Life's Hard Lessons

Hey all!  Long time, no blog! :)

The title of this blog is a little serious, but really, it's just an opener for me to vent my frustrations on you.  My life and days are quite chaotic anymore, and they are going to continue to be hectic.  With two more upcoming art shows and a wedding looming, I don't have a lot of down time to play with.  This past week has been especially busy.  I've been putting some serious wedding planning time in, and I have my wedding shower today!   

All that being said, there have been some important life lessons I've been learning the difficult way over the past few months.  It's not that shocking since I'm trying to start my own business and I'm getting married this October.  I'm a bit of a naive, optimistic thinker, which makes some of these lessons a little surprising and hard to swallow.  Without further ado, here are some of the crappy, hard ways I had to learn basic realities in life.

Life Lesson #1: Just because you paint it doesn't mean someone will buy it.
Okay, call me naive (because I do all the time) but when I was in my art studio painting away this winter, I really believed that I was going to sell every single painting I created.  I have 3 art shows behind me, and I've only sold one painting.  Ouch to this reality check.  I think I was a little off in my guestimation of sold paintings, don't you?

Life Lesson #2: You can't continue to spend money you don't have.
God, this one has been a tough one to sit with.  Okay, so I used to have a job where I was paid an okay wage consistently.  I no longer have that job.  I have another job that I like much better, but I make significantly less money.  The problem is I'm still spending the way I used to when I had my old job.  Doesn't take a genius to figure out this does NOT work.

Life Lesson #3: The Home Depot will find a way to make money off of you.
Steve and I took out a lot of credit card debt on our Home Depot account when we were fixing up our farmhouse this past winter.  Not sure if any of you have a Home Depot credit card, but to quickly explain, they have these nice offers of 12 months no interest as long as you charge over $300 on your account.  We definitely took advantage of that offer.  And even though we were careful and paying our payments on time, we were recently charged $200 in interest alone in our last billing cycle.  Home Depot found a way to make some money off of Steve's smaller charges.  Sneaky bastards.

Life Lesson #4: Money starts to add up quickly when planning a wedding.
I'm a fairly frugal person, especially when I don't have money.  I'm working this whole wedding planning thang with a very limited budget, and I like that.  I don't want to spend a lot of money on a one day event.  But, I want our wedding to be nice.  And even using my most creative powers, I'm still finding I'm spending more money than a should!  Which leads me to my next hard life lesson...

Life Lesson #5: David's Bridal will find a way to screw you.
Okay, thank God for my mom, because without her, a lot of this wedding planning wouldn't even exist.  My dress wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for her.  Back in February, my mom and I went to David's Bridal to find my wedding dress.  I had a strict budget in mind of $500.  I did not want to spend more than that on my one-day dress.  We found my dress, and my God, it was $489!  Perfect!  Or so I thought.  Here's where the financial b*tch slapping took place:  I went to David's Bridal this past Thursday for my dress fitting.  Everything was going well, a few tucks here, a few inches lifted there... when the time came to talk about the cost, I almost passed out.  $419!?!?!?  For alterations!?!?!?!?  I was practically in tears.  I managed to hold it together, but I felt so awful.  My mom had to pay it.  We were trapped.  And the most upsetting thing was we were not prepared at all for this cost!  When I was trying on wedding dresses, they only mentioned the dress was going to have to be taken up a little in length, and that it was going to cost around $120.  We were not prepared for a the sticker shock we were faced with on Thursday.  It sucked.  It still angers me.  My damn dress was $1000.  Way over my budget.  Waaaaaay pisses me off.

So, those are the top lessons I've learned this past week.  I think they are kind of major lessons.  Not very easy to accept.  But oh well, that's life.  Money tends to rule it a lot of the time, especially when you are getting married and starting a new business.  :) 

I'm sure I'll have more rants in the future, but for now I have to get going.  It's time to get ready for my wedding shower! 

Peacing out,
Nikki