It's not quite the middle of the month yet, but I'm already feeling a bit discouraged on the budget. It's not terrible, but there were a few unexpected (and stupid) costs I didn't anticipate.

$169/300 in Groceries, so I need to reign it in for the rest of the month for sure.

$0/150 in Restaurants. Woooo! I'll prob spend a little on Sunday, but beyond that we've been doing really great.

$130/100 in Shopping/Misc. This is my catch-all, and it included a $35 late fee on my CC (stupid, and really no good reason that I paid it late) and a $37 parking ticket from a couple of months ago that got lost in a pile... it was $25 originally, so again. Stupid. I did purchase a small purse yesterday - I've been searching for one to replace mine, so that it matches my wardrobe. I found one for $20 at Target. I also purchased a new bra at VS. I have a hard time finding ones that fit me correctly (and unfortunately not because they're too big. haha). But I had a coupon for $10 off and it's really quite a need at this point. Still went with an inexpensive one, so I ended up spending about $30.

$17/80 in Fuel. I'm so thankful that I don't drive a ton for work. Most days I work from home, and when I do drive it's quite a bit of distance, but I've been averaging about $60/month for my tiny Honda.

$79/65 in Car Insurance. I have one of those devices that tracks my driving patterns, and apparently they think my driving hasn't been going as well for the last 6 months because it jumped :/ Upon investigating, the reasoning doesn't make much sense - and DH and I are going to have a friend switch our policy so that the two vehicles and our renters insurance are all together. That should reduce our payments by at least a bit. I was a bit miffed about that for sure.

Christmas shopping is still under budget. And almost complete! Which gets us to our crisis...

DH asked for a new Brown's t-shirt (die hard, and ever-hardened Cleveland fan he is). I decided to design him one custom and ordered it a few weeks back. It was $50 for one screen-printed shirt, which is a lot. But I trust the company (have used them in the past), I chose the more expensive t-shirt with the fabric DH likes, and the print quality is great. When I received the shirt yesterday, I realized I had made a big (rather, tiny) mistake - the stuff printed on the shirt was waaaay too small. I hadn't planned it correctly, and it looked rather ridiculous.

I immediately called them and explained my situation. It is certainly my fault that the dimensions weren't correct. But I also uploaded a proof so they could see what the shirt was intended to look like. If anyone actually checked it for QC, they would have noticed the discrepancy right away (because they see these every single day).

They were so very helpful - not only ran the shirt again for free, but upgraded my account to get better pricing and then on top of it ran another shirt for me using their other (cheaper) printing process so I could see the difference. They expedited the order so it would get to me before xmas, and I was left in awe at having such a great experience with them. I'm sure I'll end up doing additional t-shirts in the future, and I'll definitely be going with Scalable Press.

They saved Christmas

I guess I'm just not used to that level of service and I appreciate it so much when I do encounter it. It definitely inspires me to want to create that kind of environment for my own clients.

So that's that. Busy weekend coming up - shooting an event tonight and a proposal tomorrow evening, which should be a lot of fun Then Sunday will (thankfully) be relaxing and fun, hanging out with my SIL.

Hope you all enjoy your Friday and weekend!!