Fabulously Frugirl has moved!

Hello dear readers!  I hope you have been doing well!

Sorry, I’ve been MIA for a while on this blog.  I’ve been doing a lot of work behind the scenes, though.  Aside from all the moving I’ve done in real life, I’ve also moved my cyber home, as well.

About 4 5 6 7 weeks ago, I attended the Canadian Personal Finance Conference in Toronto.  The conference was really well organized and engaging.  Krystal and Preet did an awesome job.   It was really neat to meet so many talented, fun, super nice people, and to put a face to ones whom I’ve been following.  Truly a humbling experience 🙂

I also had the opportunity to chat with Vanessa, Nelson, Marissa, CountryGirl, Simon, Kerry, Frugal Trader, Avrex Money, and Canadian Couch Potato.  They basically convinced me that I had to go self-hosted, and it wasn’t that hard.  Country girl was on the ball, and 2 weeks later, she had a new website, but I dragged my feet.

Coding is definitely not my forte, but with the help of  the lovely and talented Marissa, Google, YouTube and encouragement from BF, and my sisters — –ta da 🙂  (click on the image to enlarge).

http://www.fabulouslyfrugirl.com

Please check it out, come say “hello”  and also update your RSS feeds, blogrolls, and e-mail subscriptions.

There are a few glitches I am working to resolve.  Your patience and feedback would be much appreciated.

On another note, I’d also like to update my “blogroll” and  I would love to include your blog, or your blog recommendation(s), so please leave a comment or e-mail me.

Note: I imported my content (posts, pages, comments, etc), a few weeks ago, so if you have submitted a comment since then, your comment will not appear on the new site (my apologies, yourfablife and beauty and the budget!).

I hope too see everyone at my new home.  Ciao!

Sincerely,

Checking in… this and that

Hello everyone,

I hope you are well!

I’ve missed blogging, but I think it was a much needed break. Prior to taking my break, I felt that my online life wasn’t balanced with my offline life.  Blogging and connecting with people is so much but I think that I had trouble balancing.  Since this blog is a hobby, I want to keep enjoying it, and I think I will get my posting to once or twice a week, so I can enjoy my offline life, as well.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been able to focus on studying for and writing my professional licensing exam.  Whew, am I glad that’s over with.  It was so hard getting into the groove of studying, again!  I’ve been studying for the professional engineer’s law and ethics exam, and it’s not terribly difficult exam, and I got a lot of helpful notes from my colleagues.  The funniest thing that came from this, was that my friend witnessed someone cheating on the exam!  It’s a law and ethics exam for goodness sakes!

I’ve also started job searching as I’ve been at my first job since graduation and I’ve been feeling kinda “blah” about it for a while now.  I’ve been slowly trying to see if I could make adjustments that would make me want to stay, but it hasn’t been working, and I think I need to look elsewhere.  Not really enjoying my job has also been affecting my life outside of work, and I really need to kick my job searching up a notch.  Any helpful tips you have would be much appreciated.  I went for my first interview in years last week, and I am keeping my fingers crossed!

I’m planning to celebrate with BF, my sister and my close girl friends this weekend, and I am really excited.  On the agenda – dinner at my favourite wine and cheese bar, and karaoke-ing!  I haven’t karaoke’d in soooo long, and I am so glad that my friends have obliged.  We are doing the “Asian style” karaoke where we have private rooms – it would take a lot of liquid courage for me to sing in front of a crowd.

I’ve finally got around to cleaning my room and apartment.  Having a clean place is so much nicer than having a cluttered space.  It just makes me feel so calm :).  I also attacked my mountain of laundry.  BF and I were getting tired of picking out our clean clothes from the pile on my couch.

I took BF out for a very special dinner, since have accumulated quite a number of celebrations since January: BF’s birthday, Valentine’s Day, BF getting into business school.  We went to this little restaurant and had a wonderful dinner.  I had a delicious duck and BF had the tenderloin. I think I impressed BF 😉

And my taxes have been submitted, as of two weeks ago, and I am eagerly awaiting to get my grubby hands on my refund.  I know, I know, I am giving the government an interest free loan.  In my defense, most of my RRSP contribution is not taxes, and I have been saving my charitable donation receipts for the last 4 years.

