As much fun as planning a wedding can be, my mind often meanders over towards the honeymoon.

I’m almost more excited for the honeymoon than the wedding.  Overall, the wedding still takes the wedding cake, but it will be infinitely more stressful than 10-14 glorious days of rest, relaxation, and enjoying our newlywed-ness on some remote, sandy beach for the honeymoon.  I really think we should try to make this honeymoon thing a yearly tradition…

Sandals, please

For the honeymoon, we’re leaning towards one of the Sandals resorts.  Cliché? Yes.  Do I care?  Not at all.  Sandals has everything I want in a honeymoon:

• beach
• eating
• drinking
• privacy
• catered towards honeymooners
• all-inclusive

We want to go away for at least 10 days (maybe more) and spend those days relaxing on the beach, going to romantic dinners, having more sweets and decadent desserts than we probably should (and I’ll be dying to do that after cutting out sugar in order to fit into my wedding dress), and generally just enjoying being newlyweds.  Not so much to ask, is it?

The goods will cost ya…

With that said, Sandals knows their game and they know it well.  They lure you in with all those tempting accommodations and then leave you wanting more … which they will happily offer since they have such a wide variety of room choices (standard room with view of tennis courts to deluxe room with oceanfront view to a private villa with your very own pool).

When you bring up a quote on their Website for your stay, the standard room will pop up first with a price that will floor you.  Something like $2,000 for 10 days per person (remember – all-inclusive).   Sounds pretty good, right?  Then you see that the view is of the garden and that the room is teeny-tiny.  Bummer.

So … you scroll down a bit and see a $3,500 room with a private pool!  Score!  Only to find out that the view is of another pool … no oceanfront view here.

Finally, you’ll scroll down to see the Deluxe Oceanfront View room for $4,500 a person with a beautiful ocean view and you immediately fall deeply in love with this room.  You become so attached to the Deluxe Oceanfront View room that you can no longer even fathom going on your honeymoon if you have to stay in the … ick … standard room.  You MUST have the Deluxe Oceanfront View room!

Reality Check

But at $4,500 a person plus airfare, there’s no way I can swing that.  I cannot and will not spend over $10,000 on our honeymoon.

Yes, we’re getting married, and, yes, we want to have a special honeymoon, but after those two things are over, it’s back to life.  Back to our full-time job and our quest to save for a house and for retirement and for children.  As much as I want to wake up to an ocean view with my husband on our honeymoon, I can’t justify spending $11,000 for it.

Our budget is about $6,000 for the honeymoon for the two of us.  I, personally, think that is already a little ridiculous, but it’s a once in a lifetime experience and I don’t want to miss out on it.

Hey, Readers!  Have you been to Sandals?

I have several friends who have been to Sandals and absolutely loved it.  I haven’t heard a bad thing about the place!  Even my matron of honor and best friend said she loved it and I value her opinion more than anything.

So, I ask YOU:  have you been to Sandals?  If so, did you like it?  Hate it?  Did you get a good deal on your stay?  If so, tell me your Sandals money-saving secrets!  I’d love to have that room with an ocean view if it fit into our budget!

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Just wanted to say THANK YOU for the warm responses to my new blog this week!

I wasn’t sure how everyone would respond to my transition to new topics, but overall the concept is the same: to lead an awesome and balanced life whether it’s in money, health, relationships, work, life, self-improvement, etc. etc.

Stay tuned tomorrow for my announcement on that wedding teaser that I posted last week!

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The time has finally come – my new blog is open and ready for business!

(Pssst…This is Carrie from Carrie…On The Cheap in case you’re reading this in a feedreader and are completely confused.)

Welcome to my new blog – Blonde & Balanced!

My real name is Amber, so you can forget all about that pen name of Carrie that I used to go by (which is a little bittersweet, I had some good memories with that name).

I’m so so excited for the new blog! It had been many months in the making and I think it turned out really great! If you’re still in the feedreader, feel free to come over to the site, check it out, and stay awhile!  Take time to check out my About page as well – it’s got a lot of good info about the site.

You’re probably wondering what exactly this new site is all about and that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

First of all, my last blog was an anonymous personal finance blog.  The new blog will still focus on personal finance, but it will also focus on some other topics that I’ll get to in a second.

My new blog isn’t anonymous, but it’s not 100% public either.  I’m slowly starting to tell some people in my life about my blog, but I’m not telling everyone.  Also, if someone that I know in real life were to happen across my blog, I wouldn’t mind telling them about it.  I guess you could say, I’m easing myself slowly into the world of non-anoymity.  It’s kinda scary after being anonymous for a year and a half!

