New Floors!

Since tomorrow is the day I have been planning and saving for since last year, I thought I would write a little before post. 7 years ago we moved into this house thinking it was a starter home and that we would probably sell before kids came into the picture. Well the housing market crashed and we were stuck. If you didn't read the news about it, Tucson AZ was the worst city for real estate in the country! There was no way we would be able to get our money back. So here we are 7 years later and with two kids in our small home, we make it work. We have plans on moving in the next couple of years but its still a ways away. And until then, we are now financially at a place that we can save and start putting some money into this home.

When we bought the house the carpet and tile were only a year old. It was a nice color and it was fine at the time for us to live in. The owners before us even had it steam cleaned before we moved in. But the one thing I really did not like about the carpet was where it cut off from the tile in the dining area. It was at an angle that made our long table hard to fit. So any time we needed to use the leaf in the table we ended up on carpet. And it made our dining area look smaller than it really is.

 

Then we had kids. And when Nathan was born I started doing child care. Kids are MESSY! They are messy in every way, shape and form. And it ended up on and in the carpet. And no matter how much I tried to clean it up I know its still embedded in the carpet. Plus, we have people over A LOT. And I am not some one that makes them take their shoes off. So dirt and mud and more kids came in and out of our house.

Then Zachary came. He finds lose carpet and likes to pull at it and create holes and uncover the nails that hold the padding.

 

And then we noticed that the carpet was loosening up and creating bumps.

 

And after that we realized we didn't even think our carpet would survive a steam cleaning.

And so tomorrow we start the process of ripping it all up and laying down laminate wood flooring throughout our house (except the 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms). I am so excited I probably won't sleep tonight!

Can't wait to show you the after pictures!

This is the worn out area from all the walking to and from the kitchen

4 years ago we got a media table. We got rid of it but can you see the discoloration?

 All of these next shots are the before shots of what our home looked like with the old flooring. By the way, I made sure to take all of these photos when my house was at its messiest! I want the after shots to look 1 million times better! :)

The Mantle...

Ok, as most of you know we are going through this really big remodel. I say really big because 3 years ago we tried to remodel our kitchen on our own and its not done. So we are actually forking over the thousands of dollars to pay people to remodel our home for us. I will continue to blog about it all as it comes along.

This is a chipped tile on the edge that caused us to realize we needed a redo

OLD FIREPLACE

The first big thing we wanted done was our fireplace "mantle" redone. The owners before us had a tile/border/trim in an ugly shade of tan glued on to the tile fireplace border that came with the house when it was built in the 80s.

I love brick mantles! I think it has a lot to do with how much I love my mom's mantle. But we don't exactly have a ton of room in our home because of the huge windows on each side, OH and above our fireplace. So we thought a simple brick mantle that lined up with the teeny tiny ledge that is already there.

Well who do you call for a job like this? Google had zero answers. So I figured a handyman can do it. I found one that was close by and had good reviews. Sent an email and within a week the dialogue of getting estimates and scheduling and finding brick was upon us.

I had a vision. I knew exactly what I wanted my fireplace to look like. I LOVE the distressed red brick with the white fading in it. The old timey look. We have 4 brick stores on our side of Tucson and one used construction goods store. I went to all of these places looking for the exact brick I wanted. NO ONE sells it anymore. Its been discontinued. Sad day.

So we are now onto vision #2. Finding a dark red brick. Well, we went to The Brick Yard. The name alone sounds like it should have just what I want. NOPE. So we settled. And we had 3 days until our handyman was coming to get this done. After two days of looking over the brick sizing it and thinking about it, we realized they sold up 2 different sizes of brick.

So Joel went back the day of the installation and walked around looking for brick. He found 4 other kinds of brick and sent me pictures of each one. We settled on option 4. It was the darkest one they had that seemed to work for us.

Now you should note, if we didn't like the outcome of whatever brick we settled on, we planned on painting it.

Ok now time for the demolition and installation. We were penciled in a week early because I can't call and schedule our flooring (another post) until this is done because I wasn't sure when this will get done. And I am so ready for new flooring.

Well, the guys showed up an hour late (during nap time).  And thankfully my boys slept through most of it. But 4 hours later, the men were only done with the step. And our handyman kept leaving to go to other appointments (he was so over booked). 6 pm Friday night, they stopped and said they will be back at 7:30. Well 8 am they roll in and get to work. by 2 pm (nap time again) my house is a mess I but the mantle is done. I send them away and say come back Sunday to finish us. The mantle was a mess of mortar.

This is the mess they left me with

That was not my vision. So I spent all night Sat. scrubbing the step and getting as much cement off as I could. I made a difference but it was awful.

 

This is the after picture after scrubbing the cement away.

