In the works

Things are moving on the home front.  We met this afternoon with a realtor who looked around our house and gave us his opinion on selling it.  He seemed to think that we should be able to get our top asking price for it and that it would sell relatively quickly, even in this economy.  Our location saves us again.  Even though we are a single family home, we are in a high density zoning area and evidently properties in this zone don't come up for sale often.  He pointed out some of the things we already knew- we need some painting and minor cosmetic repairs before we put it on the market.  He also gave us his opinion on the property we have been looking at.  He seemed to think that what we are thinking about offering is reasonable and encouraged us to make an offer soon, since more people are out looking when the weather warms up.  He also reminded us that acreages this close in don't come up often.  We're beginning to prepare our offer.  I think we want to go look again before we submit it and take the children along this time so they can see what we're getting into.  Things may be moving quickly from here on out. I'll keep you posted.

Independence Days- week 14

Another week gone by already!  Where does the time go? It seems like it's been a busy week but I don't really feel like I've accomplished much.  But then, how I feel doesn't always correspond with what I've done.  I really like the Independence Days challenge- it helps me see how much I've accomplished toward my goals. Speaking of goals- I'll have to do a post on my personal goals for the year soon.

1. Plant something- YES!!  I have 8 varieties of tomatoes, 5 varieties of peppers and eggplant down in the basement with heating cables and lights.  My little broccoli seedlings are doing well but don't seem to be growing very fast, and my hot peppers that I started early are hanging in there as well.  Roger keeps asking me if the potato sets have arrived and I keep telling him "No, it's still too early- but soon..."

2. Harvest something- Other than snacking on a few lettuce leaves while I was checking the seeds, NO.

3. Preserve something- nope

4. Store something-  25 lbs of whole wheat flour, 12 lbs of oatmeal, 5 lbs of rolled seven grain blend, half lb packages of sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds, 1 lb of wheat germ, craisins and dried apricots from the Amish bulk store.  Can you tell that I had granola bars on the brain while shopping.   Made a double batch of waffles to freeze for this week's breakfasts.

5. Manage reserves- Had a lovely creamy butternut squash soup for lunch from the last of the squash.  It didn't have a spot but was starting to wrinkle a bit at the stem end. Ate mostly from stores all week but did have several big shopping trips this weekend- once to the bulk store and once to the local grocery- there were a lot of things that we were about out of.  

6. Cook something new-  Tried my hand at fondant for K-9's birthday cake which turned out well.  Improvised my own recipe for granola bars.

7. Prep something- Not really.  J14 and I found another candle sale and picked up 2 pillar candles for the sconces in the living room since the ones there are getting low.

8. Reduce waste- The usual, plus I reused a saved gift bag for K's birthday presents.  One of K's presents was from e-bay so wasn't new.

9. Learn a new skill-  Hmmm- I looked at my knitting sitting by the couch- does that count?

10.  Community food security- Donated a bag of canned goods to the local food pantry.  I had picked them up a while ago when there was a good sale at the store and finally remembered to take them along to drop them off.

11. Regenerate what is lost- had lunch with one of the other OTs where I work who lives down the street.  She works in a different division than I do, so I don't get to see her much.

12.  Behavior change-  working to not procrastinate.  Did the mandatory on-line training the day after we got the e-mail about it so I didn't forget.  I'm trying really hard to keep my inbox in line at work and respond promptly to emails.

Yesterday V and I went to look at another property.  It is relatively new on the market with 4.5 acres and a 3 to 4 bedroom house.  They were having an open house and we thought it would be a good opportunity to check it  out.  Let's just say that we nearly drove right on by when we got there.  The house was lovely - almost too much so- it looked like something out of a magazine with lots of busy wallpaper and 'stuff'.  Not our style at all but a nice house.  The problem was the land.  There may be 4.5 acres but the house sits on the only flat part and it appears that the rest of the land encompasses a wooded ravine.  Don't think so.  So we are back to thinking about the first one and trying to decide if it's worth the amount of work that would be required.  I need to push V to make the appointment with the realtor but I don't want to nag him.

