Desiree Gets Creative

Hi all! Long time no see. What have you been doing during this quarantine? Me? I've been SPENDING MONEY. Ugh. I was doing so good and then here comes Covid 19 with it's stress, and prolonged stay at home orders, and the resultant cabin fever and next thing you know I'm shopping online. I've broken all my rules. I bought fabric, I bought eyeshadow when Melt had their reopening sale, I bought books, I bought a new outfit, I bought a new sewing machine (which is fabulous, but more on that later.) With all my plans being cancelled, the salons closed, and nothing fun on the horizon it's been really hard to talk myself out of buying things. I've decided that today I have to reign it in and restart my no buy ... Again. Same rules, new start/end date. From Memorial Day 2020 to Memorial Day 2021 I will (hopefully) find no further excuses to spend loads of money for no apparent reason on things I really don't need anyway. Now let's talk about that sewing machin...

Hi all! One of the things that I've found difficult during my no buy has been curbing my Starbucks addiction. I have allowed myself one trip to Starbucks per month (vs. my usual every time I'm shopping at Target, or out running errands and drive past one, or out running errands and not really driving past one but there's one that I can make a detour to, or just whenever I actually leave the house because, hey, I'm outside ...) So, in order to provide myself that pick me up that only a fancy coffee seems to give I did some research. Now I don't have a milk frother or anything fancier than a Keurig for my at home coffee making and I didn't want to buy anything because that would miss the point entirely, helloooo I'm on a no buy, so instead I opted for finding out how to make delicious steamed and frothed milk with what I had. All you'll need to make lattes and cappucinos at home is strong coffee (because I also do not have an espresso machine. Yes, I know...

Hi All! So I've been implementing a new workout/cleaning schedule to keep myself on track and unfortunately that's meant that I haven't had time during the week to blog. I decided today that I'll blog on the weekend from now on while my husband's home. My daughter doesn't let me do anything on the computer when she's awake (she actually closes my laptop!) and I've been using her nap time to write for Textbroker and do transcription. So, you'll be seeing one post from me on Sundays from now on where I'll discuss how my no buy is going, give tips, and let you know what item I've decluttered for the week. Valentine's Day weekend I had a minor regression. My husband brought home a bottle of wine to go with my Valentine's Day chocolates and I may or may not have had a glass too many. I woke up the next day to discover I had made a purchase while tipsy. What did I buy? Was it the adorable fabric I had my eye on for my daughter with the sup...

Hi all! Here we are on financial update Wednesday. I know I missed declutter Friday and Makeup Monday but I've been recouperating from a minor procedure I had on Friday and didn't feel up to blogging. Nothing serious, and I'm fine, just needed some rest. Of course one of the things that I tend to do when I'm not feeling well is to spend way too much time looking at things on my phone I have no business looking at which led me to notice that a bunch of fabric companies have really cool fabric out right now that I'd love to buy but can't. While it's been tempting I managed to not get anything so I'm pretty proud of myself. Some of the preorders are going to be open for a while yet so I have to keep not buying them until the end of the month. I'm dodging fabrics with images ranging from The Witcher to Rainbow Brite here so it's not going to be easy. Helping me along the way is the fact that Awesome Con just announced that the cast from Back to the...

So here we are just about one month into my reboot of my no spend year and I'm doing really well. Last week I took some time to just focus on spending time with the babies and getting back into my fitness routine (I do LES MILLS workouts at home through their On Demand platform, it is amazing.) I only made about $80 last week, which is definitely below my weekly income goal, and you know what? I'm okay with that. Typically this would've been a cause of anxiety for me. How am I going to pay my Sezzle or After Pay bills? I won't have enough to buy that fabric, book, makeup, or article of clothing I've been coveting all week. This week I didn't care. I think this is probably the first week in a long time where money wasn't at the forefront of my thoughts all week. You know what else? my daughter's finally starting to call me Mommy, sometimes she comes to me for play time instead of my husband, and she loves snuggling with me in the morning af...

Hi all! As I promised earlier this week I'm going to talk about counterfeit makeup in this blog post partly because I'm pretty sure I accidentally bought some on Mercari. Now I know you've seen in my makeup Monday posts that I own some dupe palettes from Bad Habit. So the main difference between dupes and counterfeits is that dupes, while considered problematic by some, are completely legitimate, legal products. Bad Habit is/was (Again, I'm not sure. They still have a website but there aren't any products listed on it and I'm pretty sure the "away" message has been the same since Shop Hush closed last year.) a registered brand and their products have to go through all the quality tests and have all legal ingredients listed on their packaging just like any other product you can buy at a legitimate retail store. Their product can be similar in color and packaging as the original product but they can't be the same, no logos, no claiming to be the br...

I think one of the hardest parts of my no buy is not buying fast food. I made this decision both for my health and for my wallet. When you're out running errands and you get hungry it's easy to just pull into a drive through and get some lunch. I always think, "Well, it's fast and it's cheap." But all those cheap meals really add up over time and so does that cholesterol. Since I tend to plan out my week it's easy for me to know which days I'll be running errands and plan accordingly. I try to do most of my errand running between the hours of 9 AM and 12 PM so that way I leave after breakfast and get back home in time for lunch. This tends to work really well with the kids too because they tend to be at their most agreeable in the morning. Well, my daughter is a grump before breakfast but once she's fed she's fine. If I can't do my errands during that time period, like I have a doctors appointment or something that got scheduled during lu...