It’s a new week, and boy am I excited.

Here’s my week:

And for a quick recap of what happened {in case you aren’t at all interested in reading about my life}:

• This month’s photo challenge is going much better but not great.
• I stayed home sick on Tuesday, but ended up working from home all day.
• We finally had a  SNOW DAY {with no snow…}
• Saturday was super busy, a home appraisal, IKEA’s Bring Your Own Friends event, and a trip to Costco.
• Sunday was even busier thanks to inspiration from IKEA which kicked my room renovations into high gear.
• March’s focus on budget is not going so well… AT ALL.
• and I cannot wait for Spring Break (even if I only get 3 days off)!

And for the longer version {for those of you who like to read or are just nosy :)}:

• Who knew that adding the photo challenge prompts to my online calendar AND my daily to do pages in my Filofax would keep me on the track?! I’m staying fairly on track with the furthest I’ve slacked behind being 2 {busy} days.
• Monday evening, my throat was a bit scratchy, and later that night, I ended up with a fever. Tuesday morning, I barely had a voice, so I decided I’d stay home for the day to avoid getting anyone in my office sick. Normally when I’m sick, I don’t want to leave my bed, but I felt fine aside from sounding like a frog and the fever from the day before. I was wide awake though, so I pulled my laptop out and worked from 6am-5pm. I even kept to my usual work schedule and took a lunch break at 2pm.
• Wednesday, everyone was predicting a huge storm to hit the East coast. We were supposed to get 4-8″ of snow, which is a lot for us. I was pretty excited when I woke up to see a light dusting of snow on the ground. My university closed, and I anxiously waited for the rain to switch back to snow around noon as forecasted. The snow never came, and the rain melted any snow we had gotten that morning. It was a REALLY uneventful day, but at least I had a day off.
• Saturday morning we had an appraiser come to assess the value of our house. I keep my room fairly neat so I didn’t plan on cleaning more, but for some reason I went into “Clean ALL the things!!!” mode. Everything in my room usually has a place. If it doesn’t, I find a place for it or get rid of it, but occasionally, I get lazy and just put it in my inbox tray by my desk with the intention of getting to it later. Of course later doesn’t come, so the pile takes over my desk until I don’t notice them {or pretend not to.} Out of nowhere before the appraiser came, I threw everything that was out of place into a basket {and no, I didn’t hid it in a closet…} I sorted them into their respective areas {Office – Filing, Supplies, Coupons; Electronics; Closets – Travel Accessories, Jewelry, Pet Stuff, Tools; Bathroom}. In a matter of 20 minutes while watching a movie, everything was put away and sorted.
• Saturday was a big day, the appraiser came at 9am. After he left, I had to rush to make it to IKEA for their Bring Your Own Friends event. I made it just in time to enjoy a free breakfast of eggs, bacon, and potatoes which was perfectly “Andrea-portioned.” {Just enough to make me energized for the day, not ready to go back to bed.} Taking a stroll through IKEA was a great way to spark my creativity. I also confirmed that I do like the furniture choices I picked out, and the all the measurements work out too. After IKEA, we stopped at Costco to pick up a few things. Afterwards, we went through the containers in the garage to see what painting supplies we already had. We found out we had most of the things already, and threw out a lot of trash in the process.
• On Sunday, we had another fairly full day. We went back to Costco to pick up some more of the hangers I purchased the day before, AND drumroll… a new memory foam mattress for my room. We walked over to Walmart next door to pick up some groceries while we were there, and ventured back home so that the mattress could get a chance to expand in time for me to sleep on it. Then we went to Home Depot. $200+ worth of paint later, I got to check another item off the room renovations. {That’s for painting a few rooms, not just mine.} I got home and got to work on patching and sanding. My room and everything in it is now covered in a fine layer of drywall dust. {I really should have taken before pictures BEFORE the sanding.}
• If any of you read my March Goals post, you’ll know my focus for the month is my budget. So far, that’s a huge bust. Many of my purchases were for deals I couldn’t pass up. Others started out as things I needed but ended up including a lot of impulse buys too. So in an act of trying to shock myself into some accountability, here’s my purchases from last week:
  • Sticky notes from K&Company – I didn’t need these, but now they fit Personal-sized Filofax pages, and I have actually started using them.
  • A free pair of glasses from Coastal Contacts but I had to pay $14.95 for shipping {I wanted to have an extra pair.}
  • A 4 pack of brush heads for my Clarisonic {20% off plus 8% cashback} from the Skinstore =  about $15 dollars per brush head
  • Hair ties and headbands from Mane Message – I’ve gotten similar ones to these before as samples, and I love them.
  • I picked up some hair supplies, vitamins, odds and ends from Drugstore.com – most of it was on sale, plus I had cash back
  • I bought a license for CleanMyMac2. – I had tried the previous version before and loved it so I wanted to support the developer with version 2.
  • I also picked up a travel bag for my Clarisonic. – totally unnecessary.
  • A 5lb. Kettle bell and 2 sets of dumbbells for working out. – the set of weights I had was too heavy so I got some lighter ones.
  • The Hunger Games trilogy on Kindle {on sale for $5} – I couldn’t pass it up.
  • Two sets of 35 no slip hangers – I’d seen online that Costco was selling hangers similar to Huggable hangers for only $9. I picked up a set on Saturday, and returned to get another set on Sunday.
  • The paint of course.
  • And the big one…the mattress. My old mattress was 12 years old and sagging in the middle. On Saturday, I found out Costco had a sale on a 14″ gel memory foam mattress for $399, so I checked it out on a whim. I was a bit concerned about the quality based on the price, so I went home and checked some reviews first. It’s not a top of the line mattress, but reviews weren’t too far off from Tempur Pedic ones either. It just didn’t have the $3000 price tag of the Tempur Pedic ones I’d looked at before. I figured that for the price, it was worth a shot. I also ordered a mattress cover for it since the people I’ve spoken with recommend always putting a cover on memory foam mattresses to protect them from moisture. The hardest part is finding sheets to fit it. My old mattress has gone to it’s new home in a spare bedroom to eventually be a guest bed.
• With all that happened this weekend, I left myself very little time to do my school work that I had, as usual, saved until the last minute. I actually took a quick break from sanding on Sunday and submitted my assignment online while I was completely covered in dust. I’m actually pretty disappointed in what I turned in, but I just wanted to get it submitted.

Until next week.