Good Bye Explorer... Hello New Car

It's a sad day at the preppy house dear friends... This morning I took my car in for some basic maintenance... only to find out that my perfectly cute, paid off, wonderful SUV that I was planning on driving "until it died." Has met an untimely end, and is apparently a death trap! My sweet car spent a few years driving on the over salted roads of upstate New York. Unbeknownst to me the road salt wreaked complete havoc with my car, and more than a handful of necessary parts have in the words of our mechanic "disintegrated" and he's not joking. He let us look under the car and parts that are supposed to be connected are just gone, and the whole car is completely rusted :( 

Basically, he said I was a few weeks away from a very dangerous accident. I spent most of the day crying and looking for new cars. Crying because I really, really loved my car. I bought it after having a major accident in New York... I totaled my car in a six car pile-up...  The explorer was an unexpected purchase and I spent the next two years busting my behind to pay the explorer off. In December of 2008 I paid of the car and have been living sans car payment for a cheerful 10 months... until today :( 


I loved my car, it was my first major purchase as a responsible adult, she's never needed any work. I sort of feel like this car represented a major achievement in my life. Having it paid off made me feel like a financially secure adult. Today, that sort of crumbled. 


Buying a car was so far off of my radar. I've been budgeting and trying to save for medical school, so I don't have any money set aside for it, and I just used the good majority of my savings to make my first tuition deposit. I have to buy a car on Monday because my grandparents are coming to visit next weekend and I'll need a vehicle to drive them around as they aren't renting a car. Phew... the weight of this unexpected expense just makes me want to crawl into bed and hide. I know that in 8 months I will be living on student loans and the idea of taking on car debt in addition to that makes me cringe!


So for now, I am begrudgingly car shopping. At the moment I'm leaning towards a 2006 Honda Civic... What do you all drive? What used cars do you recommend?

Lilly Pulitzer and a J. Crew Cardigan from Ebay

Since I am trying to spend less, and since I recently cleaned out my closet via ebay, I have been browsing for some fantastic deals... This week I found two items I couldn't pass up:

A Lilly Pulitzer tunic with gold embroidery around the collar, sleeves, and hem for $15 including shipping (for those true Lilly fans out there, what is the name of this piece do you know?)

And the J. crew Jackie Cardigan in a lovely bright berry color for $25

Yay! I'm wearing the tunic today to work, and it's a light linen blend so will be great with some white shorts for my trip to Puerto Vallarta over Thanksgiving!

Row Nine, Rue La La, Gilt Group, and One Kings Lane

Readers, this post will be short and sweet...

Most of you probably know about these member's only shopping discount sites, but for those of you who don't I wanted to let you know and give you the option to sign up.

These sites feature designers from BCBG, Vera Wang, to Kate Moss and Seven Jeans. They are member's only sites, and I've now included links to Row Nine, Rue La La and Gilt Group invitations on my side bar for you. If you would like access to One Kings Lane which is a housewares sale site just email me and I'll invite you.

The fantastic thing about these sites is you can score designer duds at remarkable discounts, with no commitment. They don't cost you a thing, and they don't sign you up for a bunch of annoying emails or anything. The return policies on these sites are fantastic and the array of sales they offer is astounding. For some of the sites the sales run only for 24 hours, for others they may run for a week.

Hit the wall head on...

I had a bad day yesterday, and today isn't necessarily looking any better! I just sort of feel like I'm stalling out right now. There are amazing things happening in my life: medical school, personal growth that started with the exercise of budgeting, spiritual growth that started with a commitment to go to church every week during this topic, but the day to day of my life... getting up, going to work, coming home, picking up, going to bed... it just sort of feels like I'm sputtering through this week, and it's only Tuesday.

I'm sure each of us has had a bad week or two occasionally, so what works to cheer you up when you've got a case of the "mean reds"?

For now I'm going to tuck in and focus on the task at hand, I think one of the best blessings and biggest challenges of life is that it is only temporary... So I know that this day, and this week will come to an end, and there's a new day and a new week full of hope and promise, and hopefully a better mood just around the corner!

Are you an Early Christmas shopper?

