Time's a' Wasting

So I think I'm on something like Day 47 with the chair now. Please don't tell Bob. I really am making progress, and I'm beginning to enjoy it. This is the fun part! Pulling staples out and removing the nasty old upholstery fabric was definitely not much fun. Retrieving someone else's candy wrappers, silver chains, and loose change from the depths of the stuffing was pretty gross.

But putting new fabric on and seeing it fit nicely? That's fun.

The chair's on hold, though, for a couple days.

I'm having a garage sale tomorrow. My mother-in-law is moving and downsizing, and her neighborhood doesn't allow garage sales, so I told her we could sell her excess at our house ... and that gave me a good excuse to round up all OUR excess. And apparently, we have a lot. Like tons of clothing that the girls have outgrown. Like 50 pairs of pajamas. Fifty! Crazy.

So I stayed up late last night, sorting clothes, making price lists, putting price tags on the non-clothing-items. All of our stuff is ready to go. Today, I'll work on my mother-in-law's stuff. About 2/3 of it is on our front porch, and I need to go pick up the rest of it today. (Except for her books, which Bob will get later. I packed two boxes of her boxes the other day, threw out my hip, and started having contractions. I'm only 22 weeks pregnant. It's a little early to go into labor without due cause.)

So, that said, I better get a move on.

I know I've mentioned before how much my grandfather enjoyed making money. Well, apparently, I do, too. I'm excited about this garage sale, in a way that's fairly abnormal, I think. I always wanted to be a cashier but never was, so there's that part of it. There's the organizational part of it, which I enjoy. And there's the profit! Woohoo.

Bob's hoping we make at least $100. I think we'll fly past that number, but we'll see.

Off I go to take a quick shower before the little'uns wake up.

P.S. Anyone want to make a guess at our profit number? And, should I bake and sell cookies? Or leave that to the end and only do it if there's time?

Happy Birthday to Me!

I had just brought in the mail, when I happened to glance out and see a box on my front porch. Did the mail female bring it? Did the UPS truck stop by when I wasn't paying attention?

I wasn't even expecting a package.

But when I saw Gardener's Supply Company on the box, I thought, it must be from my dad. Yep, sure enough, the card says "Happy Birthday! -Dad"

When my parents were here not too long ago, I was talking with Dad about how this is the Year of the Garden. Bob & I have made this pronouncement before, but this time, I'm for real.

So Dad said, "I'm going to get you a seed-starter kit for your birthday!"

The kit includes two of these 24-seed starting trays, soil, fertilizer, little stakes for marking, and more. I can't wait.


And since my sunroom, the area where my computer is (which Bob calls my InterNest), the place I'm sitting right now, gets tons of southern and western light, I know just where I'm going to put them.

The tough part is going to be figuring out what to plant, and when. Although, when my parents arrived, they came bearing gift after gift ... and I'm not sure that I can claim to not have enough information now.

But seriously, I could see us growing lots of herbs (basil, of course, and thyme, dill, chives, parsley), and tomatoes, potatoes, onions, leeks, asparagus, cucumbers, squash, zucchini, lettuce, spinach, green beans, sweet peas, bell peppers, garlic. I could go on.

Anyway, lots of planning ahead.

I'm excited at the prospect of growing things without chemicals, knowing that everything was ripened in the sun, nothing was shipped anywhere, shrink-wrapped, etc. I also like the idea of saving money. Big surprise, right?

Moving on.

Remember when I said I failed to take pictures at our house blessing? Well, I lied apparently. I found a couple shots of Caroline & Bob, when she was pretending to be a daddy (drinking a beer) and pretending to be a momma (drinking a diet coke). That girl is too much.

And I found our to-do lists, which I apparently left sitting out for God and Everybody to see during the party. Classy. But at least everyone knew I'd taken a shower. (And Bob actually finished his to-do list, he's just not as OCD about checking things off his list. Funny. He seems to prefer the actual DOING of things.)


