Where's A Cat When You Need One?

The scene: Base of crepe myrtles in our back yard

What's inside: Three baby mice. Momma is nowhere to be found. We're not sure if Tucker has already eaten it or something else did. Maybe she's still lost or something.

This picture was taken after my oldest MOVED them to be safe from the animal that resides in our backyard.

The hunter: One Golden Retriever named Tucker. Sometimes I substitute the "T" in Tucker with another letter.

It was Sunday and we were getting down to the wire as far as packing up to move to our new house. We stayed home from church to get A LOT done. The kids are blowing bubbles trying to get rid of the numerous bottles of bubble solution that has accumulated over time. Then my oldest comes to tell me that Tucker has something. Sure enough when we yell his name a certain way, he knows he's in trouble. He gets as close to getting into the fetal position as possible for an animal his size.

He dropped something. Something that had fur. And a long tail.

Tucker was about to have lunch. A three course lunch consisting of mice. 

Tucker found their nest and was about to eat his lunch when my oldest saw what he was doing. My oldest had just "rescued" the mice from the jaws of our animal and found a new place for them on the side of the house.

In the shade.

With her bare hands.

NNNNNOOOOOOOO!!!!!! YYYUUUUCCCCKKKKKK!!!!!!

Without trying to freak her out I told her to go wash her hands with soap multiple times. Hubby and I are just wondering what the hell to do?!?!!? They're live mice. Do we bag them up and put them in the garbage? Do we put them in a shoe box? Give them a cruel death and let the dog eat them and let the dog possibly get some weird funk? Do we put them back in the sun, so maybe the sun will get them? WHAT?!?!?!

I'm freakin' out, but at the same time relieved that we're moving in a few short days.

 From that point on my oldest was set on helping them survive. First, she gave them a slice of cheese. I'm thinking either that's a myth or they were just too young to care. Hubby even took her to go get an eye dropper so she could try and give them water. After her story, the pharmacist gave her the dropper for FREE.

She's laboring over these yucky rodents, while I have to remind her five times a day to feed the 100 pound pooch that resides in our home. The one animal that we intentionally went out to adopt and brought home to be a member of this family.

We finally put our foot down and told her to leave these rodents alone. They could carry disease. She could get sick or worse. All we could think to do at this point is to pray that a cat comes across their path and takes them off of our hands.

On any given day that we've been in this house there are numerous cats that I've seen wandering thru my bushes. Where are they now? Where is the one ferrell cat that I need to do me a favor?  Put these animals out of their misery and move them far, far away from my house!

I'm praying for a cat right now. The cat that will take these furry creatures off of our hands. Like yesterday.

Can We REALLY Do This?

Thanks to my recent passion for Pinterest, I've come across some great blogs that have craft ideas and DIY remedies for everything to do with house cleaning. I've started following several of the blogs and a recent post after the New Year caught my eye. The blogger had taken on a challenge of "31 Days of Nothing". Which is basically re-thinking every penny that goes out the door. Every. Penny. Instead of giving those pennies to someone else they chose to keep them.  You can find the post here. She had taken on the challenge brought on by another blogger.

Hubby and I hardly think twice when it comes to spending money. Shame on us!  We don't give going out to eat a second thought.

Yes, we've gone through a popular financial management class. But after several years we got lax about it. So I guess we thought it was time to shake it up again.

After reading how her progress went for week one I had to forward the post on to Hubby. We read each and every week! It sounded intriguing. What could it hurt if we tried it*? So Hubby broke out the budget and we tweaked and tweaked. Our goal wasn't necessarily the same as the one I got the idea from. We were shooting for a monetary goal.

The two things we couldn't touch, in my mind,  in the budget was the line item for children's clothing and the gift fund. Kids clothes DO wear out**.  And there will be a birthday party sometime, somewhere around the bend that the girls will be invited to.

This is how our  31 Days of Nothing budget looks:

Grocery $200/2 weeks
Entertainment $50/2 weeks
2e's blow money $50/2 weeks
Hubby's blow $0/2 weeks!

From the first paycheck we were able to scrape off $450. The second paycheck we're able to get an extra  $550. Paydays for Hubby fall on the 5th and 20th of every month. So the first week will start off on February 6th for us. I went to the bank and got what little cash I needed***.

I went to Aldi after going to the bank. I purchased 39 items for $84.41. Some of the items included, but not limited to:

turkey bacon $2.29
Moo tubes $1.99 (Go-gurt knock off)
milk $1.99
eggs .99/dozen (2)
chewy granola bars $1.59 (2)
raisin bran $1.89 (2)
honey wheat bread $1.29 (2)
bag of tilapia filets $5.99 
pork tenderloin $4.71

I also purchased three pounds of ground beef, chips, mac & cheese, pink pancake mix****, soda, produce, frozen veggies, butter, and other necessities. I didn't need any fruit because I still had plenty from a get well basket Hubby's office sent him. I also had just gotten some other fruit for my daughter's volleyball team for the after the game snack. I also had a big bag of chicken breasts in the freezer.

