Monthly Archives: April 2019

April Book Picks

Emily’s Monthly Book Pick
Bread Baking for Beginners by Bonnie Ohara

With saving for a house and pay off debt I am looking for every possible way to save money. I have been curious about making bread and I follow Jenna Fisher on Instagram and she uses this book to make bread! So I checked it out from my library and I have made 2 of the breads in it so far (see post here). I can say without a doubt that I LOVE this book and will be purchasing it once I have to return it. I really wanted to get it to make sandwich bread for our lunches. So I will be trying that recipe next. I found the book really easy to used and very detailed without being overwhelming.

Maddie’s Monthly Book Pick
Circe by Madeline Miller

I had originally seen this book featured on the PBS Newshour but then I started seeing it on reading lists everywhere. I was very excited when I finally got a call from the library that it was my turn in the wait list! The story follows, Circe, an immortal goddess and witch from Greek mythology. Circe is featured in The Odyssey when Odysseus and his crew land on her island and she turns them into pigs (and then back to men) and they end up staying on her island for a year.

Outside of my freshman English class in high school, I do not have a ton of knowledge about Greek mythology, but I absolutely LOVED this book. Madeline Miller made myths that usually feel stale and old feel new and relatable. Even though the story spans centuries (starting with Circe’s childhood) the book is a true page turner with a fantastic ending. It was unlike anything that I have ever read before and I recommend it to anyone who is looking to mix up their reading routine with something different but very satisfying!

My Budget Friendly Spring Workout Routine

Emily here! Working out can be expensive! Gyms and group fitness classes can cost between $50-$200 a month. (If you don’t believe me about $200 a month take a gander at most yoga studios). I cancelled my gym membership about a year and a half ago. It was costing me $50 a month and I was hardly going anyway. Since then I have found some great ways to stay fit with spending little to no money.

Run/Walk: This is an easy one but I have been running about 3-4 days a week. I run outside in pretty populated areas to be safe since I always run alone. I keep my miles low so that I don’t create any injuries by putting a lot do stress on my body. I run max 2 miles. Anything more is just rude to my knees and feet. Cost: $0

Yoga on Youtube: I try and wake up every workday morning and do a 15-30 min yoga video in my living room. This allows my body to slowly wake up and it pairs nicely with the runs I typically do the previous day. I like Sarah Beth Yoga but Yoga with Adriene is great if you are just starting out. Another option where you don’t have to spend any money. Cost: 0$

barre3 online: When I was working out for my wedding I subscribed to barre3 online. It was pretty expensive for online material but still cheaper than going in person. I found myself only using about 3-4 videos out of the like 200+ they have in their library. After my subscription ended I have just used what they offer on YouTube for free. It’s not a huge variety but I don’t need a lot of variety in my workouts. Cost: $0

Weights at Home: I have a variety of handheld weight at home that I have accumulated over the years. I do various exercises from Pinterest or ones that I used to do when I had a trainer. Weights can get really spendy but when my husband and I were at Goodwill last weekend we saw weight sets for like a few dollars. Their weights were in perfect condition and you know they were donated because people just didn’t use them. A pair of 10 pound weights offers a ton of versatility. If we didn’t already have what we need then we sure would have bought some. Cost: $2-$15

First Time Bread Maker! Part Deux

Maddie here! Writing about my experience as a first time bread maker. Emily wrote about her experience in making bread by hand in her post HERE. I used a bread maker for my first loaf and it was AMAZING! My mother-in-law got us this (now discontinued) bread maker for our first wedding anniversary (6 years ago) but we did not take it with us in our initial move to the East Coast because we were not sure how much kitchen space we would have. As it turns out, living in Jersey City we have much more storage than the typical NYC apartment. With our recent re-commitment to staying on the East Coast, me going wheat-free, and being strict with our budget, I asked my fam to ship the bread maker out to us. Shout out to my parents and Emily for finding the bread machine in storage and sending it!

I used the recipe in my bread maker manual, subbing out spelt flour for the regular wheat flour. I included the recipe below, but this is only relevant if you happen to have my same bread maker as me and being that it is now discontinued, this feels unlikely. Honestly, I am mostly including the recipe for my future use.

The bread turned out delicious! The only thing that I would change next time is to choose the ‘light’ darkness as opposed to ‘medium’. I plan on making all of my breads (and jam!) in the machine going forward and definitely recommend investing in a bread machine if you want to make your own bread but don’t have the time to commit to doing it the old fashioned way. It is perfect for those (like me) who want to set it and forget it.

