Thinking ahead to some big expenses forthcoming:

DD #1 will be going off to college in 2 years
DD #2 will be getting her drivers license in 2 years

Ugh.

Renters are still in our house and have asked to stay there through 2016. They really need to just buy the darn place

Financially, we are staying steady but I would love to push ahead somehow. I need to inherit some money from an unknown relative somewhere haha.

I have been selling a lot of clothing/accessories on instagram, poshmark, and mercari... haven't put too many things on ebay because the other platforms seem much easier.

Wish we would finish up renovating our house. But on the other hand, don't really have the extra funds to do so. Oh well.

Been walking on the treadmill daily for at least an hour at usually 3mph. Hoping to get rid of 15 lbs but doubt that will happen anytime soon.

So, lots of randomness around here lately.

--- I was "offered" a job in a county 2 hours away for about $30k more than what I am making now. I wasn't looking or applying anywhere but the person there is retiring and recommended me as her replacement. After weighing out everything, I declined the offer. Believe me, I was very humbled to be considered but we have just too much going on here so the timing just isn't right.

--- Renters have renewed for another year so at least we don't have to worry about that house for a while longer. I think we lucked out quite a bit with this as there are so many horror stories about bad renters. This is a nice little family and they love our house so they have taken very good care of it. {{Too bad their rent payment is $360 short of paying our mortgage that we have on it, but it's better than nothing}}

--- Work has been complete chaos these past few months. Our superintendent was bought out of his contract to a tune of nearly $200k and we are now without a boss for who knows how long.

--- Slowly still making progress at the "short sale" house. We love living there but geez, it's taking a long time to fix it up. With the nicer weather these days, we have done much work outside amping up the landscaping. Plus side is that we get a nice workout while we are at it.

--- Drove by an apt complex last Sat and sitting right by the dumpster was something that caught my eye. I pulled over and tried to piece it together... turns out to be a toddler bed in the shape of a Volkswagen Beetle and it was in great condition. My parents are going to yard sale it off for around $30. Oh, and there was also a stepper machine that was just sitting there... in great shape too. Probably will sell that for around $20. Woo hoo for dumpster diving!

--- Upcoming local consignment sale next month that I will participate in. This is held twice a year and is a good way to clean out our closets without holding a yard sale. So, I've been looking for just about anything that can go toward that sale. The only bad thing is that they charge 40% of the sale --- yikes, but again, better than nothing. This is a huge deal where I live and tons of people shop this thing so it really is a good way to get rid of stuff.

--- Family is on a spending hiatus starting today. Besides stuff we need to get to keep our home improvements running along, we are not allowed to buy any "fun" stuff like clothes or dvds. I hope we can last a while because we are running low on cash as it is!

--- Family beach trip coming up in July so I am also starting an exercise plan tonight (Jillian Michaels, here I come). Wish me luck.

So, we took the safe route and decided to rent our house to the $1300 per month family. They seem very nice and eager to move in. I think it will work out just fine with them. The lease starts Aug 1 so we have just 2 weeks to move out (one week we had already planned to be at the beach on vacation). Yikes. So much to do. So much crap to get rid of.

We are shy $360 per month in covering our mortgage but getting $1300 is better than getting nothing so we are okay with it. They did decide on just a one year lease so we'll have to see what happens next year. Our house was much easier to rent out to sell, that's for sure!

Anyway, we are looking forward to moving on and living at our short sale house permanently. {{Big sigh released}}. I need to take some pictures to share with you but the house renovations are going great. Loving this house.

I think this is the earliest I've ever done our taxes before... I was a bity antsy as to how we would look since we had purchased the short sale house last Sept... I knew we'd get money back (I try to break even each year) so anyway, I did the paperwork and e-filed on Sat morning. Looks like we'll be getting back over $3200 between federal and state refunds this year. All that money will be put back into the short sale house so we definitely will be putting it to good use. On Sunday, we have officially started with the family room now. DH started the nasty job of scraping off the old popcorn ceiling. This is a big room so it will take another few days (a few hours each night after work) before all the scraping is done. I know I still owe you guys after pics of the bathroom but I think I have one more project up my sleeve for that area before the big reveal. Stay tuned.

Last time, I left you with the before pictures of our army bathroom. Here are some progress pictures to hold you over until I post the final after pictures.









We ripped everything out down to the studs and the subfloor. I hired a plumber to come in and move the toilet "hole" over about 4 inches from the bathtub because I felt that it was just too close for comfort. Other than that, DH and I have done everything ourselves.

As we don't have boys, this bathroom had to go. It was great to demo the entire thing and feel like something CLEAN would take its place.

Final after pictures will be posted sometime next week.

Long time coming but here are some pictures of some BEFORE shots of the main upstairs bathroom in our short sale house... this is the first big reno we are working on in the house and I think you guys will just love seeing the after (for anticipation sake, I'm going to just leave you with the BEFORE pics for now though)... and I will give you a full budget breakdown with the after pics too so stayed tuned!








(Yes, those are just matchbox trucks screwed into the cabinet to be door pulls)

Icky, yucky, and cruddy = words to describe the before state of this bathroom. Before we moved in, I wanted a clean and "new" bathroom that was completely functional so this was the first room we attacked. I'll be back later with the during and after pics!