With less than a week left to my wedding, I’m happy to announce that we’ve raised over $1300 with our charity wedding registry.

Instead of a traditional gift registry, my fiancée and I chose to create a charity registry where our family and friends can make donations in our honor. We chose three non-profit organizations, and we have been encouraged to see many generous friends.

This charity wedding registry was setup through I Do Foundation, a non-profit organization. It was fairly easy to set up. Once you create an account, you can choose from different options of what you want your wedding website to look like. After the website is setup, you can tell your family and friends to visit.

I was up in the bay area this past weekend finalizing a lot of things for my wedding.  The Chinese banquet is paid for, the flower arrangements are finalized, and the guest list is completed.

My fiancée started putting together the programs and wedding favors.  Hopefully she can recruit help so that she can finish them soon.  We still have to work on the seating assignments for the reception.

Last night we were going over our wedding budget, and it looks like we are fairly on track with what we allocated.  I have to update it to reflect our latest purchases, but I think we should be fine.

I’m getting pretty excited, but I just want to make sure that I haven’t forgotten anything.  The posting in the next two weeks will probably be a little bit lighter as I run around and take care of miscellaneous items.

Nickel over at fivecentnickel.com is celebrating its 2nd anniversary since he started his blog. In celebration for his successes, he is having a big giveaway with various prizes. Make sure to leave a comment before this Friday to get into the drawing.

Back in March, there was a big showdown of the best finance articles from various bloggers. I went head to head with Nickel in one of the match ups:
Solving Customer Service Problems - Nickel
401k For Beginners - What To Do With Your 401k Plan - Savvy Steward

I think I had the better article =Þ , but Nickel won fair and square.

He’s got a lot of helpful articles ranging a variety of topics. Some of the articles I appreciated were:
Choosing A Health Insurance Plan
Ten Simple Ways To Cover Your Ass(ets)
12 Simple Ways To Save Money On Utilities And The Planet

Make sure to subscribe to his RSS feed and check out his welcome page.

By the way, Nickel is also a family man with a wife and kids. He runs a sister site called raising4boys.com. This is a must-read blog for all your parents out there looking for tips and advice.

Flexo over at Consumerism Commentary recently purchased a Martin D-15. It’s a great solid mahogany guitar. I actually prefer it over the more popular DM Road Series. Regardless you can’t go wrong with Martin guitars.

If you’re shopping around for a new guitar, let me give you an awesome tip. Check out Buffalo Bros Guitars down in Carlsbad, CA near San Diego. They have an “upgrade policy” that can’t be beat. You can purchase any guitar from them and when you decide to upgrade to a more expensive/better guitar, they will take back your old guitar and credit you the purchase price.

So for example, you purchase a Martin D-15 for $800, and a few years down the road you decide that you really wanted a Taylor 710ce instead, Buffalo Bros will deduct $800 from your purchase price of the new guitar. When you upgrade the only requirement is that you spend $100 more on the new guitar. And obviously your old guitar can’t be broken, but normal wear and tear is fine.

I have a couple of friends that have purchased from Buffalo Bros, and a couple of them have upgraded. They have competitive prices, similar to Sam Ash or Guitar Center, except with much better customer service.

Purchasing a guitar can be an expensive investment. Fortunately, this upgrade policy will insure that you’ll end up with a guitar you really like.

If you’re in the Carlsbad area, you can also stop by the Taylor guitar factory. I’ve been on the guided tour and it is really neat. Plus they give you free coasters.

Anyone knowledgeable with Wordpress?

I’m trying out a new theme but for some reason it keeps reverting/reseting to the default Wordpress theme.  Very annoying.   Something with php, I dunno.

I searched around on google but all I could find was that there is a similar problem for those running the  WP-Mobile plugin, but I’m not using it.  I also upgraded to the latest Wordpress platform but it’s still giving me the same problem.

If I can’t figure it out, it looks like I’ll have to rebuild the theme from scratch.  I’m not that good with CSS so it might take me a while.

Darn, I really liked my new theme too.

I’m trying out a new Wordpress theme. The font is a little bigger and the navigation is a little easier.

Let me know if you notice any bugs or quirks.

My church has been going through the money series, Managing Finances God’s Way for Sunday School, but this past Sunday we had a special event.

The youth group has been going through a Sunday School curriculum called the Justice Mission which is produced the the International Justice Mission. International Justice Mission is a human rights agency that rescues victims of violence, sexual exploitation, slavery, and oppression.

