Getting the Hell out of Here: Part Eight

 "I'm explaining to you because you look nervous."

Build the Dream House

This is the accumulation of what will likely be two to two and-a-half years of hard work and upheaval. Once we've sold this house, found the land we want, and spent a year to a year and-a-half saving and preparing, we'll finally break ground on our dream home.

thehousedesigners.com

This is where the shit will really hit the fan. There'll be contractors to interview, codes to review, a slew of tiny design details to work out, and compromises to be made. We'll go in with a budget and a dream and whittle away at both until a satisfactory plan can be made. We'll have to decide where to splurge and where to save for later upgrades. We'll have timetables and setbacks and frustrations and moments of elation.

And after all that, we'll have our beautiful, custom home. We'll move our family in and settle into new routines. We'll decorate and cook meals and play games and fight and learn and grow. It's going to be awesome.

In preparation for this entire process, I downloaded this really helpful ebook that outlines a typical home building process. It's not claiming to be the end-all-and-be-all of home building, but rather a nice guideline to prepare for some of the possibilities. I really enjoyed it and found it helpful because it gave me a nice idea of where to begin and where to go.

I've already begun compiling a shortlist of possible contractors based on reputation and the information on their websites, and I imagine we'll try to narrow it down to three or so to interview. We have an idea of where we feel our money will be best spent and where we can save for later upgrades and I want a builder who will offer his or her experience and insight without making us feel pushed. I'd love to find someone with experience building Craftsman-style homes, as that's what we want and I want it done right. But most of all, we want a builder we can trust not to use shoddy materials in the structure. I'd rather put in builder's-grade cabinets and counter tops and fixtures and put our money towards quality building materials, but I need to know that the contractor is actually going to follow through on that plan and not go with the cheap shit while pocketing the rest of the money.

So yeah, that's a little scary. This is our forever home and I don't want it falling apart five years in.

I'd love to hear about your building process or plans. How did it go or how is it going?

Pinterest in Real Life: Sour Cream Chicken

 "Aaaaaaaaaas youuuuuuuuuu wiiiiiiiiiiiish!"

Okay, so I get a D- for presentation, but it tasted really good!

I made this sour cream chicken recipe for dinner Friday night and it was awesome. I had some chicken breasts thawed and no idea what to do with them because I am so super bored with most of my go-tos, so I popped (I typed "pooped" at first) onto Pinterest to see if I'd pinned anything useful at any point.

Lo and behold. This chicken was delicious. It was even still pretty damned good re-heated. The recipe is super easy, but here's what I did differently:

• I am out of garlic powder, so I used onion powder. And I am just-now-as-I-type remembering that I have fresh garlic in the cabinet. Fail. 
• I don't usually keep stuffing on hand unless I'm planning to make meatloaf, so I used Kroger brand Italian breadcrumbs instead. They worked perfectly. 
• I did not make two pounds of chicken. I'm only feeding two adults and one adolescent girl with a questionable appetite (except when she's sneaking and killing bags of chips behind my back), so I just made one pound.
• I didn't measure anything but the butter. I just slapped some sour cream on there, nice and thick, and then carefully poured the breadcrumbs over it. 
• I did not cook this for an hour. My oven cooks fast anyway, so I always plan to check things well before the recipe indicates. The chicken was absolutely perfect in 30 minutes.

The flavor was fantastic, the chicken was moist and juicy, and I will definitely make this again. The butter did leave weird discolored spots where it melted into the topping, but that didn't cause any non-cosmetic problems. I don't need my chicken to be pretty, so I don't really care. But if you're going for presentation, maybe try to find a way around that step in the directions. I'm not sure how the recipe person avoided the butter pock-marks, actually.

In conclusion, I will definitely be making this recipe again, and I suggest you do, too.

Simplifying Our Lives/Home: Book Stacks

 "When I was your age television was called 'books'."

I come from a family of avid readers (bodice rippers for my mom, sci-fi and fantasy for my dad) and I always loved that about my family. Husband prefers to kick back in front of a movie than to crack a book, but he enjoys a good audiobook in the car. Bear absolutely loves to read, and almost anytime she sees me reading, she'll grab a book and climb up next to me. She also loves to read to Bug, and will do so any chance she gets. Those are some of my favorite moments.

