Sign Overhaul

On a recent Goodwill trip, I spotted this sign for 50% off and thought that it would be a good contender for a project. I'd imagined painting a quote on it, but when Carson told me that he liked what it already said, I decided to do something simpler.

I didn't love the color of the wood, so I sort of whitewashed it. I used a mixture of white acrylic craft paint and water and painted over the entire existing sign.

I let it dry in the sunshine, then went over the letters with a mustard colored paint.

That dried, and now we have a fun new sign! I don't have a specific place for this to go yet, so it's hanging on a lonely nail in the guest room until we find a better place. 

 Eventually, I think it would be fun to find a beachy quote and put it on here, but for now we both like it so it's staying as-is.

Port Clinton

When we couldn't find my passport, we didn't really know what to do. 

Carson google-searched ways to get into Canada without a passport (apparently it's easy to get in, but not to get back... and I sort of like America) and short of smuggling me in via the trunk, there was not really any way around the passport issue. 

A "Plan B" had to be established. 

So we thought about places that were a few hours away. Chicago is five, so that was out. Boston, New York and Philly are further away - also out. We didn't care to go to Columbus or Cincinnati or Pittsburgh, so we were at a loss. At church on Sunday, a few people suggested places. We sort of liked the idea of Amish country, but then we sort of didn't (tell us - what is there to do? It feels like we'd be invading people's privacy), then a few of the other places we looked up were a little more pricey than we wanted (Sandusky, near Cedar Point has water park hotels, which Carson voted for but they were too expensive).

So I Googled "vacation near Cleveland" and came up with a few options. Our criteria was this: hotel with a pool and a TV. We don't have a TV, so one of our favorite things to do at hotels is to channel surf. So I'm here to tell you that that's what we look for in a hotel. It doesn't need to be the Four Seasons, just have working cable. Sad, right? 

Several options existed in Port Clinton, Ohio, which is just under two hours away. It's right on Lake Erie and just outside Put-in-Bay, which we'd also considered (you have to take a ferry to Put-in-Bay which would have been fun). We planned to stay there one night, so that we could get away from searching for the passport but be home the next day to work on getting a new passport in time for our Niagara trip, which was thankfully rescheduled.

The drive would have been boring, but it was too short! We listened to music for a little bit and then just talked. 

The video is of Carson singing... see HERE (:13) and HERE for his inspiration. 

The singing may have influenced the decision to just talk. 

Some sights from our drive... Ohio has really boring roads for the most part.

And some sights as we caught our first glimpses of Port Clinton. It was kind of cute, very small, and felt beachy, with seagulls flying around. It was strange to feel like we were in a beach town while knowing that we were actually at a lake - no saltwater anywhere. 

The fish on the bottom right is apparently a Walleye - a fish I didn't know existed. Port Clinton is the Walleye capitol of the world, a title that only a small town would boast. 

We found a hotel with an outdoor pool (that was an important distinction to Carson - I didn't bother to bring a swimsuit) and then walked on the tiny beach. We found some shells and polished glass that made their way home through Carson's pocket.

Then Carson spent awhile teaching me to skip rocks. He's great at explaining things by acting them out, so I learned pretty quickly, but my skips were much smaller closer to the shore than his. He could probably compete in a skipping contest, not to brag ;)

I like this picture, but I also wanted to point out the smoke coming from the horizon, to the left of Carson. "I think that's a nuclear power plant!" he exclaimed. I didn't think that it could be (I guess I pictured them in the middle of nowhere, not on the water), but we looked it up later and sure enough, it's a nuclear power plant. So there's that. 

There were lots of dead fish on the beach, which I attributed to the power plant, but which Carson said was probably due to rocks or something. 

We walked around for a bit and HAD to take this picture. We set the camera up on an A-Frame sign to take it. 

And then we went to dinner. We passed some beachy looking seafood places, but they didn't seem as appealing to us as this Thai and sushi place. They had a million different kinds of sushi, but we're novices when it comes to sushi so we stuck with the familiar - we had crab rangoons (Carson "hates" seafood but loves these) and egg rolls to start, and Pad Thai as our entrees. We got a lot of food for really decent prices. Yum!

