If any of you are wondering what DIY is—It means Do-it-yourself and is apparently what the British say when they are dong home improvement projects. I just read a book called “Mr. Maybe” and they kept referring to “DYI”. It took me a little while to figure it out. “Mr. Maybe” was a very cute book by the way. I recommend it for a light-hearted, humorous read. I was at my friend Brenda’s house tonight and kept getting books off of her bookshelf to read and then having to put them back because in one week’s time Brad and I will begin a massive DIY project. We are painting our living room, dining room, kitchen, hallway, and bedroom. We are putting new baseboards in the dining room, living room, and family room and putting up new molding in our room and the family room. We are also refinishing our wood floors, buying new curtains, installing a convection microwave, painting a fence, pouring concrete and framing and hanging pictures. Oh yeah, we are also painting the back of our house where we added on a few years ago. We also will lay paving stones beneath our gazebo if we have time. Brad says he is going to write a schedule for us to go by so we can be sure to get all of this done. We may be reaching to get it all done but we sure will try hard!
Brad and I have begun to fully realize that our family (namely my Dad and Mom)think we are insane to live on an older, modest house and drive older cars when it is so easy to finance these days and live in and drive the biggest, newest and best of everything. We know everyone disapproves, but we do not want to be in debt! We are almost finished paying of the bills we accrued when we were newly married and trying to get both of us through school while having babies and supporting our family. Once those are paid off, we are going to try to save up and PAY CASH for a new vehicle (God willing our car will make it until then). Then we want to save a big down payment for a new house. We both know it will take a while but we also both know that we will drive the cars we want to drive and live in the house of our dreams someday and we will do it all without burying ourselves in debt! Why is that so difficult for our family to accept? My brother has a VERY nice big house and he and his ex-wife drove very nice new cars and they got a divorce. Thus proving that material things do not make a marriage or an individual more happy or content. I don’t really care what people think–it is just that the pressure from family to buy a house we can’t afford is sometimes a little oppressive.
I have become a scrapbooking maniac. I am about 3/4 of the way through scrapbooking my wedding photos. Then I am going to scrapbook each of my boy’s first year and then hopefully get all of the rest of my pictures scrapbooked. I have enough to keep me busy for a very long time. I am enjoying my cropping sessions on Thursday nights. A friend of mine actually went with me last Thursday. I am hoping my cousin will be able to go with me this Thursday. It is nice to go sit down with so many family-oriented women. Now if I could just get a book club started like the Angry Housewives Eating Bon-Bons . . .
Food Journal 