Welcome Scrapbookers and Blog Hoppers!
You should have arrived here on the August Happiness Blog Hop sponsored by Stephanie Medley-Rath's Scrapworthy Lives: Because your Life Is Worth Scrapbooking Blog {click here for the link to Scrapworthy Lives}. More specifically, the stop before mine on the hop was { Tammy's Blog: Your Memory Connection }.
August's Theme is "Buy Some Happiness" inspired by Gretchen Rubin's book: "The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent A Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun." On the subject of money buying happiness, Gretchen Rubin explains: "money, spent wisely, can support happiness goals of strengthening relationships, promoting health, having fun, and all the rest."
Can Money Buy You Love? - the Beatles didn't think so - and neither do I, but can money infuse a little happiness into your relationship? I think so. This layout was inspired by a recent "Modest Splurge" when my husband and I re-instituted our long standing tradition of Saturday Night Date Night. We didn't go crazy, but we did go on a bit of a geek spree at Best Buy and then downtown to the restaurant of our choice and indulged in good food and quality time together - without the kids.
The Page: The page I made for this blog hop seems simple enough, I didn't use any embellishments or even any letter stickers - just a piece of colored cardstock and a few strips of patterened paper. To the casual observer, this is a frugal page. But to me, it represents a splurge. I try to keep my spending on scrapbooking supplies to a bare minimum - I try to limit my purchases to adhesives and page protectors because I have enough scrapbooking supplies to last a lifetime. Most of the time, I am happy using older supplies and papers in my scrapbooking, but occasionally, I find myself in a rut and when that happens I allow myself to indulge in a "Modest Splurge" and that Basic Grey Lauderdale Paper represents just such a splurge that I recently made on a trip to my local scrapbooking shop Whim-So-Doodle in Downtown St. Pete. I bought $30 of patterened papers that I didn't need but I really wanted - it was all impulse shopping - buying whatever I thought was attractive, but I kept a dollar limit for myself and paid in cash - not with a credit card. I didn't know what I'd use this paper for when I bought it but it seemed perfect for the mood I wanted to create with this page.
Here's our story: Charlie and I met in 1995 and quickly fell in love, we were both recent law school graduates with lots of potential and lots of law school loan debt. We had a long courtship and it was four years before we got married, but during our dating years, we took a giant leap of faith by starting a law practice together in 1997. In 1999, as newlyweds, we had lots of time and love - but not much money - just a lot of law school loan debt, a new business, and a home mortgage. We worked hard to get to a financially OK place. In 2002, we started a family and when the children were small, we indulged in a live-in nanny, babysitters, and a housekeeper. We kept up our Saturday Date Night Tradition even when the kids were small and we were seriously busy.
But somewhere around 2008 or 2009, when the bad economy hit, we decided to tighten up the bootstraps and stopped having a housekeeper and started cleaning our house ourselves again; and since the children were getting a little older, we no longer needed all the babysitting. So our new-found frugality led to the End of our Saturday Date Night Tradition. Looking back, I think our marriage suffered a little bit because we stopped taking this time out together, we lost a connection that we once had and our connection then centered only around the house, the kids and work - there was little to no time spent on just us.
Until last week - we brought back Saturday Date Night and it was worth every penny!
Journaling: "Saturday Night - July 23, 2011: The first night in our house alone since Mac was born in 2002 and we had a long over-due date night at Moon Under Water in Downtown St. Pete - Of course it rained! With both kids at a friend's house overnight - we got a little preview of the next stage in life."
Ok, Scrapbookers and Happiness Seekers: Now go check out the last stop on the Blog Hop! { Click Here for Melissa's Blog }
:) Katie.
