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Celebrating One Year of Expressions from Hallmark Cards at Dollar Tree

September 22, 2019 by Katie Haller

*This post is part of a collaboration with Dollar Tree. I was compensated for this post. This post also contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase. Thank you for your support!

Who doesn’t love getting a card in the mail from a loved one? Knowing that someone is thinking of you is a special feeling. I love to send cards to my friends and family, but I also hate the high price of greeting cards. Sometimes they cost more than the gift. That’s why I get most of my greeting cards at Dollar Tree! Birthdays, Graduations, Christmas, Weddings, First Communions…pretty much any occasion I can think of, I know that I will be able to find a card for it at Dollar Tree.

How to Earn Cashback Savings on Back-to-School Shopping

August 20, 2019 by Katie Haller

Tips for Organizing your House on a Budget

February 14, 2019 by Katie Haller

Organizing is something that I have always really enjoyed doing. It always feels so good to declutter and have a place for everything. The only problem for me is that sometimes life happens and it gets hard to keep up with it all. I’ve recently been watching Tidying Up with Marie Kondo on Netflix, just like everyone else in the world right now and I’m loving it! I’ve never had time to read her books, but I’ve heard so many great things. Now that I’ve actually taken the time to learn more about the KonMari method I became so motivated to start organizing my house.

We moved into our current house 2 years ago, right before Jack’s first birthday. We wanted a house with more space because we quickly outgrew our 2 bedroom condo after having Jack. Our house is a decent size home, with lots of open space for Jack to play, but it’s not always very functional for space. The house makes no sense with its layout, but it is a rental house and sometimes you just need to work with the space you have. We are planning on moving out of this house this spring, so in order to make the packing processes less overwhelming for me, I figured that it would be the perfect time to purge and go through all my cabinets, drawers and closets to make sure everything had a place.

Today I want to take you through my organizing processes to give you some ideas and tips for your own house. Most of all, I hope to share some affordable ways to organize. Some people think that you might need to run out and buy some amazing organizing products at the Container Store, but you don’t. Sometimes all you need are some old boxes and a few baskets, even Marie Kondo approves of that.

*This post contains affiliate links, which means by clicking on and/or making a purchase through a link, I will earn a commission for this blog. Thank you for your support!

Kitchen
So let’s start in the Kitchen. The kitchen is hard for me because it’s the never-ending room. It constantly needs to be cleaned and organized. What drives me crazy in my kitchen is all the plastic Tupperware and sippy cups. I’m pretty sure everyone can agree that they hate storing Tupperware. It’s never pretty. I came up with a system when we moved into this house that works for me. I use 2 large baskets (HERE) and 2 deeper baskets with handles (HERE) that I bought both at the Dollar Tree. I keep all the containers in the big baskets and all the lids in the baskets with the handles. Round containers are on the left and rectangle and square containers are on the right. This system works greats. I also store all my sippy cups in a basket in the other cabinet.

One of the best things that I ever did in organizing my kitchen was buying baskets for my pantry (HERE). My current pantry is deep, which I’m not a fan of, because food can get lost in the back. The baskets help me section out my food into categories. It makes it so much easier to find everything I need. At the bottom of the pantry, I use beer boxes to store my recyclable bags and lunch boxes.

Linen Closet
Next up is my linen closet. I have a very small linen closet at this house. It is basically a bunch of cabinets in the hallway. It’s hard to cram in all my extra bedding and towels into it. Before, I was just folding up everything and cramming it into the space. Now I have added baskets to my closet to help organize hand towels, pillowcases, cleaning rags, cleaning supplies and baby towels. I was able to fold my blankets up to fit perfectly, (not perfect like Marie Kondo, but I tried). I also used the KonMari method to fold my bath towels. The thing I like about my linen closet now is that I can see everything and I have so much extra space.

Linen closet organizing ideas- Before and After

Master bedroom
My husband is super organized and is pretty much a minimalist, so I never have to worry about keeping him tidy (besides leaving empty water bottles all over the nightstand). I feel like I’m the one with all the “stuff” in my room. I have a nice big walk-in closet that I try to keep most of my things in, but I have 2 dressers and a nightstand that often start to overflow. I prefer to hang most of my clothes in my closet so I can see them all. My clothes are always getting buried in my drawers and then I completely forget about what I have, especially in my socks and underwear drawers. I love the KonMari method of folding, so I folded all the clothes in my dressers so I could see each item. I also got rid of a lot of old t-shirts and tank tops that hadn’t been worn in years. I have been hoarding a bunch of boxes from all my sponsored blog posts over the last year in my closet, so I was happy that some of those could come in handy for my underwear, socks, and bras. One thing I really love about Marie Kondo is that she teaches people to use what they have for storage. She says to use what you have first before you buy anything new. Old boxes make for great organizing tools.

