Headbands and Hairclips

Here's a tip for all you moms out there who have walked through the boutiques and farmers markets and have seen those adorable crochet headbands with the big beautiful flowers on them.  They look simply adorable on babies and toddlers, and when you borrow the flower clips and slip them into your own hair, they become elegant instead of adorable!

If you've seen the price tags on those things, you might think that paying $6 for a headband with a flower isn't too bad.  I've got news for you... I purchased 50 headbands (several colors were included in the lot) and 50 matching flowers for $25.  I gave away about 15 sets as baby shower gifts, and kept about 10 sets for my own daughter, and then I sold the remaining 25 sets for $30 on kijiji!

Now don't get me wrong, that was a fabulous deal, but it wasn't an extremely rare deal.  If you go onto Ebay and type "Baby Headband Flower" into the search bar, I guarantee that you will find an assortment of those cute hair accessories.  If you add the word "lot" to the end of that search, you will find the wholesale prices.  Most of these are shipped from China or somewhere else in Asia, and a lot of them are shipped for free, or for a very low cost.  Click here to try it.

The photo above was taken from an Ebay vendor. Click here to be directed to their site.


Sometimes you have to look through a few pages of ebay items before you find the hidden gems.  If you are into those sorts of things, Ebay can be a valuable tool to save money!

If you are really the crafty type, you can purchase the headbands separately, purchase the little clips and some ribbon, and make your own!  Yes, you can even sell them!  I personally do not have the time or space to keep them and make my own, but it's a great idea.

If you really find a good deal, you can always do what I did.  Buy a whole bunch, save some for gifts, and sell the rest of them to someone on kijiji and make money on the deal.  The lady who purchased the bag of 25 sets from me still got a fantastic deal!  25 headbands and matching flowers for $30 is still far less, FAR LESS, than she'd pay at the cute little shops that offer the very same things.  I didn't feel bad at all for "ripping her off" because I certainly didn't!  I took the effort to track them down and purchase them, and then wait for them to come in the mail.  That is worth something too, and I was pleased to be able to make back my money with a $5 extra tip.

Reaching Goals and Starting Over

In the last post, I shared with you that we had bought a new (used - 2006) van.  We are so thrilled to have made that purchase, and even more pleased with the fact that when we drove that van off the lot, it was 100% ours, with no strings attached.

However, (there's always a however...) the hard thing about reaching goals is that you have to start all over again on working towards your next goal.  It was so liberating to pay for the van with cash... and then a little bit overwhelming to see our savings accounts dip lower than they have in years.  Though we needed a new van, we also were hoping for a new house soon, and we sort of used a good chunk of our down payment fund for the van.

I remember going through this phase before, but never to this degree.  We've been reaching for goals before, but never have we gotten past a goal of over $10,000 and then started on our next goal.  It's a little scary and maybe even a little bit disappointing to look at our savings account and have that all-too-familiar feeling of loosing the battle.  However, (there it is again...) it's worth it!!!

Upon reaching our goal for a new vehicle, we have eliminated the risk of suddenly being without a vehicle in the event that our other van breaks down.  We've taken away the risk of having to search for and purchase a vehicle out of sheer necessity instead of making a slow and careful decision like we did.  We also feel so proud of ourselves every time we get into the van, and thankful that God has brought us this far in our journey to Financial Peace!

As far as a new house goes, I'm sure that everyone around me figures it will never happen.  I get all geared up and ready to go, but when it really comes down to it, we haven't found the right deal yet.  If it's a good price, it's just too much work to make it liveable.  If it's liveable, it's usually too expensive, in the wrong neighborhood, or we just don't want to lock into such a large mortgage.

Now that our son is just about out of kindergarten, schools also factor into our decision in a big way.  He's happy at his school, and in all honesty, we'd almost rather stay here until he's a little older and ready to embrace a change in schools.

We are also not offering childcare in our home anymore for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, the children that were in our home no longer need childcare, and secondly, we are making some personal decisions as a family that just don't work well with having other kids in our home.  This knocks out some of our income, and puts us back in a place where I start to wonder if I can bring in more money.  I go through this every time our income changes, every time I am not specifically bringing money into our home.

I know that God is bigger than all that, I know He will guide us and direct us in the ways that we should go.  I also know that He is able to bless us no matter what happens with income and expenses, and that's a solid foundation that I've stood on for most of my life.