P.S. It's not actually my birthday, and won't be for about a month. I think my dad was just really on the ball this year.

I'm one frugal momma.

This year, I decided to track my savings with coupons. I started clipping coupons in the middle of the year last year, but I don't really know how much I saved.

So, here's the tally for 2010:
January -- $63.22
February so far -- $39.77

We've never actually had a clothing budget because we just don't buy clothes very often. But all of Bob's clothes for work were starting to wear out all of a sudden, and we just couldn't afford to go replace all of his stuff at the Brooks Brothers prices of $79 per shirt and $150 per pair of pants. So, I started shopping on eBay. This year, I've gotten him three pairs of pants and two shirts. One of the pairs of pants was still brand-new (with tags attached) (and it was a more expensive pair of pants than the $150 ones), and the other items were used but showed no wear. So I'm comparing what I paid to what it would have cost if I'd bought everything brand-new in the store.

Brace yourselves.

I bought, as I said, three pairs of pants and two shirts, for a whopping total of $85.80. New, I would have paid $708. Yes, that sound you hear is me patting myself on the back.

In other financial news, I e-filed our federal and state taxes last night and look forward to seeing those refunds direct-deposited into our checking account.

Dave Ramsey would be proud.

Nesting

I confess, given the name of my blog, this post title makes me laugh. Not LOL, mind you, but an in-my-head chuckle.

Lately, I've been nesting. Pretty hard-core, get the house in shape, nesting. And I'm not pregnant. I think it's just that we've been living in "transition" since the fall of 2007, when we bought the first of two big old houses in need of work. The first one had been seriously neglected, and we undertook to fix or replace (mostly replace) the systems of the house (heating, cooling, electrical, etc.). We realized, though, that the scope of it was beyond us ... and by that, I mean WAY beyond us. So we sold it and bought another big house that needed work. This one hadn't been "let go" like the last one, but I would say it had been "lived hard in", if that makes sense. Some of the woodwork is beat up, there were broken windows, no hot water knob in the bathtub, a tile missing in the bath/shower, a hole in the kitchen floor that had been awkwardly (and not permanently) patched, a patchwork kitchen, etc. However, it was a lot cheaper (a LOT), and, despite all the work it needed, more move-in-ready than the last one.

And we like it so much better. Seriously. We love this place.

For just over two years, we've been working on our houses, thinking we'd wait to "decorate" until things were a little more settled. It seems clear, now, that we're not going to have all projects done, or feel settled, for a long time. So now I'm trying to make it as cozy and homey as I can, with what we have, or with what I can acquire cheaply. Or both.


My first goal in Project Coziness is the foyer (or "reception hall" as it's called on the blueprints). Right now, there's an Oriental runner in there that's totally wrong for the space. (It's 30"x81" in a 12'x12' room.) There are two tables, one awkwardly displaced by Christmas tree #2, which really should come down tomorrow, and the other awkwardly displaced by Christmas tree #1, which should, well, really come down tomorrow. And there's a weird light fixture that we don't like and don't think is original to the house and think should be replaced. (And I'm the queen of run-ons tonight.)


Project Coziness: Foyer
I'd like to include-

• a soft rug (not sisal, preferably wool) that is more appropriately sized for the space

Maybe a traditional Arts & Crafts-y one like the one at left, maybe not.

• a chandelier, either appropriate for a 1910-ish Arts and Crafts style four-square, or something funky/modern
• a pulpit. Weird, I know, but I'm married to a former pastor, and the daughter of an Anglican priest. Some friends of ours have a beautiful old oak pulpit that they no longer have room for, and they offered it to us. I have visions of standing in it and preaching to my husband.
• A chair, or maybe just a place to sit while taking off shoes?

I'd like to do this for under $300. I'm thinking that should be pretty hard to do. A rug alone would cost more than that, so I'll have to be creative/hit up Goodwill/surf Craigslist/check garage sales. I'm open to suggestions.