.

I keep reminding myself that we are making progress, even though it doesn’t seem like it some weeks. It’s a blessing to be able to cash flow expenses rather than dip into savings or use the credit cards. All of our bills are being paid on time and we even have extra money some weeks. I have to look at the big picture, not just at the previous week. The big picture looks so much better! God is very good.

Shopping for tires

We are trying to balance debt pay off with taking care of car maintenance, clothing needs, etc. It’s really hard spending money when we’re so focused on getting out of debt. Each month, we take a look at our finances, determine what our snowball will be, and decide if there’s anything we need that month. This month, we were planning on new tires. Next month, we will be ordering hubby a six month supply of contacts. December will be all about credit card progress, unless an emergency arises before the end of the year.

We’ve known we need new tires for awhile. We have two tires on the car that are a year or so old, one that is several years old, and one tire from when we financed it in 2005! The plan is to replace all four tires so that they match and will wear evenly.

Hubby had a client appointment this afternoon and walked out to the car only to find that one of our tires was flat. Interesting timing, as we’re currently searching for good deals and can afford the tires tomorrow! Hubby changed the tire out for the donut and realized that we had no tread left on that tire and that’s why it finally gave out. We are overdue!

It’s confusing shopping for tires. I’m looking at an ad from Tire Pros that has free installation, free balancing, and sale prices on the tires. Pepboys Auto is offering that if you buy any three installed tires, you get the fourth for free and, if I’m reading the website correctly, they offer free installation. Discount Tire Company has a $40 mail in rebate on one of their tire brands but charges for installation. Walmart has decent prices on tires and $5 installation fees but I don’t really trust Walmart to take care of my car. All of the companies charge outrageous prices for disposing the tires but I’m having troubles locating a company that recycles the tires so that we can avoid the disposal fee.

I think we might have to just pick a company and go with it and hope we got the best deal. They all carry different tires, so how are we supposed to compare? I’m so confused!

Art Appreciation

My hubby and I visited the Phoenix Art Museum tonight. We visit almost every week and love browsing through the European section. Most of the paintings are gorgeous and we learn something new every time we visit.

When I was growing up, my only exposure to art was photography. My brother and I have been interested in photography for as long as I can remember and our parents encouraged us in it. We were poor growing up, but my parents still bought both of us cheap film cameras. As I was responsible for funding most of the film development, I didn’t take that many pictures. However, when I was in high school and was hired at my first job, my photography took off. I have thousands of pictures in our spare bedroom, mostly taken in high school and early in college. Hubby and I bought a digital camera last year and I’ve been digital ever since (I prefer print, but my budget demands digital).

Hubby is an artist, a painter. Even though I knew of his talent, I still didn’t have much of an appreciation for painting. My only exposure to paintings was my art appreciation class in college. The only paintings I was familiar with were photographs of painting in my textbook and the ones my professor projected onto the wall. Still, I didn’t have much appreciation for art because I didn’t realize just how detailed a painting could be.

When hubby and I first learned the Phoenix Art Museum had free admission once a week, we visited on a date. I fell in love with paintings, mostly the European art. I love visiting the museum and only wish that they had a larger European section. Someday, hubby and I have determined to visit New York City’s Met. Maybe when we get all of our debt paid off, we can vacation in New York and visit some of the cultural sites.

Kitchen doings

What a great success. For the first time since we were given it a year ago, I opened the box and used my new Crock Pot. I filled a pot with water and soaked black beans overnight. This morning, I rinsed the beans, pulled out a couple bad ones, and covered them with water in the Crock Pot. I cooked them for eight hours and they tasted really good! I wasn’t sure how to long to cook the beans or how much water to use, so I searched the internet and found A Year of Slowcooking‘s recipe for cooking dried beans. What a great website! I’m drooling over a few of the recipes and have already determined to make apple butter this weekend if I can find a deal on apples.I also made homemade tortillas and rice. We really wanted to make enchiladas but the tortillas are too small for me to roll and then bake. Instead, we filled them with black beans and rice (plus sour cream for me) and then poured hot enchilada sauce over the top. We ended up eating them with a fork. If I can wean myself off the sour cream (or switch to vegan sour cream) and find a homemade enchilada sauce recipe, we’ll have ourselves a very healthy meal! Between the black beans, tortilla shells, and amish bread baked this morning, I had a very productive day in the kitchen! 

Easy-peasy

Today was a pretty easy day for work and I’m glad. I’ve been feeling under the weather all day so I was quite happy when I completed three hours of contract work and was told that would be all until tomorrow.

So instead, I did some cleaning. I washed two loads of laundry and washed the dishes. If I’m feeling better tomorrow, I might tackle the kitchen floor. It’s looking kind of grimy in front of the closet where our trash can is stored.

I also worked on my Nano outline for awhile, putting together some information for my first two chapters. It’s been very interesting trying to imagine what it would have been like to live through the plagues. How hard would it have been to find drinking water by digging in the banks of the Nile? What would it have been like finding your house overrun with frogs and being able to do nothing about it? Most of the plagues affected both the Egyptians and the Hebrews so no one was immune.

I wonder how much the Hebrews remembered about God. They were in Egypt for a really long time with no prophets. The 10 commandments reminded them of God’s precepts, like keeping the Sabbath. Does this mean they had forgotten to keep the Sabbath or were just keeping it incorrectly? Or maybe they knew about the Sabbath and wanted to observe but couldn’t because they had to work every day. Do we know for sure? I’m not sure that we do, but it’s been enlightening trying to imagine what life would have been like.

Mini-milestone and goals revisited

Last week’s progress on CC1:

$1,448.98 starting balance
– $176.00 contract paycheck

$1,272.98 current balance (20% paid)

We’re finally making some progress on this credit card! I received my paycheck last week for time completed in August. It’s the first of several large paychecks, my next coming 10/1.

This week hubby and I will be shopping for new tires for our car. We are overdue and the goal is to pay for four new tires by the end of September. We have to wait until his next paycheck (Friday) to have the cash, but that’s where most of our snowball will be directed this month. Unfortunately, we can’t neglect essential car maintenance just because we’re focused on paying off our credit cards.

Hubby and I have decided that we’re going to start trying for a baby when all the consumer debt is paid off. I’m so excited about this as we now have a concrete goal of when we’re going to start growing our family. Before, we just talked about “when we can afford it,” “when the debt is paid off.” Well, we have $69,500 in total debt and that pay off is years away.

We’re following Dave Ramsey’s baby steps:

1 – $1,000 emergency fund DONE
2 – Pay off all debt except the house
3 – Build an emergency fund that covers 3-6 months of expenses
4 – Retirement savings
5 – College funds for kids
6 – Pay off home early
7 – Give like you’ve never given before

Because we have no house and no plans to buy one… we’re rearranging the steps a bit so that we can start growing our family:

1 – $1,000 emergency fund DONE
2 – Pay off all consumer debt (credit cards and car)
3 – Build an emergency fund that covers 3-6 months of expenses
3a – Start trying for a baby while building our emergency fund
4 – Retirement savings
5 – Save up a minimum 30% down payment on a house
5a – College funds for kids
6 – Pay off home early
7 – Give like you’ve never given before

That’s the plan for now, though things will probably change once our consumer debt is paid off. What’s left for consumer debt?

CC1 – $1,272.98
CC2 – $3,037.29
CC3 – $4,363.78
Auto loan – $4,565.83
CC4 – $9,105.16

We are $22,345.04 away from having our first child! I am very excited. That’s so much more optimistic than the original figure of $69,444.98 for our total debt.