Busy-Bodies

Life with the Casterlines has been very busy as of late.

:/

:(

O.o

We are in a marathon of music right now. Roman was asked to play drums for a friend in a concert this Friday night (with an estimated audience of 7,000(!!!!) people!). For the last few weeks he’s been travelling to Moultrie to attend practices. Read: we may or may not have eaten dinner at 10:45 one night.

On another note (pun intended), we are also playing in a concert this Sunday afternoon at Wild Adventures. Roman will be playing drums and I’ll be playing keys for our church’s Hispanic band. So no, you won’t know anything that gets said unless you know Spanish, but yes, it will be a totally fun (exhausting) day with lots of roller coasters. But unfortunately, this has also resulted in weekly practices. Read: okay fine, we have eaten dinner at 10:45 several nights.

O.o  

That’s okay though, after this Sunday all of that excitement will be over and we can return to our regular level of busyness. Which means I’ll wake up from my zombie state next week and get back on schedule with life. In the meantime, I’ll just be here….drinking lots of coffee….and eating chocolate. Does anyone want to help me do dishes??? I’ve got a ton waiting for me at home….

"All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty." ~Proverbs 14:23

Weekend Warriors

Let me tell you, I am very fortunate to have married a man who cuts the grass. Because I totally HATE cutting grass. But y'all, I'm concerned about my husband's love relationship with his new lawn mower.

Meet Larry the Lawn Mower: 

Larry was given to us by some good friends. He's an older guy, and he's definitely not the prettiest, but he runs and cuts grass and that's all we need. Notice the blade guard fashioned out of license plates.....

 Also notice the lack of engine cover.....

Unfortunately, Larry was not quite in working order when we first got him, so Roman had to do some work on him before he started working properly. As in, until recently he could only turn one direction, so Roman had to cut the grass in crop circles. Pretty funny to me, pretty aggravating to my OCD-with-yard-stuff husband. So for a few days my garage had stuff like this in it.....

Y'all. Roman stayed out there until ten-o'clock one night working on the lawn mower. In his words, I have no idea how awful it is for a man to have to borrow another man's lawn mower because his is broke. And I have no idea how awesome it feel to have my own lawn mower. I guess this is one of those "differences between gender" things, because I would love to never own a lawn mower so that I would never have to cut the grass.

But after a few parts and a few hours of tinkering, my husband excitedly entered the house and declared that the repairs were complete and he was about to cut his grass for the very first time in our married life with his very own lawn mower.  A true declaration of manhood, to be sure. Here he is, living it up.

I will keep you all posted on the creepy love status of my husband and Larry the Lawn Mower. In the meantime, I'm just excited that I don't have to cut the grass. And that we no longer have crop circles in our front yard.

Progress folks, progress.

"The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever." ~Isaiah 40:8

September Financial Update

Is anyone else blown away about it being September already, or is it just me? 

This will make the fourth time this year that I write about our finances. The first was this post in February, the second was this post in May, and then the last time was this post in June. 

In the last post, I mentioned that I was nervous about the coming furlough. Now that the furlough is over, I figured it would be a good time to revisit our goals and be accountable on where we are with them. So let's dive in, shall we? #warningitslong

At the end of July, Roman and I re-did our entire budget. For this year, we've kind of had the method of "pay extra on everything-especially whatever has the highest interest rate." But I started to feel like we weren't really getting anywhere. We weren't seeing any success because nothing was actually getting paid off, and then when we weren't able to pay extra because of the furlough, it really started to feel unsuccessful. So one day I decided to cost it out: how much interest were we saving and how soon would everything be paid off after the furlough under our current method, vs. the consolidation method vs. the Dave Ramsey "snowball method". And the results were kind of surprising.

I thought for sure that the consolidation method would be the cheapest and the fastest because we would be able to save interest on our high-interest credit card. But in consolidating, we also lost the benefit of our low-interest credit line and student loan so we actually spent more money on interest. Pretty interesting, huh? (pun 100% intended) We also would not have been debt-free until February of 2015 because of the higher interest we would be paying. So this method wound up being the worst. 

