Ideas

Quick question. Do you know what happens when you sell your shower curtain before your house??? You have to go and buy a new one. Yep, we are selling everything and a lady asked about our downstairs bathroom stuff, then she bought it all. Well now we have a very serious lead coming to look at the house this weekend and we had to go and buy a new shower curtain for downstairs. Not one of my better ideas.

Zach had yesterday off and we moved the desk from the living room down to Gavin's room. It's now considered the office for the time being. So I am sitting with my laptop on the floor of my living room connected to all the stupid wires I need to use the internet. Yes I know that we could make it wireless, but that involves spending money on a piece of equipment that we would only use for another couple of months. I don't see how that's a good idea. So I will just sit on the floor for the next few months. That's not really a good idea either, but it's free.

I'm lost when it comes to spending my days now that Autumn is back in school. Friday I know that I am cleaning like a crazy lady again. The lady who's coming to look at the house really likes it. She has waited a whole month to and is driving two hours to see it. I want the house to look it's best so when she sees it she will want it even more. Our microwave is still at the repair shop, but we will just explain that when it gets fixed it will be back in it's position.

We are pretty sure we found a truck. It's a crappy looking work truck, but it runs great and is really cheap. I think we're going to get it this week and then Zach is heading to the junk yard to get seats and a headliner for it. It is cosmetically in rough shape, but with some love I think it will be great for us.

Still moving forward on the adventure, just a lot slower than I want to be. It's discouraging sometimes, but I know we will get there.

Day 24

Good morning friends. Today is day 24 of our adventure. It's not been very adventerous thus far. Actually it's been rather boring. But we are supposed to have someone come look at the house this week/weekend. AND she is extremely interested in it. So we will keep praying that this is the one we have been waiting for. :)

Zach has had a few bites on the Mustang, but none that want to pay for it. They all want it for $1000 or more under what we are asking, and we are even asking under blue book to start with. Helpful hint: if someone is selling a car and it's already priced low, DO NOT be surprised if you offer $1000 or more under what they are asking and they tell you not a chance. There is a lady coming to look at it Tuesday. And we have an offer of trading with a guy for his truck. Zach is going to pursue the latter of the two today.

We went to the church garage sale on Saturday. That went really well. We got rid of 75% of the junk we took. I wasn't there for most of it, I spent my Saturday sitting in the walk-in clinic for a medical issue. But Zach and Autumn had a great time selling all kinds of stuff. Our Christmas tree and ornaments, our dishes, a bunch of random things. It was good. We made decent money too. I don't know if we'll be able to have on this Saturday, depends on when the lady wants to see the house.

We have people lined up that want to buy our dressers and our futon. That is awesome. As soon as we have an accepted offer on the house we are putting our tv, the tv stand, counter stools, our beds, Autumn's dresser and her toy box all up for sale too. Right now I am more than willing to part with the desk, chair and hampers.

So 24 days in and even though it seems like we haven't accomplished a lot, I know we have done as much as we can do until the house sells. I just wish this stuff could happen sooooo much faster, but all in God's time.

Nothing New

It's been a little over a week since I posted anything. There is a very good reason for that. Nothing has happened. Absolutely nothing.

Well, that's not entirely true. We did have a realtor call and tell us she wanted to show our house. She called on a Sunday night and wanted to show it Monday afternoon. This wasn't just any realtor, it was the first realtor we listed the house with. She knew everything about our house and lot. She knows how big it is and everything. So I spent all day last Monday cleaning and cleaning and cleaning some more. 8 hours of cleaning. Cleaning everything that you don't normally pay attention to, but since someone was looking at the house I wanted to make sure it was perfect.

So I finally get done and they show up. Autumn and I are leaving so that they can look at the house without us here and as we walk outside the realtor tells me not to leave because our house isn't going to work for them anyway. They need to park an RV on the lot, and ours isn't wide enough for that. SO WHY DID YOU EVEN SUGGEST MY HOUSE!?!?!?!?! I was just slightly irritated with her. They looked at it anyway and then left.

That's what has happened in the last week. In a whole week that is it. Sad huh??? We did go to Tallahassee Saturday. We couldn't have a garage sale because it rained so we headed up to the co-op. It's about 2 1/2 hours away, but it's the closest place for me to get raw nuts. It was a nice trip and while we were there we stopped by Camping World and looked at their RV's. We found one we really like, it's used though so I'm not sure it's going to be there when the house sells. But the lady that showed us the RV's was really nice and it was fun to look at some more.

