To Do List 2013

Happy New Year! As you might remember from previous years, I don't do "resolutions" but I stole the idea of a yearly To Do list from Jennie. Much more satisfactory. Here are mine for 2013.

1. Finally make those reusable snack bags.
   I bought some nylon fabric and coordinating cotton probably almost a year ago and still haven't attempted to sew snack bags out of it. I had some awesome Snack Taxi snack bags for years and this year they both went MIA. I am ashamed to say that I am using plastic baggies more now, and I hate it. I need to just sit down at a few naptimes and sew some seams to solve this problem.


2. Print family blog books.
   I have a woefully neglected family blog that I go and back-date-post so that my children will have some semblance of a scrapbook type thing for our family. In 2009 and 2010 I used Blog2Print to print books for the year and they turned out very nicely. All this year I have had "2011 blog book" on my To Do list. And lookee here, now I have "2011 AND 2012 blog books" on my To Do list. I really need to do this, it's ridiculous. I think the amount of editing it takes is a little intimidating.


3. Meal planning.
   I hate that this shows up every year. I hate meal planning for picky toddlers that can't have soy or dairy and won't eat meat or beans. I hate planning and planning and still going over budget and me being the only one that eats anything I cook. That is all.


4. Patch some giant holes in our walls.
   When we moved into this house over a year ago, the baby gate at the top of the stairs was installed backwards, so we had to rip it off and re-install it correctly. Then the screws fell out of the wall and we had to re-drill. What is left is a horrible, horrible mess. I need to get some fine sandpaper, some spackle, and the original paint from the walls and repaint it. What has been stopping me is 1) the idea of going to Home Depot and tracking down some moron who doesn't understand what I am looking for, and 2) digging through our 800 cans of paint in the garage to figure out which one matches the stairway.


5. Repaint other messed up paint...or do something about it.
   When we moved in last year, the painters put latex paint on top of oil-based paint in our living room, which is a big no-no. As a result, pieces have been flaking off or been rubbed off. I have no idea how to fix this, but someone should. SOMEONE.


6. Do something about the front yard.
   We have giant bushes covering up our porch and half of the bushes are dead, it looks terrible. My first impulse was to rent a chainsaw and go at that stuff but I don't think Christian was super excited about that idea. Also, whatever it is needs to be pretty much FREE.


7. Go to the dentist.
   Without dental insurance since I quit my full time job in 2011, and having moved to the suburbs away from our former dentist practice (it was just a dentist-in-a-box anyway), I actually have not had my teeth cleaned or looked at since I was pregnant with Little Lady. I really need a teeth cleaning.


8. Take Little Sir to the dentist.
   Oh geez. I am dreading this way more than going to the dentist myself. Mostly because it is bound to be super expensive to go to a pediatric dentist without insurance. I freaking hate going to doctors that I feel are unnecessary so that they can tell me or my children that "everything looks fine". And that will be $1,000, thank you very much. uuuuuggh.


9. Try again with the garden.
   I have to keep trying, I guess.

There you go, I'll do posts about any of these things that I accomplish and update you again at the end of the year! What's on your to do list for 2013?

Our Christmas miracles

I have been trying all day to think of how to write this post that would express how thankful we are for the wonderful blessings that have been provided to us in the last 24 hours. I know that not all of my readers believe in God, but I have to say that for me, I see God in all of this. It's probably trendy to attribute blessings to God, especially at this time of year, but I have seen blessings like this all my life - enough to believe that it's not just random and that God is not just a great big Santa Claus in the sky. I don't know if He gives us trials so that we can trust Him, or so to show us that we are powerless and He is powerful. I feel like it's probably both.

If you read this blog much, you know we have been facing some tricky times with our unbreakable lease and dual rent/mortgage after buying our new home in November - so much that we cancelled gifts this Christmas. We were amazingly blessed by a Secret Santa who brought us wonderful gifts we can give to the children, for them to see Santa (which they did - pic to come soon, I need to scan it!), and a gift card toward our Christmas meal (got it today!).