The next-best method was our current method: paying a lot of extra on our high-interest items and paying a little extra on our low-interest method. Although we did save some interest against the consolidation method, because of the furlough we were not going to be debt-free until January of 2015. And it was going to be May of 2014 before anything actually got paid off--that's a long time to wait to see any of the fruits of our labor. 

That leaves the Dave Ramsey method: snowballing. If you aren't familiar with this method, you take the smallest debt you have and pay as much as you can on it while making the minimum payments on everything else. Once it's paid off, you take that money you were paying and add it to the next-smallest debt until it's paid off. You continue this method until everything is paid off. I thought we would be spending more money on interest under this method because our smallest item (credit line) also has one of the lowest interest rates, but I was wrong because under this method our two high interest items (credit card/couch loan) were getting paid off MUCH faster. However, we did tie with our current method as far as timeline goes-thank you, furlough. 

So without further ado, here are our old goals.......

Goal #1: Pay off student loan by end of 2014.

Goal #2: Pay off credit card/credit line by July of 2014. 

Goal #3: Go on a second cruise in October. 

Goal #4: Have $3,000 in savings by end of 2014. 

Goal #5: Pay off our couch loan by end of 2014. 

Goal #6: Be 100% debt-free by end of 2014. 


And here are our updated goals under our new plan......

Goal #1: Pay off student loan by January of 2015.

Goal #2: Pay off credit card by March of 2014.

Goal #3: Pay off credit line by October of 2013. 

Goal #4: Have $3,000 in savings by end of 2014.

Goal #5: Pay off couch loan and car by June of 2014.

Goal #6: Be 100% debt-free by January of 2015.

As you can see, everything gets paid off faster except for the student loan. And the only reason we are behind by one month on the student loan is because we haven't been able to throw as much money towards our debt the past six weeks due to the furlough. 

Another thing we did was start saving for Christmas this month. In the past, we've used a combination of my Christmas bonus and credit to pay for Christmas. This year it's not guaranteed that federal employees will receive a bonus, so I don't want to rely on that. We certainly don't want to go deeper into debt while we are trying to pay it off, so we've done a mini-budget on what we want to spend for Christmas and a savings plan to make sure we have the money available. 

It's really exciting to see Goal #3, because we get to see something paid off by next month. Finally, results! Wahoo!! So congratulations Dave, you win. Not only are we saving money on interest under your method, but we are seeing the fruits of our labor a lot faster too, thereby keeping us motivated and dedicated to reach our financial goals. 

Whew! That was a long one. But you guys are all invited to an ice cream party in January 2015 so we can celebrate our debt-conquering, m'kay?? Bring the cool whip and chocolate syrup! 

Pssst: If you want to learn more about Dave Ramsey and his guide to money management, you can check out his web page here. (Not an affiliate, just really love his product!)

"The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender." ~Proverbs 22:7

The Tale of Ms. Lauren

Meet Lauren.

I normally over-share about Duke, but rarely about this *ahem* darling kitty of ours. My friend calls her the "oil spill kitty". I call her a muskrat.

I am fairly sure she at least a cousin to a muskrat. 

Guys. I know all cats are kind of weird, but this cat goes a little bit beyond the general cat-weirdness. For one, she actually looks like a muskrat. You can't really see it in any of the pictures I have of her, but her body is really chunky, and her legs are really short. This gives her a general muskratty appearance.

This also impairs her from doing normal cat-like things. 

Take jumping for instance. Sometimes she is able to jump on top of the cabinets. Sometimes she halfway makes it and then falls down. Sometimes she runs really fast and forgets to jump at all and just headbutts the cabinet. 

She's just really really weird.

For the past several weeks, she has spent most of her waking hours staring out one of the windows in our bedroom. 

