Pulling Weeds

 I had been waiting for it to rain to try pulling the vast number of weeds around my house. But the clouds came, rained on the Mountains, rained up in the Phoenix area, but no rain on us in Sierra Vista. So I brought my children, some gloves, and a rubbish bin outside.

This is about a quarter of the way done. The right side of the walk way was as bad as the left side. There were so many weeds to be pulled.

 I put the girls in the play pen while I worked. I didn't want them trying to eat a bug, a weed, or a rock. Al played with the girls and with his dump truck. 

I pulled about 3/4 of the area that needs to be pulled (in the front yard only). I worked out there for about an hour. I would have worked longer except my children had had enough of being outside. I feel good that I accomplished something.

Getting Organized

I've been all about organizing. It all started with putting the Christmas stuff away and trying to get it to fit and be organized. I then started organizing some things in my closet. From there I wanted to organize my cupboards. I have been frustrated with our cupboards. thave ey are narrow width, narrow depth, and very tall with only three shelves. I end up with a TON of unused space. Over the 3 years we've lived in this house I have slowly been trying to *cheap* solutions to my unused space.

First I have been collecting the containers of the Costco brand Kirtland Signature Chocolate Covered Raisins and Almonds. They are all so useful. I pulled them all out. The flour container is from the Costco brand Kirtland Signature Animal Crackers. I put in the smaller containers: long grain rice, lentils, cracked wheat berries, and whole flax. I have a goal to use more whole, unprocessed grains. I figure if they are handier I'll be more likely to use them.

My husband wants to save jars for various uses, but in the mean time they are taking up a TON of space and leaving a TON of unused space. I cut out hard cardboard to create a second shelf. All of these use to take up two shelves and a half. Yeah I have shelf space again.

I did the same with these awesome 60's glasses. They use to take up a bunch of space in the back of this shelf. These cups are just awesome but not for everyday use. To store them I used the cardboard to stack the smaller cups on top of the larger cups.

Spice cupboard. This is metal stack-able shelves.

I had multiple boxes of fiber bars. I decided to combine them all into one box. Cut a whole in the bottom side, taped the side closed.

I had a bunch of boxes of Jello and pudding. I took the long heavy cardboard boxes (granola bar and fruit snack boxes from Costco). I organized in the box according to type and flavor. 

Cut up this box as a tea bag dispenser. I've had the boxes in there. One box for each type and it was a mess.

Would you be interested in how I made it.

I used the gallon ziploc bag box. Four types fit across, and the height is the same as a tea box.

FIRST:

measure out the four sections, and cut lips out for each section.

SECOND:

cut out the back side on three sides and tape up the ziploc punch out door. 

THIRD:

Measure out cardboard for the inside dividers. Make them the same height and depth of the box. You'll need three of them.

FORTH:

Tape, I used packing tape, the board standing up on your divider markers inside the box. 

FIFTH:

Place tea bag packages inside box in the dividers. Close the box, tape the top on the punch out lip. It will be just enough to hold it closed so that it can stand up without falling out the back.

SIXTH:

Place labels on front above each cut out lip so that you don't have to pull out a bag to know which flavor is which row.

Rain Drops Falling on My Head

Rain Rain you came today (and yesterday and the day before that and the day before that). I normally love it when you come, but not this week. I know we need you Rain, but my roof is no leaking, oh rain rain what am I to do with you.

The house had some water damage when we purchased the house, the bank fixed the ceiling prior to us getting the keys, and the house inspector said that the roof had had some problems, but that they had been repaired. Grrrr

Nursery

Yesterday I went to Sherman Williams picked out a paint color (Jamaican Bay) and painted 4 fish on the wall. I was quite proud of myself. I couldn’t find a stencil that I liked so I bought a blank stencil sheet, traced on a fish and cut it out with a razor. They turned out really cute. So I am one step closer to being ready for this baby to decide he is ready.

We Have Signed Papers

On Saturday we went up to Tucson and met with the Escrow officer. We signed a ton of papers, I can't believe it took so long. But we have now done everything that we need to do. On Tues Escrow should close, the refund of what is left of our earnest money will arrive by FedEx on Wen. And somewhere in there we should receive the keys to OUR NEW HOME. Finally I can unpack and do EVERYTHING as I want. And I can try to set up a nursery.
We are holding our breath, and waiting for Tues.

House Update

We were suppose to close last week, but the appraiser did not complete the appraisal on time so we were not able to close. I'm frustrated that we aren't closing this week either, and that it is entirely out of my control. So now it looks like our new closing date will be March 24th. I just hope and pray that we can close by our new date. We have already postponed painting, and our original moving date. Most of the rental house is packed, I just don't know what else to pack because we still have to live in this house. GRRRRRRRRrrrr. We did meet some of our soon to be new neighbors yesterday and they seem like super nice people and will make good neighbors. I hope they thought the same of us.

Our bid was Accepted

So we put a bid on a house, back at the beginning of January. We waited and waited, and kept worrying if we were waiting in vain. In the mean time we looked at some other houses. Some in our ward and some not. The house we bid on was everything we currently need, everything we are going to need, and everything we currently want and want for the future. Also the bid house is in our current ward, and that was something important to us. We really like our wards and our current callings.

After waiting almost three weeks to hear back from the bank that owns the property, we heard on Friday and their only counter the bank made was that we close two weeks earlier than our requested close date. We can do that.

We love this house and we are so grateful we were able to obtain in. With everything we went through we could have been our own episode of Property Virgins. Now we have all the inspections and paperwork to do. Since we are closing in March and our rental house lease isn’t over till April 30^th, so we are going to have the time to take our time, clean, and paint what we want before moving in.