Zehring Vacation Fund 2013

So for the month of May I have kept track of everything that I have earned towards our vacation fund.  This is going to be a fast update because I have not really been in the mood to blog. We have had stomach flus, remodeling, ending a job (I am staying home full time) and just trying to get into a new routine with my family. So here goes the update...

• 10/12 (I forgot to add this one in) $5 Disney.com gift card. I will use it to buy a gift card for disneyland
• 4/22  $10 Disney gift card from being a part of their movie rewards. I cashed in my points for it
• 4/23 $5 Target gift card for buying cereal in bulk
• 5/22 $20 in Target gift cards for buying sunscreen and other needed toiletries in bulk
• 5/24 $10 in Target gift cards. I went back and bought more sunscreen. With the coupons and gift card deal I had to stock up. I paid about a dollar each for banana boat sunscreen
• 5/30 $10.27 in change
• 5/31 $10 from My Surveys
• 5/31 $5 from EPoll
• 5/31 $10 in Walmart (shhh, don't tell Joel) gift card from Plink

 Total: $85.27

Total Fund : $621.50
My Goal is $1000 by the time we leave in Sept.

I am officially a SAHM

We did it. We finally decided to take the step of faith and trust that the Lord will provide for us so I can stay home full time with my boys. I finished out the school year and decided not to renew my substitute teaching contract for the district. It took us 4 years to get here and I am so excited for this new adventure. I didn't know I wanted to stay home full time until my maternity leave after having my first son was done. My first order of business being back at work was planning, organizing, and going to 2 winter camps and speaking at another one 3 weekends in a row. Which meant leaving my 3 month old at home with Joel and Grammy while I traveled 3 hours away. Lots of calls and lots of restlessness. After the 3rd winter camp, I walked into the office and turned in my resignation. I decided that even though we were not financially ready for me to stay at home I couldn't leave my baby like that again. So I started doing child care at home. That brought in the money we needed. But it gave us no cushion for the summer and I was home every day. I mean stuck at home and not able to run errands or anything. So after a year of that I realized that if I went back to subbing I can make more, work less and still have days at home with my kids. I had some great friends that were willing to watch my boys and not charge me an arm and leg. It worked out fabulously. Joel even switched jobs during all of this so we can bring in more income, pay off some debt and get to where we are today. I am home with my boys and I am so glad. Its hard work and I know there will be days I wish I was some where else, but I love that there is no schedule, no set plan and I can be the one to take care of them day in and day out. I hope that we can financially make this work and I know we lost about $9000 a year in income but that's ok. I coupon, cook at home, shop clearance, and find ways to have fun with the boys for free. We will probably be down to a one car family soon so that will definitely make it easier for me to stay at home more too! I will keep you all posted on my Life As A Stay At Home Mom and also on our Vacation Fund. We are getting there and I think we will reach our goal by Sept.

Zehring Vacation Fund 2013 Update

I know I have been slacking on this update. But with all the remodeling that we have been doing I haven't been keeping track of savings. Sorry. But here is a short update on our fund. I just cashed out my survey sites. So I will break those down for you and add them into our fund.


I am a part of 5 survey sites and 1 site that adds points up for using my debit card at certain stores/restaurants.

So here is the break down:
$10 GC to Target
$70 to PayPal
$10 Amazon GC

Total: $90 added to our fund.

Previous total: $446.23

New Total:  $536.23

Our vacation budget is $1000 by Sept. 2013


Sorry its not a big update because of our house being completely torn up right now. But its something!

Because I can't wait any longer

We have our new floors! I was going to wait until it was painted and refurnished and decorated to show you the final product but I am too excited to wait! We sold everything in our living except for our hand me down couches (that will go to a friend once we find our new couches) so I could have a living room I have dreamed of. Yes, we are saving and buying as we go but I can't buy anything until I find the couch I want and that is proving harder than I thought it would be. So until that big reveal here is our floor remodel.

Last week, the floor guys showed up. They said it would take 2 days but then they saw how many doors we have and how much detail was involved in putting new trim around each door and they quickly said they will be there for 3 days. Bummer because we would have started a day earlier. And also because I had to cancel my sub job to be there on Friday. And 3rd bummer because Joel only took 2 days off of work and I had to keep the boys inside all day Friday and keep them locked in my room or their room the whole day!

So anyways, its done and its LOVELY! Joel took the boys out Wednesday and Thursday from 8am til 5 pm. Lots of zoos, parks, McDonalds, naps in the car, and more parks. I stayed at the house and tried to stay out of the way.

First thing that had to be done was rip out the old, ugly, gross, smelly, carpet and tile. We found under the tile that the owners before us just put tile on top of the vinyl. We also realized that our dining room was originally carpeted because of where the vinyl ended in the kitchen.

 

Once that was done, then the baseboards and door trim was ripped off. Then the cutting of the door frames so the flooring could fit under it. That actually set our smoke alarm off because of all the dust. I am pretty sure I still don't have all the dust cleaned up. After that our exterminator showed up. We have had termites since the day we lived here. Nothing was getting rid of them. So our pest guy said he would like to get under the floor and put the spray into the cracks of our foundation. So we told him when we  would get the carpet ripped up he is free to do all of that. And he did! Once he was gone then it was time to level and fill in the cracks of the foundation.

Then comes my favorite part. The moisture barrier. I love this because once its down the flooring is next! By day one, they actually had about 30% of the floor done. By the 2nd day all the flooring was done and some baseboards. The 3rd day it was ALL DONE!

I love my new flooring. It echos right now because we have no rug or furniture to help and we are careful not to spill. I love that our dining table fits perfectly now and that the boys have a ton of room to play trains, cars, and trucks. I love the color we picked and I am extremely happy with the baseboards and matching door trim. And our fireplace looks great with it (and it will look even better painted).

So next on the remodel is painting and furnishing our living room and touching up our kitchen cupboards! Stay tuned!

 

Fireplace before

Fireplace and flooring after

Before

After

Looking out from the kitchen

Just enjoying the open space. The very first thing to come out after the floors were done

Looking into the kitchen from the sliding door

The kitchen

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!!!!!