Okay, let’s get to the good stuff - what this blog is about:

Why Blonde & Balanced?

Blonde & Balanced is a blog about striking a balance in life, health, and money.

I went with blonde because, well, I’m blonde!  (Nothing against any brunettes or redheads, it’s just a description of me really.)  I love being blonde and love that it represents being girly and fun.  I am all those things.  But, I’m also  a lot more…

Each letter in the word “blonde” represents one of the key topics that I’ll write about on the blog:

B is for Body: I love to (or try to) lead a healthy, yet balanced, lifestyle .  This doesn’t mean cutting out every bad food from my diet, rather,  it means finding a balance between the good and the bad so I don’t drive myself crazy.  I love discovering new “superfoods”, trying out new exercises, and just being generally active.  My heart lies with weightlifting and I once even coined it my workout soul mate.  A little weird, I know.

L is for Life: Here is my catchall group for all things in my world.  Whether it’s stories about my upcoming wedding, social outings with my friends, or vacation planning with my fiancé – you’ll find it here.

O is for Opinion:  I have an opinion.  Maybe too many.  I don’t judge, I just form opinions.  Everyone has their own opinions and I love to hear other people’s side as well.  We all hail from different walks of life, so our thoughts should differ from time to time, am I right?  You’ll find opinion posts on the site from time to time.

N is for Notes:  I thought the word “musings” was too played out.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t muse from time to time.  Instead, I’ll disguise my musings under the word Notes and trick you guys into reading my random ramblings.  Brilliant idea, if I do say so myself.

D is for Dollars: Easy.  You guys know I love me some money talk.  I live, breathe, and die savings, income, and debt topics.  Of course, my original blog was solely focused on personal finance, so a good portion of the talk on this blog will be personal finance as well.  Never fear PF readers, I’ll still talk dollars!

E is for Excel: An idle mind is never a good thing.  I’m constantly trying to improve myself.  No one has ever reached their full potential.  I’m always trying to reach mine (er, it’s still a ways off).  Whether it’s as small as figuring out a way to donate some time to my church or as big as passing the CPA exam, I’ll always work to excel at something.

Balanced: And among all of those little pools of life … I try to find balance.  Because balance is the key to everything.

There you have it!  I’m so excited about the new blog and can’t wait to talk about all the new topics!

Over the next few weeks, I’ll talk more about my manifestos on all the core B&B topics.

Stay tuned and thanks for reading!

———————————————

Hey, read this!  Your feedreaders should have been automatically redirected during the move.  However, the redirect is temporary, so please please please update your:

• feed subscriptions
• blogroll
• favorites
• links
• anything else directed to my old blog Carrie…On The Cheap

THANK YOUS:

A huge, huge, HUGE thank you to Krystal from Give Me Back My Five Bucks for totally holding my hand through the change!  She is awesome and I couldn’t have done it without her!  Thank you, Krystal!

Thank you to everyone else who helped me during the process.  Thank you thank you thank you!

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Happy Friday everyone!  The summer weekends are dwindling down and I don’t even want to talk about that.  It just means winter is that much closer and I. can’t. stand. winter.

Moving on to happier topics!

New Website

The new Website is almost ready to go.  I’ve got to clean up some various pages and that’s about it.  Once that’s complete, I’m going to make the switch to redirect my wordpress blog to my new site!

The plan is to make the switch THIS WEEKEND.

So, come Monday morning (or even this weekend if you’re hanging around the blog) my current blog (Carrie…On The Cheap) should redirect to my NEW BLOG (www.secretname.com).

If you come over Monday morning and don’t get a redirect, it’s probably because of one of two things:

1. Something didn’t go as planned and I didn’t get to it this weekend OR
2. I made an epic error and there is a problem with the redirect

Let’s hope things go smoothly, though, and you’ll be welcomed with open arms to my new site on Monday!

Wedding Confessions

I’m so glad you guys liked the teaser for my new Wedding Confessions series that I put up this week!  This series will NOT be on my new site.  I’m partnering with a wedding Website for this series and I’ll be sure to post the link as soon as everything is ready to go.  I think you guys will really like the series!

Netbook

I’ve had my netbook for a little over 2 weeks now and I’m absolutely loving it.  It is so convenient – even in it’s hot pink carrying case, it fits nicely into my purse.

I’ve been bringing it with me to work and anywhere else I know I’ll have time to kill.  It has turned out to be very useful over lunch at work – I’ve been snagging open conference rooms during my lunch hour and getting lots of blog tasks and freelance writing done.  So far, the netbook is a win!

Keep On Keepin’ On

That’s about it for me!  I hope you guys have a great weekend and I’ll see you bright and early Monday morning with my new blog introduction post!

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