Praise for the blessings

I have been so blown away by all the help, encouragement, love, support, and generosity from people around me as my fiancé and I plan our wedding!

-A beautiful lady who's known me since birth will create beautiful bouquets for my wedding day. She is helping find some beautiful ribbon to decorate with!
-A college friend of my mom (and her daughter) have offered wedding planning advice, volunteered to help clean up after the wedding, AND are making (and paying for) the cobblers for the wedding ❤
-my fiances parents are paying for our honeymoon to the Bahamas!
-my parents are helping out pay for many wedding expenses!
-my grandmother is renting tables and providing table clothes!
-I have an amazing caterer and photographer!
-Our church is fantastic, so flexible, and I can't wait to decorate the place!
-The best man's mom is catering my bachelorette party and breakfast the morning of! ❤
-I have my co-maid of honors planning a fun bachelorette party!
-one of my bridesmaids is going to throw me a bridal shower!
-a new friend here wants to plan a fun bridal activity as well and has offered to help with anything I need!

There are SO many more blessings I could list! Thank you Lord! So amazing!

Engaged {in a whirl wind}

My boyfriend of 9 months proposed to me two weeks ago, on March 24th. He was perfect. He was sitting doing homework, and I was cuddling with my puppies... We actually have pictures of this (of course, it's me)!
He suddenly looked at me (at about 5:50pm) and said, "hey let's go get a drink!" I thought it was weird timing because i was getting ready to make dinner, but agreed. I called my sister and told her dinner would be late, she said he was just hanging out at our apartment. On our way downtown Ryan suddenly took a turn and said "oh that gazebo we went to on our first date is over here isn't it? Lets drive by!" (I started getting suspicious)... When he parked in front of the gazebo and got out I started getting nervous/excited, and I said "we're getting out?" He told me he wanted to take a picture together, which was weird because he doesn't like taking pictures normally! We walked up to the gazebo and talked, goofed off, took our picture. It was cold, and Ryan gave me his coat... Then he said "hey hand me what's in the pocket there..." I reached in... A RING BOX! And then he was down on his knee... "Lisa Clark, will you marry me?" Ahhhhhhh! :) happiest moment of my life thus far! Of course I said YES!

He had my sister hiding in the bushes taking pictures of the whole thing! It was perfect :) he did sooo good with the ring as well! I'm beyond blessed and happy!

$aving Money

I'm working on learning to budget better, to save money, and spend in better ways. But we have to spend money on certain items, like food. And we want food that is appetizing and tastes good. But I was sure there was ways I could spend less while still creating delicious meals. I found this article on EatingWell.com: Ways to Save Money and it was extremely practical. Just using chicken on the bone once a week instead of boneless and skinless chicken breasts will save you $78 a year! And if you have tofu once a week instead of sirloin you could save over $200. Now that's definitely worth it. And it's just little changes once a week or so... nothing drastic. Check it out. I'm definitely going to start trying this method!

I'm also attempting to make myself be more organized and task-oriented. I'm learning to set goals and then pick out the most important goal that I need to focus on. And hopefully that one success will then help me in reaching my other goals. :)  On my iphone I downloaded the Any.Do app for writing To-Do lists. It's great. Sets reminders, you can use the calendar, and you just swipe to erase your to-do once it's accomplished... always a great feeling. :]