I have no menu written down, but I know tonight I have chicken breasts thawing and some bread crumbs. Throw in some frozen veggies and we're good to go*****. Tuesday night is always breakfast for dinner. Wednesday I'm thinking tilapia. Thursday will probably be salisbury steak and Friday might just be a free for all. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

The key this month is to eat what we have. No trips on a whim to the store. 

I'm glad this challenge happened to fall on the shortest month of the year! So here's to our week one. This could be a very interesting experiment!

* I ask with trepidation!
**or they need shoes
***aaaaahhhhhh!!! Can we REALLY do this?
****Valentines Day is coming
*****They won't be frozen when served, they'll be steamed.

I Shutter At The Thought

In my bedroom I could have what might be the last set of mini-blinds in Texas. Maybe not Texas, but Collin County at least. We've been in this house for over 8 years now and I have no idea what to do.

When we first moved in we installed some inexpensive curtains*.  When we painted this room a couple of years ago they came down and I didn't want to put them back up. I just didn't want to put up something that I wasn't crazy about. I'm not doing that anymore! If I don't love it, it's not going up in the house.

I have an un-dying admiration for plantation shutters. They just scream "southern charm" to me. They would probably keep out the cold in winter and heat in summer as well**! It's taking a long a time to get this house the way I want it***.

This is where my dilemma begins. Can I have shutters in just one room of the house? Or should I work my way through the house with shutters for a more consistent look? Before we painted the room the moldings were a honey brown color. Straight out of the 80's. Yuck! Now they're a creamy, off-white color. I like the look of shutters that have a distressed brown tone to them. But would they stick out like a sore thumb? I'm wondering if I should go with a distressed white? If they were distressed they wouldn't scream out, "Hey look at me. I'm brand new. Look at me". I want them to look like they've been here for a long time.

I know in a world of crazy unemployment and world hunger this is the least of anybody's worries. But that's what's going on in my head right now. I'm trying to keep the economy going with my share of window coverings. 



*by inexpensive, I mean cheap
**and the neighbors annoying flood light on the side of their house. That light might meet a bee bee gun very soon! Or I may just go unscrew it.
***way too long for my patience.

I Finally Did It!

When Hubby and I put the house up for sale we had to do a lot of staging. We had to pack stuff up and re-arrange everything else. It was fun but at the same time exhausting. One table ended up being taken apart and stored in the garage. And another table was put in its place because it went better with the color scheme of the room. Well. This table did go better with the color scheme, dark brown with black legs. But it was a table with deep crevices. Several rectangles as part of the design.

After a long time it just got gunked up with food and arts and crafts. There was no amount of scrubbing that could get all the gross junk out. You can almost see some of the gunk in the picture above.

 Here's the  table before:

It's the basic butcher block wood color with painted white legs with chairs to match. It had to go! But not to the curb.

So. I let my new obsession go to my head. Pinterest has a LOT of neat ideas and creative tutorials. So off I go to my local home improvement store to make the second table look a lot more pleasing to the eye and go with the color scheme.

I bought some liquid sander, stain and spray paint. Off to work I go. I started with the table first. Wiping on the liquid sander and shortly after, wiping off. At first I got the plain liquid stain. It doesn't give you much time to work with. I had some gel stain leftover from when we had our kitchen cabinets stained and that's a lot better to work with.

It was actually a little bit fun! I sanded with a fine grit sand paper between two layers of stain. I used a flat enamel spray paint for the bottom part of the table and legs. I did put a thin coat of polyurethane on the top of the table just to keep it as nice as I can for a kitchen table.

I was a little bit nervous about doing the chairs. The best thing I could think to do was to spray paint the legs first. I just propped them on top of my garbage can and sprayed away. I worked my way up from there. Next I stained the seat.

I took Hubby's bike down from the ceiling and hung the chairs upside down to avoid getting too much paint on the seat part. Thank God it was a very windy day when I did this!

This project maybe cost around $100. That's a lot better on the checkbook than a whole new furniture set. It's not perfect, but I'm very happy with it.

Buy My House. Please!

After the long, hot summer we just endured Hubby and I decided we'd really like to have a pool in our backyard. The problem is we cringe at the $45k price tag installing a pool comes with. So the subject of selling our house came up. After sitting around wondering whether or not to sell, we finally put our house on the market. What do we have to lose?