We still have another lady really interested in the house. She is supposed to come look at it about the 29. There is another lady that likes it too. She's moving in the fall, so that's soon. We are just holding on and letting God give us the right person.

Zach has been looking for a truck to pull the RV with. He has his car up for sale and is willing to trade for a truck. We are looking for a diesel 2500 or 3500. A guy called last night and wanted to trade for his Ram 2500, but it's worth about $3000 less than the Mustang and that's not gonna happen, it's not even a diesel.

So we are doing a few things, there just isn't much to do until the house actually sells. We are going to the church garage sale Saturday and hopefully selling a lot of what we have left. It's so weird to want to be rid of things. I even stop and think before I buy something now. I ask myself if I really need it and will it fit in the RV or is it just something else I'm going to have to get rid of. I can honestly say that since we started this I have only bought food and vitamins.

So hopefully some new stuff will happen and I will have some more interesting to write about. Just keep praying that God sends us the right person to buy the house (and if you could mention that we have learned patience and that we will consult with him before we make our decisions from now on that would be awesome too). Until next time......

Recipes and Pictures

Goodmor (trip, ouch....stupid thing). Let's try that again, I forgot to put my soapbox away after my last post and stubbed my toe on it. Goodmorning. I hope you are all doing well today. Yesterday was Sunday. We didn't do anything to get ready for our adventure.

We did go to church and had a wonderful guest speaker. Then we went and had some lunch and Zach got a haircut. Then it was home for a nap. That was soooo wonderful. Then before we knew it it was time to go back to town for church last night, we didn't make it. We ended up staying home and hanging out as a family. Zach went back to work today and that was our last time to just be us before today. It was nice.

At our sale on Saturday we had a very nice lady interested in one of our twin beds. She called this morning and wants to pick it up tomorrow. That's good because it means that we will be able to move my desk down to Gavin's room and turn it into an office. Right now our living room is really crowded having my overly large desk in here.

She also said that she is bringing a friend and maybe her mom with her and they want to look and see whatever else we have for sale and might buy some more stuff. Let's hope that they want to buy a house too. ;)

Today I'm going to work on copying recipes onto the computer into the right format. I want all of my recipes to match, then I'm going to print them and put them into plastic sleeves and orgainze them according to what kind of recipe it is (raw, gfcf, low-carb, etc....).

I also need to get pictures organized. Autumn has therapy today, so I'm not going to have all day to work on this stuff. Hopefully I can get a good amount done before we leave. Wish me luck. :)

The First Garage Sale

Today was our first garage sale for our adventure. We made a little over $200. That is just great because we didn't have anything important out there. It was all junk. So a great big thank you to all the people who decided that they needed some of our JUNK!!!!!!! Maybe next week we will have some more important items out there.

Totally off subject here, but am I the last person in the world that has serious issues with what is aired on TV???? Yesterday we were watching Spongebob and a commercial with Joan Rivers came on during it and she had a very potty mouth and was talking about things that are not child appropriate. Then, just now we were watching i-carly and a preview for Glenn Martin DDS came on and it had a clown smoking, a knife in a guys eye with blood spurting out. That was just what we saw before we got the channel changed. We've only had cable three weeks, but I'm about to get rid of it altogether already. This is just absolutely ridiculous.

Ok, off my soapbox now. Now I'm going to go and hang out on the floor with my Autumn Bottom. She is playing with ponies and it looks really fun. :)

Helping Others

Today is the end of our first week. We have made awesome progress on our house. All the stuff that we have gotten through and priced for our first garage sale tomorrow!!!! Well, only half of the stuff is priced. The rest we are going to sit down tonight and price. We still haven't gone through everything, and we already have Gavin's closet and floor filled with stuff to sell. So if you want more stuff PLEASE come to our sales and take all of our junk and put it in your house. ;)

I'm still working on typing out the recipes that I want to keep. (I say that I'm working on it but really I haven't done any since yesterday afternoon.) There are sooooo many of them though. The stack of books is sitting beside me at this very moment, but am I doing it??? Noooo. That would be the responsible thing to do and well at the moment I want to be a little irresponsible. :)

We hadn't talked about what kind of helping others we wanted to do when we get our bills paid off. We know we will have extra money and we don't want to spend it on ourselves, so we needed to figure out where we would focus on helping. I knew what I wanted to do, but since we hadn't talked about it I had no idea what Zach was thinking. So I asked him today and he said that he thinks we should check into the homeless shelters by our next base and see what they need. That is exactly what God had laid on my heart too. So I think God showed us our focus. What I'm thinking I want to do is to make quilts and donate them. I have no idea how to make quilts, so maybe I should learn that first.