In the last week, a potential renter has come along. We are very thankful that it is someone Christian knows, so the house would be helpful in reducing this person's commute and hopefully beneficial to both parties. The only catch is that, in order to make it affordable for this person, we would have to pay their rent for January plus an incentive equal to one more month. This person would move at the end of December (we've already paid December even though the house is empty), meaning that we'd get out of the lease after paying 2.5 months rent while someone else is living there. There is also an additional fee for breaking the lease. The total amount was very daunting for us, but just barely workable. We knew it was our only shot, because the other potential tenants have just not been working out in the last month. So we took a deep breath and prepared to let go of pretty much everything. We actually felt OK with this. My husband, for all his theological interest in unbelief, actually has an amazing faith. He encouraged me that we would be OK and I agreed.

As soon as we had decided to move forward with this arrangement, we received a very generous gift from some friends at our church. Which might seem weird, except that it's sort of something we believe in. There's a passage in Acts 2 of the Bible that explains how the early believers in Jesus came together and shared everything they had - people who had more gave to people who had less, and that way everyone had enough. You know, kind of like socialism! (that was a joke) When we were dual-income-no-kids, there were times that we gave similar gifts to our friends. It felt weird to be on the receiving end at first, but I remember being on the giving end and I know that we'll be there again one day. I can't wait!

Shortly after that miracle, another miracle came along in the form of a bonus for Christian's work that was much larger than we anticipated. We really do not count on bonuses or even expect them, so this was amazing. Especially in this economy. We are blessed that he works for a company who is doing very well at this time.

We are in awe of God's amazing goodness. I would like to thank each one of you for your prayers, and even all your help in spreading the word to rent our house. So many little encouragements along the way.

We definitely do not deserve all that has been given to us. But isn't that really the message of this season? We do not deserve the baby in the manager who was born just to die in our place. And yet... there He is.

Thank You.

What I learned about renovating

Aside from the fact that the freaking renovations on our new place have (of course) cost more than we thought, there are other things that I have learned about constructor workers and contractors that I did not know before.

Here is what I have found out in the last week:

• Home Depot is usually playing very feminine pop like Celine Dion, Michael Buble, and whoever sings "How do I liiiiiiiiiiive without yooooooou? How can I breathe without you here in my liiiiiiiiiife?" or something like that.
• The 4 painting/remodeling guys also seem to enjoy some good power love ballads. I don't know for sure because it was all in Spanish, but the songs involved a great deal of strong feeling on the part of the singer. I would not have expected that.
• If you bring your kids to Home Depot, even if they act like perfect angels the entire time, the male Home Depot associates will ignore or patronize you.
• If you are a woman at Home Depot who is about to drop several hundred dollars on paint, but you are, nevertheless, still female - the male paint associates will still ignore or patronize you.
• If you are a woman and try to go into the insulation part of Home Depot because you will be dropping hundreds of dollars on insulation in the near future, you might get asked to leave because "this is a contractor area". It's not. It's insulation, anyone can buy it. What the guy means is "we think this is a male area".
• If one contractor doesn't agree with how another contractor is doing something, they get really girly and snippy about it. They will both call and talk to me about the other person, and then one went so far as to do some work anyway despite the other guy telling him not to, because he claimed that the first guy was going to do it wrong. Which also delayed a third guy doing a totally separate job. Am I in middle school again?!
• They will do totally amazing things to your house and then explain how great a job they did, and just as you get super excited about how awesome it is, they tell you that it cost several hundred dollars more than you thought it would. Then you kind of wish it was maybe a little less awesome.

So, lessons learned. Of course you know that I have also learned that some leases cannot be broken. Since that is still the case, I would still appreciate everyone passing on our Craigslist ad to anyone who might be looking for a house in Richardson!

The dangers of renting (help?)

 I've rented a lot of places in my life. In fact, since neither Christian or I have ever bought a house before, we've rented ALL our residences for the past 14 years or so. We have typically found all leases to be the same regarding the penalties for breaking the lease. Maybe we were lucky and we've always rented from good landlords, or apartment complexes that were well-resourced. But we have never encountered a lease we couldn't break by simply paying a fee. In fact, when I accidentally found myself being stalked by a crazy guy in my first apartment in Dallas, I broke the year-long lease there after only 3 months. Yes, I had to pay a fee equal to 3 months rent, but it was worth it to get rid of the stalker.

It turns out that the lease on the house we are currently renting is different. There is apparently a clause in this lease specifying that if we leave before the lease term is up, we are still responsible for continuing to pay the rent every month throughout the remainder of the lease period unless we personally find someone else to start a new lease. What?! Yeah. In this case, that means through May.

