Sassy City Chicks!

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Jamie

Last week I went to an amazing event put on by The Sassy City Chicks!! 

The Sassy City Chicks every now and again host an event in Los Angeles.  This event brings some of the best designers, local boutiques in the LA area to one location where they offer their products for 30% to 80% off retail prices.  If you’ve heard of a “sample sale” t his is very similar.

But it’s great for the boutiques because it gets their name out there and they can help to get rid of excess product, but it’s fun for the shopper.  Going to one event where there’s over 40 designers in one location.  heck ya!

Not only that but there is a spa area at this event where massages can be offered, get your nails painted, or even your hair done.  Trust me, I took in the night for all that it was, and am still relaxed from the amazing massage I received from “La Belle” spa in Arcadia, CA.  I’ll be seeing them again in the future to get my amazing facial I purchased while at the event.  Speaking of, La Belle Spa and Salon were giving 50% off any service if you booked that night.  A great deal!

For a girl who doesn’t have much style in her life it was nice to head to an event like this to have a look into the life of a fashionista! And trust me, I had a lot of fun during the process.  Follow The Sassy City Chicks on facebook to find other amazing events happening in Los Angeles in the future.

A picture of my nails after my night out.  They did a GREAT job and one of my new favorite colors.  Lavender!

And of course, a girl can’t go to a fashion event without coming home with some bling… I love this ring!!!

 

Disclosure: This post was not sponsored, but I had such a good time at this event I had to write about it!  Tickets with the tote were 20 dollars, otherwise 10 dollars without the tote bag.  And if you pay close enough attention The Sassy City Chicks may give out a code to get you in free 😉 

And oh yea, next time, you all are coming with me 😉


Categories: Fun Stuff, Life | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Guest Post from The Debt Princess

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Jamie

I asked Jessica over at The Debt Princess if she would write a guest post for me based on how to budget while in your 30’s.  I could really relate to Jessica’s story as myself accumulated way too much debt in my life.  I have lost a house after going through a divorce, and well, I’m still paying off college student loans in the process of losing 50% of my income because I was so miserable in my former job.

My true goal is to get myself completely out of debt and live comfortably.  Here is Jessica’s story with tips on how to look at your own financial self:

 

I have been an adult now for about 18 years but I didn’t grow up until I was well past my 35th birthday.

 

For me, being an adult meant having things. Stuff. I spent a lot of time accumulating my stuff and I was proud of it. I also spent that time accumulating debt, a lot of debt.

 

In March of 2010, at the age of 35 I found myself a single mom of 2 young boys, living back with my mom, unemployed, in debt and selling my car for scrap after the transmission went out. I had no clue what I was going to do with my life or how I was going to provide for my children.

 

It took starting my blog, The Debt Princess for me to really grow-up. As I shared my story about being in debt, I learned a few things about myself.

 

  1. I didn’t know the first thing about personal finance, not even a little bit!
  2. I was not alone. There were people everywhere in the same position as I was.
  3. Things needed to change.

 

I wanted to share with others “what NOT to do” with their money and to do that, I felt like I needed to know a little bit about what we should be doing.

 

I have learned so much in the 2 years that I have been working on improving my financial life.

 

Budgeting

 

Every. Single. Person. Needs a budget. Everyone needs to know how much money they have coming in and how much money they are spending. It doesn’t matter if you are uber wealthy or middle class, you need to know how much money you have.

 

When I looked at my budget for the first time, I was shocked and disgusted to see how much I was throwing away at places like McDonald’s (I was addicted to fountain Cokes.), Starbucks and Target. I was paying for subscriptions that I never used to Netflix and the gym. Once I started adding all of that up, I found that I could put that same amount of money to better use.

 

Saving

 

The concept of paying myself first was so confusing to me. For some reason it never clicked that I needed to think about my future. Part of thinking about that future is acting today for affect on tomorrow. We all need to be putting money away for a number of reasons.