So now I need to go and be somewhat responsible and add a few more recipes to my computer. Zach is working on dinner and Autumn is watching Spongebob. She loves Spongebob.

A Buyer and Junk

Yesterday was a great day. We were at home when a realtor stopped by. Our contract with our realtor was up on Monday, but this realtor wanted to show our house the day before that (Sunday). Our realtor refused to take her call and would not show our house!!!! Since we are no longer under contract with our realtor, this realtor offered to do a one time showing where she only takes 3 points.

The lady that wanted to look at our house really really wants it. They saw the pics online and she looked at four other houses, but none of them fit what she needs. She has a VA loan and only our house and one other fit in her budget and are VA approved. The other one is in a bad spot and not new like ours. She told her realtor, that ours is the one she wants. The only downside is that she lives in Tallahassee and won't be able to come back to see it until the 29. But that does give us time to get all this work done in it and have several garage sales so that it's more cleared out. So please pray that this is what God has been having us wait for.

Other than that, we have just been busy going through all of our stuff. Zach and I got through all of our clothes. That was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I also went through all the beauty products that we women love to buy, but rarely get around to using more than once or twice. So now my bathroom looks really really empty. :)

I'm also going through all my cookbooks and typing the recipes out that I want. Then I'm going to sell the books themselves. This is turning out to be the hardest one of all. Recipes are my thing. Everyone has a thing, and recipes are mine. I LOVE RECIPES!!!!!!

I'm loving this getting rid of "stuff". It's very liberating knowing that we won't be responsible for all of this junk. JUNK JUNK JUNK!!!!!! Honestly does anybody really need three sets of kitchen utensils???? Or five sets of tools??? The scary part is that we've only been married about five years and when we first got married we only had a 13" tv, two surround sound systems, a blow up air mattress, two frying pans and our clothes. We had absolutely nothing, and somehow we've managed to accumulate a house full and then some in less than five years. Imagine how much we would have in five more years!!!! It's crazy all of the stuff that we think we "need".

We are still researching our new home. Everytime we think we have it picked out, we find another one that we love too. Luckily Autumn thinks that looking at RV's is the coolest thing ever. She is always so excited when are. That gives me hope that she will see this as one big adventure too.

Now I'm going to type out some recipes and maybe shower. It's kinda late, but I'm still in my jammies. :)

Clean, Clean and Clean Some More

So we didn't end up going to NC afterall. We have a lot to get done here and this is Zach's last week off before he goes back to work. We have to get our microwave fixed and we have to take it in this week. We also have some chores that we've been putting off for a long time, but now we are getting super serious about getting rid of the house, so it's time to get them done. Zach just got done pressure washing the house. It looks really really good.

Earlier we removed the original caulk around our kitchen sink and counters and re-caulked them (the builders did a horrible job). We still need to paint a few areas that we messed up a little when we took the old caulk off though. Then the kitchen is done. Well we still need to get the microwave fixed, but then the kitchen is done. It never seems to end sometimes.

I finished cleaning and waxing my kitchen sink. Yes, I waxed my kitchen sink. It looks really good and the water just beads on it now. Then I cleaned the bottom of our shower. It's textured and I've tried and tried to get the dirty look off of it. Nothing has worked, and for the past year our showers have been clean, but looked dirty. Well today I tried something I should have tried at the beginning, Softscrub with bleach. Now the bottom of our shower looks awesome. :) I'm considering waxing it, but I'm afraid it will be too slippery. Tomorrow I'm going to tackle the kids bathtub.

As far as making progress on getting the RV, we have to call the owner of the company on Thursday. He is gone until then. But he really likes the area our house is at (most people do, including us). So we're just going to sit back and let God take care of things, doing what he asks us to do as we go.

I think later tonight I'm going to go through more of my stuff. We are hoping to have a garage sale this Saturday and we need more stuff to sell at it. So off to do more work on this fine day.