Needless to say, we aren't exactly resourced in a way that will allow us to pay both our rent and a mortgage for 6 months.

I am asking a little favor from my blogging friends who live in DFW or might know people in the area - please help us rent this house!


Here is a link to the Craigslist ad. I am changing the link every day so I can re-list the house at the top of the rental results, but I will also update this post to the new link. Please pass it on, and I appreciate your help!

It's 9pm and still NaBloPoMo

...therefore I am posting. I don't have a lot to say except that I've spent the last 3 days over at the new house a good deal of the time talking to Jose, who is doing all the painting and handyman things, and the general contractor for the other work. It is insane the number of people I have to call and text all day long just to coordinate things. I even had my kids nap in the empty dining room today so we could meet with the carpet people since that was their only time slot.

It's iffy right now as to whether we will make our expected move date of Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. We can't delay it by one day because Saturday is the birthday party of our niece, Mazzie, and we can't wait to see her!

I did finally pick paint colors. Most I am satisfied with, but there was one that I picked out of desperation and exhaustion because I just wanted to have a freaking color for that room. Hope it works out!

What, I have to pick out paint, too?

We are officially closing on our first house on Tuesday! We're excited, but I'm also starting to get a little overwhelmed with the amount of things we have to do to the house before we move in.

One thing we'll be doing ASAP is having the whole interior and exterior painted. The exterior isn't that difficult, we only have to pick one main siding color and a trim color (which is currently the most horrible olive and poop green from the 70's and most of the reason that the house was on the market so long). It's the inside that's freaking me out.

At first I thought, hey, all I have to really do is pick a color for the living room and dining room and I'll just paint the rest a kind of off-white. Oh, but then there's also the kids' rooms...which I don't want to paint pink and blue because those are gender stereotypes that I don't believe in, but I want them to be bright and welcoming - not white. And also our bedroom, with new duvet and pillows in grey and yellow. Need to paint that so that it creates an nice soothing feeling... Then there's the new office/guest room of completely undetermined color scheme because we've never had a room like that before.

We have 2.5 baths now! So do I buy new accessories/towels for the new bathroom and coordinate the paint color to the new things? Or just pick something randomly right now because I don't have time to buy new stuff before we move? Aagh! I give up!

It's not that I don't care about the paint, but I kind of just want someone to come in there in and pick it for me. You know, like on HGTV! Only I need them to do it by Wednesday. Any volunteers?

The color I'm thinking of painting the living room: Benjamin Moore paints for west elm

Source: westelm.com via Jenny on Pinterest

Miscellaneous: house, kids, parties, budgets

I realize that it is Wednesday and I haven't posted at all this week yet. I had some ideas for posts that just didn't seem all that great to me. I couldn't get enthused. In addition, we have been working on putting together all the fun paperwork that is involved in buying our first house.

I really do NOT understand how people can just buy and sell houses like it's no big deal! I mean, the bank needs signed letters of explanation for everything... and cancelled checks... and they are all up in my PayPal and whatnot. Is it just because both of us occasionally do 1099 work? Is it because we are on one income? I have no idea, but all the documentation is ridiculous. I am so thankful for scanners, otherwise we would be wasting a ton of paper and killing the earth.

In other activities, we just finished celebrating Little Sir's 2nd birthday, which took some time and planning in itself. We have already attended one Halloween party for his playgroup this week, with another Halloween party to come on Thursday at Mother's Day Out. It's an awful lot of cuteness!

Finally, in an effort to stop spending ridiculous amounts of money on groceries and home purchases, I have put myself on a cash-only basis for those 2 categories of our budget. I am doing terribly at it. We run out of money for milk for the kids and I get really hungry because I spent all my money on scallops, which I failed to cook properly, or at Costco on whatever it is that we buy at Costco.

That would probably make a really good post but it's 11PM and I have to go to sleep now.
Maybe tomorrow? (don't hold your breath)

A post with no SEO or topic

Usually I really try to have good search engine optimization to my posts, making sure that the topic is really searchable since I get most of my traffic from search. I also try to write fairly topic-centric posts that don't ramble unnecessarily.

This is not one of those concise, searchable posts.

I have been wracking my brain to think of topics over the weekend, feeling the pressure to write something awesome. BlogHer 2011 is coming up and I've met lots of new bloggers on Twitter recently who I will probably see in San Diego. I will be giving out all these business cards with my blog address. People will visit the blog! I have to be amazing!!

