Arts and crafts time

Lately, I've been trolling the list of craig for a suitable headboard for our guest bedroom. I wanted something simple but nice looking and above all, not too expensive. Baby Time is still a couple years away, but we didn't want to invest in "real" furniture when we're going to have to get rid of the bed that's in there at some point. Craigslist didn't have anything that was suitable, so we decided to follow the homemade arts-and-crafts project track instead.

B was amenable--excited, even--to build a headboard, and we each started making plans in our heads. When it came time to compare notes, we both had different ideas about what to do and had trouble finding common ground.

We both wanted a picture-frame style headboard with fabric-covered plywood as its "picture." The idea was that you could re-cover the plywood at any time and have lots of flexibility to change the look of your headboard. However, B was picturing a very thin headboard, and I had in mind something more substantial, a la Pottery Barn. I thought that B's headboard design was going to be too lightweight to support itself, and B thought that my headboard was going to weigh hundreds of pounds.

While we tried to reach middle ground, B pointed out that we're both very independent thinkers, and neither of us takes on the drone/"I'll-do-whatever-you-say" role very well. We both want to have complete control over planning and doing, and we both are convinced that we are right. I agreed and told him that that was true, but in this instance, I was right, and he was wrong. I think that my argument only made his point stronger.

We decided to let a neutral third party decide what we should do, so we looked up headboard plans online. We realized that neutral third parties know a whole lot more about woodworking and building than we do, and we are totally unqualified to build even the simple wooden headboards that we found online. Back to square one.

Our original plan--before the picture frame excitement took over--was to make a simple fabric-covered headboard, which requires minimal tools and very little woodworking knowledge. We found a video tutorial online, made our plan and materials list, and set off for our local hardware and fabric stores.

We got 1/2" plywood and had the Lowe's guy cut it to the right size (major time saver) and 1x4 pine planks for the "feet" of the headboard. We also picked up a staple gun that fires both staples and brads (those little nails that the guy on Yankee Workshop is always talking about). B was very excited about the brad capability. I was more interested in why a nail is called a brad, but that is a mystery that will have to be solved some other time.

Our plan was to cover the plywood with quilt batting and then a white sheet, but when we got to the quilt store, we realized how thin the batting was and decided that one layer was not going to be enough. Instead, we got enough batting to make a king-sized quilt, which allowed us to put five layers of batting on the headboard. It's not pillow-level soft, but it feels a lot softer than wood.

Assembling the layers was pretty easy--B had a ball with the staple gun, which makes a satisfying, loud noise every time it goes off and has a bit of a recoil--sort of like playing a war game, except the result is redecoration rather than death and destruction. The batting got a bit thick toward the end, what with the five layers and all, but B and the staple gun got the job done.

The sheet that we used as the top fabric layer has stripes, which added a new level of difficulty for attaching the fabric--we had to make sure that they lined up correctly. The end result might not be perfect, but it's good enough.

The final step--attaching the legs--turned out to be the hardest. Our original plan was to attach the headboard to the bed frame, but B was having trouble getting the screws to stick in the plywood without going through to the other side. All of the batting was complicating matters, too. In the end, we decided to skip attaching the board to the frame, and we just nailed the legs toward the middle of the headboard, where the fabric is thinnest, and we are using the weight of the bed to keep the board standing up straight.

The new headboard has improved the look of our guest room dramatically. Now I feel inspired to continue the redecoration. New lighting, anyone?

A German Christmas?

A couple years ago, B and I were considering a vacation abroad and decided upon Germany as a fun destination. I immediately ran out to the bookstore, bought several guidebooks, and started planning with gusto. A few days into my planning adventures, we realized that a trip abroad was going to be too much of a stretch, and I stopped my plans.

Then last December, Germany popped back into my brain, this time because of its Christmas markets. Christmas markets in Germany are a big deal--just about every town has one, and some attract millions of visitors a year (which is pretty impressive when you consider that they run for less than a month). The markets are all outdoors and feature traditional German food, like pretzels and sausage and gingerbread and mulled cider, and traditional German Christmas goods, like nutcrackers and ornaments and other crafts. I decided that I wanted to see a Christmas market, but was thwarted by our passport situation--we had sent ours for renewal and they hadn't yet arrived (plus we had just returned from a rather extravagant trip to Europe).

My Germany efforts have been thwarted--twice now!--and I have started planning a third German adventure (in my mind, anyway), for a long weekend (and by long weekend, I mean 5 nights, which will encompass a weekend) this December. I want to go to Munich and see a few Christmas markets and maybe take a day trip down to Neuschwanstein. Because it will be December in Germany (aka the land of cold and dark), I won't be tempted to extend this vacation as I usually am (for reference, see upcoming 20-day extravaganza this September).

B is on board with my plan, as long as I can find discounted airfare. I've been looking but it's too early to get a real deal; I will have to push down my over-eager personality and hold off for a few months.

Now the only task is to find the funds for this trip somewhere in the budget. Now where is my magic wand...