Then I go to dust the shelf of the mantle and noticed the end bricks are not staying attached. Email the handyman and told him there was more to be done. And that he needed to clean as much as he could. His partner in crime made the mess and left it. I was pretty upset about that and I think our handyman was too. Because on Sunday he showed up alone and stayed for 2 hours cleaning and repairing. However, I can't clean the top shelf until its completely dry. So the rest looks good, but the top is still cementy. And what masonry people use to clean brick is an acid that I am not comfortable using INSIDE my house and around my kids. So we are sticking to water and vinegar and scrubbing. Its a lot of work but so much safer and still does the trick.

The end result after scrubbing and fixing the broken pieces and every thing.

Well all that to say, We love the design and how that turned out. Joel and I were talking about the rest of the remodel and we realized we are probably going to paint it anyways to match the rest of the house. So it doesn't matter any way. Stay tuned!

Disney Fund 2013

I have had a very active month of cash added to our vacation fund. LOVE IT! So here it is...


I went to Target and Fry's and came home with a $5 gift card from Target for buying 10 boxes of pasta for under a buck each. Its a great stock pile price! And at Fry's I bought some snacks in bulk (I can't remember what) and receive $4 in catalina coupons for my next shopping trip. So I use that and take $4 out of my grocery budget and add it to our fund.

 

Then the next week Target was having an AWESOME sale on Pampers diapers. So I stocked up on those and got $10 in Target Gift Cards for that.

 

Then today I was at Target again (I know I shop there a lot. Its like I have a family member that works there or something) and stocked up on cereal because of an awesome sale and received another $5 gift card. And in the mail I got my Ebates check in the amount of $7.58.

 

So my Grand total for these last few weeks is $31.58. Adding that to my fund we now have $446.23 saved for our Disney vacation. Which we are taking in late August/early September! Our goal is about $1000. Woo Hoo!!!!!

Vacation Fund 2013

I know its been awhile. Please don't add salt to the wound. With the holidays and life and work I couldn't keep up. But I was diligent at writing everything down. Even if I don't have pictures for it all. So here is the run down for our Disneyland Vacation Fund.  I haven't put the exact numbers down for our budget but I am guessing right now we need about $1000.

So what I have to add to the fund since the last time I wrote (which was October) is:

November:

• $5 Target gift card 
• sold some toys on craigslist = $28
• sold another toy on craigslist = $10
• $5 paypal from Epoll surveys

December:

• $10 Target gift card for buying bulk (probably diapers)
• $10 Target Gift card for using the coupon that said to spend $50 and get $10 GC
• $15 My Survey redemtion
• $10 iTunes GC from Swagbucks (I used it for a Christmas gift and swapped from the Christmas fund)
• $5 Target GC
• $10 Target GC for using another coupon with the spend $50 get $10
• $5 Target GC for buying 10 products in the food aisle

January:

• $5 Target GC for buying 10 more products
• $10 Amazon GC from swagbucks
• $20 paypal from I-Say surveys
• $10 Safeway GC from My Points 
• $8.10 in spare change
• $10 GC for Safeway from My Points
• $10 Amazon Gift card from I-Say

 

I will be swapping with my grocery budget for these and buying our paper products on Amazon.

So there you go...Add them all up and we have - $186.10

Take that and add to it to our fund and we have a total off: $414.65 And we are going in early September 2013!

Zehring Christmas Traditions

My husband has been working retail full time for over 2 years now. It has been a blessing and a curse. But most of the time its been a HUGE blessing. The Lord provided this job for Joel when we were looking at losing $500 a month in income through one job or another. We were both working hard and taking care of a 1 year old at the time. When this position came up we were nervous (we had been discussing it for a year and kept putting it off) but super excited over the possibilities.

It all started right after my oldest was born. I always thought I would be a working mom. I thought I would make it work. But after my maternity leave was up, I didn't want to go back to work. I wanted to be with my baby at home. And the Lord provided for me to do that by doing in-home child care. Then I started substitute teaching when child care wasn't enough. Then, the pay cuts with Joel's job started happening. That's when retail management started entering our conversations. Long story short, Joel took the job and I am home more than ever before. I am also at the tail end of my working out of the house. And its been wonderful to see an end in sight and my chance to finally stay home full time. With the exception of  holidays, Joel's job has been a wonderful change to our family. He his home more and we have extra income.

But during the Christmas season, we would never see him. Dinners at families houses were not happening because of Black Friday and overnight inventory. And he always seemed to be the one that closed on Christmas Eve. Which meant that he didn't participate in any of our traditions that Nathan and I started. Then this year, Target gave us the BEST gift ever. They allowed all management to either have Christmas Eve or the 26th off. We chose Christmas Eve. And by far, the best day ever. Here is what we do on Christmas Eve and how Joel was able to join us this year.

