We got a new piece of artwork for our home, and I could not be more excited!!!! With the business and our studio keeping us busy, our home has been neglected for quite some time. Dan and I set some goals when we started Dave Ramsey, and when we hit a recent milestone, we bought this canvas for our home (we had cash for it, of course.) :) We still have a
long way to go,
a lot of goals to achieve, and still aren't making all of the payments we want to be right now, but once we sat down and crunched the numbers of how far we've come on the Dave Ramsey plan over the last 10 months, we couldn't help but to celebrate a little.
We ordered this 30X40 canvas gallery wrap to hang over our fireplace, and that's exactly what we did when it came in. After much contemplating, I decided it just didn't look perfect where it was so I made Dan move it down 3 inches, which meant visible holes in the wall to fix (sorry honey). With the canvas moved and two more holes in the wall, I still didn't think it looked just right, and we set it above the couch to see how it would look there. That was it! It looked perfect! Especially with our brainstorming and plans to add to it later! (See below)
Finally the huge wall of our living room had something interesting to look at! I rummaged through our closet and dug up the framed prints that Dan bought me during his photography internship in Italy in 2002, which fit perfectly over the fireplace.
We have two 11X14 canvases upstairs, so I brought them down just to see what it might look like to hang two of this size on either side of the big canvas, and we loved the look! We did a quick photo shoot of the girls a few nights ago because there is a perfect field of overgrown weeds near our house. I have a feeling those will be perfect 11X14 additions to our wall, but those will be coming in the future... hopefully sooner than later!
This is a rough idea of what we'll be doing, with two on the right too!
If you've been following our journey and been contemplating doing
Dave Ramsey, DO IT. It has changed our life more than any other thing we've ever done and we are
so grateful. Since October we've paid off about $30,000 of our debt (not including mortgage payments). I'm proud to say we are down one credit card, three store credit cards, we finally own our carpet, and we finally paid off the last of our $15,000 of hospital bills. I guess that means we can keep Natalie. :)
The only thing we changed was putting numbers on paper and sticking to a budget that
we created based on what was important to us. (We didn't cut our cable and Dan didn't give up coffee...) It's not always easy. It's hard to stay motivated. It's awkward to say "no" sometimes. But in the end, it is so worth it. And I would venture to say you don't need to be in major debt to get
a lot out of his teachings about insurance, investments, college, retirement, teaching children about money, etc, etc, etc. And if you are in debt? Well, if we can do it, you can do it.
I promise. And then you can buy a big 30X40 canvas of your family from
BRAND PHOTODESIGN to celebrate. ;)
We have waited a long time to take our girls to their first movie ever, and although I was still a little nervous about chasing them around the theater and shhhhing them for two hours, to my delight they (mostly) stayed in their seats, quietly paid attention, and absolutely LOVED it!!! Every part of the experience was new and so much fun for them! We had a ball.
Thanks, Sammi and Natalie, for giving us such a memorable and fun first movie experience together!!!! XOXO