And I just though that this was funny. He walked into my picture.

Back at the hotel, Carson decided to take a swim. I joined him with a book on the deck, but required a few pictures first. 

Took this while I was setting up the right spot for the camera and it's moody but I like it. Nearly unedited - I did straighten it but that's all. 

So we set the camera up but then the wind blew it so we had to jump into the camera's line of sight. That's why we're laughing in this series.

Finally it worked and I like these a lot.

Finally, Carson got to enjoy the pool. He's accustomed to heated pools, being from Washington. This pool was not heated. He was in there for about two minutes before calling it a day.

Our room didn't have a fridge/freezer but it did have an ice bin so we improvised with dessert.

...while flipping through quality television, like Food Network cook-offs and Disney cartoons. We only caught the tail-end of Cinderella, so we watched the whole thing the following night.

On Monday morning, we called to see about the passport. We were on hold for a good amount of time, then discussed necessary documents and the logistics of changing a passport. My wonderful mother dropped her plans to mail me my marriage license and birth certificate for the process to proceed.

After we got off the phone, it was time to check out. We explored Port Clinton some more, parking and walking around. We collect ornaments when we're on trips, so that was what we were looking for (we found a magnet that I'll glue to a string... not a real ornament). We browsed consignment shops, a popcorn shop, the local drugstore, and a huge thrift store with the 10 Commandments posted outside. We liked the summary on the bottom!

We headed home, but were hungry, so Carson suggested Cracker Barrel, since he's never been. This was odd to me because on road trips, my family always stopped at Cracker Barrel. Long story short - he loved it. He loved the rocking chairs, the prices, the homestyle food, the store in front... he had chicken fried steak, which I do not understand (wouldn't that just be fried steak?) and I had a salad because I'm really not in love with Cracker Barrel's menu.

The point of this game is to have as few pegs as possible left at the end. I beat him twice (he claims that I cheated but that's not possible) and finally he succeeded by leaving only two at the end. 

It was a nice little getaway for just a night. When we searched for overnight trips nearby, we didn't realize that there would be so many options. We just might make overnight "vacations" happen more often. 

Traditiooooon... Tradition!

Do you have family traditions? We do.

Growing up, one of my favorite things was that we'd save the Christmas things for that season alone. After Thanksgiving, the Christmas music, books, and decor could all come out, but they went back into the attic in January. It was so fun having those "special" books and things for that one time each year. Watching those ABC Family 25 Days of Christmas movies was one of my favorite things.

We'd been dating only a few weeks when I brought up the "What kinds of traditions did you have growing up?" and "Which traditions would you like to keep/begin for your hypothetical family with me?" (probably not my exact words). It was a fun conversation that got us thinking about ideas and reminiscing about our childhoods.

So it was a big thing to me from the start, to have things that we, as a family could look forward to and have as ours. We've only been married three years, but we actually have a few already.

For our anniversaries, we're going to try to stick to the traditional gifts. The first year was paper, the second was cotton, the third was leather, next year is Linen or Silk, and so on. It's been a fun creative challenge too.
One other anniversary tradition is that I try on my wedding dress. I love doing this, and I plan to continue my tradition until I physically cannot. Since it's a dress... I mean the physically think quite literally.

Our wedding day - 2010, Spring Formal - 2011, Our Spokane apartment - 2012, Our Ohio house - 2013. You can tell that I didn't wear the heels in 2012 - they add another 4.5 inches.

We have plans for traditions when we have kids, things like a monthly camp-in-the-living-room night, a weekly family movie night.

There aren't any set birthday traditions yet, but I have some good ideas. Most of them involve food. Cinnamon rolls, cakes, that sort of thing. When I was younger, Mom and Dad would put our presents on the kitchen table and we'd eat breakfast and open gifts, which made it special. I think we got to pick out dinner for that evening too, because there was one year that all my brother requested was pancakes and water. Lame.

When we travel, we find an ornament (or something that we can tie a string on and use as an ornament) to commemorate that trip. I have them from Amsterdam, Beijing, Ukraine, from our honeymoon in Mexico, various day trips we've taken. This is a great tradition and it gives us something to hunt for in cheesy souvenir shops.

