Papers & Pretty Things

Life Lesson #4

Ah, the internet.  Alas, it is not on my computer.  It is on my husband's computer.  We just backed up the data from my hard drive and will wait until we are around a technically inclined family member that does not charge us $150 to simply look at the dang thing.  We have to share a computer now.  Oh the injustice.  ;)  We really don't need two anyways.

On to a scrapbook layout, this week is Life Lesson #4, all about dieting.  Well.  Just a diet tip:  Don't subscribe to Food & Wine Magazine when you're on a diet.

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Life Lessons are made up of stuff that I’ve done or haven’t done (that I wish I had … or hadn’t). I’ve also decided to include things I’ve observed other people do…or not do. (Not all of these lessons are things I went through myself…so don’t get too shocked.) The rest will be things that annoy me, anger me, sadden me, confuse me, or even make me happy.  Sometimes they'll be little tips I've picked up along the way.

This effort is as much for my benefit as it is for helping others. Hopefully, throughout this process, we’ll all take something away from it. My life’s motto: Well. Now we know.

If you'd like to find out more about why I'm doing this series, you can read more about it here.

Silly Old Computer

So, my computer seems to have taken a vacation and did not think to let me know.  It was all very sudden.  This morning, it just doesn't turn on!  Again.  So, I may be away for a little while as we try to get it fixed.  Hope everyone had a fabulous Fourth of July, we saw Hancock, which was slightly disappointing.  Thankfully it's been raining a bit for the last few days.  Yay, no grass fires.  I just finished our Disney album after working on it all week, and am just waiting for refill pages at the moment.  Other than that, nothing too exciting going on.  I just miss our kitty. :(

How Much Do You REALLY Have?

Having only been married for two years, we sure have accumulated the stuff.  Especially with home-ownership.  Having an empty room just looks... dumb.  Take our living room for example.  We only have one kitchen table.  The dining room is currently housing the cat taking a nap in the sun.  And a painting.  And that's it.  So, in response to the empty room situation, we purchased more stuff.  (For the other bedrooms and living room, not the dining room.)  In truth, we only live in half of our house.  Without kids taking up space with all of their paraphernalia, we've got unused rooms.  Which is a life lesson for us when purchasing a domicile.  But nevertheless, we've got a lot of stuff.  For just two people.  And in this sense, it can be difficult to know if something is missing... or if it is missing to prove you had it in the first place. 

Enter the home inventory.  In response to our last encounter with movers and several things going missing, being unable to prove this has continually made me grit my teeth and roll my eyes at myself for not keeping better records of our earthly possessions.  I am determined that this will not happen again.  I originally assumed this would be an extremely daunting task, comprised of either a notebook or clipboard and a pen, slowly and surely, handwriting everything we owned.  Unsure as to how to categorize these lists, other than by room, I wanted to see if anyone had created an Excel spreadsheet with different ways to sort and categorize their belongings.  After a few Internet searches, I stumbled across a different method completely.  The Insurance Information Institute has some wonderful software to download for free!  This software is called Know Your Stuff and is a whole program that allows you to add photos of the exterior of your house, add and title your own rooms, and add items to each room.  The individual item you add is titled however you want, there are categories you can assign it to, (ex. major appliance, linens, artwork, jewelry, etc.) the quantity, how much it would cost to replace, when and where you made the purchase, make, model, serial number and description boxes.  The other cool thing about the item you're adding, is you can add a photo and a scanned receipt to the file.  Then you can look at how much you really have in valuables, either by room or category.  This is really a wonderful tool to have.  While my original assumption of this task taking some time to accomplish is indeed correct, I have found a way to make it fun and easy.  Plus now I'll know if we have enough insurance to cover everything we've got!