I did manage to get lots done this weekend- the usual laundry, cooking and cleaning.  I've got the meals planned for the week but it's going to be a busy one.  We're double booked on Wednesday evening so things could get interesting.

Hope everyone has a great week.

Name change

K8 has a name change today.  He is now K9.  Although, I will always think of a dog when I type that so I may need to think of something else.  V and I had a lovely afternoon off together.  We ran errands in the morning and then spent the afternoon decorating K's cake.  It was our first attempt at sculpting a cake and covering it with rolled fondant.  It actually turned out rather well for a first attempt.  We made the cake shaped like a whale- it is a family joke from bedtime when V will often flop on top of K tickling him talking about being a wormy bed whale.  Ok, I guess you have to be there for it to be funny.  Anyway, we made a wormy whale- yes, it had gummy worms inside it as well as for the spout.

V trimming the fondant.

Here I am, presenting the finished cake to a delighted K9.

K loved it!  "It is so weirdly awesome' I think was the direct quote.  Anyway, it was a wonderful afternoon working with V, laughing and being silly while we tried to figure this out.    J14 has now demanded something equally 'awesome' for her birthday. Hmm, I have 2 months to figure that one out.

Signs of spring

The first tulip!

It was a sunny 70* here this afternoon!  What a tease! The first tulips are starting to peek out of the soil.  We completely rebedded them last fall, hoping for a more spectacular show this spring in hopes of showing the house.  I'm sure it will get cold again and things aren't completely thawed anyway but it certainly makes me want to get into the garden.  I picked up my fencing material that I'm going to be using to trellis my peas (we're planting a lot more than usual so I got new fencing), and tomorrow or Saturday I'm going to be starting my tomatoes and peppers.  I think I need to try some more hot peppers. While 3 jalapeno plants and 3 hot hungarian wax should be enough I only had one Anaheim come up (out of 6 seeds started)  We eat a lot of stuffed chilis in the summer (and winter, I freeze them halved so we can stuff them).  I had really hoped for a better germination rate for them.  I don't know if it's because these are heirloom varieties and not the hybrids I've started in the past or what but I had bad luck with the hot peppers this year.

V and I talked.  With the economic news getting bleaker and bleaker, it seems, we are still hopeful about the house.  We will still plan to meet with the realtor to see what he feels are the odds of our house selling in a reasonable amount of time.  If we can sell this place, the new place is quite doable, if they accept our offer (or a reasonable one).  Again, I'm impatient and not wanting to wait.  V has been going to call but he's been busy working.  He is, in fact, still sitting at the table working on a manuscript that he has to turn back in to the publisher tomorrow morning. So, he hasn't taken the time to call to set up an appointment.  I am trying to be patient,  I realize that, given that this house has been on the market for so long, the odds that someone else will beat us to it a this point are small- but you never know.

I have tomorrow off work since I worked last Saturday.  We've got a lot planned.  A run to the local Amish bulk store- we're OUT of oatmeal and will also pick up a few other things. A trip to Menard's to pick up another fluorescent bulb for my grow lights- and we have a cake to decorate. We're going out for dinner as a family tomorrow night for K's birthday. That should be fun, it's something we rarely do.

Now, I need to go bake a cake so it is cool enough to frost tomorrow- We're making it shaped like a whale!  (family joke)  I'll take pictures.

Weekly meal plan

Ooo, a two post day.  What will everyone think!  

I was going to post this yesterday but never got around to it.  I was tired after only getting a few hours of sleep on Sunday night and just didn't have my heart in it.

Here is the meal plan for this week- even though we're already partway into it.

Monday- Beef roast with winter veggies.  On Mondays J14 has orchestra so we don't eat until about 7 pm so I have time to do something that will take longer.

Tuesday- Beef and been burritos with homemade salsa. Ok, I'll admit, I used canned refrieds- soaking and cooking beans just didn't happen.