On the 4th of July, we wear red, white and blue, or at least two of those colors together (my sister always wears green, which I kind of love too).

For Easter, I plan to make deviled eggs from now on. We also dye eggs every year (Grandmama sends an egg dye kit with my birthday gift every year which helps me remember to do it!).

Thanksgiving this past year didn't really have any traditions. We had a dinner with friends and then our own variation. That could be a potential tradition.

At Christmas, we take a picture in front of the tree, and we have our very own set of Christmas books and movies that are for that season alone... and we try to keep adding to that collection each year. We actually have a whole list of traditions taped to the inside of the box where we keep our ornaments.

We wear green on St. Patrick's Day (I made Carson change this year and we were late to church) and one year, I went all out with green food and nails and house. We try to get a Shamrock Shake at McDonald's too, but every year we remember that we don't love them, so this may not stick.

Before writing this, I didn't realize that we had so many traditions!

What's your favorite way to make a day seem special? 

The Rainy Day Jar

Last March, a cousin of Carson's got married. The day before her wedding was my birthday, so since people were running around doing wedding things, she was kind enough to ask me if I'd like to join her for wedding errands. We got our nails done, ran to Target three times, and I helped (read: watched) her pack for the honeymoon. We had a really fun time, but one of the things that she did that I found interesting was to save cash from the time she was engaged until the wedding for them to use on their honeymoon. She was really intentional about it, and in a five month time period saved a few hundred dollars.

Rainy Day Jar

So thanks to Savannah, the rainy day jar was born. It was thus titled because we didn't have a real goal in mind when saving money. We thought about saving it for Christmases, or our anniversary, or paying a card off or something (we think we save more than we do) but in reality, we were saving it for an unknown adventure or circumstance, just saving until the bottle (it was a prickly pear soda bottle) was full or until we got curious and decided to count it. 

The jar began its life last summer before we moved. We're glad that it did, and that it was tucked away behind my seat where it was, because as we were driving through Illinois, we suddenly came to a toll station. Neither of us had the right amount of money for the toll, so we panicked for a moment before I looked out of the corner of my eye and noticed the bottle. A few dollars were wedged in the neck (thank goodness) so I got those out with my finger and a rogue pencil and the day was saved!

That was the only time that we've taken money out of it (I think we paid over $25 in tolls between Illinois and Ohio - crazy, right?) and I think that we took out more than we needed because we were afraid of more pop-up tolls. 

Anyway, we added to it for awhile, but kept it in a coat we rarely open so it didn't get to the point where it was overflowing. One day, I opened the closet, spotted the bottle, and got really curious, so I suggested to Carson that we open the bottle and use the money for our anniversary trip. I handed him a little hammer, but he made a smarter decision and smacked it against a piece of concrete next to the garage. 

I'm not going to lie; I wish we'd waited. There wasn't as much as we'd assumed. Still, it was exciting to see what we'd saved, and an encouragement to continue saving surprise money for later. Since we shattered that bottle, we can't continue to use it, but the next rainy day bottle is in the works. 

52 Week Savings Plan

In case you're wondering, this is another thing I do to save money: I follow this savings plan. Instead of using cash and putting it in a jar, I deposit the money weekly from my checking account to a little savings account. I deposit instead of using cash because I would forget to have that much cash on hand each week and because I have a feeling that we'd try to use the money if we saw it sitting there. This way, we set a little aside each week, and we can track what's going in. I have the amount to transfer written on the corner of the page for every Monday of the year, so that I calculate correctly. Though to be honest, it wouldn't hurt anything to double up once in awhile. 

Envelope Plan

I know several people who have tried Dave Ramsey's envelope plan to great success. We tried this for a little while and it was more frustrating than successful. Basically, you set aside one envelope for each category in your budget and use only cash to make purchases, tracking it on the envelope. Maybe we needed a better way to carry the envelopes around, we needed to divide them differently, or have a better understanding of the system, but we gave this idea the boot very quickly. Now that I'm thinking about it though, I'd like to give it another shot someday. Anyone used it successfully?