So not surprisingly, we've acquired quite a library. Both Bear and I are really into series, so we end up with entire collections of one author's work taking up a foot or more of shelf space. I also like to go on trips with my girlfriends once or twice a year (though that's on hold while Bug is little) and I read on my flights. There are times that I spend eight or nine hours between destinations because of layovers and delays, so I've always packed three or four books.

Our Kindles. Obviously.

All that changed when I got my Kindle last year. It was a gift from my mom for my graduation from college, and I love it. I can load it up with all the books I want and stick it in my purse for flights, waiting rooms, nursing time, or whenever.

Bear saw how much I love my Kindle, so she saved up her money and bought her own. Rather than linking a credit card to her Amazon account, we just load up gift cards. 

We've since gone through all of our physical books and really purged the hell out of them. We've kept anything that was signed by the author or that we know for sure we'll re-read, but we've cut way down on the number of physical books.

How has this simplified our home?

• Fewer books collect less dust, saving time cleaning and reducing allergens.
• We have more storage space for things we need.
• Our move will be that much simpler with less (heavy stuff!) to pack.
• We used the money we got from Half Price Books to buy fun craft supplies at Michael's.
• We'll make money from the rest of the books if we ever get to have this damned yardsale.
• We can take all the entertainment we need with us anywhere without packing more (there are even free games you can load).
• We can borrow books for free from the library without ever leaving our house (no late fees or gas money).

I'll never lose my affection for a crisp new book, and eReaders are not for everyone. This is not an endorsement of Kindle or Amazon, either. It's just one way we've cut back on some of the clutter and stress in our lives. 

Do you have an eReader? What do you like or dislike about them?

Pinterest in Real Life: Homemade Donuts

 "She doesn't get eaten by the eels at this time."

I will literally gnaw your hands off over this shit.

I am a girl who loooooves me a donut. I don't eat them very often because I also loooooves me a pair of jeans that fit. Still, sometimes I just want a f%&#ing donut and if anyone stands between me and said donut, I make no promises about what I will or will not do. Except to promise that I will charge like a bull and send them sprawling to the floor in a heap of MOVE IT, ASSHOLE!

So when I came across this delicious looking recipe on Pinterest, I gently wiped the drool off of my keyboard and pinned it for later reference. Last weekend was "later".

These donuts are really delicious, really easy, and really terrible for you. Husband informed me that I was going to need to make them for him every single day for the rest of our lives, 'cause he thinks he has power (adorable), and Bear killed off most of the donut holes*, plus her full-size donut. Husband gave Bug a little taste of the sugary coating and Bug tried to remove Husband's finger with his gums.

I followed the recipe exactly, which was easy because it was a pretty laid-back recipe. The chick is all, "Just toss some sugar and cinnamon and shit in there. Yeah, like that. And pop a hole in the middle. Or a star, or like, a toucan. Whatever. Puff, puff, pass, bitches."

Okay, she might not actually be a stoner, but I humbly submit that anyone who comes up with this recipe has recently smoked something left-handed. I'm just sayin'.

In conclusion, while I will not be making these every weekend, it's not because they aren't awesome. They are. It's because I want my family to survive the next year or so and we can't do that if we're going all Hunger Games on each other over the last donut hole. So I'll make them again in a month or so, maybe with a homemade fruit glaze in place of the cinnamon and sugar. Yum.



*We do not waste donut batter in this house.

We've Got the Bubons

 "You've been mostly dead all day."

source

Due to an unforeseen and incredibly inconvenient illness sweeping my house, illness is the only thing sweeping my house. My to-do list has become more of a, "should probably get to that" list as I sit and hack while Bug sleeps off a nasty ear infection and cold on my lap. I kept Bear home from school yesterday because I thought she had pinkeye in the morning (which seemed likely, as I had it last weekend), but after an initial cleaning it never recurred, so she basically got a free day off to hang out at home.

Which was fine, because I'd rather not send her to her school any more than necessary, anyway.

Husband is picking up some overtime this week, which is great financially, but it leaves me alone with a sick, miserable eight month-old all day. He takes the little dude when he gets home and naps with him in the morning, but the sickies do make for a long, challenging day.

