positivity is key

a big thing that matt and i are dealing with right now is money and how we don't have any.

sometimes it makes me wear a very sad face but most of the time i try to stay chipper.

both Matt and myself are pretty positive people, instead of looking at our situation in a very negative way we like to make it fun by trying new things like shopping sales and using coupons, cooking crazy meals ourselves instead of going out to eat and making up new date ideas instead of going out on the weekend.

my big sister Christy is the master of coupons/sales.

she is trying her best to pass her wisdom on to me and drill into my head that walmart is not the best place to go.

i still kinda secretly think it is but today almost changed my mind.

Christy was nice enough to give me some coupons on things i really wanted/needed including 3 coupons for Chex Mix because Matt is madly in love with them and when it's in the house he basically turns into a Chex Mix monster and eats nothing else.

i think he's even eating them right now...yes he is.

so we went to use those coupons today and we got 6 bags for only $3!

Matt was a little bit in shock when i told him he can choose all the different flavors and when we got to the register and i paid the $3 he practically grabbed the grocery bag and ran out the door like they had made a mistake ringing us up and we better get out of there before they realized what they did.

but seriously, all this for $3?

that is a steal!

and when i went shopping with Christy yesterday at Fry's i even got stuff for free because of sales and coupons combined.

now that's the way to do it!

hopefully if i follow Christy around enough stores i'll get this whole shopping thing down and it'll save us oodles and oodles!

Now something that Matt and i actually like to do is cook and try new recipes.

some of my favorites that we've made from scratch are fried chicken, lemon chicken, crock pot burritos, stir fry and last week matt actually made spicy macaroni and cheese all by himself!

it was so crazy!

i asked him to make me some mac and cheese because i was busy working and i love mac and cheese but he doesn't love it all that much so when i get downstairs my mac and cheese is ready for me but the kitchen is a total mess.

(Matt has no idea how to cook without taking every single item out of the cupboards and putting it on the counter)

but he was putting a bunch of things in a casserole dish that he later put in the oven and it turned out to be spicy mac and cheese which was really tasty!

and even TASTIER the next day for some reason.

i give him total kudos for not running to fresh and easy and buying their spicy mac and cheese that he loves so much and making his own instead!

date nights can actually be really fun when you have no money, that's what we found out.

and Matt and i are a little on the kooky side so our date nights are SUPER fun.

like one time we built a fort that covered our entire family room and we stayed in it for 2 days while we watched all the star wars movies in a row.

and one time we dressed up like star wars characters and ate star wars food and watched the family guy star wars movies.

and it kinda seems like all we do is star wars stuff but really we don't.

we like to do crafts together and walk around stores and take funny pictures and pretend to make music videos.

this weekend our grand idea was to paint and design our office!

i was super psyched about this because i'm in that office all day long, every single day and i'm sick of looking at boring white walls.

i decided that it should be a "pacific northwest" themed room, that way i can pretend that i'm there instead of in ridiculously hot arizona.

i picked a super cool minty green for the walls that would match good with all the brown accents like the curtains and the rug that i've been drooling over but can't get until my birthday.

so Matt and i went and got the paint friday night so we could spend saturday painting together.

how cute are we?

he ended up having to go to work super early saturday morning so i started painting by myself.

i started by putting a little bit of paint on one wall to make sure the color was right but i really wish i hadn't done that because i ended up not liking how it looked.

i was totally bummed but i decided i'd try painting a whole wall with it just so i could get the real feel of it and see how it looked.

sadly, i still wasn't lovin it.

this is my "not lovin it" face.

but then i told myself that i bought that whole can of paint so by golly i was going to use it whether i liked it or not!

so i kept painting and painting and painting and painting and if you're wondering why i haven't talked about Matt painting it's because he didn't paint with me, AT ALL!

that little booger tricked me into painting the whole room by myself while he went off to work in the morning and went to see iron man 2 with his dad that afternoon.

so basically i had a date with myself this weekend.

but i'm not complaining because i painted the room all by myself!

who's the bomb? i'm the bomb! THAT'S RIGHT!

and i'm happy to report that once the room was covered in minty green i actually really liked it!

i'm so glad!

once i start bringing in all the "pacific northwest" elements into the room it's going to look amazing!

i can't waaaaaait!

the only bad thing is that now that i painted this room all by myself Matt has gotten this crazy idea in his head that the whole rest of the house needs to be painted too and that i can do it since i got mad painting skills.

bummer.