I have come to a decision. I think instead of my "blogging calendar" (at least for this week) the best way that I will be able to give you guys an accurate picture of what this month looks like for us, is to just give you guys honest updates on what's happening day by day. I really do intend to update each day, but seriously, our lives are very... what's the word.... spontaneous. And I don't mean that in the cool way where we just decide to go do something grand off of a whim just for a change in routine. I mean our weeks basically fall into our laps come Monday, and it looks nothing like the week before. Coincidentally that makes us very busy people, and I think I was just so excited to get this no-spend month started I made my blogging schedule without having that fact in mind. I'm super thankful that Ruth at Living Well Spending Less mapped out a plan everyday for a month, but like I said at the very beginning, with us being a young newlywed couple without children our day-to-day this month will probably look very different, and occasionally you'll have to read boring posts like this one.

Technically for day five, the plan was to create a meal plan for the rest of the month, or at least make an inventory of our pantry using the worksheet from Ruth's blog. However, you might be able to see how that could be difficult with us not being home for the week. Either way we had a good evening. Our good friends Natalie and Travis came over for dinner, and we had crockpot chopped beef brisket sandwiches.

(photo credit: Mix and Match Mama)

I wanted to get fancy and make us some homemade hamburger buns, but by the time we had gotten to the house, I was starving, and sliced bread looked just as good to me. Either way they were still delicious, and we literally have leftovers to last us the rest of the week. I enjoyed a night in watching chick-flicks and reality TV with Natalie while our husbands were out at Starbucks discussing theology. Exciting night, right? Still enjoyable nonetheless.

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So to sort of offset a relatively uneventful update, I thought I would throw in some excitement. I know that I've given you all an idea of why we're doing the 31 Days of Spending Zero, but we also have a bigger picture in mind than just using this one month to go towards our credit card. This past month Scott and I have made a decision for our next transition in our lives. We decided that once our apartment lease is up in June 2014, we are going to move downtown! We've come to the conclusion that downtown is the ideal place to be for us with where we are in life right now. We both work downtown (we even carpool together each morning) and are beginning to make great connections with people who either live downtown as well, or at the least closer than where we live right now. The con here is, downtown in exponentially more expensive than the area we are living in now. Your first thought is probably "How do expect to do that with all of this 'debt' you keep talking about, it's kind of counterproductive, isn't it?" Well, yes, it would be. So this is our big plan. Depending on how the next three weeks play out, our hope is to do these no spend months every other month, until we have our card down to 20% of it's usage. (Approx. next Feb/Mar) Our other big decision in being able to do this is selling Scott's car. Which, through some incredible blessings, we should be set to do in September, or better yet, possibly even this month. So if you're in the market for a 2012 Ford Focus, hit me up! ;)

As you can see, we have some big dreams in mind for the next couple of months. It does help make this month seem much more bearable in perspective, but I hope you can see how much encouragement it would require to actually achieve. I hope that you all will stand by us in this adventure, and cheer us on when the going gets tough. My prayer is that when the next ten months are said and done we will have a great story to tell about God's goodness, provision, and gifts of strength and self-control.

So please, stay with us! Tonight I will be getting my bridesmaid dress (technically "for free" through our money earned by house-sitting) and Thursday is the big going away party which I have put together for FREEEEEEEEEE! I'm so excited, and really, just a *tad* proud of myself.

More to come!