Dimples' Divine Domain
My journey to financial empowerment.

This post goes everywhere and back again. Hang on tight. I am feeling giddy this morning so I thought I would spread some love. LINK LOVE that is!!!! I have a lot new subscribers. If you would like to be featured in DDD's first ever humongous link love post then leave a comment and I will add you. You have until 11 pm tonight to leave a comment. I will compile list after that and hopefully have the post up before the day is done. *WARNING* - I can tell the difference between a regular ole blogger and someone trying to spam my blog. I have seen an increase in spammers over that past week. Of course their comments get deleted. This post is no different so don't try it. Test me if you wanna. This week has been hella crazy so I apologize for the lack of posts and for not visiting your blogs. It is hard trying to visit EVERYONE's blog but I do try. I shop to damn much!!!! I mean I have been spending some of this extra money that I have been bringing in when it should...

My crockpot is GONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *sniffling* oh........HAPPY EASTER ERBODY!!!! *sigh* Before I left for church this morning I put a whole chicken in my crockpot wrapped in foil around 9 on high. Well after church my friends decided to hit up Red Lobster. I haven't hung out with them in like 3 weeks and dem cheddar bay biscuits were calling my name....mmmmmm. I had put the crockpot on high and it had already been 4 hours. So I was like ok, we'll eat and mingle for about 2 hours at the most and I'll go home and just put the food away for tonight or tomorrow. That plan sounded so good in my head but ish ain't work out that way. My friends can talk and we had a lot of catching up to do. Needless to say I didn't make it home till 5 pm, 8 hours after I put the chicken in. Part of the foil and chicken had burned into the crockpot......... I couldn't save her. Had to send her to the crockpot heaven above. So now Dimps has to get another crock...

One important step I take towards becoming debt free is to find extra money to pay down my debt. I have been doing this from the beginning. There are many different ways to find that extra money but one way that can work for a majority of people is to trim the fat off of your expenses. First, track your expenses. If you already have a budget in place then your golden. If you don't, then track what you spend on bills in one month. This is what my monthly expenses looked like a year ago: BILL Amount Rent $800 Cable $70 Electric $160 Phone $60 Cell $90 Car Note $532 Daycare $410 TOTAL $2122 Second, analyze your monthly expenses and find areas where you can "trim the fat". If you are willing to make sacrifices then do so. Analyze each category and find cheaper alterna...

and I am 5 days late........ LOL! My one year blog anniversary was March 15th. I didn't realize that until today. Oh well......I can still celebrate and I plan on doing so. YAY ME!!! [image credit: MySpace]

Warning!!! This post will be going all over the place. Tee hee........have fun. Sweet & Spicy Garlic Wings I made some tonight. It was off the chain. Mmmmm. All I did was season some chicken wings (whole) with some cayenne pepper, garlic salt, chopped garlic, and pepper. I put them in a baking dish, drizzled some olive oil and honey on them, and baked them in the over @ 400 degrees for about 25 min (or until cooked). When I took them out, I drizzled a little bit more honey on them. Oh my goodness!!! Those wings were soo good. eBay and Amazon I am pretty sure most of you guys do this already but if you don't here it is: ALWAYS check out eBay and Amazon before purchasing something online. I am so mad at myself for not doing this last month. I purchased some hair products from Carol's Daughter and spent $48. Well the exact same products were on sale on eBay for half the retail price. DAG-NABBIT!!! I could have saved $24. Needless to say I have learned my lesson...

Ingredients: 2 tilapia fillets = $.83 1 cup of shrimp = $.50 2 cups homemade chicken broth (or one can of store bought broth) = $0 1 cup of chopped carrots = $.25 1 cup of chopped snow peas = $.82 1 can of cream of mushroom soup = $1 1 medium size onion, chopped = $.15 1 box of sweet corn = $.75 1 cup of water = $0 TOTAL COST = $4.30 (approximate) Prep Time = 15 min Cook Time = 4 hours on high Directions: Turn on crockpot on at the high setting. Add homemade chicken broth to crockpot. Chop up carrots, snow peas, and onions, if you haven't done so. Cube fish. It can be thawed or still frozen. Add everything to crockpot. Distribute cream of mushroom evenly in pot. Cover and let it cook. Notice that I didn't use any seasonings. The homemade chicken broth and cream of mushroom added enough flavor for me. Of course if yours needs some then add salt and pepper to taste. Final product: This was good and hearty. I could smell it coming up the walk way to my apartment. It sm...

Yes it does! And God is so good that I can't help but just be in awe of him. Let me hip yall to how good he actually is. I did a post earlier this week giving an update on my car situation. Due to the speediness of some awesome chicks at my credit union and the grace of God, my refinance was completed rather quickly. This allowed me to NOT have a car payment for this month. This meant I now had $550 dollars available to use at my discretion. And of course, in accordance with the theme of my blog, I planned to apply $400 of that towards my credit card debt. The remaining $150 was to be used towards my car maintenance for this month (I wanted to get some tints on my car). Well my car has been acting funny. It would make this clicking noise every time I made a turn. And yesterday it started shaking. I called up the Honda dealership and set up an appointment to get it checked out. I went in this morning and an hours later this is what the service tech told me I needed: -Two ...