First, we introduce Nathan to Santa. We track him on google maps and see how close he is to where we live. We also sprinkled reindeer food for Santa's reindeer. Nathan chose our front walkway because its right by his window and maybe he will hear them. :)

After that, we went to Costco for pizza before we headed over to Winterhaven. Its a neighborhood that goes all out for Christmas and is completely free for people to walk through. All they ask for is donations to the food bank. So we clear out my stock pile of food and head on over. Nathan was actually on the news two Christmases ago while we at Winterhaven.

 

When we got back home, we tracked Santa one more time. Then came the baths, Christmas PJs, and some thing Joel got to do for the first time, the reading of the birth of Christ from Luke 2. After that its getting a plate of cookies for Santa and some Christmas books are read. Then bedtime.

 

 

After the boys are asleep, Santa comes, eats some cookies, and he ALWAYS leaves a Thank You note for our boys.

BEST CHRISTMAS EVER!!!!

How did I earn my Christmas fund in 6 months???

Christmas came and went and it was a blast! Having a 4 year old and an one and a half year old made this time of year AWESOME! I love my kids and I love their excitement for life. I did a lot of posts on how my goal for Christmas was $600 and I made that goal happen here. It only took about 6 months to save that much for Christmas. I also have a huge family to shop for, so knowing how to shop clearance and online deals helps. It looked like I spent a lot on some one, when in reality I spent $10 or less. Shhh, don't tell them. :) I take part in about 5-6 survey sites. Some I use for surveys and others I use for just collecting points. Some one asked me to break those down, so here it goes...

Swagbucks.com: by far my favorite site. They have surveys, polls, videos to watch, shop and earn, web searching and my favorite is using coupons from their site. All of these allow me to earn points. You can join this site by clicking on my points bar on the blog.

MySurvey.com: Strictly surveys. I love them because they some times send free products to test out. I have gotten perfume, toilet paper, paper towels, diapers, food, and other great stuff. You earn a good amount of points too.

Mypoints. com: they are similar to swagbucks but I don't take surveys on this site. They have the shop and earn (similar to ebates.com). But I earn most of my points by email. Now you have to be ok with junk mail to do this site. You earn points just by going to the webiste that is in the email. Most emails give you 5 points just for clicking on the link to go to the website. There is nothing else to it. I get about 50-60 points a week doing this.

Epoll: very slow moving site. But when you do get a survey emailed to you its worth a lot of points.

I have about 2 more survey sites that I am a part of but my Windows crashed and my sites are on that and I can't remember the names of them right now. Sorry.

I also earn extra cash by saving all my gift cards I earn by buying things in bulk that I would normally buy eventually. I use coupons as well and that brings down my price.

I recycle cans too. I also save all my spare change. I never pay with change. Anything I sell on craigslist or a yard sale gets put towards the fund. And the last thing I do and you don't need kids for this, is I am signed up with Pampers Gifts to Grow and Huggies rewards. You get point codes that add up to get great stuff. I got a gift card off one and a toy for my youngest on the other. You just search for codes or follow them on facebook and they post codes all the time.

Hope this helps some of you out there wondering how to start fund and save for it. Let me know if you have more questions. I will be updating our vacation fund soon. Stay tuned. I hope to have Windows up and running again soon so I can post some pictures too!.

My thoughts about Black Thursday/Friday...

Joel said I had to start this by saying Target does not endorse or support the thoughts and opinions of this post.

Ok.

As a wife of a Target employee I am not opposed to them being open on Thanksgiving day. Its retail. In the end they are about the $$$. I don't complain that grocery stores, movie theaters, gas stations or restuarants are open on this day. And if we are honest, a lot of people don't complain about those either. We like to fill up our tank on Thanksgiving morning on our way to our destination instead of having to think about it the night before. We like be able to eat out when there is nothing else to do. Or go to the movies. We like that grocery stores are open when we realize we forgot to get one main ingredient for our big meal.

So why should it be different for Target? My only concern is that they are open over night. Why not just open during the day? I know its because customers love the rush and feel of getting a good deal in the middle of the night. But I worry about employees that are not use to working overnight, driving home the next morning feeling tired and worn out. That just doesn't seem safe. I also know that ALL Targets ask for volunteers to work those shifts first. And they always have more than they need. Why? Because they offer incentive. They make it worth it. So if you don't want to work that shift, then don't volunteer. Let some one else who doesn't mind take that shift. I am tired of complaints about it because of a few people who think its not right. Get over it. Its retail. Its money for the company. I am thankful that Target has taken into count that some people were working both Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas. Now they are offering that each employee get one of those days off.

They care about family. I know this. Joel had to work those awful shifts in the past. But our family time together was never compromised on any holiday. Target has been good to us and we know that Joel's hard work and his hours could be a lot worse some where else.

So when I see articles like this I get frustrated because people shouldn't be surprised that they are trying to keep up with the competition. GO TARGET!!!!