Chip Board Decorating

I'm so intrigued by all the craft bloggers out there - love, love, love looking at their ideas!  Check out the subway art by Lil' Blue Boo and Tatertots & Jello.  So I headed to Hobby Lobby today to check prices on artist's canvas to use as the backdrop for my piece.  Although I haven't figured out what it will say, where I will put it or how to get it done, I really want to make one (or two or ten) of these for my house.  Ahhh, details, details....

In typical fashion, I got sidetracked by other craft projects.  Today, it was these chip board initials!  Since my poor front door wreath has seen better days (my house faces due south) and since Halloween is coming up, I decided to use the letters B-O-O to create a fun door hanger.  Here it is:

Of course, I couldn't just stop there, right?  One of my neighbors is having a baby boy next month.  As this is her third child but first boy, I decided to get crafty with the baby's first initial.  This could be used as a door hanger or wall hanging - really anywhere.  Here it is:

I also created Christmas ornaments using this same technique.  To read about this project and to find a tutorial, see this post! 

Now, back to watching paint dry.....

Sign of the Times?

This week was a sad, frustrating week for me with respect to My Gym.  We had an employee who was just about to have her one year anniversary with us.  She had progressed from a part-time, hourly employee to Assistant Director with a salary and health benefits.  In all respects, she was a key employee, able to manage the business when both Addie and I are out.  Over the Labor Day holiday, she had a falling out with her boyfriend of seven months.  In the space of 48 hours, she decided to move 350 miles away without notice.  After giving her the world, she screwed us over without a second thought.  She was 21 years old without a college degree but with a salaried position and health benefits.  Additionally, she was poised to advance even further as we grow and expand.  To add salt to this wound, this week just happens to be the busiest week of the year for My Gym with a huge Fall Open House that typically brings 250 families to the gym over the space of three days.  We needed her in every sense of the word. 

Now I am fully aware (and reminded all the time) that an employee owes a company and its boss nothing.  I know that this is a dog-eat-dog world and that most people only look out for numero uno.  That being said and out in the open, I treat my employees very well.  I regularly check in with them, ask them how they're doing and how they're feeling.  I have a defined system in place of hurdles that must be met for raises to be earned.  We host regular staff nights and make our job as fun as possible.  I am regularly told that I am great to work for.  Blah, blah, blah....  So I am at a loss for why most people don't have the common decency to at least give some notice before leaving us high and dry.  Most people can only look to "what would I do" when trying to understand another's actions.  I have no idea if it is my upbringing and my instilled sense of duty, morals and common decency or just my experience in the corporate world; however, I can say with 100% conviction that I would never fathom leaving a job without providing notice or an explanation.  I grew up with the phrase, "Don't burn bridges," pounded into my head.  It has served me well over my 34 years.

Our business is not one where just anyone can be slotted in.  A trained assistant teacher takes at least three weeks.  A trained lead teacher takes at least six weeks.  Unfortunately, we don't have the cash to pay the quantity of employees that it would take to be overstaffed, and we can't afford to pay the quality of employee that definitely wouldn't do something like this.  We predominately employ young, high-school and college-aged individuals who need part-time jobs.  Regardless, when employees leave us with absolutely no notice, I can't help but feel personally affronted and wonder where I went wrong.

These are the questions I ponder when we have an employee shoot us in the foot:

Do I get too close to my employees?  Do I make them feel as though they can't quit unless they do it stealth?
Is this a result of a deficiency in their upbringing or just a sign of their generation?
For those that still live at home, why do their parents let them handle things in this manner? 
If I was a hard, uncaring boss, would I have better luck with employees due to sheer fear on their part?
Why is he/she so selfish that he/she can't stick around for two weeks to allow us time to find someone else?
Should I just get back on the floor with my Director and minimize the need for additional employees at the expense of off-floor work and growing the business?

I am convinced that we are doing our younger generations a mass disservice by allowing them to get away with these types of actions.  What has happened to the strong work ethic of our forefathers and the common sense of right versus wrong?  Have we given our children too much and expected too little?  Have they not been required to work for the things they want, instead of being handed everything on a silver platter?  Have we gone so far to the left in wanting to be our children's friends that we've forgotten to teach them morals and virtues and to redirect their erroneous actions?

I know that these thoughts seem deep and based solely on my experiences with a certain subset of individual.  However, the consistency with which I see these actions makes me assume that my employees are not the minority and that this is going on around the world.  It makes me very sad....

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Kiser's 5th Birthday!

We enjoyed:

Sugar. Lots of it.

A cape-decorating workshop. (Each child was given a cape, a felt cutout of their initial and felt superhero emblems.)

A crazy fun visit from Superman.

Great friends.

Birthday Bash Plans

This coming Saturday is Kiser's big birthday party.  Being the planner and organizer that I am, I have been working on it since early May.  He has been really into superheroes for a while, so I began with inviting Superman to pay a visit.  Then I found out that Superman needs a 9'x9' space to perform, so I had to search out a large space for the party. 

Once that was done, the invitations were created....

The cake had to be designed and ordered and paper products using Superman, Batman and Spiderman were purchased.

Then the fun began!  I began looking for fun ways to decorate the party place and party favors to give the guests.  You wouldn't believe the number of blogs that can be found related to birthday party planning.  Additionally, the quantity of really creative ideas for superhero parties is staggering!

I decided on the following:

Of course, there's still the floor to ceiling city scape, the 36 Superhero balloons, the 3-dozen Sweetface Cookies superhero lollipop cookies, Superhero ceiling danglers and specially-created Superhero music playlist.