Let the good times begin*! I've gone through closets and packed up boxes. I've spit and polished just about all I can. We hired a handyman to fix odds and ends. It is show ready just about twenty four hours a day. 

It's been a couple of weeks now and it's been a roller coaster. Our realtor gave me access to the comments that the realtors who come through have. It comes to my email after each visit. 

This is the time I'm going to take out my frustration on all of you ignorant realtors out there. 

1.  Comment: beautiful drive-up, but the den is too small and the bedrooms are all on the same side of the   house. 

     Well, I can't do anything about that one. You and your kids are too old for this neighborhood. It needs  

      young blood. I can't change the floorplan. It is what it is. For this area you either need small children or  

      be empty nesters. 

2. Comment: beautiful drive-up, clients favorite of the day. Will discuss an offer. 

     Please. Don't insult us with ridiculous offers. We want to move. We don't have to move. We're not          desperate. 

3. Comment: Clients are looking for more contemporary. They would need to decide if they would want to  remodel. 

     Contemporary? Had the client or the realtor looked at any of the pictures online they would have known  that there is nothing contemporary about this house. There's plenty of contemporary crap out there. We've seen it. 

4. Comment: Client thought the house was beautiful. They are moving here from Brazil and this would be their first time to buy a house. The only thing they didn't like was that the fireplace was too big. 

     Seriously, if that's the only flaw you can come up with you don't need to be buying a house in this area. We don't use it either, but it's just there. I didn't know that fireplaces came in different sizes. 

5. Comment: Beautiful drive-up and fabulous colors on the inside. They liked the updates then saw some of the paneling and wondered why we stopped updating. 

     Look here beyotch, had we not stopped updating we either wouldn't be selling or it would be priced much higher. We've put in granite in the kitchen and painted over a TON of pathetic wallpaper. We've put in a fence, new a/c, new hot water heaters. We've stained the cabinets to rid this house of the deplorable golden honey cabinet color that was popular in the 80's. All of our light fixtures and ceiling fans have been updated and there's no sign of the gold fixtures that again, the 80's dumped on us. Did I mention the buttload of energy efficient windows we put in a few years ago. Cha-ching!! We've seen houses priced much higher than what ours is and we've done much more than they have. We've made the necessary changes. The rest isn't broken. It still works just fine. It may not be the latest and greatest, but that's for someone else to change if they see fit.

Yes, people are entitled to their opinions. But so am I. This has been a short road that in some ways seems like it's already lasted forever. There are some moments when I think, "What are we doing?". The market is saturated with houses for sell. There's always the springtime. Hopefully someone will come along and think this is the perfect house for them. At one point, we thought it was perfect for us. Who knows? 

God knows.  It's in His hands. I have to be okay with that.

One realtor we met at an open house said not to get discouraged. "People are moving all of the time" is what she said. Here's to people to moving all of the time! Here's to hoping what she said rings true. 

*sarcastic tone intended here

Being owned by a "good" home

Just when we thought we could take a breather and enjoy a somewhat "cosmetic" upgrade in our home, the a/c goes out. Craig and I wanted to have the shower in our master bath regrouted & recaulked by a professional. God had other plans! The night before the grout guy comes the a/c goes out(Our shower was looking pretty skanky!). We were without a/c from Wednesday night til Friday morning. This after Frymire had just fixed the specific part that broke in April of '06. We don't use Frymire anymore.

Well, thankfully we have an emergency fund that took care of paying for the a/c to get fixed. Ah! Cold air blowing through the vents.

A week later.......

My husband goes out to the car to go to the mens bible study he attends at our church(this was at 5:45am, mind you). Well, what does he spy, but water draining from the hot water heater closet in the garage! Joy! Like we need something else to go wrong with this pit of a house! So, he wakes me and tells me this horrible news and I go ahead and get up. I'm mad at the world because now I can't take a shower til God only knows when, and because something else is wrong with this house. I go about my morning in a baseball cap, fixing my kids lunches for the day. Thank God, they both have a day camp and MDO to go to.

As my morning continues, I find myself not being appreciative of the $11k that we've paid off in debt , in the last 10 months. I'm pissed at how much more we have to go, and that this latest water heater fiasco will set back our payoff date of everything else. We have grand plans for our payoff date. We have our eyes on Disneyworld in the summer of '09. I want to renew my vows with my husband. Debt free.

I'm standing alone in my home, yelling at Satan to get the hell out of my house. Literally! Satan is trying to break us, trying to get his foot in the door. I am slamming the door on that foot. He may not know this yet, but he doesn't win. God always wins, we will continue the good fight. God is my rock and my fortress. I yelled out, in the name of Jesus Christ, that Satan needs to leave. There is no room for him, here at this inn. I actually felt better after my yell fest.