I like to blog about my ongoing journey to be more conscientious in my life. Unfortunately, I haven't been taking much ground in that area lately.

Little Lady and I are really struggling with her reflux, which has caused about a month of sleepless nights for both of us. We've tried all kinds of things from chiropractic and other natural methods to prescriptions medications (which gave her really bad gas and were worse than nothing at all). Fortunately, the last few nights have been better. If it turns out that I have finally reached a solution, I will be blogging about that for sure. I can tell you right now, it's not a 100% "natural parenting" solution - there is medication involved.

Another area that's been eating up a lot of time is our on-again off-again search to buy (or not buy) a house. My husband and I are not in agreement as to whether this is the time. Since this is a marital issue and an area in which I need to learn to submit to him, I don't feel it would be appropriate to blog about this discussion while it is still ongoing.

So, although these two issues (how can I ease my daughter's suffering and get a good night's sleep? and will we be moving in the next month(s) or not?) are probably the most prominent in my mind these days, they aren't resolved and they aren't something I can really discuss until there is some kind of resolution.

That's where I am right now.

I'd love to blog about things unrelated to what is currently on my mind, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know! Ask me any question you think I might be able to answer in a post or suggest a topic!

Love the {Home} You're With: kids room switch

Since we made the decision to stay in this house another year (and then promptly started to change our mind again, but that is another story...), we needed to somehow get both kids in one room. In other words, eventually move Little Lady into the crib and Little Sir into a Big Boy Bed (twin size). This is a 3 bedroom, and we would like to move the office stuff out of a bedroom altogether but, um, there is nowhere else to move it. Very small house. Very small.

The rooms in this house are super small as well, but the room in which we were keeping the office/computer stuff was slightly bigger and more conducive to fitting both a twin bed and a crib in it. I know because I measured and made a to-scale grid on graph paper. That is how OCD I am. The conclusion was that we needed to switch the rooms. Front bedroom stuff would go in the back bedroom and vice versa. Also, we had to sell the daybed. Guests will henceforth be sleeping on a queen size air mattress in the newly located office.

I made a board on Pinterest to figure out how to incorporate the design of a big boy bed with the design we currently had in the crib and wall decals.

Here is the arrangement of the rooms BEFORE. {video here}

Here is the arrangement of the rooms AFTER. {video here}

As you can see, the wall behind the big boy bed is currently blank, but we have these animal decals which were in his original room in the house before this one, which I have not put up yet. If you are wondering if this Blik really re-sticks, the answer is: YES. This is the third room I have put the safari decals on and it still hangs. It's definitely not as sticky as it was, but it works. And it never leaves marks when I remove it!

There you have it, this is what we've done so far to love (or tolerate) where we are.
FOR NOW.

NOTE: I was not given any of the things in the rooms for free, especially not the Blik, that stuff is expensive. However, if Blik would like to give me some free Blik, I would say YES, PLEASE!!


ANOTHER NOTE: No, Little Sir is not sleeping in the big boy bed yet. He refuses. See the post on our family blog.

My green home wish list

NOTE: If you haven't already, please take my Blog Reader survey now to give feedback for the redesign of this blog!

If you know us in real life, you know that my husband and I are chronic renters. This is partially financial and partially because we are both commitment-phobic and terrible at any kind of maintenance or handywork. As we have discovered since living in this particular house for the past 9 months, we are no good at yard work either. Our poor neighbors, I know they must be embarrassed for our yard to be on their street!

At least in the last 5 years we have rented houses, rather than apartments, like we did when we were single and then when we were newly married. After living in rental houses for so long, I have realized there are far more things I want in a "real" house some day than are ever going to be available in a rental property.

I have composed a list of things I have learned from experience that we would need/want in a house. Many of these things would help the house run "cleaner" and "greener" but would also be convenient, or just plain common sense.

