I love the idea that Stephany & Katherine came up with for wanting to make 12 changes and make a change each month for 12 months.

So when I was thinking of the 12 changes that I want to do, I couldn’t decide which one I wanted to do for each month since I want to pretty much start some of them this month at the same time. So this month I might focus on 2 changes and if I feel ready for another change then I’ll add another change instead of waiting until the next month to change.

So with that said, here are my 12 changes (not in order):

Eat healthier. I want to learn to like new vegetables & fruits that I don’t like now.

Bring lunch to work. I’m so bad at this one! I don’t think a day ahead. This means I would need to prepare my lunch the night before. It helps that the girls at work are totally in on this goal so we can’t go eat out.

Stop eating out! There are so many times where Tyler and I come home from work and not in the mood to make dinner so we eat out. I want to start planning for the week on Sundays.

Exercise for 21 days! It takes 21 days to form a habit so why not?! Plus I already did this last year and I felt amazing! Not that I’m going to stop after 21 days but focusing on small goals here and forming a habit out of this.

Drink water every day. I seriously need to work on this and drink water every day. There are times where I get a headache because I’m definitely dehydrated. I want to make it a habit to carry a water bottle around with me everywhere I go like my iPhone!

New hobby…Zumba? I’ve heard a lot of great things about Zumba from Missa Lee who has lost 60 pounds so far. There are plenty of Zumba classes here where I live so I have no excuse to go try it. I don’t want to get bored with just going to the gym to exercise on my own so this would be a great thing to add to my plate.

Save money! Clearly I should be saving tons of money every month but we’re not. We recently signed up for an American Express card with Costco so we can get cash back for using our money. So far we like it and it seems to be working in terms to sticking to our budget. I want to build up our savings AND pay off our credit cards. I want to be debt-free before 2013!

Take vitamins every day. I keep forgetting to take vitamins every day so Tyler and I decided that we will take them every night at dinner time. We have them out in the kitchen so it’s in our sight. If we seem to be struggling then we’ll invest into vitamin organizers but seriously I don’t want to get to that point. It shouldn’t be that hard to remember to take them!

Quality time with Tyler. I’m so busy with designing blogs that we don’t really have quality time together. So what I mean by this change is eat dinner together without the TV on, walk the dog together, exercise/cook together. Tyler agreed to this in addition to ignoring his iPhone when we have quality time together. I don’t want him walking behind me in the grocery store because he’s busy looking to see who won what game or whatever.

Clean house daily for 15-20 minutes. I hate that Tyler and I have to spend an entire day out of the weekend to clean the entire house because it wasn’t kept clean during the week. The house can stay clean if we spend 15-20 minutes cleaning every day so that we can have the weekend to enjoy ourselves and do things we want to do.

Keep my emails organized. I want to keep my emails organized and not let it get out of control. This means labeling them more often and archiving them. Unsubscribing from emails that I don’t want to get emails from instead of deleting them.

Create more pre-made blog templates. I’m pleased that Yellow & Savvy Design has been keeping me happily busy! I want to unleash my style into pre-made templates that I can add to my Etsy shop.

I’m so ready to rock it this year and accomplish these goals. Bring it on, 2012!

I decided to stop really relying on Mint.com to see what my budgets are like at the end of the month. It wasn’t accurate at all since sometimes I’d buy groceries & household items in one trip.

So I decided to create an Excel sheet under Google Docs so I can access it anywhere I go. I have successfully saved all the receipts (so far) and have recorded them. Now this way I will know exactly where our money is going!

However….this recent weekend was Labor Day weekend. I took a mini-break from saving money to splurge a little bit. I mean…. c’mon there were great deals!

I went to Pier 1 Imports and found a really cute lantern on sale for $2 and a cute little white bowl for $2. Two things all under $5! I decided to use the white bowl for my rings. I’m not sure what I’m doing with the lantern yet as I have many different projects going on in my head right now and need to figure out what to do first, second, and so on.

