I did not qualify for the almond study. My cholestrol was not high enough. Oh well I guess that is a good thing.

In October my good friend is marrying my husbands good friend. The wedding is out of town in historical St. Augustine one of my favorite places. We will be there friday till sunday.

Lodging: free at a B&B and a beach house
Tux: $50 Is actually $100 but they are paying half
My dress: $40 at least
Shoes: $20 for me husbands are included with tux
Gas: $20
Cash on hand: $50 just in case

At the end of Sept. we are having a girls weekend at Ft. Walton Beach for bride, her mom, daughters, me and two other close friends. The condo is free but I do not know what the women have planned. I will bring $50 just in case.

I am planning on having a garage sale soon to offset some of the costs. .

Just want to clarify that my husband is not unemployed and we have lost his $1,200 a month income. He is employed but many new construction plumbers lost their jobs and went with companies that specialize in residential/commercial and he is back with an old employer and his pay has been reduced $1,200 less a month ;-)

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I have sold on Ebay before and made some money here and there. However I have been inspired by this woman's blog http://mydeartrash.blogspot.com/ and have decided to try again. She lists many, many items of clothing at once and I think that is the trick. It is time consuming but I am off tomorrow and will try to list as many as I can. I have name brand clothes that I picked up at garage sales for 50 cents to a dollar and from the thrift store for $2 for a garbage bag full. Those I have to pick through and sometimes I hit the jackpot and others not. My short term goal for any money I may make is to take the family to dinner at the new Kobe's Japanese restaurant they just opened by my house. I will let you know how it goes.

Last week I answered an ad on Craigslist for people who were interested in making $300 participating in a study that determines wether or not eating raw almonds daily affects high cholestrol in a positive way. I responded and went to a 30 min orietation on wednesday and had blood drawn yesterday to determine if I qualify. I hope so. That money will be used for Christmas. I find out Monday.

My husband was paid today and had a little bit of overtime. Thank goodness.

Working this weekend (work every other). Can't say I am too upset about it. I just want to be indoors. This heat is unbearable!

I have decided to start blogging about our financial mess and struggles so that I can hopefully look back and see how far I have come (hopefully ahead of the game with our home paid off). Never in a million years did I think that my husband and I would regress financially the way we have since Oct. of 2009. My husband is in construction and right now with the state of the economy noone is risking opening a new business and the banks are not handing out loans the way they were (which is why our country is in this mess in the first place). My husband has taken a $1,200 loss in income A MONTH! I have had to sell my car back to the dealership (at a $2,000 loss) we bought it from and I now drive one that was my daughters with over 100,000 miles on it. I quit paying 3 credit cards and settled on one of them. I have two more to go but cannot even begin that now. We owe our parents $5,000 for getting us out of those two obligations. The worst thing of all and this is totally OUR fault is we have a first and second mortgage with the second one used as a loan consolidation. Together they total $2,020.00 dollars our other expenses amount to $2,000.00 a month inc. gas and groceries. That is what we make a month down to the last penny. We have 7 years to pay these loans off and we will be mortgage free. I am praying every night that we reach that goal.