Even though I won an H&R tax software from the lovely Young and Thrifty (thanks again!), I just can’t wrap my head around filing electronically!  This is my second attempt to complete my taxes electronically.  Every time, I complete my taxes electronically, I owe money.  This makes no sense, whatsoever.  When I took a closer look at the H&R forms, I think that the provincial forms weren’t part of the package (or I didn’t know where to find them), and that threw things off.  It only takes me about an hour to do my taxes by hand, they are very straight forward, so I think I’m just going to continue with that.  Unfortunately, it takes forever to get a refund.  I guess that makes it more the reason to pay less taxes throughout the year so I won’t need a refund, right?

That’s about all that’s going on in my life right now!

What have you been up to lately?  Are your taxes handed in?  And do you prefer to do taxes by hand or electronically?

I’ve been trying to follow everyone on Google Readers, but have fallen desperately behind.  So many new blogs!  And have you checked out Modest Money’s list of Canadian PF Bloggers?  I’m on the list, and I’ve got 9 votes (including my own vote!).  So, if you like my blog, I urge you to check Modest Money’s blog and vote for your favourite Canadian PF blogger 🙂

Cheers,

You Guys are the BEST!!!

Image via

When I posted up my February FAIL recap, yesterday, I felt pretty down and disappointed in myself.  I made all these purchases, many impulsive – and $700 over budget later, here I was.  (And I was still admiring my Revlon Colorburst lip glosses and convincing myself that it was a great bargain.)

When I read everyone’s comments and you guys were so supportive.  Some of you even told me that you’ve had one of those months, before, and to just focus on making March better.

That is why I love the PF blogging community.  We help one another, from figuring out how to buy a house, to negotiating for a raise, to just making a gal feel better about blowing her budget 🙂

Thank you so much for totally making my day and giving me steam for nailing March’s budget!

I really appreciate each and every comment, but I haven’t been able to keep up with so many of the new PF blogs.  Here are a few new blogs that you may want to check out and welcome them to the community!

• BogofDebt
• Below her Means
• The Budgeting Tool
• Turtleneck & Highwaisted Jeans
• Delicious Shovel
• A Fistful of Dollars

Have you checked our Carly Rae Jenson’s song?  It’s so fun, catchy and I just can’t stop listening to it.  I can’t seem to find the original on Youtube, but here is a great cover.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Image via

Isn’t this the sweetest thing?

Wishing all my readers a wonderful an amazing Singles Awareness Valentine’s Day.  No matter what you are doing, I hope that you can be silly around with the people in your life – whether they be your friends or your friends.

Go on over to check out more great illustrations by HJ Stories!

Cheers,

Happy (late) New Year

(Image via)

Hello dear readers!

I hope that everyone had a very safe and happy new year.

I have been MIA from my computer for most of the break, spending time with family, friends and my dear boyfriend.  Even though I felt a bit of internet/blogging withdrawal (I kept thinking about how practically everything would make a great post!), I really enjoyed my time away.

Thank you to everyone who entered my Grown up Christmas Wish Giveaway.  Your support and generosity was very much appreciated and blew me away.   You contributions to a holiday charity totaled $480 and a few days ago, I made a donation of $250 to Sick Kids Hospital.   I hope that we will be able to help the children, in any small way 🙂

I will chose a winner really soon.  I want to do with BF since this is my first time, and I want to make sure it’s fair and I don’t mess up.

I know that some of you filled out the form without writing a comment sharing your grown up Christmas wish (which was mandatory).  I blame this on my lack of clarity in the directions and hope that I can make the entry directions more clear in my next giveaway.  In keeping with the holiday spirit, I will still include those entries.