We also went to IKEA over the weekend too. I think I might still be shopping at IKEA when I’m 40 years old. I seriously never get sick of that place & the fact that IKEA is amazingly cheap!

We decided to buy 2 Ribba picture ledges for the bathroom in our master bedroom. We have limited space in our bathroom and that’s not a good thing especially when I have a lot of products everywhere on the counter & trying to make them fit in the medicine cabinet.

You can obviously see that Tyler’s products are on the top shelf and mine are on the bottom shelf. We still clearly have a lot to do with our bathroom which is at the end of our list of projects.

As soon as the weekend was over, we went back to the plan of saving money. It’ll be good for us in the long run to save a lot of money and be able to put more into our savings especially now after I recently got a raise at work!

I also have been working on ways to become debt-free. I happened to find a credit card that has no interest for 18 months. We signed up and did a balance transfer so now we’ll actually get to pay off our credit cards soon! Last night Tyler was THIS close to winning $30,000 (Streak for Cash) but he didn’t. Bummer!

Here’s to being frugal and making it worth it in the long run!

It feels great to still be doing something and not spending money at all. After running into some financial issues lately, we have been forced to buckle down for a few months. I am hoping our new habits will stick for a while anyways so we can put more money towards our debt. Credit cards are not fun at all! Especially after getting married and combining our debt together. It also has helped that we have recently taken upon some projects that we’re getting paid for designing brochures, business cards, etc.

So we have been finding more money-free activities lately.

Spoil the cars. We cleaned our cars this weekend. It’s a nice way to get some tan outside too and keep ourselves busy. We managed to rinse off our driveway. Now it’s dirt-free! Unfortunately we were still unable to find Tyler’s wedding ring in my car. My in-laws are coming next week and I’m really hoping they bring their mojo with them and find it!

Gardening & weeding. I never thought this could be exciting! (Only when Tyler’s doing most of the work, haha!) I guess it’s a different story when owning a house. Our first priority is making sure the front yard looks good because of our HOA rules. The last warning we got was that our drip lines were showing. It’s ridiculous!

Bike rides! We’re definitely saving money on gas by going for a bike ride while enjoying the weather and view. I love this because I know I’m also getting some exercise in for the day. It’s an exercise I can truly enjoy without sweating and saying I can’t do it. I ride my Mom’s old hot pink bike while Tyler rides my Dad’s old blue bike. I still dream of owning a beach cruiser some day!

Pay and organize bills. I truly love paying the bills even though it’s not fun. It actually makes me feel more relaxed afterward knowing I’m done. It’s also nice to be aware of what needs to be paid soon and work around our budget. We can now see our budget everywhere we go since I just transferred it to Google Docs. I wish I thought of this sooner since there has been times where I’m at work or somewhere else and I wanted to look at our budget. We recently started focused on paying for necessities only. The only thing I refuse to give up is my DVR!

Fix things around the house. The best part is when we know we don’t have to spend more money to get things fixed. Recently our vacuum started acting up so we took the time to take it apart and clean the brush underneath. Now it’s actually working! If this happened to me in college, I would have totally gone out and bought a new vacuum.

Scrapbooking. This is an endless project for me. I have so many unorganized pictures and wedding pictures that I need to go through. Tyler and I majored in Graphic Design/Media so we have a lot of supplies, canvases, & scrapbook paper. We should start blowing the dust bunnies off our storage box and dig up all these supplies that we have and put them to a good use. There’s always Photoshop and InDesign too! We could always save them on the computer until we have the extra money to print them.

I really wish I realized all of this a few years ago instead of spending money all the time like it grew on trees. The best part of this is that we have taken this situation and turned it into a positive. We’re grateful to have a house and jobs. We both know that our financial issues won’t be forever.. only just a few months if we take ourselves seriously. We know we’re doing the best thing for ourselves as we would like to live comfortably later in life and not still be in debt.