And the winners are...

Are you ready to know who won the vinyl monograms?!

Drum roll please...

The winners are:

Kelly, Alyssa, and Roxanne

Congrats Ladies!

Email me [meghansray(at)gmail(dot)com] and give me your address, your color choices(1 per monogram), and the initials you would like (please put the initials in monogram order. for example, mine would be mRs) All of the monograms will be in the style pictured in the last post.

Here are your color choices:

Garnet

Red

Light Purple

Dark Purple

Green

Lime Green

Yellow

Dark Blue

Light Blue

Gold

Silver

Grey

Brown

Black

Orange

Light Pink

If you didn't win this time, that's ok! I can still get you a monogram for a great price! Email me and we will work something out!

Keep Calm

And monogram EVERYTHING!

Well, that's at least my motto ;)

I got a Cricut a while back and although I've done a few paper projects with it, it is mainly here for cutting vinyl!

I don't have all the time in the world so my personal projects are kinda on the back burner for the moment but I have enjoyed making monograms and personalizing a few gifts for friends!

 Some of the car monograms I've made!

Love the teal and white combo!

These chairs are such a neat gift and they don't break the bank!

If you're looking for some vinyl work, please feel free to contact me and we will see what we can do!

 

In the meantime, I'll be giving away some vinyl goodies to 3 lucky winners! All you have to do is comment on this post and tell me what you would do with a few vinyl monograms! I will use randomresult.com to draw three names at random. The winners will receive 2 monograms each! (each monogram will be 2.5inches tall) You have until Sunday night at midnight and I will announce the winner first thing Monday morning!

 

Good luck!

Mother's Day

I love Mother's Day! Some of my favorite people in life are the people we get to honor on Mother's Day! We had some big things happening at SVBC for Mother's day so I was so excited when my mom said that we were eating at her house! We always eat Sunday lunch at Mimi and Papa's with the whole family (there are at least 16 of us when everyone is there!) but there's something exciting about having everyone over at Mom's. 

All 16 of us! 

 The progression of the next few pictures is why I love the continuous shutter on my camera and I appreciate that my husband knows how to use it!

All the Dorton women!

I seriously LOVE family! We have been through a rough year but I am so inspired by the strength that everyone has shown, especially the women! They are showing me how to be a true woman of God and how to face disaster and devastation with perseverance and the knowledge that it's never goodbye, it's only a see you later...

Budget

I hate money! I know that hate is a strong word and I really do try to not use it but I do hate money. I would totally be okay with a world where we bought everything thing with hugs and smiles! I don't really know where my disdain for money stemmed from but it stresses me out to the MAX!

When Stuart went to talk to my parents about proposing to me, their one stipulation was that we take Financial Peace before we get married. I'm not gonna lie, I was NOT excited about it. Luckily, the class grew on me. I quickly learned that my love for math would make me a lover of budgets. I would geek out over calculating everything down to the last penny but my follow-through was not so enthusiastic.

We entered our marriage with all of the knowledge we needed to be financially responsible but we just didn't have the will power. I wasn't working at the time so I spent a lot of time at home alone with nothing to do. I was always stressed out that we never had money... I mean we were always counting down the days until pay day and then going and doing all the things we had wanted to do before pay day and then we'd be back to square one. It was a vicious cycle that made me physically sick. I decided to look into couponing. Now, you could not have told me at 20 that I would have been clipping coupons and scouring sales circulars by 22 but I did it because I was desperate.

I quickly learned that the things we were buying, specifically at the grocery store, were things that we didn't ever have to pay full price for! It was like an addiction. But we still weren't spending wisely and we honestly still couldn't tell you where most of Stuart's paychecks were going.

I still kept finding ways to cut costs around the house but it wasn't making a huge difference. I started making my own laundry detergent and added "CVSing" to my weekly couponing adventures.

Fast forward to recently and we are honestly still not where we want to be. It is not nearly as bad as it was before because I now work two jobs but we stink at budgeting! So this week, I tightened my belt and sat down and created these

Yes that is a Lilly Pulitzer print and yes I did spend the time to make my own budget sheets. When we decided to put a "family budget meeting" on the calendar, I decided that it needed to be something that we would keep up and that meant that I needed a binder. We needed to be able to refer to other months for certain things and we needed to have places to save receipts and bills. I scoured Pinterest for budget binder printables but I just didn't find any free ones that I liked and frankly I think its completely backwards to have to PAY for the forms to put together a BUDGET binder. Ever since I've gotten my Mac, I have loved playing around with Pages so this was actually really fun to design.

I plan to create a binder that we can put each month's budget in and keep it handy so that we can refer to it every pay day when we have to pay bills. I'm also adding a calendar of every month so that we can schedule things like what bills need to be payed when and special things like our alotted one date night a month. I also created a sheet that is a "checkbook register" for each of our accounts so we can start receipt tracking. It looks a little like this

The budgeting process for us is going to be long and slow process. It's probably going to be painful at some points and we are guaranteed to bicker over things like how much "fun" money each of us gets and "yes we do need to buy groceries every week"(we seriously have that conversation EVERY TIME I get my grocery store "stuff" together! We would live off Ramen and OJ if it was his choice!) But the thing that counts is that we're both committed to buckling down and working through it together.