I will be posting my December 2011 recap, 2011 recap, 2011 resolution recap and 2012 resolutions goals and habits, soon.  I’ve been spending most of today organizing/moving around furniture/building furniture in my room.  Can’t wait to share my “reno” photographs and perhaps a tutorial on making my first jewelry holder.

Stay tuned and here’s to a great 2012!

Cheers,

Reminder: Grown-up Christmas Giveaway

Hello, everyone!

This is the last reminder of my giveaway which ends December 25th at midnight!

You can win these two lovely and very useful finance books. I understand that money might be tight this month.  You do not have to give to charity to enter my giveaway – that just gives you additional entries. 🙂

I will match all your donations by 50% up to $250 with a donation of my own to Toronto’s Sick Kids Hospital.

Mandatory entries:

Leave a comment of your grown-up Christmas List and fill in the form.

Additional entries:

Give to charity and tell me the amount; follow me via RSS feeder, email subscription, Twitter and tweet about this.or write a blog post about this giveaway.

Good luck, everyone! 🙂

Make-Over

Some of you may have noticed some changes to my blog.  Using my (limited) website design skills, some very helpful WordPress widgets and Paint.net – I am pleased to share my new look.

There are still some works in progress but most of my new look is there.  So, if you’re reading this via an RSS feed, come check it out! 🙂

 

Vacation Preview: The Maritimes (East Coast Canada )

Thank you for all your wonderful comments on my Frugal Parents “Pilot” post!  My parents are a huge inspiration to my desire to achieve financial freedom, and I love to share my stories.  It also serves as a good reminder to myself when I start to slip up!

I’ve been a little quiet around the blogosphere the past little while.  That’s because BF and I are on vacation!

We are spending almost 2 weeks on the beautiful east coast of Canada.  We’ve been to Halifax, Nova Scotia and took a road trip to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia so far.  We are planning to head to Prince Edward Island soon.

I’m a huge fan of Anne of Green Gables!  And you can imagine me squealing like a baby girl – “Anne was here!  Anne and Gilbert went to school here.  They kissed on this bridge!”  Yea, I’m crazy like that 🙂

BF and I have been diligently tracking our travel spending and I will be excited to share that with you when I come back.  And the pretty pictures, of course!

I hope everyone is having a great summer (or winter for those of us on the other side of the equator)!

I leave you with a picture of their Royal Highnesses on their recent trip out to the beautiful island (and after doing some awesome dragon boat racing!).

P.S. I’ve recently joined twitter, and haven’t figured out the widget to link my twitter account with my blog (yet).  If you’d like to follow me, you can find me @fab_frugirl.

Busy Bee

Things have been a bit hectic lately, and even though I have money on my mind, I haven’t had too much time to write down my thoughts.

Posting here will be a bit more sporadic, as I want to spend more of my extra time outdoors and soaking the sunshine.  In the City, we really have 2 seasons – winter and construction.  I am going to try to squeeze out the little summer there is out there, and enjoy it.

I hope you understand.  I will be back in a few weeks.  And I promise I will post vacation budgets and maybe some photographs 🙂

Cheers,

Hello world!

(Photograph Source)

Welcome to my blog.

I am a twenty-something girl on my journey to financial freedom.  I tested the waters of personal finance not long after starting my first full-time job after college and have been hooked ever since.  I have been reading so many inspiring writers on their financial journey for the past two years, that I took the plunge and started my own blog to track my progress.  I’m hoping this blog will also serve as a motivator, and a place for me to speak my mind about money and my life.

I am also an aspiring minimalist, and hope to share some of my experiences in minimalism on this blog, as well.  To me, minimalism and personal finance go hand in hand.  I first contemplated “minimalism” when I tried to continue living like a student, even after my college days.   I saw it as a great way to save money, and through that experience, I realize that I don’t need much to keep me happy.  I want to live my life with a purpose, and spend with a purpose.  I also want everything I own to serve a purpose in my life.

Join me as I start this journey  towards my financial freedom!

Cheers,