Wednesday- Cheese tortellini with pesto. (Veg)  Ok, another confession- I love the local store brand of frozen cheese tortellini.  It is not terribly expensive, really easy to make and quite tasty.  The pesto is from the garden.  I make it (minus the cheese and some of the olive oil) and freeze it in ice cube trays in the fall.  I pop the cubes out of the tray into a freezer bag then thaw as much as I need, add parmesan cheese and olive oil, and voila!

Thursday- Stir fry with Tofu over rice (Veg) using mostly frozen veggies.

Friday- K's choice! K8 will have a name change and become K9 on Friday.  It is our family tradition that the birthday boy or girl gets to choose what or where to eat (within reason).  K8 had initially chosen Kneip- an old family recipe of egg dumplings in broth but now he changed his mind and wants to go out to dinner at The Mill- a local restaurant- he LOVES their chicken strips.   I'm a bit hesitant to go to a restaurant/bar downtown on a Friday night but I think we'll be home long before the college bar crowd is out.

We're eating 2 vegetarian meals this week.  We generally try for at least one per week and have really tried to cut down on the amount of meat we eat at other meals as well.

Cold Feet

And not the kind you can warm with slippers...  

The recent economic down turn has gotten V worried.  He is concerned that if things continue to get worse the hospital will make more cuts.  While that is always a possibility, I do feel that they would be shooting themselves in the foot to make more cuts in staffing.  Of course, no one ever said that hospital administrators always make the best decisions.  I'm not too worried.  Our division already gave up the new staff we had been promised and are going to be cutting another .2 FTE.  That will leave us only 4.05 FTE to cover 5 inpatient units, 2 outpatient programs and outpatient cognitive evaluations.  I'm not holding my breath that we will get a raise in July like we usually do but I'm okay with that given the current situation.  I may be wrong but I really don't foresee my hours being cut.

But V is worried.  He wants to back out of making an offer on this property and just sit tight for a while longer.  I'm anxious to move on- we've been 'sitting tight' for too long.  We really need time to sit down and talk about this but I've been busy at work and we've been running in the evenings this week.  V has been working on freelance stuff.  He has a bunch of start up stuff for his brother and has a manuscript to edit for his former employer by Friday as well.

I want to make an appointment to meet with a realtor.  A different one than who showed us the house.  We will eventually need someone to help us sell this place and we want someone who can help us negotiate on this property- who is more experienced than we are.  We know a realtor socially (he is a friend of my brother and we have chatted with him several times at my brother's parties) and I've been trying to talk V into at least going to talk with him.  Who knows- he may know of something in our price range that we haven't found.  There is another place that we've looked at on line- but it's only 3 acres and it's almost 20 miles from town and the children would be in a different school district unless we wanted to pay for them to remain in this district and provide transportation- that seems a bit much- but the house on that property was built in 1990 rather than 1951 and would be much less work to repair.  It does have a bit of the McMansion look about it- it looks like a garage with a house attached-yuck.

I'm going to try to corner V tonight after we get the children to bed.  Hopefully we can both stay awake.  I think we both slept better last night than we did the night before so we're not dragging our tails quite as much.  Sunday night both of us had too much running through our heads about house stuff.  I was cataloguing problems and V admitted that he was choosing power tools for different projects in his head (I guess that means he's willing to tackle them)

I really don't want to give up on this one.  I know that the economic times are scary but I feel that we're in a much better position than many.  

I guess I allowed myself to get my hopes up and I'm worried that it will all fall apart.

Independence Days- week 13 and other news

What a week!  Things have been flying around here!  Trips to the bank, working 6 days straight and then today, out to look at a house.  Whew!  No wonder I'm tired tonight.  It has been a challenging week in my Independence Days- but here's the run down.

1. Plant something- Not this week but I have 30 little broccoli seedlings in the basement and a few of my hot peppers have begun to sprout.  I plan to start my tomatoes next weekend so I hope my peppers finish sprouting so I can move the heating cable to the new flats.

