Holes in my clothes?!

It's Saturday night and I'm sitting on the sofa watching The Lake House (Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock).
So here I am sitting down and I go to adjust my t shirt only to find a hole in the front of the shirt.  What's even odder, is that the other day, I found a hole in the sleeve of the sweater I was wearing that day.  Is it possible that there's something in my washer or dryer that's causing the holes?  I'm not happy, I really liked this shirt.  Oh well.

So yesterday I posted about how The Bay was having a clearance sale with an additional 40% off.  I walked over at 10am and in the first 15 minutes I had about 6-7 items of clothing in my hand.  Then I thought about checking out the deals on their bedding.

On Thursday J got his hands on markers and had left them uncapped on my bed.  When I got home from work that day, I found him asleep in my bed and the markers sitting there, with big splotches of green and brown ink on our comforter.  So I thought that maybe I could find a good deal on a new comforter.  I had no luck finding a comforter on clearance but I did find a duvet cover (set came with 2 pillow shams as well).  So I thought I'd compromise.  I bought 3 pieces of clothing and and the duvet cover set.  Total cost: $58.  As I took the escalator from the 4th floor to the 2nd floor, I realized that I really didn't need the duvet cover, and so I walked to the nearest customer service desk and returned the duvet cover set.  I got back $42.  Phew!  I'm glad I got some common sense knocked into me.  I realized that although my comforter is now covered in ink splotches, no one outside of our family even sees the comforter.

And one other win?  I went grocery shopping with a list today, and I stuck to that list!

TGIF! Must stay on track!

I’m so glad that it’s Friday.  Even happier that I opened up my Outlook calendar at work and saw that I only have one meeting to attend today.  The past couple of days, I’ve struggled to get motivated at work.  I’m hoping for a more productive day today.  It would be a great way to end the work week.

I have a couple challenges today.

The office building I work in is connected to our downtown mall and The Bay.  Whenever the guys and I head out for lunch to the mall food court we walk through the Bay, specifically through the Children’s Clothing department.  Since the New Year, the Bay has been marking down merchandise and every now and then I stop to check what the current sale prices are but not making any purchases.  Today, I received an email stating that the Bay has further reductions on their clearance items.  An extra 40% off the lowest-ticketed price!!  Thinking about the current prices I had seen, an additional 40% off would make some items definitely worth purchasing.  When I saw the email I immediately thought of purchasing Christmas gifts for 2012.  Is it too early?  Since I haven’t set aside any money for Christmas shopping should I not even consider making the purchases?  But they’re such great deals!  I’m not sure what to do.  I’m very tempted to still walk over when the store opens to check things out.

I forgot my snacks at home this morning.  I usually bring almonds and some fruit to munch on throughout the work day.  I’ve got a bit of fruit for breakfast, but nothing else for the rest of the day.  Not sure if I can make it through the day without my usual snacks or if I need to head to the market to pick up some almonds and fruit?  Although at the present moment, I feel that the lack of snacks will be a challenge for me today, perhaps I just need to drink more water to make me feel full. hehe…

OH… and one other thing, a new item to add to my list of things to save for.  I spoke to my friend about her upcoming social and wedding plans and she mentioned that another group of friends have already started thinking about her bachelorette party in Las Vegas!!  The upside?  Since these girls seem so gung-ho about planning the party, there’s nothing for me to do!  The downside?  I need to make sure I have money set aside for this party.  I suspect this party will require at a minimum $500 (for airfare and hotel).  Food, shopping and gambling will require more (of course the latter 2 items aren’t really needed at all, but I threw them in there just in case). 

OH… still one more thing to mention.  On the drive into work today, DH mentions that some of his coworkers are thinking of placing a sports bet on next week’s Superbowl game.  He casually adds “Yeah, I’m thinking of joining in on the bet.  It’s only $100”.  Seriously?! A $100 on a football game?  Ha!  I don’t think so.  DH is responsible and he knows that we don’t have $100 to throw away on a sports bet.  Just thinking about it is ridiculous.

Updated "All About Debt"

I went ahead and updated my "All About Debt" page.
It shows the debt repayment plan that I'm trying to stick to this year.
At a minimum I need to put $1000 towards debt repayment and I'm hoping that I can increase this amount.  But there are things that I need to save for, specifically:

• Emergency fund.  I'd love to see more progress on this and reach $1000 this year.
• Blinds fund.  Our 5-year home ownership anniversary is on May 1st.  I'd like to have all paper blinds replaced before this date.  Even if they're not the dream vision I have for window treatments, I'd like to get real window treatments up.
• Best Friends Wedding fund:  My best friend of 21 years just recently got engaged and currently their wedding plans include a destination wedding early next year (Feb 2013).  At a minimum I must be at the wedding (since I'm in the wedding party).  Ideally I would love for our entire family to go, but this will be extremely difficult to save up for.

At this point I am hoping for good tax returns this year and will try my best to tweak the budget so that more money can be put aside.  I still need to do the calculations to determine how much I should be putting away each month to meet these financial goals.  Now that DH has gotten his first paycheque of the year, I can update our budget with his new paycheque amount and it will help me move the numbers around.

My upcoming paycheque will reflect my new salary and the effects of not purchasing any food from the work cafeteria.  I'm so excited to see the increase.  When I think about it, last year I spent $1200 on cafeteria food, this is more than enough to get me to my best friends destination wedding.  So I should really take that extra amount and put that away into the wedding fund, but of course some of that extra money should go towards the grocery budget, since we are buying more groceries now as well.  And of course, I still need to get better at meal planning and putting our weekly grocery list together.