Planner Addict Box and a little Wealth Advice from a guy with a mustache

This month I tried a subscription the Planner Addict Box.  I only got one box and cancelled the subscription...even before I got it...because I wanted to try another box next month.  But turns out, I would've cancelled anyways.  Not sure this one is worth it for me.  

Here are a few pictures of some of the stickers in the box.  A purple and green theme.

I didn't like this sheet specifically because there are two stickers each of the same quote.  Some people may like that...I didn't so much.

They were all cute...just not what I would probably say I must have.  10 sheets in all.

On another note...there is a must read blog I have discovered.  Mr. Money Mustache.  This guy has some great financial advice.  Extreme advice yes...but the results are extreme as well.  This post I found today was particularly interesting:  Wealth Advice that should be obvious.   Some is pretty obvious right...don't buy shit you don't need and/or can't afford.  But I love how much further he takes it.  "Never, ever go shopping."  You go to the grocery store to buy food for salads, food to prepare.  You don't go to the grocery store to go grocery shopping.  This article links to the debt emergency article.   This is also a great one.  So many people are working towards paying off debt while not making sacrifices to do so.  (guilty)  This guy talks about sacrificing hard core.  No drinks with friends.  No eating at restaurants.  You just don't until your emergency is handled.  Most of us think we aren't capable of this...but if we think of our debt as true emergency...we are capable.  It's just uncomfortable.  Then again, being in debt is uncomfortable.  So which uncomfortable do I want?  Of course I want the best of both worlds...I want to get out of all debt while living like I want to...I just have to accept that if I do then my debt emergency isn't going anywhere anytime soon.  This guy makes me think differently and look at things differently.  I like it.  The more I look and think about money, the more I look and think about money differently.

Upstairs Nook Update

This weekend I tackled a small update to the upstairs reading nook.  The one where I never go and read in.  

So I'm sending all of the above items off with the kid when she moves into her new apartment soon.

I filled the space with a new desk (found on clearance, score!) from Target and a chair (also on clearance, woot!).  I had most of the supplies to place on the desk already.  The Silhouette Cameo is a new toy from Amazon that I haven't really started playing with yet but this was the perfect space for it.

After adding the curtain and lamp I felt the space really came together nicely.  I'll add something to the wall up on the right to finish it up.  I was pleasantly happy with the fact that I got the desk and chair put together solo while only uttering a few curse words once or twice!  A productive, successful project!

Another night of awesome

Tonight I ventured out to do another workout with the local running store weekly workout group called Project Awesome.  It truly is a great group of people.  They are all excited to be there and super encouraging.  I was all pumped and ready to go.  Beth was leading us tonight.  She starts with telling us our warm up.
"We're going to run over to the parking garage..."
So far sounds good.
"Then we're going to run up it.  That's our warm up."
That is our WARM UP?!  Right.  Have I mentioned I'm not a fan of hills?   This group pounded up this parking garage like it is their job.  I did not.  Pretty sure I needed a warm up for that warm up.  Going down sure was fun though.
Then we proceeded to run down to the track for the next part of our workout.  I think it's about .75 miles to the track.  It was about 65-70 degrees tonight but it already felt like 85 and I was thirsty.  It was going to be a long hour.  Like I mentioned, everyone is super friendly.  They enjoy chatting while running.  Chatting while running is not my thing.  Mostly because I can't do it.  I need every ounce of my breath to properly function.  I'm happy to listen to someone else talk though.  But I didn't want to be rude of course and I'm still new to this group...so my .75 mile run went a bit like this:
"So what do you do?"
"I work...huff puff...at...huff puff...State Farm...huff puff."
"Oh I know a lot of people that work there."
"You?"   Because one word questions are the bomb when you can barely speak because you are still trying to recover from running up a 7 floor parking garage.
"Own my own photography business....weddings...etc...." continues to say about a paragraph's worth of sentences here.  "You have kids?"
"One. Huff...puff.  I had her...huff puff...young...huff puff...she's....huff...18...puff...graduate...huff...soon..puff."  Thinking to myself how much I want to walk.
"Wow you don't look old enough..." continues to chat and make me feel young.
"You?"  Picking up on my strategy here?
"What races you have coming up?"
"2 fun runs in April...huff huff puff puff...2 in May, huff...Jay...puff Dix...huff and Go Girl."
"Oh cool you doing the full or half for Go Girl?"
I hold up 5 fingers.  "5k."  Judge me.  I don't do halves in Columbia and I don't do marathons period.  But by this point I couldn't explain I have done 2 halves because all I had left were the huffs and puffs.
The great thing was chatting did make it go faster and it made me not stop and walk even though I would have loved to.  Again a great part of the group, the guy was obviously faster than me and runs more but slowed to my pace to keep chatting.  This is common with everyone so nobody is working out solo.