• Bathrooms larger than a closet. There's nothing "green" about this one except that 4 ft by 4 ft is not big enough for a pregnant woman and her husband to share, especially when the door opens INWARD, taking up 75% of the floor space when it's open. And I included the space that the sink and toilet take up in that measurement. In reality, there is only about 2 ft by 2 ft of floor space.
• Two sinks in master bath. Similar reason.
• There should be central heating/cooling in the bathrooms. Because when there is no heating or cooling in a bathroom, when it is 12 degrees outside, it is 20 degrees in the bathroom and when it is 110 degrees outside, it is 115 in the bathroom. The result is longer showers and more water used.
• I really, really want tankless water heaters like they have in Japan. The cost savings of these water heaters are debated but they definitely result in less water usage.
• Digital thermostat that can be automatically programmed to drop or raise the temperature at certain times of the day and on particular days. We had this at our last rental house and it was awesome. Again, very energy efficient.
• Insulation, of any kind, anywhere in the house. I don't know why landlords skip this one (probably because they don't pay the utilities) but none of the rentals we've lived in have any insulation at all. Ideally, I would choose a combination of a radiant barrier and eco-friendly insulation.
• Xeriscaping - because not only are we terrible at yardwork, but pouring hundreds of gallons of water into the ground every year is wasteful and expensive.
• Vent the gas stove into the attic rather than right back into the kitchen. Seriously, it's a fire hazard to throw gas fumes right back into the kitchen. Not to mention, when it is 110 degrees outside we can't even use the oven or the stove because the automatic fan kicks in and blows all the heat back into the middle of the room. Who decided this was OK?? 
• Laundry waste-water pipes should be inside an interior wall, not one that is on the outside of the house. Cause when it is below 20 degrees for 48 hours, there is no way to keep these pipes from freezing (since the are inside the wall and cannot be wrapped...and again, there is no insulation in this house) unless you run the washing machine 24/7 and that wastes huge amounts of water. So when the pipes do freeze from all that cold, the water can't drain from your washing machine, which is filled with clothes the baby peed on... and you can't wash your cloth diapers either.
• A garden area in the morning sun but shaded from the evening sun. In our first house, the only places we could plant things were either in the direct sun all day or in the full shade all day. If I bring plants in the house, the cats eat them. In this curent house, I could build a raised garden, but I have been pregnant since we moved here and unable to do that much manual labor. We really hope to be moving houses shortly after this baby is born.  One day I want to grow my own herbs.
• Linen closet, kitchen cabinets, a coat closet, garage, closets larger than the back seat of a compact car. Basically - storage space. Rental houses don't have it. We really do not have that much "stuff" but I'd like somewhere to keep what we do have. Like, say, our clothing and our towels.
• Open kitchen. I have been lucky enough to have one of these everywhere we've lived because it is a requirement for me. By having a kitchen that is open to the living areas, it's easier and more sociable to cook meals. If I have to choose between cooking and hanging out with everyone else in the house or in the family, I would cook a lot less. Which is a lot less healthy!

That's all I can think of right now but I'm sure there are more.
What attributes do you look for in a house?

Spare room

The spare room has always been a little weird for us. We primarily use it for an office, but sometimes when people visit overnight they use it as a bedroom. We have never owned a real bed for it, but just blow up the queen size AeroBed mattress. We did combine our two separate filing cabinets (from before we were married) into a single drawer-style which looks a little more like a bureau than a filing cabinet and purchased a simple and streamlined desk for the room.

But, we were still inflating and deflating the air mattress. I had moved my desk into the room when the bed wasn't out, but what I really wanted was somewhere I could sit and read comfortably while Christian worked at the desk in the evenings, and which could also be used for a bed when guests visit. So, when my friend told me she was getting rid of a daybed, we were excited to take it for free! I spray painted it black to go with the rest of the room and bought a grey custom daybed cover for it. Here is the end result so far:

And here is a shot of the trundle bed and linens under the daybed cover - when the trundle is up and pushed against the daybed it makes a king size bed:

I do think we need some nice bright pillows for it, although I am struggling to decide what color of pillows. Any ideas?

Maybe one day the room will have a few more accent pieces like art or something. For now, I am really enjoying it as a type of couch to read on while Christian is working.

Bedroom remodel

I have finally decided to post pictures of how I painted the bedroom, since I finished the curtains this weekend. I am a little reluctant to do this yet, because I am still convinced that I have yet to find the perfect bedspread and/or pillows that will really tie the room together. But, the search is taking longer than I thought and I think it might be next year until I get that part figured out, so here we go.

BEFORE:

AFTER

You can ignore the demonic-looking cat on the bed. That is why we have to stick with dark colors, and we don't actually sleep with that bedspread - it is for keeping the cat hair off the duvet underneath :-)

I couldn't find curtains I liked so I bought 4 twin flat sheets and made them into curtains. I'd really like to find a nice bedspread or pillows that would tie in the brown and green. And we do plan to get real nightstands at some point...but there it is!