Starting fresh again isn't great, but each time we do it, it seems to get a little bit easier.  It's not the shock that it once was.  Eliminating our entertainment and dining out budget in order to send more to our savings account is not nearly as hard as it once was.  Some days it's not fun, and my dear husband knows that some days I'd just rather throw in the towel on all this "saving for my future" stuff.  Sometimes I just want to do what I want to do NOW, and then figure out my future later. 

But that's when I take a deep breath and say no.  No, I'm not going to go with the flow, I'm not going to leave the plan, even though sometimes I wander off of it and have to pull myself back on track.  Someday, I'll be thankful I did.  I am already thankful!!  Whenever I look out our window and see the van in our driveway, I'm proud of ourselves.

We've been around this road before, and each time, the rewards get bigger.  At first, it was a matter of paying upfront for every regular expense in a month.  We were so proud.  Then we managed to stockpile enough into our savings account that when we ended up taking a $5000 hit when everything broke at the same time, it hurt, but we were fine.  And we were proud!  When we were able to give bigger donations to our church, without thinking twice, we were so proud! 

Each time we've started over, we've worked towards a greater reward, and for each goal that we've reached, we've felt even more proud of ourselves and ever so thankful to God than for the last one!

So here we are again, starting fresh, working towards an even bigger goal.  Eventually, we'll reach it.  And hopefully, one day we will be able to reach goals without giving everything we have.  When that day comes, we will be so happy that we gave up our entertainment to plan for our future.  (And there's no "however" after that one!!)

New Van!!

For the last 2 years, I've posted about how our van was slowly breaking down more and more, and how we just kept fixing it and going on.

After a few more old-age quirks from our van, we decided to start looking for a new van.  We found the van that we wanted (a Toyota Sienna, 2004+), and waited for a good deal.  We waited for nearly a year, watching online ads and keeping our eyes open at all times, waiting for the right van to come along.

On Monday morning, I came across a van that I'd seen before, but it was listed as a 7 passenger.  We were set on an 8 passenger van.  I'm not sure why, but I clicked on the ad, and browsed through the photos.  It was then that I realized that regardless of the title on the ad, this was definitely an 8 passenger van!  I called the Lexus dealership that was selling the van and confirmed the number of seats. The sales person couldn't believe they had made a mistake like that- it virtually eliminated their chances of selling the vehicle!  Anyone who wanted a 7 passenger would have seen the photos and realized it was an 8 passenger.  Anyone who wanted an 8 passenger would never click on the ad, as "7 passenger" was written right in the title.

It was a 2005 Sienna with only 126,000 km on it, for $11,500.  The other comparable vans for sale were all a good $2000 higher than this one.  This one had come down in price by over $1000 since it had been on the lot since February. 

After crunching the numbers and dipping a little into our emergency fund (technically not allowed by the Dave Ramsey Rules, but we were sure this was the right van for us,) we decided that we could pay cash for the van. Since Steve and I couldn't really find a babysitter at the last minute, we decided that I'd go do a test drive alone.  I asked my dad to come along, mostly to help with the deal making.  I've never bought a vehicle at a dealership before, and I wasn't sure what to expect.

I loved the van right away, and it took very little time to settle in and driving felt just as normal as ever.  The van was in perfect mechanical condition, the dealer had put in nearly $2000 of work into the van to bring it all up to good condition.  They even replaced the windshield because it was cracked.  When I asked about the condition of the vehicle, the sales person said to me, "What??  This is a Lexus dealership.  We do NOT sell anything that is not in excellent mechanical condition!"  He had the work orders and the inspection results to back that up.

We worked out a deal for $12,000 final price, and I was pleased to find that they had thrown in free lifetime oil changes as an added perk to the deal. 

My favorite part of the whole deal was when we came back the next day (Tuesday) to pick up the van. It was paid for in full, we didn't owe a penny.  The van was ours, like 100% ours, no payments to make later, and no buyers remorse.  We'd waited a long time to choose a van, and we felt that this was right for us!

We brought the kids to go pick it up, and we were so pleased to see that they had the van all shiny and polished up, parked inside the building right alongside all the other Lexus vehicles, waiting in front of some grand glass doors that opened to let us drive through.  The kids were all so amazed that our van was in the midst of all the "race cars", and it was immediately dubbed, "The Race Van!" 

We drove from the showroom floor out through the glass doors and felt like royalty.  It was fabulous.  They treated us so well, we really loved the whole experience.  And the best part is that we paid cash, 100% cash for the purchase. No credit card debt, no car payments, nothing. 

Thanks Dave Ramsey!  Now we start building back our savings to get a down payment for a house!  We accomplished one major purchase, and I have the confidence that with more hard work, we can keep saving our way to a paid-for home!