The youth group wanted to raise money for a donation to IJM. Their goal was $1500. So out of the youth group 10 people volunteered various services such as car washing, baby-sitting, gardening, etc. We invited the entire congregation to participate in the auction and support the youth group and support the work of IJM.

It was a great success and the youth group raised over $2600. Who would have thought a car wash could raise over $300 each. Praise God.

Free Money Finance is hosting a March Madness style tournament where finance blogs go head to head with the best articles they’ve posted. I’ve submitted two articles and am hoping that at least one of them will move on to the next round. If you think my posts were helpful give me a vote. Check out the other posts as well while you are are FMF.

FMF Game Number 17:
My post about “How To Keep Track Of Your Spendings” is matched up with No Credit Needed Blog’s post on “Avoid 10 Common Debt Reduction Mistakes“.

FMF Game Number 28:
My post on “401k For Beginners - What To Do With Your 401k Plan” is matched up with Fivecentnickel’s post on “Solving Customer Service Problems“.

My post on Wednesday about building my own bookcase got me thinking about other do-it-yourself projects. I looked around and found a bunch of awesome websites for the do-it-yourself types out there. Here’s a collection of useful links:

Daily Blogs
Hack-a-Day
http://www.hackaday.com
A daily blog that gives you a new hardware hack every day. Learn hacks for your iPod or for your wireless connection.

Zedomax
http://www.zedomax.com
A blog that offers both do-it-yourself projects and reviews on the latest gadgets and technologies.

DIY Live
http://www.diylive.net
A do-it yourself blog that is more electronics and technology related.

Paper Crafty
http://www.papercrafty.com
A blog that covers all sorts of paper craft possibilities. Learn how to make ninja stars and modular origami.

DIY Bride
http://www.diybride.com
A blog dedicated to do-it-yourself wedding projects. Find tips on various projects as baking your wedding cake to learning how to do calligraphy.

Magazines
Ready Made
http://www.readymademag.com
A magazine for people that love to make stuff. The website has awesome how-to articles and a blog as well.

Real Simple
http://www.realsimple.com
A magazine devoted to simplifying your busy life. It offers thousands of useful organizing tips, quick and healthy recipes, and other useful life skills.

Make-Zine
http://www.makezine.com
A magazine devoted to various digital and hardware projects and hacks. Learn how to make pinhole cameras, altoid tin headphone amps, and a human catapult.

Craft-Zine
http://www.craftzine.com
From the creators of Make-Zine, a magazine dedicated to inspiring and cultivating all sorts of crafts. Tips on your crocheting, quilting, sewing, knitting, etc.

Hack-Zine
http://www.hackzine.com
Also from the creators of Make-Zine, a webzine that is devoted to all sorts of useful hacks. You’ll find a lot of software and hardware hacks are.

How-To Websites
Instructables
http://www.instructables.com
Do-it-yourself tips and projects contributed by an online community. This is an awesome website that is constantly updated with great ideas. The step-by-step instructions come with easy to follow pictures.

Elephant Staircase
http://www.elephantstaircase.com
A website offering do-it-yourself project ideas in both wiki format and blog format.

DIY-4-Less
http://www.diy4less.com
Do-It-Yourself For Less, offering helpful tips and ideas for your home or garden.

eHow
http://www.ehow.com
A more general website that provides concise how-to articles on a broad range of topics. Find clear instructions on just about everything.

How To Do Things
http://www.howtodothings.com
A similar website to eHow, a website that people can come to learn and share their knowledge. They’re still in a beta phase and looking to expand their content.

According to Wikipedia, abandonware is computer software which is no longer being sold or supported by its copyright holder. Sometimes, it is used as a blanket category for any software over a certain age, usually five years.

All the games you remember playing many years back are now available for free. What great nostalgia! So if you’re looking for frugal entertainment for yourself or your family this winter break, enjoy playing classics such as:
Dune
Final Fantasy
Lemmings 

I was fortunate to grow up in a household where my parents encouraged learning through the use of technology. We’ve had a number of personal computers including an Apple IIe, IBM 386, and a Packard Bell 75mhz. I remember growing up and playing games such as Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? My friends let me borrow other games such as Hot Rod, Ninja Rabbit, and Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat.

Go here and here for a bunch of free Abandonware games.
Abandonia
XTC Abandonware