Do you struggle with monthly household budgeting? What are some easy ways that you handle spending, saving, and giving?

Lately...

We've been busy! I mean, it's like you blink and three weeks have flown by! Holy Week (the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday) is always super busy for us in the church office and Stuart's band went to Concert Festival to compete that Tuesday. The next week was spring break and I had taken the whole week off to spend time with Hubs. This week I have no excuses for not blogging!

Here's an update on the past three weeks of life!

Seriously, how can you not love that man?!

Our 15 pizzas for Stuart's band kids... My car smelled like Dominos for a week!

I decided to purchase this at home gel manicure kit to save on getting my nails done. The jury is still out on this one...

We got to go to a Carolina game!

This sweet girl seriously has the best smile!

Bird's Nest cookies for my preschoolers on Easter Sunday!

Grilled Chick-fil-A nuggets are my new obsession!

Men's Spanx?! Or shall we say Manx!

Beautiful Fripp Island!

This is in the doll making section of Hobby Lobby... super creepy!

Our set up for the fellowship we put together at church!

I put this post together on Monday and since then we've been to another Carolina game and the Carrie Underwood concert! Has anyone else been super busy lately?!

Favor

Please do me a favor. If you find yourself reading my blog regularly, would you please follow me. I'd love to know who the readers are! And of course, if you follow me I'll gladly follow your blog as well!

Following is really easy to do! Just scroll down this side of this blog until you see the "Join This Site" button and follow the directions from there! 

Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading (even though I don't know who you are all yet!) I wouldn't continue this if I didn't know that people were at least visiting my blog to read the updates.

25 Things

I was given this idea by a friend that I just met recently. ML and her sister grew up with Stuart and her sister and husband are in our Sunday school class. She recommended that I do this as a follow up to the favorites post. This will definitely expand on some of the things I mentioned in the ABC's of Me.

1. I have an anxiety disorder. It gets so bad that there are certain social situation I can't be in and simple tasks that people do everyday like making phone calls can be hard for me.

2.  I am TERRIFIED of snakes. I have panic attacks when I even see a picture of them.

3. When I was 4, I had Histiocytosis X which is a disorder where there are extra immune cells in your body and they cause tumors. Mine was on my cheekbone. We had been through testing, a spinal tap, and a biopsy and we're talking next steps when they discovered that the tumor was gone! This is the reason I am such a firm believer in miracles and God's work. Prayer was such a huge part of my journey and now I'm 24 and never had another issue with this disorder. Praise God!

4. Besides one year in a college dorm, I never lived outside of my parents house until I married Stuart.

5. In high school, I wanted to be a marine biologist and work at Sea World.

6. I love to sing Gospel music but especially Southern Gospel! We used to sing as a family so I perfected that southern drawl!

7. I am OCD about the weirdest things. I do not care as much about clothes all over the place but if you move something in my kitchen, prepare for the wrath!

8. I never graduated college or completed a program. I don't know exactly what I want to do at this point so I don't know if I want to finish college yet although I am doing a certification program for Wedding and Event Planning.

9. I got dumped the day after my Senior prom for a freshman. No lie. And now that guy and his wife and kid go to our church... awkward... (at least his wife isn't the freshman he dumped me for though)

10. I know a whole lot more about Nascar than you would think. All through high school, my dad's company had a Nascar sponsorship so we went to a lot of the southeast races. My graduation weekend was spent at Charlotte Motor Speedway. I got a picture with Kyle Busch and was on cloud nine...

11. I hate when people pick their teeth with their fingers... please do that in private with something other than your hand!

12. I really like trash TV. Toddlers and Tiaras, Dance Moms, Teen Mom, Real Housewives, you name it, I have probably watched it and liked it.

13. I've had two eardrum repair surgeries on the same ear. One of the ruptures came from swimming with water behind my eardrum but the other came from a severe sinus infection. I knew the exact moment that it ruptured.

14. Baking relaxes me. I will usually bake and then never even eat it. The relaxation is truly in the making of the sweets, not the partaking.

15. I hate chocolate. I gag at the smell of it.

16. I hate to pay full price for anything. Even though I may a really nice things, I NEVER pay full price for them.

17. I like cheesy teen novels. I read all four Twilight books in less than a month. 

18. My husband says that I'm very, very generous. I tend to spend a lot of my money on things for other people.

19. I get overly obsessed with ideas until I make them a reality. If i decide that I want to sew something or make something, I have to go out and get everything and do it right then!

20. I have enough kids names picked out that I could easily have 12 kids and NOT run out of names! (but no worries, I really only want 4 at the most!)

21. I already have gray hairs on my head. It apparently runs in the family to get them at an early age...

22. I love going to the zoo.

23. I hate war movies and any movie with excessive gore in it. Although I really want to see Zero Dark Thirty.

24. I hate horror films but I love the Paranormal Activity movies and The Exorcism of Emily Rose.

25. I usually snort when I laugh.

What are your 25 things?