We proceed to partner up and do relays of walking lunges and burpees.  Which earns a groan from me.  Then Beth announces we are doing 2 laps around the track.  1 easy, 1 hard.  Or in my case, 2 easy.  We come back and do more partner relays.  This time planks and walking planks.  As I'm doing my walking planks I glance over at Beth and say "Great idea Beth."  Those suckers are WAY harder than they look.  I was hoping nobody would notice my modification on the way back to my partner but I heard someone laugh and say "Shyla is crawling."  Caught me.  I owned it.  Heck yeah I'm crawling.  The workout was so hard I literally was crawling to the finish.  Literally.

Next we did some wall sits.  I was next to Beth and I said "Isn't this hour about over yet?"  Then I remembered I am trying to complain less and I said "These are my favorite."  I don't think she believed me.  We did two more "easy" laps around the track.  I was in desperate need of a drink and someone pointed out a water fountain.  It was a mirage.  They didn't work.  Womp womp.  Beth asked how I felt when we finished up...I said "I'm out of gas."  So after all that then we run .75 miles back to the store.  I mostly walked this but did run some.  Until a bug flew right into my eye.  Then I called it.  I think I would rather swallow a bug than have to dig one out of my eye.  It is truly unpleasant.

Lessons learned tonight:
Running up a parking garage is just as hard as it sounds.
Walking planks are a lot harder than they sound.
The fitness community is truly awesome.
This group gives the best high fives.
I need to eat more during the days before a Project Awesome workout.
There's no shame in crawling to the finish line.

Shamrox 5k

March 13th was the Shamrox 5k.  It was a cold, dreary day.  That line just kept going through my head that morning.  Just the typical, cliche opening book line.  

The run was at the winery in Rocheport for the 2nd year in a row.  I knew from last year that I could expect a nice downhill course, then some flat trail, followed by a hell of a hill to end it all on.  My only goal was to beat my time from last year.

This guy...I would hate to wear that green pantyhose thing all day.

My hair was so gross at the end just from the fog.  I have pretty much only been doing spinning for cardio.  I did a mile warm up here and there at the gym but not really running much.  I was pleasantly surprised to feel great during the run (although the picture above looks like I feel a little rough).  I especially love the downhill!  The hill at the end was not pleasant but it was better than last year.  I shaved about 3 minutes off my time from last year.  I'm hoping this means I'm on track for a new PR this year, aiming for May.  Two runs coming up in April that are fun runs and two in May that are probably my favorite runs of the year.

I have gotten hooked on the Showtime series The Affair.  I thought there was a brilliant monologue in an episode I watched recently where the character Noah is answering the question "Can love last?"  He responded with "I believe love is a kind of faith and when two people both believe, something very powerful happens.  If you and I are in love and I trust you enough to lean in towards you and you trust me enough to lean in towards me then we meet in the middle, it's a triangle and we're holding each other up and it's very strong and unbreakable.  But if I disappear, you can't hold our house up alone, you're kind of falling through open air.  Love can't work without the trust, without the faith.  That's why people say when somebody cheats they were unfaithful.  Think about that word."  I thought that writing was pretty awesome.  What a great way to sum up a partnership and love.  The whole series is pretty interesting.  You see the first season from both perspectives of 2 people and the second season you see perspectives from 4 people.  It's kind of eye opening really...to see the same "story" and think how in real life people do perceive what happened differently.  It's often hard to see things outside of our own perceptions.

Speaking of TV shows, if you are a fan of Marvel...season 2 of Daredevil is great.  Mainly, because of The Punisher storyline.

Trash Talk

Time to get rid of some trash again.  This month I had plenty. 



My beloved O2 Gold from Advocare ($31.16), again not sure if this is a placebo but since taking it I swear I can breathe better.  I take Vitamin C every day.  I just bought this one at Target and recently bought a new bottle at Wal-Mart for about $5.  I've read that it taking 2,000 mg daily is a good anti-aging routine.  That's 3 times the normal dose than I normally take so I will probably dig a little deeper.  But I'm all about anti-aging.  I take some B12 daily for energy and a slew of other benefits.  I really like the chewable cherry flavored tablets from Wal-Mart and they are only about $3.50.  I finished a bottle of the Equate brand Ibuprofen PM ($4).  I always get the Equate Ibruprofen and the PM from Wal-Mart.  It's SO much cheaper than name brand and just as good.  I keep a bottle of both in my nightstand.  I have learned if I feel a headache coming on in the middle of the night the last thing I want to do is get out of bed to hunt down pills.  Unless it's a bad one. Then only the RX will do.  My last bottle is Catalyst ($25.20) which is an amino acid supplement.  

Total:  $68.86

Purex Crystals in Lavendar...a must.  About $4.00 at Target. 

Hair products...Suave dry shampoo...I love this stuff!  It's getting tougher to find for some reason.  I couldn't find it at Target and grabbed the last bottle at Wal-Mart.  It's $3 and smells great.  I bought this Aveda Smooth Infusion from Nordstrom online over a year ago for about $30.  It's pricey but I liked it a lot and it lasted a very long time.  I used less than a dime sized amount at a time and I think it really helped smooth my hair.  I used it on my damp hair and let it air dry.  I would probably actually buy it again.  I had two shampoo samples.  Wella shampoo which is my favorite!  It smells SO good.  A huge bottle goes for about $15 on Amazon...which after looking at that I kind of want to buy it.  So I'm going to call this bottle about $1. The Clear shampoo is pretty good too and also smells really good.  This bottle is closer to about 75 cents.