Paying ourselves first

All of the celebrity financial experts out there recommend paying yourself first, and that's what B and I did last week--we opened IRAs.

Although we consider ourselves (and by ourselves, I mean mostly B) to be relatively proficient in financial matters, we don't have the time or inclination to research mutual fund families or individual funds, so we decided to open our IRAs with a financial advisor who could help with the decisions. We also liked the idea of starting a relationship with a financial advisor to whom we could turn when we're ready to make bigger financial decisions.

IRAs, or more specifically, mutual funds, provide a minefield of new terminology. When you invest in a mutual fund through an advisor, you can buy A shares, B shares, or C shares. The type of share dictates how the advisor gets paid. With A shares, he's paid up front, and you can move your money at any time with no fee. The more you invest in a mutual fund, the lower fee percentage you pay. With B shares, he's paid over (usually) 8 years, and if you remove your money from the fund family before the 8 years are up, there is a fee (to make up what he would have been paid over the 8 years). I forget the deal with C shares, but they only make sense for a short-term investor, which we are not.

The fees, unfortunately, do not end there. The mutual fund itself also has fees. Luckily, the fees for our fund family--which "regular" people can't invest in; you have to work with a financial advisor--are pretty low.

Our advisor asked us a few questions to determine our risk tolerance, such as:

• The fund that you're in loses 20 percent. What do you do?
• a. Sell!
• b. Hold steady.
• c. Invest more.
• d. Avoid funds that lose money.

I think we both chose either B or C--excellent. The next question was harder to answer:

• The fund that dropped 20% had just dropped another 15 percent. What do you do?
• a. Sell!
• b. Hold steady.
• c. Invest more.
• d. Avoid funds that lose money.

A lengthy philosophical discussion about the stock market and the role of financial advisors ensued, but in the end, we both chose either B or C again. The brief questionaire said that we fit the profile of moderate-to-aggressive investors, a label that we were both comfortable with--after all, we're looking at a 30-year minimum investment period, and the time to be (moderately) agressive is now.

Our investment profile suggested an allocation of assets among large-cap, mid-/small-cap, international, and bond funds, and our advisor helped us choose 4 funds and allocations for each. As soon as he gets them set up, we can track their performance online and start planning our retirement vacations. (Just kidding--I think...)

We also planned to buy life insurance that day, but we had run out of time. However, before we left, our advisor helped run some education-cost models to help us determine the amounts that we might want for life insurance. He detailed the current average costs of education (high) and the percentage at which education costs were rising (astronomical), and ran a profile on our unborn children to figure out how much we'd need to save to pay 75% of 2 kids' private college education. The monthly sum that we would have to start saving now (now! before the kids are even born!) was astronomical--over $800 per month.

Ever since then, we've been trying to find niche sports at which our kids can excel and work to their advantage for sports scholarships. Right now, fencing and squash are at the top of the list, but curling is a candidate as well. B suggested that they might be musically inclined and can finance their education with pop-star careers, but I reminded him that usually talents like that are hereditary, and our children will be starting with an extreme disadvantage when you consider their parents' musical abilities. For now, we're pinning our hopes on athletic abilities or raw intelligence.

A lot can happen in a year

A year ago today, B and I got engaged. Six months later (to the day), we were married. It's been quite a year.

A year ago today was a Friday. I worked at home due to an impending snowstorm--in hindsight, it was an unexpected storm, but the winter was so mild that a late-season storm wasn't the bother that it would be this year. Our one-month-prior return from the land of pixie dust helped ease the arrival of the powdery white stuff.

It had been a good winter, our first in our new condo. That winter, we painted our bedroom without getting into a single fight--we considered the venture a success because all prior occasions featuring a paintbrush had dissolved into open critiques of technique, followed by angry silence and sloppy painting (don't look too carefully at our downstairs bathroom the next time you are over).

That winter, we purchased furniture that had not been owned by anyone else. We put a brand-new bedroom set in our brand-new bedroom, and we added a couple of armless leather chairs to our living room (and I am in fact sitting on one right now--definitely a worthwhile purchase). Our house was becoming our home.

A year ago today, B picked up my engagement ring from our jeweler. Unknown to me, he made reservations at a swank restaurant in a nearby town, only to receive news late in the day that they were closing early due to the storm--sorry for the inconvenience.

Unknown to B, I started making dinner after he left work. We later called it the engagement pizza, and I ate the leftovers at work the following Monday--luckily, neither of us thought to freeze them and eat them today. He was so relieved to walk in the door and find dinner already prepared--it was one less task to figure out that evening.

I cleaned up after dinner, and he disappeared and then called me upstairs. A trail of candles led me to the bedroom, where he had left a small book on our new bureau for me to read. The book was full of ticket stubs and match books and cards from places we had visited, movies and shows we had seen, and restaurants at which we had eaten. Each page had a little story about our adventures together.

The last page of the book had an envelope with two tickets that B had made, and the show was called, "Will you marry me?" B emerged from his hiding space (the bathroom) and offered a smile, a ring, and a bended knee. I'm pretty sure I said yes, but I don't think there was a question in either of our minds at that point.

