Our Debt-Free Party

We finally celebrated our debt-free party, after making the final payment on our credit cards today. I wanted to make sure that it was really special and that the kids would be an active participant in our joy and elation of all we did to work towards this day.

Above is our centerpiece for the event. As cheesy as it was, it was symbolic of the fruits of our labor. I put the amount of money that we paid off into the basket to show Ethan what a big sum it was and how excited we were that we didn't have to pay this anymore. The money came from our Monopoly game and we were able to let him count it out and also used it to show how borrowing money works. This made things more tangible for him and we tried to make this a great teaching opportunity for why debt it so bad.

What should a debt-free family eat for their celebration dinner? Steak, of course! I used this marinade recipe and marinated the steaks while I prepared the rest of the ingredients for the meal. I got a big loaf of crusty bread with oil to dip it in, I made this Creamy Spinach Ravioli (minus the dill and prepared with half & half instead of milk), and I made a big batch of brownies for dessert.


Even Emily seemed to appreciate my modest culinary efforts. Most of the ingredients came right from the pantry so it was still an affordable dinner. The writing didn't turn out on the brownies, but we devoured them anyway. That will teach me to get anxious and pipe before they are throughly cooled.

What's a party without a good toast? I got a bottle of wine for our celebration and used our cut up credit card as an accent to our wine glasses. I poured pink lemonade for Ethan in the fancy wine glass so he could celebrate a toast with us.

We clinked glasses several times to get the best shot for you! Ethan loved clinking the glasses so he didn't mind the extra takes.

I finished the evening by reading my entry that I wrote about our happy return to the land of no credit cards. It actually was quite emotional for me to read it out loud to my husband because we went through so much to get to this point.

Thank you all for sharing in our journey with us and for supporting our efforts on the site. Cheers to you!