Our house has plenty of windows, but apparently this one has suddenly become special. When I wake up in the morning, she is there. When I come home from work, she is there. 

We thought she was staring at a tree that was growing out of the bush right in front of that window, but Roman cut it down over a week ago. And she is still sitting there. She's probably sitting there as I write this post. 

I'm telling you guys, when my mom rescued her out of our barn when she was just a tiny kitten, I'm certain that she suffered brain damage from malnutrition. I just wish I had known that I was adopting a muskrat. A muskrat that should spend her time staring out of one window and shedding a bucket of fur every day all over my house. A muskrat that would eat the heads off of roaches and leave the rest of them on my floor during the night. A muskrat that never wanted to be petted, but wanted to gnaw on your fingers and toes instead. 

I'm telling you guys, she goes beyond the general level of cat-weirdness. Even Duke doesn't want to chase her. Oh, and did I mention that she likes to chew on his dog toys? (see above)

Weird. Really weird. 

"A glad heart makes a cheerful face, but by sorrow of heart the spirit is crushed." ~Proverbs 15:13

Two Years Old!

So yesterday we had a birthday……

*sniff sniff* My little baby-dog is a whole two years old now!

I did not attempt to bake him another dog-friendly cake like I did last year, because that was a disaster. You know the dog-friendly cake tastes bad when the dog won’t even eat it. Ahem.

He did get his favorite dog treat, some bites of my lasagna and his favorite: a small chunk of shredded cheese straight out of the bag. Oh yea, and he got a bath. Because he went swimming in the pond and there was no way I was going to hug that dog with him smelling like that.

It’s hard to believe that just under two years ago we were giving him his very first bath at our old house.

It’s really funny to look at his puppy photos and see how his facial expressions really haven’t changed all that much over the past two years. He just weighs fifty more pounds.....

 

For those of you who may not know, we adopted Duke the day after Thanksgiving in 2011 from the Humane Society. His original name was "Jabo", and it was totally love at first sight. He was so excited when we first met that he started scooting around the floor on his belly. Sold. He came home to be our child dog dog-child and has made us laugh every day since. Seriously guys, adopt a dog. Best. Decision. Ever.

Leaving the shelter with our new baby!

Christmas 2011



Christmas 2012



Okay, enough with the puppy-dog cuteness. Who else is excited about a three-day weekend? This has been one roller-coaster week for sure, so I’m definitely looking forward to a lazy weekend, some cookouts, and a few hours at the pool. I hope all of you have a safe and happy weekend!  :)

Just kidding, one more:

Okay, I'm done now, I promise.

"You are the Lord, You alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and You preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships You."  ~Nehemiah 9:6

Bundle of the Week

Happy Monday! Today, I’d like to share some exciting news:

I’m really excited to partner with The Bundle of the Week! Here’s how it works: every week they sell a bundle of five eBooks for only $7.40 (that’s 65% off!) The sale goes up on Monday at 8 a.m. and closes the following Monday at 8 a.m. This is a Christian-based organization, so you won’t ever find anything gross or inappropriate in the bundle. However, the topics from week to week vary from marriage to organic living to organization tips. As of this week, I am an affiliate with this company which means I earn a small percentage if you use the links on my blog to purchase something from their store. From time to time I’ll do a post detailing the Bundle of the Week, but if I don’t do a post one Monday, you can still click on their image I have in the sidebar to find out what this week’s bundle is. As an affiliate, in order for me to receive credit for the sale, you have to use one of the links posted on this blog. I have the links to this week’s bundle in this post. I also have links in the left sidebar that will link to the current week’s bundle. I love this company, and I have used them to purchase bundles before. They feature some really great authors with helpful information (I recently purchased one that covered blogging!), so I’m really excited to help spread the word about this great resource.