Total:  $34.75

Body products...the Coconut Frosting shower gel from Philosophy was a Christmas gift.  It smelled pretty awesome.  It also can double as bubble bath and shampoo but I only used it as shower gel.  I was told it was purchased on sale for $10.  I used 3 of my Mango Temptation lotions up.  ($5 each) I despise their new packaging.  They basically kept the body butter in not as good of a formula scent wise, kept the thickness, and put it in a squeeze tube versus a tub.  So it is very difficult to get the product out.  So what I've done is kept one of my old tubs and started to just cut open the tube and put all the lotion in the tub so I don't have to fight with squeezing the lotion from the tube and giving myself hand cramps and threatening to never buy from VS again which is an obvious lie.  The Olay shower gel was in a Pinch Me sample box (I think this would be about $1.50 if I'm estimating low).  It was decent.  I typically don't buy the full size due to price.

Total:  $26.50

I finally finished up this Loreal Color Riche Balm in Pink Satin which goes for about $6.99.  It's pretty moisturizing for about 3 minutes.  There really is no color to it.  Finished the small bottle of the Smashbox Primer Water which goes for $16.99.  Using the full size bottle now because I'm pretty addicted to this stuff!  I like using it before and after I do my makeup.  Finished 2 bottles of eye make-up remover which was the Clinique Take the Day Off ($9) and the Estee Lauder remover ($9).  I like both of these but unless it just doesn't work I'm not too picky on removers.  Now I'm on to a drugstore remover which works just as good and is much cheaper but I had these samples from orders. I decided to stop hoarding all my samples of toothpaste and used the Tom's toothpaste ($1?) which was really minty and nice.  Also finished the Pond's cream ($2.03) which I pretty much used on my neck.  It lasted a long time.  It was decent, didn't love it. 

Total:  $45.01

I'm including the empty Hy-Vee cotton ball bag because these were terrible.  The "regular size" were like miniature marshmallow size.  Would not repurchase these.  I think I paid maybe $1.50 for them. 

Trash total 03/14/16:   $180.62

Trash total   2/7/16:        $311.07

Trash total:  2/17/16:    $251.02

Grand total year to date: $742.71

Doing this has inspired me to finish up a lot in my pantry too.  I've recently finished up a lot of products that have sat there for too long.  I've been drinking a lot of hot tea that says "Kroger" on the label.  We don't even have a Kroger here so that is at least 8 years old.  I'm not going to Google how long tea lasts and just hope it doesn't expire.  It tastes good and I'm not puking...so, so far so good!

Feb Faves, Comfort Zones, and a Life Hack

 My mom called me the other day to tell me there was a set of gel pens on sale on Amazon for 10.99. I thought "I so do not need to order those." then promptly proceeded to go check it out, read reviews that made the pens sound like the best thing since sliced bread, and ordered them. The reviews were dead on. I love these things. The black one writes great for everyday writing and the glitter ones are super pretty. I have been using them for my next favorite....

 The coloring book I bought at Target for five bucks. These things are super expensive at Michael's! It is pretty addicting and relaxing.

 I have been writing more lately and this book had been inspiring me. It is awesome. I love it.

 I stocked up on my Nivea lip butters the other day and was happy to have a stash so I can throw them around multiple rooms of the house to always have one in arms reach.

 I ran out of multivitamins not too long ago and I typically buy the Target brand. I was at Wal-Mart so I looked and found these had a mail in rebate to try free. I like free stuff. They also taste good and it's kind of like eating a treat so win-win.

This stuff....not a fave.  I found it at Wal-Mart sometime last year and I think it regenerates itself so I can never finish this bottle I want to throw away so badly. I just can't do it. I mix it with other shampoos because this one is just bad.  Will never buy again.

The other night I forced myself out of my comfort zone and went to the local running store for a weekly group workout called Project Awesome. I was nervous about it since I can be completely socially awkward. I made myself go. (And a text from a far away friend telling me to do it encouraged me too) I was so glad I did. I had a great time. The workout was great and a way to really push myself and the people were so nice. There were people of all ages and fitness levels and it was all about encouraging each other. Once a month the workout is a pub run and the group goes out to have a drink after. I happened to show up on the right night and everyone encouraged me to join after for the fun. I had no doubt I would return next week. Oh and I won some free socks so that was a fun bonus! I could barely walk the next day but I think that means I did it right. I determined comfort zones are overrated and the saying is true...nothing good happens in them.

On another note I discovered a life hack courtesy of Pinterest that worked wonders. Coke as a cleaner for toilets. I poured a 16oz bottle in, let it sit for 30 mins. and barely had to put any arm power into scrubbing. I don't think I will ever buy a bottle of toilet cleaner again. Makes you wonder what it does to your body doesn't it? I am pretty sure I wouldn't normally consume something I would clean my home with so that should deter me from ever drinking that again!