I love buying presents for people, and I love having a fully stocked gift closet so I'm not running out at the last minute trying to find the "perfect" hostess gift.

As such, I am an early Christmas shopper... I buy presents ridiculously early. However, this year I'm stumped as to what to get for the preppy boyfriend's father. PBF's family is always so kind and generous to me, I always want to give them something special. I have a few things for PBF's mom and sister, but his father has completely eluded me. Earlier this year I gave them a book as a hostess present and he raved about it, so I'm thinking of perhaps another book or two. He loves to cook, so perhaps a unique cook book of some sort? Maybe Texas' best BBQ or something... I don't know, I'm just stumped.
He's also been working out lately so I thought of maybe giving him a few personal trainer sessions, you know the kind where they come to your house and train you... but I thought that might be insulting? 
What have you all given your Father in law's for Christmas (I know he's not technically my father in law...)?

30 Day Shred day 3 kicked my bottom

Okay so I promise sooner or later I'll blog about something apart from the 30-day shred, it's just that it's the new thing in my life right now...

So about my last post where I say it wasn't as hard as I thought, I'm totally eating those words. I was so sore the next day that I had to take a day off. I hopped on the eliptical trainer to work out some of that soreness (I'm of the school of thought that an easy workout generates blood flow and increases recovery time). The eliptical was tough and a good workout! So this morning I was back to the shred again. My muscles are fatigued, and I'm praying for less soreness this time around... we'll see.

For anyone who has ever hated workout videos, but wants to try one again... I recommend the shred you need the video ($10) and some hand weights ($10) and you're ready to go! It's cheap and so far as been an awesome workout. One note though, in the 25 minutes I did the workout I only burned 150, about half of what I would burn on the stairmaster, treadmill, or eliptical (measured with my polar heart rate monitor). However, exercise scientists say that weight training keeps your body burning calories at a high rate much longer than cardio, so overall it's about the same for calorie burn (in theory).

Be Grateful To Yourself, 30 Day Shred Day 1

This quote was the daily quote in my Real Simple Daily Quotes email earlier this week and it struck a chord with me:

"I finally realized that being grateful to my body was key to giving more love to myself." ~ Oprah Winfrey

As I've started to budget, I've begun to realize how much shopping I really do, and how much time and effort I spend on that pursuit. For me it just feels out of proportion. Clothes are an important part of your image, and how you present yourself. But, I don't want to feel like what clothing I have and what clothing I wear defines me. Right now I think my relationship with clothes is a little unhealthy. Part of that stems from just not knowing what to do when I'm bored, and the other part of that stems from having an unhealthy image of myself. It seems as though nearly all women want to work on their figure or lose weight. I know I'm constantly wanting to change my appearance. Right now I'm working towards accepting myself for who I am, and also working towards being healthy. Eating healthier, and focusing on getting the recommended amount of cardio and strength training in per week. I would like to see some weight loss, however, I would much rather have a healthy habit of exercise. So for now I'm doing the 30 day shred for strength and doing 5 days of 30-45 min of cardio per week.
When I started the budget I had no idea how transforming it would be, but I'm really learning some important lessons about my self, and my perspectives on life through this exercise. It's exciting to feel like I'm growing as a person.

30 Day Shred, Day 1 notes:
I woke up late, but was committed to doing the 30 day shred this morning (and I was excited to do it), so I ended up being a little late to work. Thankfully nobody at work cares if your late. The workout was challenging, but it was easy to catch on to because they are familiar and basic moves. I used 5 pound weights and even now I can feel the fatigue in my arm muscles. I also wore my heart monitor and found that my heart rate was higher throughout the workout than I had thought it would be (at one point I got up into the 90% of maximum heart rate range). I also burned between 150 and 200 calories, which is what I expected given that the routine is 20 min or so. I have to say, I'm not a huge exercise video fan, but this one wasn't bad. I certainly had more energy when I got to work today! Level 1 wasn't as excruciating as some of the reviews made it sound, but I did have to modify some moves (on the second round of squats and presses I did one press for every 2 squats... also, I can't do more than 13 or so pushups without stopping). So hopefully, I'll master level one this week and can move onto level 2 next week!