A year ago today, I had already (secretly) started planning a honeymoon--but to Nova Scotia. B wanted to go to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. How did we end up going to Paris and Nice, you might ask. All I can say is that it popped into my head one day and wouldn't go away, and that's how I knew that it was the right place to go. It was kind of like when B and I realized, after two years of knowing each other, that we each existed. We got into each other's heads and stayed there, and that's how we knew.

It's been quite a year, and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

Charitably speaking

Now that B and I itemize on our tax return, we can take advantage of a few great tax allowances. First and foremost--the entire reason that we itemize in the first place--we can claim all of the interest that we pay on our mortgage. We are in the early years of our mortgage (the 2-year anniversary of the closing of our mortgage is less than 2 months away), so the majority of our payments go toward interest. The mortgage interest benefit is great for us.

Another tax allowance is charitable contributions, which you can claim when you itemize. In the past, my charitable contributions have been scattered--when friends or coworkers participated in runs/walks/bike rides/whatever, I contributed to their campaigns. When I received return-address labels in the mail from a charitable organization and used them, I'd write them a check.

This year, we want to plan our charitable giving and make a conscious effort to contribute more towards charitable (and tax-deductible) causes. I hit the internet, trying to find a reasonable amount that we should contribute towards charity. Some religions dictate 10% of your income, but that number is not realistic for us. I found some statistics for the UK, and the article said that the average Brit contributes .8% of their annual income towards charity, while the head of several charitable funds recommended 1.5% (and higher percentages for higher salaries). We decided that somewhere in the middle was a reasonable goal for our first year of planned charitable giving.

For 2008, our goal is to contribute 1% of our adjusted gross income to charity. We want to continue contributing to coworkers and friends who participate in charitable fundraisers, and we also want to contribute more to our alma maters and any other causes that we believe in.

On a side (but somewhat related) note, we're also interested in micro loans. People in developing countries or even the US can register for smallish loans (usually under $1,000) and post their stories ("I need to buy supplies so I can start a general store in my town, which doesn't have a store," or something), and anyone can lend any amount, even as little as $25. With most sites, you get interest on top of the amount that you lend. There's always a risk that the lendees will default on their loans, but lending smaller amounts minimizes your overall risk. Of course, making interest off of a loan cannot be considered a charitable endeavor, but lending to someone who might not otherwise have access to loan funds is a worthwhile thing to do.

Time to go off-roading

When most people think of honeymoons, they don't think of them as opportunities to create to-do lists, but that's exactly what B and I did the last evening of our honeymoon. It was a Sunday night in Paris, and museums, stores, and many restaurants were closed, and we were tired anyway, so we hung out in the hotel room, watching American football and figuring out what we had to do to merge our lives after we returned back home.

The tasks were pretty straightforward. Change my name (which has been more difficult than I anticipated). Merge our checking accounts. Complete our financial round-up. Sell B's car and get a new one.

B's car, a Saab, is sporty and apparently fun to drive (for those who know how to drive a standard), but it's had some issues in the past. The heat has a tendency to stop working on the coldest days of winter. A couple of summers ago, we went away for a weekend, and one of the rear windows went down and wouldn't go back up again. The car stranded us on the side of the road one day when we were visiting my parents, and we had to ride 40 miles in a tow truck with no seat belts and a driver who was a likely crystal meth addict.

In short, the car has been more of a hassle than it is worth. But the idea of going to a car dealership to trade it in was not appealing, either. Driving the car was a little like riding around in a ticking time bomb, but as long as it was just ticking and not exploding, continuing to drive it was easier than going to a dealership and starting the haggling process.

We postponed the haggling and decided to focus on research. B has an unrequited love for station wagons, so our plan was to buy an Outback, and we found a couple of models that featured dual-zone climate control, which is possibly the best invention on earth for those of us who feel the cold more than others. Our marriage is better off when the heat is set to 78 degrees for me and 64 degrees for him.

This weekend, we decided that our procrastination had continued long enough, and it was time to close the Saab chapter and start a new Subaru chapter. On the recommendation from a friend, we went to a dealership that was pretty far away but that offered several potential vehicles.

We found a vehicle that we liked--we wanted to buy used, but it is a 2008 model, so it has a couple more years left on its warranty. It is two-tone, with blue on top and silver on the bottom. It has heated seats, a giant moonroof, and the all-important dual-zone climate control, and a few other features that I don't care about (the steering wheel moves in and out as well as up and down, and the CD player can hold 6 CDs instead of 1).

The negotiation was stressful. He came back with an interest rate, and we countered. He offered a number for our trade-in, and we countered. He offered a number for the car, and we countered. We finally settled upon some numbers that were acceptable to both parties, signed on the dotted line, and agreed to come back at the end of the week to pick up the new wheels.

When we left, my shoulders were stiff, my stomach hurt, and B had licked his lips so much that they were bone dry, but we were proud of our acccomplishment and were glad that we had stuck to our guns during the negotiations. And soon we will have 2 reliable cars that we love.

And now we need a name for the new car...