 

  1. Emergencies. Whether it’s car repairs, medical expenses or a broken dishwasher, emergencies happen. A solid financial plan includes a savings account for those types of emergencies. This alleviates the need to go into debt by charging the expenses.
  2. Short Term Savings. When I want something, I need to save for it. I do NOT need to have it immediately. Those items that I use to buy on impulse mean a lot more to me after I’ve saved for them for a few months. This is also where I need to be saving for my next vehicle.
  3. Long Term Savings. This is my retirement plan and it is essential for every person. Social security will not be enough to provide a comfortable lifestyle when retirement hits. A diversified plan is essential and the best way to achieve that is through a Roth IRA.

 

Priorities

The single greatest lesson I have learned in the 3 years since I truly became an adult was that I needed to have my priorities straight. I needed to stop giving into impulses. I could not make trips to the mall just because I was bored. I do not need a new car every few years. In fact, a used older model car that I own outright is a far better car that will take me years to pay off.

 

As a single mom, I needed to remember that my children are learning from every move I make. And if my priority is to raise well-adjusted, stable adults, I needed to make sure they were learning about the right way to handle finances. I do not want my children to live their adulthood in debt, the way I have.

 

My priorities are set now, for the most part. I still struggle with the occasional decision but I feel better about where I am now than I did a few years ago. Even if I’m still in a lot of debt, I know that my next 40 (hopefully more) years as an adult will be better than the first 18.

 

 

Jessica Streit is a single mom of 2 boys, a graduate student, a freelance writer, a blogger and she is in debt. A lot of debt! She’s writing about how she got into debt and process she is taking to get out of debt on her blog The Debt Princess. 

Jessica, thank you so much for sharing your story and also the tips in how you got there.  We all need to sit down and look at our financial self and figure out where our money is going.  The next step for me is to start saving for me first .

 


Categories: Life | Tags: , , , , , | 19 Comments

Aperture Does What?

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Jamie

How many of you out there know what Aperture means when it comes to photography?  How many of you know that you have a function on your camera where you have the ability to control the aperture setting?

Aperture for those that don’t know in the simplest terms possible means the size of the opening of the lens when a picture is taken.  (www.digital-photography-school.com).

This excerpt taken from www.digital-photography-school.com/aperture: When you hit the shutter release button of your camera a hole opens up that allows your cameras image sensor to catch a glimpse of the scene you’re wanting to capture. The aperture that you set impacts the size of that hole. The larger the hole the more light that gets in – the smaller the hole the less light.

If you have heard the term of f-stops, this is in relation to aperture.  The lower the f-stop number means the larger the aperture in the photo is.  It also means larger the aperture the more light that is coming in.  And vice versa.  The higher the f-stop number means the less light that is coming through to the image.

Depth of Field: In the world of photography you may often hear the term of Depth of Field.  Wikipedia defines it as:  the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image.  The larger depth of field there is the more focus your entire shot will be.  The smaller the depth of field is means only a small part of your shot will be in focus.

The aperture has a big effect on depth of field.  Large aperture (the smaller the f-stop) decreases the depth of field in photos, and small aperture (larger f-stops) will give you a larger depth of field, and helps keeping your entire picture in focus.

Below you will find some examples that can help show you what changing your aperture can do:

This is an example of utilizing a larger aperture (f 2.8).  As you notice the focus of the flower is perfectly focus, but the background is blurred.  With this large of an aperture, even if another flower showed up behind this yellow one, that second flower wouldn’t be nearly as in focus as the yellow flower because of the small depth of field.

Whereas, in this photo:

The aperture is set at f 4.5.  Yes, the background is still a bit blurred, but you can make out the features of the background whereas the picture above you can really just see the colors.

I know this may come out to be pretty confusing, but it really is a lot of fun to go out and play with aperture.  A good time to use a large aperture (f 2.8, 4.5, etc) is with the use of portrait photography.  You put the person in the forefront where they come into focus nicely, and then the background gets blurred out.  It can make for some really great photos!

Also, if there’s ever a fine detail you want your camera to truly focus upon, it’d be a good idea to play around with the aperture to see what you can come up with.

Playing around with the aperture can make for some pretty great photos, and allows the use of creativity by bringing it to an entirely new level.

I hope you enjoyed this segment on aperture.  No worries, it can be a bit confusing, but I hope this helped in explaining more in detail what aperture is and what it can do for your photos!


Categories: Photography | Tags: , , , , | 22 Comments