Add to all that, 25 smiling boys and girls.....AND YOU HAVE YOURSELF A BIRTHDAY PARTY!

Bye Bye Summer!

A new school year officially starts today! Both boys went bee-bopping into their new classrooms with excitement.  Kiser begins Pre-K and Connor begins official Preschool.  We had a great summer, but now it's time to get back into routines!

We're DEBT FREE!! Oh, and I saved 54.2% today!

WE'RE DEBT FREE!!!!!!!!  It took us six months to pay off $38,024.26 in school loans, car loans, credit cards and furniture!  Additionally, we have built an emergency fund equivalent to six months of household expenses!  The only liability left on our personal balance sheet is our mortgage.  With two children in private preschool, that mortgage is going to be around for a while.  Once we get them off to public school, we will practically be able to make two house payments per month!

Patrick and I started following Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover plan in September 2009.  We put ourselves on a budget, shut off the credit card, paid cash for discretionary items (using an envelope system) and stopped all retirement saving. 

Wait a minute....I know what's going through your head right now.

"I use a credit card for the air miles/cash back/etc..., and I pay it off every month.  I'm not really in credit card debt; therefore, there is nothing wrong with using my card."  That's right, you're not in credit card debt.....yet!  All it takes is that one tough month.  What if a member of your household loses their job this month?  Are you able to pay the credit card bill for everything you bought the month before?  Nope, you're going to leave that bill unpaid and, to make matters worse, you're going to buy more items with the credit card.  All of a sudden, you've put yourself into such a tumultuous cycle that you can't sleep at night.  Additionally, most people spend less money using cash instead of credit.  I know that I am much more conscious of my purchase decisions.  If this is a hard pill to swallow, I challenge you to pay cash for all discretionary items for just one month.  By discretionary, I mean the items that you have control over.  Examples of these might include groceries, restaurants, auto expenses, haircuts, cleaning supplies, laundry detergent, clothing and anything else that you decide whether or not to buy on a monthly basis.  Pull a specific amount of cash out of the bank, keep it with you at all times and only use the money in your pocket to purchase discretionary items.  I'm betting that you will make different decisions when you're using cash than when you're pulling out the card.  Just try it!

"Everyone knows that you have to save for retirement.  Are you crazy?  Why would you stop saving money to become debt free?  Isn't that counter-intuitive?"  We stopped saving for retirement for six short months.  Is it ideal?  Of course not.  However, it allowed us to focus all our resources on becoming debt-free and building up a sizable emergency fund.  Now that we have no payments other than our mortgage, and an emergency situation is not going to send us into a tailspin, we have even more resources to put towards retirement!  In fact, 15% of our gross income will be going to retirement savings beginning in June 2010.  According to Dave Ramsey's calculations from his Total Money Makeover book, the monthly amount we will put into retirement savings could provide us with an annual income of $229,800 in our retirement years!  I think that I could probably find a way to live on $230,000 per year in my retirement years!  These numbers assume 12% interest and 4% inflation for a net return of 8% per year.  Even if these percentages are aggressive, saving 15% of our income for the next 30 years or so will still provide a nice income in the golden years given an average return on investment.

"Isn't this just a little basic?  I mean, you're an educated person with decent financial means.  Aren't you making this a little too watered down?  Living from envelopes and on a budget....don't you work too hard to have to live this way?"  I can't tell you how many times I've heard this from my friends.  I have an advanced degree, am a Certified Public Accountant and own my own business.  My husband is a project manager and leads 14 people in a publicly held organization.  Our friends can't believe that we would get so basic with our money.  I will tell you that we would never have done this on our own.  Following Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps gave us a simple, systematic and disciplined approach to take charge.  We started this process with an end in mind.  In the past, our attempts at living on a budget have fallen short because there was no end game.  We didn't know where we were headed.  Saving money would have been great, but for what?  The Total Money Makeover provided us with a road map and big waving victory flags to know when we had arrived at each destination!

Taking control of our financial life feels great.  We will never again have a car payment, a credit card bill or a school loan.  We know that when we want to purchase big-ticket items, we save for them and pay cash.  This goes for vacations, vehicles, home improvements....everything.  We are living like no one else so that later, we can live like no one else!

I know you've been on pins and needles for this one!  The Grocery Game Update:

During my Kroger shop for the week, I scored chicken nuggets (eight bags), yogurt (12 containers), barbecue sauce, Kool-Aid (12 packages), fruit and coffee creamer (two boxes).  These are all staples in a young family's kitchen!  I paid $16.46, but without coupons and store sales, I would have paid $35.93!

Dallas Museum of Science & Nature....maybe

Today, we took advantage of the Bank of America program that provides cardholders a monthly free admission to certain local museums.  After church, we made the haul from Frisco to Dallas Fair Park to check out the Dallas Museum of Science & Nature.  The boys had a ball digging for dinosaur fossils, playing with bubbles, gathering and sorting vegetables in the farm and admiring Texas native wildlife.  However, I found myself feeling as though I was in some sort of time warp.  It seemed as though this museum may have looked exactly the same way and boasted exactly the same exhibits when I was just a mere child.  I was actually a little saddened by the state of the facility.  Many exhibits did not work, there was a general air of disrepair about the building and there were few patrons actually visiting the museum on a weekend afternoon.  I don't know much about the ins and outs of supporting cultural landmarks; however, if I was a supporting member of this facility, I would definitely be wondering where my hard-earned money was being used.