What is this thing and why is it buzzing???

I came back from my retreat last night pretty tired, Christian is still at his conference for the next few days. When I got back, I noticed a loud buzzing and grinding noise in the empty house that would occasionally vary in pitch and loudness. It is coming from this object:

I did try fixing it by hitting it repeatedly with a stick, that did make it get quiet temporarily and the buzzing changed pitch. I took its cover off and looked inside, there was nothing in there that I recognized, except that it appears to be wired directly into the wall, and there are electrical shock warnings printed in the inside.

My theory is that it might be the doorbell, since the doorbell has mysteriously stopped working. But, I have no idea why it is making so much noise. Is it about to blow up? Should I be worried? I didn't think it was a big deal, except that it is outside our bedroom door, and being alone in the house all night I kept waking up whenever the sound changed, and being scared.
You know, the kind of illogical fear you have when a sudden noise in an empty house wakes you up. So I had a kind of fitful, nervous sleep last night.

My plan is to continue smacking it with various objects to change the tone and pitch of the noise until Christian comes home.

Hallway redesign

So, I have finally finished our hallway!

To review, what we did was paint the hallway and install these picture ledges so that we can display all our photos in one place without taking up space on the bookcases. Also, we purchased simple frames from Ikea to help all the photos look uniform and stand out more.

Here is the "Before":


And here is the "After":

and
Happy Valentine's Day!

I hear it is going around

It has been another length of time without posting, sorry for the gap.

Apparently everyone here is sick from either a stomach bug or a cold/flu and somehow I was amazingly lucky enough to get BOTH!

We have been whiling away our time here by painting the hallway of our house. It is all part of my overall strategy to create a hallway photo gallery. I am hoping to finish it this week and will have pictures as soon as it is finished. It is unfortunate that we aren't able to install track lighting, that would be ideal. If anyone knows how to do that sort of thing, be our guest, but we sure don't.

Since I have been doing a lot of wearing sweats, not washing my hair, and going to bed at ridiculously early hours, I really don't have anything very interesting to say. Leave me a comment and give me some ideas on what to talk about or something.

Oh, and 8ish days till I turn 30. Woo hoo!

Pictures of the house

In case you haven't seen them, we do have pictures of the house online now.

However, you do have to be marked as one of our Friends or Family to see them. So, make sure you log in. If you are not marked as Friends or Family, please let Christian know by contacting him via Flickr.

I think I can imagine...

...what a form of hell could be like.
It would be like constantly packing and packing your stuff and never running out of stuff.
It would be like taking 100 trips to and from the same 2 houses and never significantly diminishing the amount of stuff at the first house, while creating nothing but mass confusion at the second house.

We have lift-off!

We have a fridge! We are almost packed! This is a good thing since the movers are coming between 8 AM and 9 AM tomorrow morning! The new house was pretty clean up until things started getting dragged around. The old house is pretty much a pig sty. We are so excited about the move!!

Free food

All I have left to pack now is the bathroom and the kitchen, which I am dreading, but we are very close! However, the main snafu is that we cannot get in touch with our landlord and the refrigerator currently in the house was pulled in from the garage and is covered in rust and mold. When I say covered, I mean COVERED. As in, it is not white anymore, it is dappled with grey/green (the mold) and orange (the rust). It smells, drips, and makes weird noises constantly. We cannot use it. But we also cannot contact our landlord. None of the numbers he left are good and he did not answer the email we sent. I am beginning to move to Plan B, which is to assume we will be without a refrigerator for an unknown period of time starting on Sunday when we no longer have access to the old apartment. I will be giving away and throwing away all our refrigerated foods, and begging friends for room in their fridges for the things that can't be given or thrown away. This does not make me happy, but at the moment there isn't an alternative.

Packing, moving

I know, I have been MIA because we are packing up stuff and doing all the usual stuff in addition to that.
Right now, I am slightly obsessessed with:

~ the "Free" section of Craigslist. I am getting boxes from there and possibly also some free bamboo for the new back yard!! I was sad that we don't have Freecycle here in Dallas, but Craigslist "Free" rocks!!
~ boxes. BOXES. I am constantly on the lookout for boxes.
~ Blik and Flor for decorating the new place!