Layout:
Home > Archive: November, 2009

Archive for November, 2009

Soda on sale...

November 23rd, 2009 at 08:15 pm

Our family drinks way too much soda... not coffee or alcohol at all -- just soda. So, anyway, I try to stock up whenever they go on sale. Lately, the best deal has been $2.75 for a 12-pack. But today, I scored. Harris Teeter is having a sale of buy 2 get 3 free on Coke products. The regular price of a 12-pack is $5.99 there (outrageous!) so with the sale, I got 10 12-packs for just $2.40 each. I think I'll head back tomorrow to get another 10 and we'll be set. It's been years since I've been able to buy a 12-pack of soda for less than $2.50.

Plan for Christmas with Charity angle

November 6th, 2009 at 07:44 pm

Thanks for the responses to my recent post about how I wanted to go "charitable" this year at Christmas time concerning gifts. I am a huge Somaly Mam Foundation supporter (fighting child sex trafficking in Cambodia) and found that The Body Shop sells reusable tote bags for $5 where $2 of each purchase goes to the Somaly Mam Foundation. So, I had the brilliant idea of buying these bags (like 15 of them) and using the bags as "gift" bags for the normal Christmas presents I will get folks. Sure, they may not look festive and whatnot but they will serve the purpose I aim to achieve... family and friends will still get their useless materialistic junk they expect while I can at the same time give them something to help the environment (hopefully they'll reuse the bag many times) and help my charity of choice. The Body Shop also sells lotion that 100% of the profits go to another child prostitution charity so I'll get a handful of those as well to put in the bags... maybe I can find even more products that support charities and just make huge "gift bags" as the presents. Of course, this very well may blow my Christmas budget out the water but if I combine that budget with my charitable giving budget, maybe all will wash out. If you know of any other websites that sell products to help benefit charities, let me know. Smile Thanks to momcents for the idea!

One year later and back to the same house...

November 5th, 2009 at 07:28 pm

I posted a year ago about a house that we were interested in...well, that house still hasn't sold yet and they've lowered the price by $86,000 now. We would still love to move into it but want them to go down another $100,000. It needs a lot of work and DH and I just don't think it is worth more than $250k (they started at $435k and it's down to $349k now).

The house is a 1976 brick rancher that needs a lot of updating from end to end. The location is just to die for -- that's really what is worth the money. The tax value on the property is at $269k. Is there any good way to base a market price on what the tax value is?

Here are some pictures of the backyard --- isn't it beautiful!?? Keep in mind that we live in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains so finding a home on such a FLAT lot in the middle of town is nearly impossible. The river is literally the back border of the property and is just wonderful. On the other side of the river is a beautiful golf course -- ahh, location, location, location.

How much would you think we should offer just based on the tax value (and without you even seeing a picture of the actual house yet)?





Oh, and if you are interested... the current owner of the home is an elderly lady. Her sister was the one who built the house and lived in it all these years. Her sister died 3 years ago and left the house to her. It's been vacant for 3 years (it took the lady a long time to clean it out and go through everything)... so it's not like she has to sell it as she has her own home but at the same time she is paying the property taxes and stuff on it so I'm sure she'd like to see it sell. However, based on past conversations with her, she "thinks" the house is worth closer to a million dollars because of its location... um, yeah.

Christmas gift idea

November 2nd, 2009 at 02:22 pm

So DH and I would really like to go "non-material" this year with our gift giving. We'd like to donate money to charities in honor of our family and friends. Instead of spending hundreds of dollars on junk that no one wants or needs, we just would love to have our money go toward the causes we feel are important this year.

Then, we woke up to reality. There is absolutely no freakin' way that our families would accept this kind of gesture. Unfortunately, both our sides expect nice gifts under the tree for Christmas... a card or certificate acknowledging a donation just wouldn't cut it.

We'll still donate to our charities this year but alas, we'll have to just conform and buy more junk again as always.