This week’s bundle is for the married folks, with 5 eBooks to spice up your love life. Everything from rekindling romance to being the best spouse you can be is included in these five books. I understand how easy it is to get busy and put your marriage on the backburner while you handle “everything else”, but we do not need to do this! Rediscover that spark and prioritize romance this week. ;)  Since I often post about marriage on this blog, I thought this week’s bundle was a great one to feature. Click here to get your bundle!

Here are the five books, along with a short description:

“The Wife Life” by Marla Taviano: Is married life a little different than you thought it would be–or maybe a lot different? Do you wonder if something is wrong, if other people feel the same way about their marriages? Are you sometimes intimidated by wives who seem to have it all together? Marla has been there, and she knows what it’s like to adjust from unrealistic expectations to real life. In The Wife Life she offers hope and encouragement — with her trademark humor and the sensitivity of someone who’s been in your shoes.

“31 Days to Great Sex” by Sheila Wray Gregoire: In 31 Days to Great Sex, Sheila takes you step by step through the process of building a fun and intimate sex life. It doesn’t only focus on the mechanics of sex — though there are certainly exercises that will give you tons of fireworks — but also focuses on building friendship, experiencing real intimacy, and learning to have fun again.

“Rekindling Romance Kit” by Jason & Jami Balmet: Romance is a big part of marriage, and can be a very enjoyable part at that. But without care it can wither and perhaps even die, relegated to anniversaries and Hallmark holidays. In Rekindling Romance, Jason and Jamie have created the perfect romance kit, with 7 inexpensive date ideas and more than 30 pages of printables to help you reignite the spark!

“The Irresistible Husband” by Jason Gratehouse: The Irresistible Husband was written to help every husband live up to his potential to be irresistible to his wife. This book is simple, practical and easy-to-read, and the principles within will help you have the marriage that you and your wife have always dreamed of. If your marriage has reached a plateau, or is even in a state of decline, this book could be the spark to rekindle the flame.

“Christian Woman’s Guide to Romance on a Budget” by Rhonda White: Is your marriage in a rut? Take action with these fun date ideas that won’t break the bank. This is a quick, Christian-based ebook that includes Scripture from God’s Word for your marriage plus tips for a healthy relationship and 33 date ideas to help you rediscover the romance!

Remember, you can only get this bundle for the discounted price of $7.40 through 8 a.m. Monday next week, so order yours today!

"The godly offer good counsel; they teach right from wrong." ~Psalm 37:30

WFMW: Easy Dinner Recipe

I love easy dinners. What I love more than easy dinners are easy dinners that taste really good. Everyone knows that pork chops and mac n’ cheese is easy, but you can only eat that for so long before your whole family is like “nooooo…….mac n’ cheese again???!?” Last week Roman posted a picture of one our favorite meals and he was asked by several of his friends to dish out the recipe. Your wish is my command!  :)

Creamy Pesto Chicken

Ingredients:

2 tbsp. butter

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (cut into cubes)

1 can condensed cream of chicken soup

3 cups bow-tie pasta

½ cup pesto sauce (we use the basil kind, not the original kind)

½ cup milk

½ cup Mozzarella cheese (optional)

Directions:

1.       Melt butter in a large skillet. Add the chicken and cook until firm (about five minutes). While the chicken is cooking, go ahead and start cooking your pasta in a separate pot.

2.      Add the soup, pesto sauce and milk in with the chicken and bring it to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cook until chicken is cooked through.

3.      Optional: sprinkle mozzarella cheese on top and stir it in. (Because we all know that cheese makes everything more awesome!)

4.      Drain your cooked pasta and add it to everything and *boom* you’re done.

5.      Post pictures of your amazing dinner to Facebook

I discovered this recipe scribbled on a piece of paper in my recipe drawer about three weeks ago and decided to give it a shot. I have no idea where I wrote it down from, or how long it was hiding out in my drawer, but I’m definitely glad I ran across it! We may or may not have eaten it once a week for the past three weeks……   O:)

Easy, delicious dinners work for me!

“Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” ~Romans 8:14