DJ and Yvette’s Blog!

Life is getting busy for DJ as we’ve decided to pursue more actively DJ (as in Master of Ceremonies) events for the year, with the unofficial goal of at least $6000 in revenue in 2010.  This is a challenge for DJ as his business isn’t really established and wedding season is coming up soon!  The DJtheDJ.com website is no more than a shell and there’s much work to be done from the State of Colorado’s perspective as well!

The goal will be to shift from a sole proprietorship into an LLC so we can better protect our personal assets.  It’s a hard decision because there’s not really any need for acquiring debts in this business and DJ already owns the equipment needed.  DJ is hoping to have everything done and a new business fully launched by mid-March.

In addition, DJ has a goal of obtaining all of his Microsoft certifications this year, as well as possibly adding Citrix certifications to the mix.  The hope is that with these certifications he can help either grow his existing role at his employer (TechSmart) and, well- make more money to pay down those debts!

Of course the plan is still to play for our church and if time allows even try recording some of those songs he’s been promising for the last 15 years…

Now that it’s typed out it certainly doesn’t seem like much… but it’s a lot of little things adding up to Busy Deej.

Hi Everyone!

On Feb 12th, Yvette will be leaving her job to take some time to study on a new aspect of her career.  Currently she’s been doing design for catalogs and ads, etc, what she’d like to do instead is to work more with photographs- focusing on color correction and touch ups for professional photographs, etc.

It’s been very difficult to come home after 8 hours in front of the computer and spend a few more trying to learn a new trade.  She’s been very frustrated but has been willing to stay until the time was right at her current job.  The big catalog went out at the end of January.  So, the time was right at her current job to give them enough time to find a replacement.

As for us, February is a great month because DJ has a lot of DJing gigs providing about 2 months of income replacement for Yvette.  Look for some pictures and video of this year’s Butterfly Kisses Dance coming soon!  The event was HUGE this year- dad’s even looking for tickets on Craigslist!

Our current goal is for Yvette to find part-time work doing something else non-computer related so that she can spend a few hours every day focused on learning more about working with photos, from there we’re not 100% sure what will happen.  We’ll of course look for steady work in that area but the end goal is to offer her services to photographers so that they can send us photos, Yvette retouches them and sends them back on a per-photo fee.  This will allow her to work on-demand out of the home, so we hope.  Of course we’re open to the idea of her finding full-time work in this arena as well- time will tell!

So we’d love your support during this transition, obviously we will be slowing down the paying down of debts during this time but fortunately DJ makes enough for us to survive, and we can get by at least 6 months on what we have extra in savings.  So we’re confident this was the right time but we know it’ll be taxing to adjust!

Hello friends and family!

Well, here it is.  Our first holiday letter as The Eshelmans!

2009 has been an interesting year, for sure.  And ‘interesting’ is the understatement of this decade!

2009 started for us just returning from our last Christmas with DJ’s grandmother, Eileen Larson.  While difficult to face at times, it was great to be with DJ’s wonderful family in a large family reunion.
Never one to let a gathering like that go uninteresting, just before leaving DJ put a promise ring on Yvette’s finger!

January passed in a breeze, with worries about the policies of the soon-to-be President dominating DJ’s thoughts (and Facebook account).
Soon more practical distractions would arise as one Sunday in our church, DJ felt a strong leading to attend what he thought was going to be a one-night event- Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University (which is actually a very comprehensive multi-week course).

After attending the first week, DJ was overwhelmed with conviction and asked Yvette to join him.  She did so and thru taking the course together, we realized that we were ready for the next big step.

DJ asked Yvette to marry him on March 21st, 2009… and she said yes!  Well, eventually.  She was apparently so happy she forgot to say ‘yes’ and just kissed him instead, but he got the official ‘yes’ eventually!

So began a whirlwind of real change in our lives!
The spring did have a bit of hardship, as DJ’s last remaining grandparent, Eileen, went to her Heavenly Home- but we were very blessed to see Eileen smile very large- fixated without any words on Yvette’s wonderful eyes before she passed along.  She obviously liked Yvette very much and approved, which meant a lot.  It’s a moment DJ will likely never forget.