One of my 2008 Goals is to start and stick to a skin regimen. Well I need to find some products to use before I can even think about a regimen. Unfortunately, I have EXTRA sensitive skin. Some days my skin is dry as all out doors. Other days it can be real oily. But between those two, my skin is more dry than oily. I have been using AMBI for the past 6 months or so. It has been an okay product but it is not giving me what I want. I am looking for the following things: -Even out my skin tone. -Moisturizes my skin. -Will NOT break me out. -Fades away my blemishes. (I don't have a lot but I do have this bad habit of picking at my pimples.... TMI I know!) -Take care of the dark circles around my eyes. (I need to get more sleep) Dang, you would swear I look like an old hag after reading that. But whatev! I'm cute!!!! LOL If you know of a good skincare line that will take care of the things that I listed above or even products from different lines, please feel free to drop...

Anyone looking for a laptop? MicroCenter has one on sale for $359.99. (Hat tip to Hustler ) Check out the specs: Intel® Celeron® M Processor 540 512MB DDR2-667 RAM 80GB 5,400RPM Hard Drive Combo DVD-ROM/CD-RW Drive Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 10/100 Network 802.11b/g Wireless Network 14.1" WXGA CrystalBrite Display Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic SKU: 394965 Mfr Part #: LX.AKZ0Y.169 UPC: 099802364373 $359.99

Better late than never. Everything is pretty much the same with the exception of my car payment and car maintenance this month. I am going to take my car in and get a thorough check-up. I have noticed that my car is driving a lil differently and I want to make sure everything is running smoothly. I think it just might need a new tire or two. Anyways, since I do not have a car payment this month I am going to put some money to the side just in case the check-out doesn't turn out okay. Oh and I think I may get some tints. All other categories and sub-categories are pretty much unchanged except for a few tweaks here and there.

As you all know, I decided to trade-in my vehicle for a less expensive one . I currently pay $532 a month for my 2006 Honda CR-V. Ridiculous I know. I called my credit union on Monday and applied for a $10K loan over the phone. The loan officer called back in 2 hours and said that I had been approved. She put me in touch with a company the credit union worked with that would be able to get me a car at a wholesale price. The guy took my info and looked up the trade-in value of my car. He called me back and said that the trade-in value on my car was $13,500. Mind you, I owe a lil over $19K. I would basically be almost $6000 upside down on a loan for a used 2001-2003 car. Can we say UH NO!!! Dude advised me NOT to go this route and to just keep paying down my car for a lil while longer. He kept it real and I appreciated that. I am so glad that I decided to talk with his company first instead of going to a dealership with my freshly approved loan and walking away just plain ignor...

Ingredients: 1 whole hen (make sure it fits in your crockpot) = $3.02 1/2 cup of organic dried fruit or you can use fresh fruit (dates, cranberries, apricots, raisins, apples) = $.50 1 apple, peeled and chopped = $.25 1 cup of chopped carrots = $.25 1 sweet potato, peeled and chopped = $.35 3 tablespoon of honey (optional) = $.10 Spices = pepper, salt, 2 cloves, parsley, 1 chicken bullion (all to taste...not too much) TOTAL COST = $4.47 (approximate) Prep Time = 15 min Cook Time = 6-8 hours on low (all depends on if you want the chicken to remain whole or want it to fall off the bone) I cooked mine for 6 hours. Directions: Turn on crockpot on desired setting. Rub seasoning on chicken. Put to side. Add dried fruit, apple, carrots, and sweet potato to bowl. Add honey and seasoning and distribute evenly. Add some of the mixture into the chicken (like you would stuffing). Put remaining mixture in crockpot. Add stuffed chicken to crockpot. You can add liquid to the cro...

BUDGET RESULTS February was a great month. I brought in some extra income and received a chunky tax refund Income: I brought in $395.26 in extra income and I also received my tax refund of $2629. The extra income consisted of sales I made on Amazon and eBay, bonuses from Revolutionary Money Exchange , mileage reimbursement from work, and blog income. Rent & Utilities: Everything but my damn cell phone bill was cool in this area. I am highly upset with Cingular AT&T or what ever the wanna call themselves today. I supposedly went over my text messages and when I checked the bill it seems I was being charged TWICE for each text message. I called to inquire about this and got the run around. I was leaving to go out of town in a couple of hours and I did not want them to cut my phone off while I was out-of-state so I went ahead and paid the ridiculous $195.89 bill. I called them today and they are going to go over my bill and call me back tomorrow. I want to cancel my con...

Yes indeedy! I had a blast in the A. That vacation was long overdue. For all those Atlantians out there: We hit up Atlantic Station and M Bar. We ate at Gladys Knight's restaurant and I had some of the her famous chicken and waffles. It was off da chain. And while we are eating, guess who winds up sitting at a table right next to ours? Cedric the Entertainer!! I was so giddy but I managed to hold still and not bother that man while he ate. Steve and Monique were funty as hell. After the comedy show, we went to the Westin and straight to the top to have some drinks and dinner. Our last day we ate at Thumbs Up diner. We ended the trip by visiting MLK and Coretta's grave sites and visited the MLK museum. Wow! Talk about goosebumps! On the budget front: I tried and I tried but I did not keep to my $225 budget. I winded up exceeding it by $68.09. After visiting MLK's grave site and visiting the museum, I HAD to get some souvenirs to bring home. Good news is tha...