rushley & crew

Holidays are a tricky thing for newlyweds, and something that, 2.5 years later, we still seem to be figuring out. We spent our first Thanksgiving with his family and our first Christmas with mine, and since then, we have swapped each holiday each year. We live relatively close to both families (15 minutes from mine, 6 hours from his) , so this works pretty well for us. However, we've discovered we still need to take the time to make holidays our own, too. Since it was my family's year to have us for Christmas, we spent a lot  of time over there during the break. I still have my room at my parents' house, so although we live close, most nights we would just stay over at my parents'. My sister's family was also visiting from Texas, so we wanted to spend as much time with them as possible. But because we spent so much time at my parents' house, Russ and I kind of neglected to figure out when we would have our own celebration. This led to a sticky situation w...

If you haven't noticed yet, I like to craft. I love seeing cute things on Pinterest and then re-creating them or creating my own versions of them. I already have enough everyday things on my walls and bookshelf etc., so this year when I've crafted, I've made a lot of holiday decor. I've done  Thanksgiving crafts ,  Valentine's Day crafts , 4th of July crafts (yet to hit the blog since I made them after the holiday had passed) . . . and I've been making Christmas crafts throughout the year, all for this amazing month of December. Some of my crafts fit in our apartment just fine: Stockings . . . Can you guess whose is whose? ;) Jingle bells . . . So we can hear Christmas every time we open the door! Table decorations . . . I made this years ago at some Relief Society thing with my mom. I don't actually remember what I did to make it though . . .  My mother-in-law used these lanterns for our Boise reception, and now I've mad...

. . . Nope, not the kind of vacation where you ride roller coasters (though at one point that was part of the plan), but rather, when the event of planning a vacation becomes a roller coaster. Here's how it went down: Once upon a time, about a year ago, Russ and I decided we were going to go on a cruise to the Caribbean. Neither of us had ever been, so we were excited to do our first cruise together. We started saving. Fast forward about 5 months. We had enough money to have an awesome vacation--we were thinking we'd cruise the caribbean and depart out of Florida. Since we'd have to spend all that money to get to Florida, we'd also spend a few days after our cruise doing theme parks. We were psyched! But then Russ got moved from part-time to full-time, and taking two weeks off from the start-up he works for just was not an option. I was sad, but we decided we'd just use the money to do other fun things. We talked about using it to buy a tent and then tak...

This Thanksgiving, I finally succeeded in doing what I tried to do my whole college career: I got a 10-day break instead of a 5-day break. At my college, we have class the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving, but on Tuesday we have Friday classes. Kind of complicated. So I've tried every year to get classes on only Tuesday/Thursday so I could have Friday (Before thanksgiving) until Monday (after Thanksgiving) off, and I finally succeeded! For the first few days of the break, I was in Salt Lake at Time Out For Women with some of the girls in my family. Then, Russ picked me up and we drove from there to Boise to just hang out for a few days. We spent an afternoon with Russ's high school friends, Jake and Jenzi; we played some games with Mom & Dad Holmes, and we just relaxed a bit. On Wednesday , Russ and I made the 8-hour drive to Seattle, where Shayne's family lives (Shayne is Russ's brother). We were originally going to be driving with Mom and Dad, but due to...

Wahoo! Thanksgiving is almost here! I've already had two plus a third time of leftovers, but I'm still excited :) We brought back Tomothy the Thankful Turkey this year, and he's filled out quite nicely with feathers :) Turns out Russ was right . . . smaller feathers looks better. I haven't done any thankful posts yet this November, so I'm going to do one today, about the things I'm thankful for that are coming up in the next week! Time Out For Women! I'm thankful I get to go again this year; I'm thankful for my mama for paying for it; I'm thankful I get to go with my mom, sis-in-law, grandma, aunt, and cousin/best friend!; I'm thankful that we're going to eat at the Cheesecake Factory for dinner along with the event!; I'm thankful my husband lets me go on girlie weekend trips without him, though I'll miss him :) Boise! I'm thankful that Russ and I get to go visit family in Boise; I'm thankful for all the fun we...

Want free clothes? Who doesn't, right? Well if you click the link in this post, it will take you to a website. Then you . . . 1. Sign up. Get $10 credit. 2. Sign in on up to three other iDevices (iPhones, iPads) and get $10 credit per device you add. 3. Sign in on an Android phone and get a 50% off code. You can purchase on your phone, or just plug that code into your computer. 4. Get $80 worth of clothes for free! I ended up choosing clothes that totaled more than $80, so my total cost was like $14.83 for seven items. Say whattttt?! That's $2/item folks. Be sure to click my link, because then I get even more credit for you signing up! Then spread the word so you can get credit, too :) liketwice.com/DBMO4 Happy shopping!

Budget  is a word that brings fear to some and joy to others: fear to those who don't understand it, and joy to those who do. When Russ and I got married, we had to figure out how to manage money. At first, we just tried to save as much as we could and spend money as little as possible. I think a lot of people think of a budget in this way: restrictive. But having a budget is actually incredibly  liberating . Budgeting gives you the opportunity to choose how you spend your money, and as a result, it takes away the guilt that sometimes comes from spending money. Now that I have a budget, I don't think I could ever go back. Here's how to create a budget of your own. Step 1: Figure out how much money you make per month. This is pretty self-explanatory. Look at pay stubs, or calculate how many hours you generally work and how much you get paid. For instance, I work 10-13 hours each week, and I make $9/hour. Since my work time is somewhat flexible, I go on the low...

Remember earlier in the summer when I first got started on making a family birthday board ? Well I finally got it all finished and hung up! The color is all off because the lighting of where I hung it is awful. Even after photoshopping, it's not quite right. The original post shows the colors better. Finding all the right supplies took some time, but I'm happy with how it turned out :) Russ had to help me drill holes in the tops and bottoms of all the circles because I couldn't find any that already had holes, but it worked out okay. Now I'll be able to remember everyone's birthdays! And the best part is that I can add to the board at any time because I used jump rings between the circles :) How do you remember family birthdays? :)