Top- Underwear and socks || Middle- T-shirts || Bottom- Tank tops

My nightstand drawer is always a hot mess. I just added a couple long baskets (HERE) from the Dollar Tree for my pens and random phone chargers. I also left space for my journals. My bathroom drawers are similar. The baskets just help keep it from turning into a big mess.

Toddler Room
Jack’s room is actually my favorite room in our house. It has 2 big windows that let in lots of light and has a vaulted ceiling. It’s the perfect room for a nursery. The older Jack gets though, the harder it is to keep up with him and his mess. He wants to play with everything. That’s why I had to drop him off at school on my day off work just so I could go through his stuff without him freaking out. Getting rid of baby things is hard for me because I am still hoping for one more, but I realized when it comes to clothes, I’m not going to want to keep everything. A lot of his baby clothes were in really bad shape. I had to ask myself “will this bring me joy to see it on another baby?” If it had stains on it, I said no. I only kept the clothes that were in really good shape and something special. I folded up everything and stored it in a plastic storage bin from Target (HERE).

In Jack’s closet, his stuff was pretty messy. At one point I had his closet organized, but now it was just a mess. I added a couple baskets, eliminated the diaper boxes with old clothes in them and folded up his blankets nicely, and now everything fits so nicely. In his dresser, I folded his clothes like mine. The rest of Jack’s toys are in his play area in the living room. We use an organizer (HERE) to store all his toys and for all the miscellaneous toys my husband just throws them all into his old Pack n Play. It’s not pretty, but it does the job for now.

Before

After

Now that I’ve reorganized my house, I feel ready to take on the year. I know that it’s going to help when we have to pack up. It feels so good to purge and have a place for everything. If you haven’t watched Marie Kondo’s show yet, I highly recommend it. Have you purged and re-organized your house this year yet? I’d love to hear your stories!!

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5 Tips for Building a Financially Successful Marriage

January 22, 2019 by Katie Haller

5 Ways to have a Financially Successful Marriage

My marriage is not perfect in any way, but when it comes to finances, I think my husband and I are pretty good at that part of our marriage. Money is not everything, but it sure is important. The number one thing that most couples argue about is money. That’s why it’s important to work together to find a way to be financially successful as a couple.

Before I met my husband, I would have to say that I wasn’t always very financially responsible. In college, I had taken out a large amount of student loans to pay for my last 3 years of school. I always worked hard and had jobs, but I didn’t save a dime. I spent all my money on going out with friends and shopping for new party outfits. When I graduated I had about $10 in my bank account and about $70,000 in student loan debt. My husband was the complete opposite of me. He was very responsible with his money, even as a college student. He had a plan for his future and he also graduated college with zero debt. It’s a blessing that I ended up with someone like him because I don’t know where I would be with money if I married someone like myself.

Over the last 8 years, we have worked together to create a pretty financially successful marriage. We haven’t always made the income we do now, so we have had to make a lot of sacrifices in our first years of marriage, but our sacrifices don’t seem that big in the long run. Because of our dedication to saving and living our lives on a budget, I have never needed to worry about not having enough money to pay a bill, I’ve never had to worry about having an unexpected expense come up, and I have never had to live paycheck to paycheck. It’s not always easy for couples to manage their money successfully together, so that’s why I wanted to share 5 tips that have helped us become financially successful in our marriage.

1.) Make a plan together

Before we got married, Kevin and I talked a lot about our money. Our number one priority was to pay off my student loans. Kevin always explained to me that we would never get ahead and save for our future with that kind of debt hanging over our heads. I agreed, and we both worked extremely hard to pay them off as quickly as we could. (You can read all about that story HERE.) Once the loans were out of the picture, we started saving as much as we could to catch up on lost time. We both understand that the younger you are when you save, the more money you will have in the future. Our plans are for me to stop working, hopefully, this year, and for Kevin to retire at 55. We want to have financial freedom in our future and saving your money is the only way to achieve that. We are always re-evaluating our plan to make sure we are on track, but we still stick to the basic plan that we made at the very beginning of our relationship.

2.) Be completely open and honest about all your spending

This one was hard for me at first. I didn’t want Kevin to know about every purchase I made, especially when I bought another new pair of shoes, but I quickly learned that honesty is always the best policy. Hiding your spending will only cause fights and a lack of trust in your relationship. You will never be able to work together if you can’t be honest with each other.

3.) Share a bank account

I know that a lot of couples don’t share bank accounts in this day and age and that works for them, but I personally think that it’s best to share a bank account. This just makes everything easier. I feel like you can’t work together on your plan if you can’t combined your finances. It’s important that you both know what is going on with your money.