As for the wedding and it’s planning, there’s no doubt about it- Financial Peace changed a lot of things about how we approached the wedding, and thanks to some generosity from our families, we were able to pay for the entire wedding on a budget of about $7,000 in cash.  Absolutely no credit was used for the event, which for DJ… was a big thing!
(and it’s continued- in the first four months of our marriage we’ve paid down almost $6,000 of debt!)
Today we live on a comfortable budget and believe our life to be much happier because we are communicating well about the #1 thing that families struggle and fight over… money.

Of course, we have made sacrifices- we currently live in a very small apartment (with a very small rent!) and will be waiting to have kids until the shackles of debt are no longer around us (currently estimating 1-2 years but we’ll see how God works on that one)!

After the wonderful wedding on August 29th here in Fort Collins, which we were blessed with so many of you attending, we went on a short honeymoon to Estes Park- where we rented a cabin and played for a few days.  The rest of the honeymoon will follow over Christmas in Glenwood Springs!
Soon after, we had the pleasure of attending DJ’s cousin Meg’s wedding (a very funny story that involves getting married three times in one summer!  Meg is a missionary in Hungary and married there as well as here…  long story!).  DJ actually DJ’d the wedding as well, which was interesting because the wedding was in Indiana!

Sadly, the only other travel we’ve done this year has been to Yvette’s uncle Steven’s funeral in Houston on December 14th.  He was a wonderful man and will be missed by us both greatly.  The trip did give DJ the opportunity to finally meet the rest of Yvette’s extended family, which was quite positive.  Fortunately DJ did get to spend a little bit of time getting to know Steven before he passed, which we’re thankful for.

Yvette and DJ were surprised to have two sets of siblings move here to Fort Collins- DJ’s sister Star and family, and Yvette’s sister Nikki and family!  That has been wonderful to say the least!

In summary, we are quite happy and content.

No, those words are not quite right…  let us say we are extremely blessed.

God has blessed us beyond what anyone should expect this year.  Not only with our love and marriage, but with steady paychecks, a somewhat loving cat and wonderful families and friends that care for us.  In short, more than could be expected in our difficult times.  We both feel that we are headed in a very good direction and absolutely love being in love with each other!

Merry Christmas to all!

As a freshly married couple, we’ve had some challenges to overcome. One of them was meals. We wanted to save money, but we were finding that trips to Sams Club and the grocery store wasn’t enough. Food was going bad in our refrigerator and we weren’t really all that effective. We were going over budget every month for groceries and all too often too tired when we got home to do anything productive.
As you can imagine, this is bad for a lot of reasons- we even began gaining more weight!

You’ve heard us go on and on about Dave Ramsey, so naturally we were stressed a bit because wasting money doesn’t work for paying down debts!
DJ had been hearing an advertisement on Dave’s radio program for E-Mealz and we decided to give it a try.

We LOVE it!

In the first two weeks we’d slashed our spending on food in half, and have found a lot of… well, PEACE in having a plan!  Yvette loves it because she can just follow the plan right in front of her and it causes a lot less anxiety, but probably mostly because she doesn’t have to eat DJ’s improvised meals on this plan…

It’s pretty simple, you sign up for an account and you can download weekly meal plans. These plans have all the ingredients you need on a sheet you can take to the grocery store and only buy what you need- no more being swayed by what’s on sale and buying too much of stuff you don’t need!
From there, it’s just a matter of every night selecting what meal you’d like and making it. We’ve found all of the meals so far easy to make and delicious, with a good amount of variety.
There are a host of different options for the meal lists- we’re currently on the basic two person plan- but there are tighter plans for diets and even some that track seasonal sales at certain stores (mostly East Coast, unfortunately).

So we say go for it- click the link and try it out!  It’s $15 for 3 months (we saved more than that in the first week, so YEAH it’s worth it!)