Hey There, Chelsie

Lifestyle + Personal

3 Ways to Stay Motivated Around the House

  I've been thinking about motivation all week and what I need to do to keep myself motivated. I definitely could improve in motivating myself; ever since I graduated college last April, I have found myself in limbo. While waiting for Dustin to finish his degree, I picked up a part time job that was enjoyable but had nothing to do with my degree. I went from going a million miles an hour between work and school and student teaching and classes to twenty. It was really hard to motivate myself because I felt like I had nothing going for me. I especially had a hard time staying motivated around the house and keeping up on the chores! In this last few . . .

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Lifestyle + Personal

Why I am cheering for the Patriots

Okay, I know I'm going to get a lot of flack here for even writing about this, but I'm not doing it to set up tension or start serious controversy. With the whole "deflategate" and "spygate" issues spanning the media, the Patriots have become the team to hate and to route against. I can almost see why because the media has made it so easy to hate them. They don't have a perfect track record and they have made some mistakes in the past, so it's easy to pin more things on them. But, so have the Seahawks (remember the Adderall issue, anyone?).   I rooted for the Seahawks last year because I couldn't stand the thought of the Broncos/Manning winning. I . . .

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Lifestyle + Personal

5 Tips to be Financially Prepared for the New Year

Coming from someone who was up to her eyeballs in debt this time last year, I don't feel like I'm really in a place to give advice on money. At the same time, I have learned so much from getting out of credit card debt and finding ways to make sure I never put my little family in that position again. So, here are five things that I'm doing this month to be financially ahead and prepared for the new year and recommend to anyone looking for some extra tips and tricks! 1. Get ahead with the extra pay period. For those of us getting paid bi-weekly, December magically had three pay periods, which is one extra then we are used to getting in a month. Instead of looking . . .

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Lifestyle + Personal

We’re Debt Free!

I have been contemplating whether or not to write about this because it's personal and slightly embarrassing. D and I have been working on this goal since before we got married and it's been a long time coming. We learned a lot about money, finances and sacrifices while going through this process and maybe some of the tips we picked up might help someone else someday down the line. I have never been good with money. For almost my whole college career, I lived pay check to pay check. I never saved money and I used my credit cards a LOT and just paid the minimum every month and left a hefty balance on them (yes, multiple). When I got my knee replaced a few years . . .

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Lifestyle + Personal

On blogging, writing and life with Rosie.

I started blogging in my Freshman year of college. It was a little corner of the internet that belonged to me and transformed as I grew up. It started out as a place for lists, turned into a place for me to vent and eventually a place for me to write. Reading through that blog is like re-living different versions of myself-the tough as nails girl with pink and black hair, the proud cancer survivor with a knee replacement, the girl who fell in love with her best friend and waited for him over two years, the girl who was brave enough to live in China. In some ways, the posts on that blog were juvenile and immature. In other ways, some of my best writing is hidden on . . .

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