Tag «budget»

Living in a Land Down Under (Part V)

While my sister lived in Australia, she lived in Newcastle with other students studying abroad. Newcastle is about a 3 hour train ride north of Sydney. We spent about a week there when I came to visit. Obviously, I met all of her fellow students and we hung out most nights, either bar hopping around …

You Can’t Step In the Same River Twice

The annual canoe trip was almost three weekends ago (August 18th-20th) so I’m here to give you the rundown on our favorite budget trip of the summer. We drove up to Roscommon and the Canoe Harbor Campground Friday after Seth got off of work. We set up our tent just before full dark set in …

Spirit in a Vacuum

Just when you thought we were done adding family members for a while, I have to introduce you to a new one: Herbie! Herbie (AKA Herbert Hoover) is our new robotic vacuum, and I am in love with him. Herbie is an ECOVACS DEEBOT N79 Robotic vacuum, and I found him on Amazon. I have …

Living in a Land Down Under (Part III)

After our last night of silliness in Sydney, we flew to Cairns. Compared to the relative bustle of Sydney and its air of excitement, Cairns felt incredibly laid back. Like a summer night in the South, but way more liberal and with surfboards and dreadlocks. This was probably my favorite stop on the entire trip. …

Living in a Land Down Under (Part II)

Sydney I arrived in Sydney after a 14 hour flight from Dallas (and a six hour layover before that) exhausted and sure that I wanted nothing more than a nap. So when I found my sister at the airport, we headed to our hostel. Yes I said hostel. I know in America that word conjures …

Living in a Land Down Under (Part I)

In 2012 my sister, Allison, was studying abroad in Australia. I had been working at the Bench for a little over a year, hadn’t yet bought Bones, and had no idea what to do with server money after working minimum wage retail jobs for the previous six years. So when she suggested I come visit, …

A House With No Curtains

Today I’m going to talk about “in a pinch” window treatments that work. This post is pretty short because these are pretty easy. Sometimes you have a window or two that needs dressing up without needing a full-blown window treatment. It may be a frosted window in your bathroom.  It may be a window that …

Where Do the Children Play?

In our circle of friends, RISK has always been our excuse to get together and hang out, usually for absurdly long game sessions. One complaint we always had was that the countries on the RISK board were often too small to accommodate large armies (of plastic game pieces). At the time, we had a hand-me-down …

Bills, Bills, Bills

I was listening to a morning radio show on my way into work a couple of days ago, and they were talking and laughing about when they lie to their spouse about their spending. I wish I was joking. They didn’t call it lying of course. One of the hosts was talking about her “shopping …

Island in the Sun

This post is an alert for all of you world travelers (or would-be world travelers) out there. You may or may not have seen posts like this floating around sometime this year: The U.S. Virgin Islands Will Actually Pay You To Visit In 2017 I saw this crop up at the end of 2016 and …