So yeah. As far as any kind of housekeeping this week, we've managed to do the bare minimum in dishes and laundry, changed the trash when it began to overflow, and I think I may have swept once. We still have so much to do before the yardsale this weekend, which is happening come hell or high water (high water being a distinct possibility). Sunday looks to be nice and I am not ashamed to tempt people away from church with an early-season yardsale full of kid stuff. The massive pile of stuff in my living room is causing me serious anxiety and I feel like the crew from Hoarders is going to show up any minute to stage a misplaced intervention.

Bear has been a huge help this week. Today she even made me lunch. I've just started letting her use the stove on her own to make frozen pizzas and things, so she heated me up some chicken fry thingies that I could eat one-handed while Bug nursed and slept. In between sucking down hot tea to soothe my very sore throat and trying to keep my house just clean enough to avoid having my children removed by the state, I cram in a game of Words With Friends or work on a blog post.

Fortunately I don't have any paid deadlines looming, so I have about a week to get my shit together. But today I must grocery shop or my family will starve, so off I go. I'm taking the night off from tumbling because if I flip upside down I think my brain might actually fall out on the spring floor.

Thanks for letting me bitch a little. Imma go have some Starbucks and buy food for these demanding children.

Getting the Hell out of Here: Part Seven

 "'Fezzik, are there rocks ahead?' 'If there are, we'll all be dead!'"

Move into an Apartment for 1-1.5 years

Source

"But Jen! Why you want move to apartment? Why you no just stay in house?"

What a terrific question. Let me share the answer with you now.

Selling this house is probably not going to be the easiest thing we'll ever do. When we first started talking about building our dream house, the fear of finding ourselves with two mortgages hung over us, making the whole idea seem impossible. Not to mention that we need to save up for some kind of down payment for the new house. And as it is currently, we are sharing one of the two bedrooms we have with Bug. Bear has her own room, and that's not going to change. And if we found ourselves really stuck here, we could potentially make the family room a third bedroom. But we'd like to avoid all that.

So we decided to rent an apartment for a twelve to eighteen months. It's a great solution for several reasons:

• For about the same amount as our mortgage payment, we can rent a three-bedroom apartment with more square footage than our house. That means we may not need to even rent a storage facility for any of our stuff.
• In that cost, some utilities are included.
• The apartment we're looking at allows large dogs, so we don't have to make arrangements for our girl, or allow her to continue to destroy our yard. We'll just have to walk her more often and take her to the bark park for exercise.
• The apartment we're looking at has a month-by-month leasing option after the first year. That means that we can spend a year saving up for the dream house (with no toxic debt sucking up our money!) and then build the house with the option to move out of the apartment as soon as the house is ready. 

It's the perfect solution, really. The apartment is even several miles closer to the grocery store we like to use. We have time, flexibility, and adequate accommodations without the pressure and stress of selling a house strangling us, because we can just move whenever the house actually sells. No staying with relatives, no overlap...it's perfect.

Stretching Out: My Soul

 "You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles"

Stretching out your soul? Really, Jen?

Sounds super pretentious, right? I know!

Whatevs. I'm over it. Moving on.

 I read this on FIMBY yesterday and it resonated with me:

"I love making plans and looking with anticipation to the future but this present moment, right here, is where I need to live with contentment. Not in the "if and when" future. I've got a lot to learn in how to live this way.

To have a foot in the future, always moving forward (because we have some awesome plans), but to be content with the present.

And I need to remind myself, daily it seems, that today I'm living yesterday's plans and dreams."

I think it's a great reminder that if we're always trying to "get there," it's easy to forget where we are. I am as guilty of this as anyone. I'm always thinking, Once X and Y are done, Z is going to be so awesome! 

Come on—smell me. You know you want to, baby. (source)

I love using this blog to chronicle A-W, and hopefully I'll remember to stop and enjoy some of those yellow brick letters, because I don't think the Emerald City ever really appears. Once we move into the new house, I'll want to start thinking about landscaping. Then I'll think, Once the yard is done, we can finish the basement! And during the basement work, my mind will turn to...who knows. But it's unlikely that it will be focused on the beauty of the process in front of me. And that's a shame.

I need to meditate on this idea a bit. It just struck me so suddenly and with such ferocity that I had to share it.