I was bragging to Chris the other day about how I was doing SO good on my spending this month. I was predicting that at the end of my billing cycle (this coming Friday) I would have spent about 1/3 of what I normally spend in a month. YAY, right? Well…then this weekend happened and I realized where my money has been going in the past.

We ate out Friday & Saturday night and those two dinners alone cost over $100! Granted, we ordered a couple good beers each, and we had an appetizer on Friday night, but seriously…$100 for 2 people to eat 2 meals! I think the fact that I just whip out my credit card whenever we’re eating out makes it VERY easy to ignore the fact of how expensive it is. We could make a meal that is just as delicious (even better maybe) than what we ate for a fraction of the cost (including fun, good beers!).

Anyway, it was just an eye opener for me. Since we got back from Europe Chris & I have laid pretty low and it’s been a nice change…both because it’s very relaxing and because it’s nice on the pocketbook! (P.S. I think I’ll still make it within the 1/3 of normal spending…but it will be close!)

As a side note, I came across a blog sometime in the past month where a couple decided to see if they could live off of $1.00 a day. Yep. ONE DOLLAR. They did it for a whole month. I haven’t read the archives but I think it’s an interesting idea. If I could cut the cost of what I spend on food, how much could I donate to a food shelf or a homeless shelter?!

Last Saturday I volunteered at the MN SOMN State Bowling event with Chris, Josh and Robyn. Here’s a photo I snapped…as you can see most of the athletes have their own bowling ball because this rack is practically full…this is a serious event!

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A great quote from my co-worker Vince.

Enough said.

So, 3 different couples I know (who just happen to all know each other) went with the same DJ service provider for their weddings. I’m thinking they all ended up with different actual PEOPLE because their experiences were so completely different. How is a person supposed to select the entertainment for the evening when it’s not consistent across a company?!?!

Here are the 3 stories:
1. Great experience!
2. The DJ was okay. No real complaints but they could have been a little more social.
3. The DJ was not prepared for the start time (in fact, not even dressed appropriately when the wedding party arrived) and didn’t follow any of the guidelines that the couple set as far as songs to play. The reception hall had suggested a different company but the Bride decided to go with what she knew. Unfortunately she feels this was the wrong decision.

And here’s a 4th story from another company (the one the reception hall in story 3 suggested). My co-worker got married this year and they have only good things to say. They thought the DJ did a good job of keeping people on the dance floor & interacting appropriately. I think we are going to request the specific DJ they worked with and hope to have a similar experience…keep your fingers crossed!

The other option is to go with a live band which would be super awesome but is about 5x as expensive. Ugh. Why are weddings SO EXPENSIVE?!?!?!

Photo credit to phil h via Creative Commons.

…this map is really pretty! I checked the winter storm advisory after lunch today on weather.com and this is what I found. I find it hard to believe that we’re having a winter storm advisory on November 11. Yuk. I hate winter!

This year for the first time in MANY years I dressed up! Chris has hosted a Halloween party for quite a few years now (8 maybe?) but unfortunately last year it didn’t happen because he was traveling for work. So…this was my first ever Jensen Halloween Party!

The party was fun. Everyone came dressed up in different costumes which I was pretty impressed with! I dressed up as Tinkerbell, although I had purchased some children’s wings and they were uncomfortable so I don’t think they lasted 15 minutes…but thanks to the obvious green dress people still knew who I was. Chris was a tourist and his costume was HILARIOUS! We found everything at Saver’s…I think it was a great costume. The fanny pack even had a cup holder!

Chris made his famous “Jensen Punch” which I took a sip of and even though I watched him pour fruit punch in it I couldn’t taste it. He says he only made 2 rounds of the punch but I have a feeling it was being added to throughout the night because there were quite a few people drinking it!

We had a decent spread of food I think. The meatballs were a huge hit which is awesome because they are SO easy to make. That morning I took out a bag of frozen meatballs and dumped them into a crock pot with a gigantic bottle of Prego spaghetti sauce and put the setting on Low. By that evening they were delicious! We also made (Robyn’s) cheese dip with Rotel in a mini-crock pot and had some other snacks. I was hoping that everyone would eat our leftover Halloween candy but somehow we ended up with MORE candy at the end of the night. Sneaky people leaving their chocolate at our house!

There are pictures of other people in their costumes and other silliness of the night in my gallery. If you want to see them click here.

