Happy Birthday to Me.

So. Today is not my birthday, but today I stopped contemplating something and just did it and it felt like the perfect early birthday gift!

One, which is not really significant, is that I finally put my order in for a subscription to Anthology magazine. So far they have released 1 issue and the 2nd issue just came out and so I decided to place my order so I can start from issue 2 and slowly build to owning all of them! When Cookie magazine first came out, I bought the very first issue at a Bel Air grocery store and immediately became a subscriber. I love that I own every issue of Cookie and I frequently refer back to them.

Over the last couple years ALL of my favorite magazines have folded...Blue Print, Domino, and even Cookie. I can't tell you how excited I am to actually have a new magazine arriving in my mail. I love blogs, don't get me wrong, but there is just something you can't beat about a well laid out magazine full of inspiration. My lifelong dream was to be a magazine writer but right now I am getting to live out my other dream of being a mother and I can fulfill my creative aspirations writing copy and providing art direction over here, so it's all good!

Speaking of that, I found the first novel I wrote in the 3rd grade (it was a spin off book to the American Girls book collections) and I also started a school newspaper in the 6th grade called C.A.T. Gazette (for Christie, Andrea, and Tiffany..they were my 2 friends I talked into helping :)). Guess I'm kind of dorky but what can I say? I love magazines and I love writing and I can't wait for my first issue of Anthology to get here.

NOW. The big choice I made today was to move money out of our savings and pay off my credit card in full so I can close it. Last year I had 2 credit cards and Billy had 2 as well. We each paid off 1, so we had 2 total. So now I am happy to announce we are down to 1 card in this household and I can't wait to get that one paid off as well.

Because of my resolution to move towards minimalism, I knew it would eat at me if I just let that card linger. Honestly I don't even know where that card is, I haven't used it in forever, but I've just been making a little more than the monthly payments every month and I just decided to bite the bullet and pay the whole thing off.

We have some big news we are announcing (God willing) in May and while it will require us to pad up our savings, pulling some of it out to pay off that card felt absolutely amazing and I know it will serve to benefit us as well down the road for our new ventures this spring.

To be turning 27 and knowing that I have 0 credit card debt was one of the best gifts I could have given myself. I can't wait to put our 12 month plan into action to be able to close Billy's by this time next year so we can announce we have 0 credit card debt as a family. Wish us luck :)