Hubby Valentine Challenge

I know several of you are anxious to see if we really only spent $20 total for Valentines Day.  If you read our Valentines Day post, you will know that we had a fabulous Valentines Day.  We did go over our Valentine challenge by $1- not bad and that was to increase the tip for lunch. 

My $5 bought:

What you don't see are the Valentines Day nerds- he got into those already:)  I did get him a card- that threw him off- he looked at the back of the card and it said $2.30.  He was ready to bust me about going over- then I informed him that I bought the card at the Dollar Tree and it was $0.50 and didn't come out of the Valentine money.  I used the change in my pocket to buy that card.  It isn't the card so much as what is written in it:)  He got Valentines Day nerds- for my nerd, Love lollipops for my love and Reese's hearts for the way he makes my heart feel:)  I am so blessed to have such a wonderful, caring and supportive husband.

I got from him:

a cute teddy bear with Reese's hearts attatched- in case you can't tell- we love Reese's here:)  Michael was so impressed that he still had a shiny nickel left over.

As you can tell, we had an awesome Valentines day and stayed (mostly), within our challenge of only spending $20 total for Valentines Day.  I love these challenges and cannot wait to do another one.  Maybe the next one, you will join us:)

P.S.  I have been asked, why I named this "hubby challenge"?  My hubby knows that I can take $1 and do amazing things with it.  My hubby on the other hand needs to be challenged to be more creative.  He has gotten alot better over the years.  Normally, he picks up the first thing he sees, doesn't matter how much it cost and thinks it is the most perfect gift ever.  I needed a "challenge" to prove to him that with a little thought he could find the perfect gift without spending a mini fortune:)

Hubby Challenge

You are probably wondering what in the world is a hubby challenge?  And those who know me personally are probably wondering what in the world I have challenged Michael to do this time-LOL:)  Its cool or as my kids say- Its all good:)  As many of you know, my family is trying to get out of debt- we are climbing more and more each day.  When Michael and I sat down to discuss our finances, one area we really needed to work on was our spending.  We love buying things for each other and our families- and so did our credit card companies.  Evertime we would get one of our credit card bills, I would cringe at the amount of interest that they were charging us.  So, we decided to do something about it, stopped using our credit cards and started using cash for all of our purchases.  We created a budget and all of Michael's paycheck goes to pay our bills.  It wasn't until my birthday, that we realized that we forgot to create a gift budget.  But that is OK, it forced us to get creative.  So, for my birthday, Michael came to me and asked how much I wanted him to spend for my birthday.  I had $20 left over from grocery shopping and gave it to him to use.  He looked at me like I had 3 heads-LOL.  What in the world am I going to do with $20- he asked me.  I told him to get creative, which is something he is not familiar with.  I told him that I didn't need a $5 birthday card- I would be very happy with a handwritten note- something personal would warm my heart.  Well,  I didn't get a note of any kind but I must say that after some thought- he did very well.  For my birthday, we went out for lunch and the only money we spent out of pocket was the tip to the waitress.  You can read about my birthday lunch here.  That evening, he gave me my present.  It was a movie and a date night popcorn tub filled with popcorn, candy, pretzels, etc- I loved it.  He was proud of himself- he had managed to get the popcorn/candy tub on clearance.  That night, we popped popcorn, snuggled on the couch, watched a movie and spent quality time together- something we haven't done in a long time.  We loved it so much that we put it on our 2011 goals to have a date night, whether we go out or spend the evening watching a movie.

That brings me to this hubby challenge- Valentines day:)  We have decided to spend no more than $20 total and would like to have lunch out, since he has to leave that week for a conference.  That would mean we would each have $5 and we would use the remaining $10 with the help of a gift card to have lunch together.  Lets see how creative he gets:)