Life has been interesting on the home-buying front, well, on the money front in general. I spent 45 minutes this morning on the phone trying to get us pre-qualified to buy a house here. I was not too thrilled at what I found out.

When we moved, we decided to keep the house that we had, and turn it into rental property. We had some concerns about it selling for the amount that we needed, so we decided to rent it instead. We were told that it wouldn’t hurt our chances of buying a home here.

Unfortunately, it does somewhat. The very fact that our credit reports already show a mortgage is a hindrance in pulling out another one. Some of these things, we probably should have known already, but since we’re still fairly young, a lot of these things we’re just now learning.

I just called our property manager to discuss details about selling the property. Not that we’ve decided 100% to sell, but there are some details that we wanted to know. Kind of a “getting all the details so we can go in fully informed” kinda thing. If we can or cannot do something, that’s fine – we just want to know so we know which way to turn next.

We’ve also learned from experience that credit card debt is a very, very bad thing. (Duh, right?) We got involved in a network marketing thing a year after we were married. That killed us. We were so naive – we believed our “supervisor” when he told us that if we paid all that money for advertising, we’d sell enough product to pay it back. Whatever. Not a fun lesson to learn. . .but at least we learned it! To this day, though, every time I make a credit card payment I remind myself how good it will feel to have that all completely paid off. I still can’t believe we were that ignorant. . .

So now, we sit. We’re still living as frugally as possible. In some ways, we’re just now getting back onto our feet after Stephen was unemployed for 3 months. I told Stephen just the other day that it’s hard to justify buying so much “stuff” after not spending money for so long. . .until I remember all the things we did without for so long. We still need to be careful. There’s not a lot of extra money. Thankfully, though, there’s enough money to cover bills this time instead of wondering where the money will come from to pay them. And yes, there’s even enough money now for the occasional bucket of ice cream when I buy groceries, instead of coming home with $20 worth of groceries while longing for the money just to buy produce. It really was that bad. We didn’t eat very healthy at times, but we had food and we didn’t go hungry. Just the same, it is a real blessing to be able to go to the store and buy the stuff I need for well-rounded meals. I am thankful.

Another thing that has been an incredible blessing is the house we’re living in. We’ve been able to live here completely rent-free, at least so far. Each time Stephen has asked what to pay for rent, he is told that they’ll get back to him. . .and they never do. They had given us a (very reasonable!) $ amount, but then immediately told us that “oh – we won’t be charging you that much though.” I told our pastor’s wife today that there’s no way I could express how thankful I am to our landlord. We moved here with no money, and the past few rent-free months have really enabled us to get back on our feet much faster. Our plans have been to use this time to get as much debt paid down as possible, however long that may be.

So we shall see. We’re still adjusting to Stephen’s paycheck. He just now became eligible for health insurance, so we’ve got a few more weeks before we see what his checks will look like on a regular basis. I couldn’t stop giggling with excitement when the enrollment information came in the mail. We haven’t had health insurance in four years, so I am THRILLED that we have it now. It may be less money that he brings home, but it is so worth it. Another blessing about it is that even though we don’t have the insurance cards yet, the insurance became effective June 1st. I am so thankful.

Little man just did the sweetest thing.

Stephen was laying on the floor in Little man’s room watching him play. He looked at Stephen, grabbed the blanket off his bed, and laid it over Stephen, saying, “Night, night.”

Stephen told him, “I need Doggie to go night night.” (Little man has a stuffed dog that he sleeps with – and he will NOT sleep without it)

Little man gets up and goes in our room. “Where’s Doggie?”

“It’s downstairs in the kitchen.”

Little man goes downstairs and walks into the study where I am. “Doggie!” He was looking all over for that dog.

How sweet. . .Little man putting his Daddy to bed!

Michelle asked:

I’m wondering if I can use regular milk instead of dry milk? Does it make a difference? TIA

The recipe calls for 9 oz warm water and 1/3 cup dry milk (you can see the recipe here). You could use 9 oz of warm water instead of the water and dry milk with no problems. This recipe came from the manual to a bread machine that I no longer have. If you were to make it in the bread machine, and wanted to use the timer, then you would need to use the water and dry milk. If you were mixing it immediately, though, it wouldn’t matter.