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/4 Cup + 2 Tablespoons of Milk at 80 Degrees F
  • 2 Tablespoons of Butter
  • 3 1/3 Cups of Spelt Flour
  • 1 1/2 Tablespoons of Sugar
  • 1 1/4 Teaspoons of Salt
  • 1 Packet of Active Dry Yeast

Steps:

  1. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl.
  2. Add milk to the pan first, then add dry ingredients (except yeast) and level.
  3. Quarter the butter and add to the corners.
  4. Make an impression in the center and add the yeast.
  5. Close the lid, select menu and select 1 for basic setting, select light color, and press start.
  6. The bread maker does its thing and TA-DA, about 2 hours later you have a delicious loaf of bread.

7 Ideas From My First No Spend Weekend

No Spend Weekends are a great way to bank some money, whether you are saving for something specific or if need to get back on track after a weekend of going over budget. My husband and I recently challenged ourselves to doing one no spend weekend per month. For us, this means no entertainment spending (eating out, alcohol, movies, etc.) but we still go grocery shopping and spend within other areas of our budget.

Here are my ideas for making a No Spend Weekend fun!

  1. Go for a walk. During our No Spend Weekend, we went on a 3 mile walk to one of our favorite parks in Jersey City, Lincoln Park. On the way, we discovered a new coffee shop that recently opened and while at the park, we saw a turtle. This was an awesome representation of our No Spend Weekend because, as Dave Ramsey teaches, we are trying to adapt the mindset of the tortoise (and not the hare) with our finances. Some other ideas for getting active during your No Spend Weekend are doing at-home yoga (I like Yoga with Adrienne), going for a hike, or playing your favorite sport like tennis or basketball, as long as you already own the gear.
  2. Make something fun for dinner. Since we do our meal planning and grocery shopping on Saturday mornings, we decided to make something fun for dinner on Saturday night: my Buffalo Wild Wings Ultimate Nachos Copycat. Other ideas could be a taco bar, a burger and fries night, or homemade pizza. We try to eat very healthy during our at-home meals, so this was a special treat for us!
  3. At-home movie night. After dinner, we popped some popcorn and grabbed some peanut M&Ms that we purchased at the store and watched Ready Player One. We have Comcast for our TV/Internet and they do free weeks of HBO throughout the year so we were able to watch it for free. If it wasn’t during that week, we would have found a movie on Netflix or popped in one of our DVDs from our collection.
  4. Cleaning. Well, we do our chores on the weekend anyways, but the extra time allows you to really get the apartment/house sparkling! The No Spend Weekend also gives you a good excuse to tackle any annoying errands that you have been putting off.
  5. Work on your side hustle. My side hustle is the work in connection with my family’s business, so I took the weekend to get ahead on a few upcoming projects.
  6. Face mask. Am I the only one who buys a face mask with the intention of regularly applying it, only for it to sit on my bathroom shelf for eternity? Refresh your skin with the face mask on your shelf! This is also the perfect time to do anything else you have been putting off like an at-home mani/pedi, eyebrow grooming, or shaving your legs. (Just me again?)
  7. Call your family and friends. Being so far away from family and many friends, my No Spend Weekend was the perfect time to facetime and catch up with everyone. It is hard living on the other side of the country from the majority of the people you know, but I always feel more connected after talking with my family!

First Time Bread Maker!

Today I made my very first loaf of bread! I used the book Bread Baking for Beginners. Which I checked out from my local library but after this first bread recipe I will be buying this book for sure. It was so easy to understand and I really enjoyed the process of making the bread. I started at 11am today and finished around 3pm. I did other meal prep task in between that time. I made the very first recipe the No-Knead Bread and it turned out amazing!!






See? Look at that! I made that! It was really yummy but, like I love bread so even if it wasn’t that great it wouldn’t really matter. I wanted to start making bread to save money (which is the same reason the author of the book I’m using also decided to start baking bread). That is why I only rented to book too. I didn’t want to commit if it wasn’t helpful or I didn’t like it. Which it was extremely helpful and like I said I will be buying it in a week (fingers crossed I can find it second hand!). The only things I bought were a thermometer for $12 and a bag of flour for $3. I can get the flour cheaper if I buy it in bulk but I didn’t want to commit just yet in case I really didn’t like it. This delicious bread literally cost me maybe $1.10 to make. Other than flour I needed salt, instant yeast, and water. Which I all had on hand and are really inexpensive. This book has a sandwich bread which I am very excited to make. Our sandwich bread cost about $5 a loaf. Which, depending on how you look at money $5 isn’t that much money but we are being very tight and intentional with our money and $5 a week quickly becomes $20 a month and we can use that for something else. And I wanted to try out a new hobby. So it’s a win win for me. I plan to make the next recipe after we finish this loaf. And with how good this loaf is could very well be tomorrow.