Weed Whacking

Good evening. Today would be considered day two of our new adventure. Zach took a weed whacker to our front yard. That was interesting. We've lived in this house for almost a year and we don't have any "yard" to speak of. We do have many many weedies though. So we went and got a weed whacker and whacked/mowed our yard. (Please notice that we JUST bought the weed whacker and we've lived here for almost a year.) Now when the guy comes to appraise it for us at least he won't mistake it for a jungle.

I did go through my desk and purged soooo much junk. I also went through our two orange file cabinet thingies. We got them from World Market and they hold a bunch of stuff, but now they are empty. Too bad half of what was in them is now sitting on my floor as I decide what to do with it now that they are being sold.

That's about all the getting ready we did. We have decided to head to North Carolina tomorrow. We have a few errands to take care of with our adventure tomorrow morning, and Autumn has school, but after that we are heading up to see my brother-in-law and sister-in-law. Plus our two adorable nieces. We haven't met the newest one yet. She was born in Feb. I can't wait to see her and my other niece who is four now.

So tomorrow after I take Autumn to school, we get to come home and make the appointment for the house to get appraised, pack the car for the trip, pick up Autumn from school, head in to the RV dealership and price out the exact one we want and find out exactly how much it's going to be. We know about how much it's going to be, but I would feel 1000 times better knowing the exact amount.

I think I will try and start going through my clothes tonight. It's not going to be an easy process. My poor poor closet. It's not going to know what happened. It's going to think it did something wrong. "WHY, why are you taking all of my friends away???" it's going to cry. "It's so lonely in here now." And don't even let me get started on what my cast away clothes are going to think.

I have no idea if I'll be able to update this tomorrow. We will be driving about 12 hours. So if I don't get to before I head out I will talk to you all on Tuesday.

Until then......

It's On

Today is day one of our new journey. Well, you could consider it day two if you take the fact we made our decision yesterday, but for simplicity we'll call it day one. :)

Let me introduce us. I'm Tonya and my hubby is Zach. Our kiddies are Gavin and Autumn. The hubby is in the US Air Force and currently we are stationed in Florida. Gavin is our oldest. He is eight and lives with his father in Indiana most of the time, but is with us often too. (That's a long story that I don't feel the need to delve into right now. Maybe I'll bless you with the tale someday, but rest assured we would love nothing more than to have him with us all the time too. Our family just isn't complete when he's not here.) Anyway, he's going into third grade this school year. Autumn is our next (and last) little one. She is three and probably the girliest thing you could ever meet. She is autistic, but that's not who she is, it's just one piece to the puzzle we call Autumn. She goes to Pre-K ESE now, but when our next set of orders comes through to move she will be homeschooled. I stay home with the kid(s) and research everything you can imagine on autism and special diets for her.

Back to the adventure I mentioned earlier. Right now we are a typical American family. We own a three bedroom two bathroom house. (Luckily for us we are less than a 1/4 mile to the Gulf of Mexico though. :) ) Well, we are also Christians. We are trying to instill in our kids that "stuff" isn't important. We want them to learn that there are much much more important things in this world than having "stuff". So, we are selling all of our "stuff" and trading our house for an RV. We are going to be living in it permanently for an undecided amount of time, at least until we pay off the few bills we have accumulated, and we also want to just have the extra money to help others with.

We realize that some people will think we are off our rockers, and yet others may just applaude us for this. But we know that right now this is the right thing for our family. It will help us show our kids that we can "practice what we preach". Now don't get me wrong, the RV is really nice, LCD tv's, A/C, DVD players, stereo system, the whole nine yards. But there is no extra space for all the "stuff" we all think we "NEED".

Today is day one because we have officially started going through our things to get ready to sell what we don't need. We are keeping special things, like our pictures and yearbooks from school. I plan to ask my mother-in-law to let me keep my wedding dress at her house. (Some things can't be parted with and that is one of them.) But we have come to realize that we have closets upon closets full of JUNK!!!!!! I'm hoping to make a decent amount from the people who come to our garage sales to add more stuff to their own houses. :)

So now to go through more of our stuff and get ready for our first of many many garage sales. The hardest thing for me to part with is my clothes. We all have wayyyyy to many clothes. I know I have to part with the ones that I don't really wear, but I love them. I think it's going to be hard to get rid of most of the kids toys too. Even though we know this is the best thing we were raised like typical kids from our generation and it's a mental hurdle to get through that "stuff" doesn't equal your worth. We know that, but it is engrained in us so we are pushing through that. I think the kiddies will be better off without all those useless toys, but we will keep the educational ones.

Off to more sorting.......