Use, Wear, Do

I'm not sure where I first heard that saying, but it was probably from my mom.  Through the years of waiting for my husband to finish with school I certainly learned to live on less.  Two months after he started his job he got an amazing raise that allowed me to stop working and just be home with our girls.  The money seemed to be there in great abundance and I stopped being careful with how I used money.  It was fun, but not smart.

A few months ago my husband got a raise that was not only amazing, but fantastically amazing.  Surely money would never be an issue again.  Ha!  Anyway, we bought a dining set (we'd given ours away), minivan (necessary with baby #3 on the way), a laundry pair (also given away), and a sectional (also necessary because our new house has two rooms that need seating).  Oh yeah, we also built a house.  Not that there's any expense included in that...

As we were contemplating which bedroom set and new mattress to buy we noticed that our funds weren't as abundant as we had become accustomed to.  I spent a morning going over finances and discovered that money really doesn't grow on trees.  That was a shock to the system.  So now we're back to economizing (a LOT) and the "use it up" saying is my new mantra.

Now I'm dealing with the disappointment.  I've always wanted to go all out and do a nursery for my kids.  I even had a plan going for this one and I was super excited to get started on it.  With the first two kids we were renting and a room makeover wasn't a possibility.  Now that we own we can't afford to redo a room.  Dang it.  What's a girl to do?  Well, I decided that I could 1) ignore all common sense and redecorate despite the cost, 2) whine and grumble and cry and sulk, or 3) make frugality an adventure and see what I can do to make it work.  I thought the last one seemed like it would make us the happiest over the longest period of time.  So I'm going with that one.

The really fun part for me is that it will allow me to get some creative juices flowing.  Sometimes it takes more imagination to revamp what you have than to find new things that work together.  Then I remembered I can document it here so that when everything is paid off I can remember that there are things we can do to avoid getting back into financial straits.  I may actually have fun with this.  The first project is making a nursery with things we already have.  It'll be interesting.