I'm not 100% sure if I achieved this goal this month. There were many things that would have affected this month; Christmas holiday pay, more overtime hours, Chinese New Year Money, HST return cheque. So in the month of January I definitely had a little bit of help money wise. Here's how I faired this month:

Travel 100% (none saved)
Cell 33% (67% saved - for some odd reason, my cell phone bill was very small this month...)
Groceries 73% (27% saved)
Eating Out 155% (55% higher than what I had estimated - Prob had to do with Dine out)
Clothing 300% (This one isn't as realistic as the max limit I set for myself was $50, but come on... it was CNY and post Holiday Season sales, so I should have set my limit a bit higher. I ended up tripling what my budget was almost with all the extra monies)
Misc 0%
Savings 30% (I ended up saving more than I had planned. Yay me!)

Well I guess I'm going to have to do this for the next 12 months to really be able to cross this off my list.

So cute! :)

Day 2 of CNY celebrations were held at my grand aunt and uncle's place where we had a ton of food again!

Lo Hei, prawns, veggies, curry, fish, meat balls, Churches Chicken of course, sotong...

Joey and I bought matching fuzzy sweaters with ears as our Chinese New Year outfits. Not very chinese... but.. we were both wearing red pants!

I watched Kung Fu Panda 2 with the boys :)

We had some family friends over for dinner on CNY Eve. We did the whole Yu Sheng/Lo Hei as usual where everyone comes together and tosses the salad as high as you can, the one time you're ever allowed to play with your food.

For dessert, home made pineapple tarts and mango pudding! :)

We couldn't find Pepper a hat for CNY.

The company I work for held a Chinese New Year lion dance for all our agents today. :)

A couple weeks ago I went shopping with Jo Jo to look for her Grad dress. I was expecting to go a couple more times to a different mall each time so she would make up a mind which dress to get, but it seemed like we found the one on the first go.

This weekend we went shopping pt 2 for shoes and a clutch to match the outfit. We found a lacy clutch and some shiney shoes.. all in one trip again too!

From what I remember, I think I spent $50 on a dress which took me an hour to find and that was that. I haven't put that dress on again since 2007. O_O Maybe I should go find it.

I've always heard of Dine Out Vancouver however never participated. Probably because I haven't had the $$ to spend on gourmet dinners. The crew decided that this year would be the year we try it out!

Lily planned it all and we decided to go with Copper Chimney, French style Indian cuisine. I really was not sure what to expect. Only about a month ago have I actually gone to Indian restaurants or had Indian food at a food court. Most of my Indian taste buds come from weddings! I wasn't too sure what to expect as everytime I have Indian food, it's always so yummy.

For $28, we got a 3 course meal, an appie, main and dessert. Usually the main course would have cost us $28 and everything else most likely $12-$15 if not more.

I picked the Potato Masala as my appie. It's a deep fried potato ball with SPICES embedded on the inside. Chick peas and sauces on the side.

Butter chicken as my main course which came with rice as well as 2 pieces of naan. Who could go wrong with Butter Chicken (I also did not like lamb curry or prawn curry, so this really was a no brainer)

For dessert, tiramisu cheese cake!!! :)

Oh for $28, we were all stuffed!

I can't really say it was worth $28 as the food was great but I feel like I could have had butter chicken at any other indian restaurant and I would have been just as content, but when I worked it all out in my brain, $8 for appie, $15 for main, $8 for dessert and $9 for a drink, it was as if I splurged at a regular restaurant. So I guess it was quite a good deal for what we got. :)

Photo courtesy of Lily Wang.

I definitely recommend Dine Out Vancouver to anyone out there interested in having a reasonably priced fancy night out.

Negative 2 this morning. Negative 8 tonight. Winter is here. Br!!!

Shot the first wedding of the year this weekend. :)

Our last dog grew up loving to swim. We'd spend weekends at the beach playing fetch in the water. Pepper unfortunately lives in Canada where it's cold and the beach isn't a very common place for him to go to. I'm not even sure I've ever seen Pepper swim before but he loooooves the snow! :) Here's him sporting his new coat my mom made for him.

Pepper loves me. :)

I posted very briefly about Warmachine days (Sundays) on my jmety blog. Every Sunday our friends have game day, and the latest and greatest fad is Warmachine. It's a game where by you choose a race, you buy the troops or characters which come as a body, arms, legs and weapons all dissembled. They're usually made of metal and require a base layer sprayed on before painting.

Ty's really been into this game in the last few months and has almost got a full army of trolls now. So the aim of the game is to basically destroy each others armies by strategically planning and scheming, and at times rolling dice to determine your fate. Hard to picture? Imagine a very intense and glorified version of chess without squares but with dice and measuring tape.

3. Throw out everything from under my bed (ha...........no seriously.)

Believe it or not I cleaned my room. Ok I didn't through EVERYTHING out from under my bed. I did remove everything OUT from under my bed, vaccuum, throw out some stuff, condense some boxes, reorganized, dusted, and replaced what was left nice and neatly. :) Quite the accomplishment I think. It took from Thursday night all the way til Saturday morning. I can now walk under my bed and turn 360 degrees and come back out!

Ok, from looking at the picture... I don't know if you can REALLY tell. If you look very closely, it's actually quite neat compared to the left photo.

I found my old Game Boy Colour while organizing. Looks like technology went from large, to small, and back. My phone is pretty much the same size but GB is much thicker.