I really liked the whole process of making the bread. It was almost therapeutic in a way. I always feel like I am trying to rush through everything and every task but with the bread you cant rush it and you can’t force it to move any faster. I think doing this every week (which is the goal) will help me to mellow out a bit more.

March Book Picks

Maddie’s Book Pick
Everyday Millionaires by Chris Hogan

For Christmas this year, our parents bought us a year-long membership to Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University (thanks mom and dad!). As my husband and I have worked our way through the course, it has been life-changing. It has completely shifted our outlooks on life and money and we are attacking Dave’s plan with a gazelle-like intensity. Since starting the course 2.5 months ago, we have paid off our car (our last piece of debt after paying off my husband’s school loans and some credit card debt) and already have one month’s of living expenses saved up in our emergency fund. Chris Hogan is a “Ramsey Personality” and his work centers around the habits of millionaires. This book (while I actually found it to be poorly written) uses Chris’s study of millionaires to illuminate that most net-worth millionaires do not have extremely high paying jobs or large inheritances, but rather become rich through consistent saving habits and dedication to their future. It is not a get rich quick book, and most of the information is repeated several times throughout, but I enjoyed it and if you are looking for some encouragement to “live like no one else so you can live like no one else”, I recommend it.

Emily’s Book Pick
The Proposal By Jasmine Guillory

This book was another one of Reese’s Book Club Pick! I finished this book in less than a week which is fast for me! But I didn’t read it fast for the reasons you probably think. The book starts out with Nik getting proposed to by her boyfriend and then Carlos swoops in to save her. I knew there would be a love story between Nik and Carlos but I kept reading the book so intensely because I was expecting it to turn into a suspenseful thriller or mystery. There kept being hints that Nik was worried that the old boyfriend would show up and I love a good mystery book that messes with my mind and makes me put together clues. This…was not it. So I kept reading fast because I was like “The NEXT chapter for sure it’s going to happen.” Never did. So I felt a bit disappointed by that but overall a cute love story.

Work Outfits Week of 4/8

  • Monday
  • Tuesday
  • Wednesday
  • Thursday
  • Friday

This was a pretty average week for me work-wise. My boss was out of the office on Monday, hence the more casual look but we had clients in for the rest of the week. All of my work pants have become too loose on my recently due to some weight loss (yay!) so I didn’t feel the most confident in my lewks because of my sagging pants. But I was able to purchase some new pants from the Ann Taylor Factory online. They pretty much always have a sale, so I will often put things that I want in my cart and check in periodically to see if they are discounted enough for me to purchase them. I was able to get two dress pants (one of them is the same pair I was wearing on Thursday) for $50! Emily had given me a gift card for my bday in February that I have been saving so it only cost me the $8 to ship it to my work. Woop!

Emily was sick this week so she did not take any pictures BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T FEEL LIKE IT. Just keepin it real.

Work Outfits Week of 4-1

  • Monday
  • Tuesday
  • Wednesday
  • Thursday
  • Friday

This week I tried harder than last week. I found some good outfit inspiration on Pinterest. It was fun to look at an outfit and try to figure out what I could use from my closet. Also Maddie said I looked like the Theranos Girl on Wednesday. So I think I know what I will be for Halloween! My favorite outfit was probably Thursday. I got a few compliments on my top. It’s an old one from Anthropology but I just really love it.

  • Monday
  • Tuesday
  • Wednesday
  • Thursday
  • Friday

This was a fun week because my boss was out of the office on vacation and we had no clients in the office. This meant that I was able to experiment with a more “business casual” work style that I have not been able to do in a few years. I had fun mixing some of my work clothes with my weekend clothes for outfits that felt put together but still relaxed. On Friday I went a little more dressy because my husband and I had a date night in the city! We went out to a nice dinner and then saw the new Broadway revival of Oklahoma. It was INCREDIBLE!