4.) Assign one person to be in charge of the finances

Obviously in our marriage, Kevin is the one who is in charge of all our accounts. He pays all the bills and moves the money around when needed. I have all the information to all our accounts and he’s very good at sharing with me where our money is or if he’s moving it around or investing in something. He always asks me what I think before making a major move in our accounts. I would never make a major purchase without talking it over with him first and he does the same for me.

5.) Talk about money

It’s good to talk about money in your marriage. A lot of times people don’t want to talk about money. Obviously you don’t want to go around telling everyone you know how much money you make or save, but between spouses, it’s good to talk about it. It keeps it out in the open and helps you both understand where you are at with your financial goals.

Thrift Store Look for $16!!

November 15, 2018 by Katie Haller

Hey everyone! I hope you’re having a great week so far. For today’s outfit post, I wanted to share my latest thrift finds. I typically don’t buy an outfit when I shop, but on this particular thrifting trip, I ended up coming home with an entire look.

On Veterans Day, I had the day off work. I took Jack to school for the day and Kevin had to work, so I thought the perfect activity for me was to have a day of thrift shopping. It is so much easier to thrift shop by myself, without Jack all over the place. I went to Goodwill first, which was a little disappointing. They didn’t have much of a selection at all, so I decided to go to Savers. I completely forgot that Savers was having a 50% off sale for Veterans day. Normally when I know they are having their big sales, I head over to the store right when they open because it can be kind of crazy. That didn’t happen on this day, so I walked into the store and it was so busy. The line was all the way to the back of the store. I had to browse kind of quickly. The fitting room line was ridiculously long too, so I didn’t want to try on anything. I was excited because, despite all the chaos in the store, I was able to find 3 things that I really loved.

The first thing I found was a pair of Ann Taylor black jeggings for $2.50. I’ve been needing a pair of black jeans for a while. When I found this pair, in my size, for that price, I decided to take the risk and buy them without trying them on. They ended up fitting great. Next up, I found these cognac riding boots. The brand is Sam & Libby and I couldn’t resist them. They were $10.49 and they look like they have never been worn before. I love the color! Anything in that cognac or camel color is my favorite and it goes with everything. Lastly, I bought another striped shirt. This one is from American Eagle and I know it will go with everything. It was only $3.

*This post contains affiliate links, which means by clicking on and/or making a purchase through a link will result in a commission for this blog with no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support!

So there you have it, my $16 outfit! When was the last time you went thrifting?

If you love the style of this look, I have similar affordable items linked below for you!

Why I Love Thrifting my Jeans

September 24, 2018 by Katie Haller

Hey guys! Today I want to let you in on a little secret of mine. For about the last year, I have been obsessed with thrifting my jeans. To me, jeans are like shoes and purses, you can never have too many. There are just so many styles and colors to choose from and you can wear jeans with EVERYTHING!! What is not to love about a great pair of denim bottoms? I’m always amazed by the prices that people will spend on a pair of jeans. I get it, some jeans are too perfect to pass up, but owning 10 or more pairs of $80 or more jeans seems a little much to me.

In the past, I’ve bought a lot of my jeans on clearance racks and I’ve often had to comprise comfort and quality for a good price. Ever since I started thrifting my jeans, I’ve been able to spend less and find great quality brands.

*This post contains affiliate links, which means by making a purchase through a link, I will earn a commission for this blog. Thank you for your support!

So here are my 3 reasons why I love thrifting my jeans…

1.) You can buy name brands, like Levi’s, American Eagle and Abercrombie, but you don’t have to pay the name brand price. They still have the same quality, they are just worn, which sometimes when you’re talking about jeans, worn is best. Recently I’ve bought a pair of Hollister, Abercrombie and American Eagle jeans for under $5 and I honestly can’t tell the difference between mine and the brand new ones in the store.

2.) You can alter your thrifted jeans to fit your style and not worry about messing them up. I love to distress my jeans myself. I like to take a picture of a pair of jeans I like from the store and then I try to recreate the distressed look myself. The jeans I’m wearing above were a Savers find of Abercrombie jeans. I was inspired by the Free People jeans HERE to create the bigger holes in the knees.

3.) They are guilt-free! Being a preschool teacher and a mom of a 2-year-old, expensive clothes don’t fit my lifestyle. I love that I can wear my thrifted jeans to work and if one of the preschoolers walks past me with a paintbrush to the butt, it’s no big deal.

Here are some of the jeans that I’ve thrifted over the last year. I tried to put the brand and the store they were thrifted from.

Old Navy- Savers

Hollister- Goodwill

Abercrombie- Savers

H&M- Goodwill

So there you have it. Those are 3 things I love about thrifting jeans. Have you ever tried thrifting for jeans? I challenge you to find a local thrift store in your area and look in the jean section. You have to give yourself plenty of time to look through the racks and try on all the jeans, but if you stick with it, I know you will find something that will fit your style.

Happy Shopping!!

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