HisHersMoney

Everyone knows that this is Inauguration Weekend here in DC. We actually live in Northern Virginia about 6 miles outside of DC so personally I haven’t had to deal with much traffic or crowds. We aren’t going downtown for the actual Inauguration or Parade tomorrow but we are going to attend one of the 10 Official Inaugural Balls.

The Official Balls are those that are put on by the Inauguration Committee and Obama will be making an appearance at each one of them tomorrow night. From what we understand he will say a few short words and he and his wife will dance one dance at each one.

I am so excited to be able to attend one of these balls. We are actually attending the Commander in Chief Ball which is hosted by Obama and is exclusively for members of the military. I saw on the Entertainment Online website that they are covering the Official Balls which makes it even more exciting.

An event of this kind requires some preparation and the purchase of a new dress. I was surprised to realize that I really didn’t currently have a basic black full length dress. I headed out to the Tyson’s Corner mall which has all of my favorite stores plus many more that aren’t always quite in the budget, but unfortunately everyone was there looking for dresses!

After about 3 hours of searching high and low I finally found a dress! It’s from JS Boutique and it is beautiful!

We previously posted about our New Years trip and how we managed to have a great trip and stay within our $500 budget. I would love to say the same for our Steamboat trip. We had a great time, but the budget was definitely blown! Here’s the breakdown – all costs are for the two of us for 7 days

Lodging, airfare, lift tickets and airport transfers: about $1200

Ski rental Him: $61

Ski socks: $75

On mountain daily lockers: $25

Food & Ent: $900

Shoes for Him: $86

Airport Cab both ways: $40

Our goal was to spend less than $850 while there which obviously didn’t happen! We ended up spending just under $1200 bringing our total to $2400.

All in all it was definitely worth it and we just sucked it up out of our regular budget so nothing went on credit!

We joined a group of friends in the Poconos Mountains for a trip of the New Years holiday. We were lucky enough to be able to stay at a friend’s family cabin and not have to pay for a hotel so that really helped minimize the out of pocket expenses. We spent four full days up there and went skiing two of the days.

We budgeted $500 for the trip. This was to include gas, food, skiing, etc. So, how did we end up? $474!

Skiing for two people Day 1: $80

Skiing for two people Day 2: $90

Our portion of the food bill: $130

Gas: about $50

Misc food and drinks after skiing: about $100

Bottle of liqueur: $24

This really was a great trip for us. A couple days of skiing, New Years with a bunch of friends (there was seven of us total) and under $250 each!