Around here, since we go so long between grocery trips (we’re too far from a reasonably-priced grocer, so I try to limit my trips to the local grocer as much as possible unless they have super sales), it’s not uncommon for us to run out of milk the day before I’m planning on going grocery shopping. We always have dry milk in the house because it is so cheap compared to liquid milk – and stores much easier because it doesn’t spoil. I’ve been getting better at keeping milk in the house, but having the dry milk around makes life much easier.

Hope that helps!

Now THAT was a LOT of work! I’m pleased to announce that my jewelry store Hope of My Heart Designs is now ready for the public once again.

The site is totally re-designed, thanks in part to completely rewritten code that necessitated such changes. I wasn’t originally intending to change very many things, but the code had been changed just enough that it was easier to just start over again. I’ve emerged with much more code knowledge under my belt. It was a real challenge, but it was definitely worth it.

Stop by and take a look!

Hope of My Heart Designs

But this time, not one I have to make.

My mom just called me with a prayer request. My grandmother’s health is going downhill pretty quickly. She has stated many times that she does not want extreme measures to save her life, as each time she is in intensive care she is absolutely miserable.

So now, all of Grandma’s children have a decision to make. The immediate medical care that she requires: would it be considered too extreme or not. A decision that I am thankful I do not have to make.

Yes, I am becoming more and more convinced that one is never truly ready for the death of a loved one. It is a huge comfort to me to know that Grandma is born again, and that I will see her again in Heaven. But no, I am not ready for this.

I added some printable shopping lists just now. I noticed I was about out of the paper I had for shopping lists, so I designed some instead. They print 3 to a page, and there’s blue, green, and red.

Although the end is finally in sight, it’s still a fair bit away. I’m finally making progress on my site. Yay.

While I was working today, I discovered that yesterday’s mistake was not what I thought it was. I hadn’t wiped out all the data – I had instead installed a file that dictated that the pages be displayed differently. I accidentally stumbled across the files I thought I had deleted, and I was thrilled. Problem is – I’m not too sure which of the new files it is that I messed with – making me none too convinced of which file needs tweaking. I’ve edited so many files now, it’s hard to remember which one it was that made the difference. Oh well.

Now I’m almost to the double-checking phase. Most things are the way I want them now, but not quite. My personal goal is to have the site operational again by Monday, but I’m not sure if that’s attainable or not.

Stephen sent me to a Creative Memories scrapbooking party tonight, and it was a wonderful relief! I even got two layouts worked on this time. One of them has the pictures of Sam’s birthmother on it – it turned out really nice. I just need to do the journalling for it and it’s finished.

Ok – my “free time” is up – time to go back to work, lol!

Have I EVER created more work for myself this time! I’ve been in the middle of a major upgrade to my jewelry store. . .so the past three days I’ve been eating, drinking, and sleeping software code and hacks. I was making some really good progress, until tonight.

In one fell swoop, I decided to upload a ton of the new, upgraded files over my old ones. Normally this isn’t a huge deal, if you have things backed up. I thought I was fine, and didn’t check.

Oops.

I accidentally erased hours and hours of my hard work, with no way to retrieve it. I just sat there in disbelief when I realized what I had done.

I’ve been feeling a lot of pressure to get the site upgraded as quickly as possible. It’s one thing if I go for a long time with no new orders – if it’s for no apparent reason. But to go for a long time with no orders because I don’t have the site operational – that’s entirely different. I just keep hoping that my “Down for Maintenance” sign isn’t turning away business.

It’s been my goal for quite some time now to do a total overhaul of the site. The new software upgrade makes it entirely possible because they’ve changed so much of the base code. Much work now, but hopefully it will be a timesaver in the future.

Thankfully, Stephen’s been understanding of my need to be on the computer more than normal. And I am VERY thankful for the DSL that we have now; it makes life so, so much easier.

Now if I just would have remembered that I needed to keep some of those old files. . .