2. Harvest something- Only a few leaves of lettuce from the container in the basement.

3. Preserve something- Nope.

4. Store something- No to this one as well. We kind of stopped buying anything until we know if housing is going to change.

5. Manage reserves- Ate mostly from stores.  Only made a trip to the store for milk, eggs and booze (We did need to celebrate after securing a loan!)

6. Cook something new- No, again.  Another boring week.  With so much going on I haven't been in the mood to try something new.  We've been sticking to old standbys.

7. Prep something- other than house hunting, nope.

8. Reduce waste- just the usual.

9. Learn a new skill- No to this one as well.

10. Work on community food security- Um, not so much

11. Regenerate what is lost- Hmm. Not sure.  

12. Behavior change- Well, things have been flying around here so the procrastination certainly isn't a problem, at least for me.  I was a bit cranky with V when I thought he was procrastinating about making appointments with the banks.

House hunting update:

V walking uphill through the meadow.  Pole building at the top, house beyond that at the crest of the hill.

From the bottom of the meadow looking north to the riding arena.

When it thaws it will be quite squishy here.

Well, we spent a while looking at the acreage this afternoon.  The land is beautiful.  A bit of it will likely be much too wet to be really useful as it is the confluence of several drainage areas from neighboring farm fields.  But there is plenty of high ground although the entire property is rather hillier than I had hoped.  

The barn is lovely.  A 3 stall 'hobby barn' with a hay loft.  The pole building is just that:  big and blue with a concrete floor.  It isn't well insulated but it does have heat.

The house, however, has 'issues'.   We spent quite a lot of time hashing it over after we got home and have decided that we are going to make an offer- but at about $50,000 less than their asking price.  The realtor said they were pretty motivated to sell (the house has been sitting vacant for about 8 months).  There is no way we will agree to the selling price- there are too many problems that need fixed and if we end up paying too much for the house we won't be able to afford any repairs (figuring finances with mortgage on the full asking price we would be pushing it to stay in the black on just my salary.)  What issues are we arguing?  Here are a few:

There is only 2-3 inches of insulation in the attic (that should be a crime in Iowa!)

Very little weatherization has been done (crappy storm windows and only 1 of the 4 exterior doors has a storm door).

There are drainage issues (no gutters or downspouts!) and the basement leaks a little.

The breather stack on the septic is nearly rusted through and would need replaced.

There are several broken windows and numerous screens that will need repaired.

There is rotted wood on some of the window sills.

There is a huge crack in the chimney (at least in the plaster covering it- we're not sure if it's structural or not).

They were evidently doing some repainting but now there are missing switch plates and outlet covers and there is some exposed wiring.

There are significant erosion problems with the driveway.

The basement will need almost totally remodeled for domestic use.  The basement had been converted into a veterinary clinic so the space has been chopped up into lots of little exam and procedure rooms- and there are more plumbing fixtures and lighting than anyone would need. 

Even though they list a refrigerator, there isn't one there- not that's an issue, we were planning to take ours with us anyway, but we're thinking of offering to overlook the missing fridge if they throw in the Cub Cadet riding mower in the garage ;)

This isn't even the entire list- we have an entire page of problems that we found.

So, do you think the list is extensive enough to knock off a bunch of money?  We are willing to go a bit higher than we're offering (we're not going to tell them that, though)  but not too much.  Fortunately, we're in a good position.  We're not out anything if they refuse to play along.  We will still have this house and I can garden with Roger.  They are the ones stuck with a house that isn't selling. I guess we'll see how motivated they really are...

Oh, and the riding arena is probably out for a garden space.  It does have some weeds growing there, but it is sand over a crushed limestone base.  We would have to bring in several truckloads of topsoil and rely on raised beds.  I'm just not sure where else I would put a garden the arena is on the largest flat space on the property excepting the house.  And there are definitely deer out there.  There is deer poo all over and the shrubs in front of the house have been nibbled down to sticks.  Of course, having the house and land vacant for so long left it wide open.

We'll see how this week unfolds... Should be interesting.