We finally made it to Bruges around 11am on Tuesday. We found our B&B (Lut & Bruno Setola) and our hostess, Lut, was very welcoming. She had actually tried to warn us about the rail strike but unfortunately Chris & I hadn’t been on email since we left home until after we found out about the strike. We had the orange room which actually had a loft area which means it could have accommodated a small family even!

Lut gave us some recommendations and we were off to see the city. We had to leave for Brussels the next day so that didn’t leave a lot of time to soak up the town! We found a cafe that opened in 1515 but unfortunately was closed on Monday and Tuesday. While it was disappointing to find that out, it was cool to be in the “old” part of Bruges.

After finding some lunch we headed towards The Half Moon (De Halve Maan) brewery in hopes of taking a tour. Our tour didn’t start for a while so we walked over to the Bruges Beguinage which is an area where women lived like nuns, but didn’t have to take the vows that nuns take. Here I found this cute heart built into the building.

The brewery tour was cool. Our guide was great and we saw some cool old things as well as a very large collection of different beer bottles and glasses! After walking through the building we ended up on the rooftop and he pointed out other sites around the city which was neat.

That night we decided to go out and try to take some photos. Here’s a good one Chris took:

After taking the photos we found our way to the Cambrinus Bar where we got a table and the magic book of 400+ beers. The book was organized by type of beer which made it very easy to get to a section we recognized or find a new one to try. Each beer had a couple line description and we were pretty happy with those that we selected.

The next day we were headed to Brussels (yes, we only had a short 24 hours in Bruges) but before taking off for the train station I really wanted to see some windmills. There were some marked on our map and even though it was a little bit of a hike I’m glad we went!

For more photos of our time in Bruges, click here.

Other cities on our 2008 Amazing European Adventure include:
(if there isn’t a link…i haven’t written it yet)
Amsterdam
Brussels
Munich
Vienna
Prague

My little brother turned 24 on Thursday. Yikes! Anyway, he did a GREAT job of extending out his birthday as long as possible. Here’s a summary:

Wednesday
* Robyn started things out by giving him his birthday present early on Wednesday night.

Thursday
* Happy hour after work
* Concert w/Robyn

Friday
* Day off from work
* Dinner w/the fam at Khan’s
* Concert w/Chris
* Late night concert

Saturday
* Volunteer at SOMN Bowling event
* Another concert!

So, yea, I’d say he made the most of his birthday weekend! Also, our family gave Josh a collective birthday present this year because he said he wanted a Wii. We were able to get him the system and Wii Play so he & Robyn have two remotes to play against each other. The wii has already been played quite a bit because we hung out at their apartment between volunteering & the concert on Saturday!

On Saturday afternoon Josh, Robyn, Chris & I headed over to Southtown Lanes in Bloomington to volunteer for the SOMN Bowling event. We were each assigned as a “Trouble shooter” and we weren’t sure what to expect. Unfortunately it turned out that we felt pretty worthless and were disappointed because we wanted to add value to the event.

Each set of lanes had two people (Lane Leaders I think they were called) assigned to make sure each athlete bowled when it was his or her turn. For the 48 lanes there were 7 trouble shooters and our job was to watch for a lane leader to raise their clipboard and if that happened to go see if we could help out. The 2 reasons they would need help were 1) A lane problem (ball stuck, pins on the lane) or 2) Scoring problem. Well…the 4 of us had never worked at a bowling alley so besides pushing the call button to tell someone from the bowling alley that something was stuck the first reason is ridiculous. There’s absolutely no reason I can see that they person leading the lane couldn’t have done that for themselves. The scoring problem is sort of the same to me. In order to change the score the bowlers had to stop so it could be adjusted and none of us were experts in bowling alley machine scoring so I’m not sure why the lane leaders couldn’t handle that part as well. Especially since there were 2 of them and at every lane I saw one of those people was standing back and basically just cheering. So…we actually ended up leaving early. I have been dealing with some sciatic nerve pains and my back was killing me so after 3 hours week took off. It’s unfortunate because an experience like that doesn’t make people want to come back.

It did seem as though the athletes were having a great time though, so I hope that it was a good experience for them! Each lane had people from different teams bowling together and everyone was cheering for the people they were bowling with which was fun to see.

When we were in Amsterdam in October, Chris & I walked to a market that is on floating floors. It was raining out, and not prime tulip season, but we enjoyed checking out the different vendors. Here were the only tulips we saw.

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