Category Archives: Life

Monday Menu Planning

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2 full weeks!  That is all we have left until the end of school!  I am using a week of parental leave at the end of the year so that both E and I will be finished at the same time.  I do anticipate that the next two weeks will be non-stop chaos but hey this is life!   I am not sure how much longer I will actually be meal planning ahead of time and not decided what sounds good each morning!  I like to be able to change things up on a whim during the summer to make sure we are using what we have and also what good deals I can find.  Sad find of the week, we are down to 5 pints and 1 quart of salsa!

Breakfast- Saturday- I had bacon, eggs and toast. Matt had a BLT Sunday-French toast Monday-breakfast bowls using 24 eggs so I have enough for breakfast all week and then some! .   Tuesday, Wednesday,  Thursday   and Friday– find it (oatmeal, omelets, cereal and milk, sausage, pop-tarts ,cereal bars, pancakes and eggs).

Lunch- Saturday- Nachos with left over meat from last week   Sunday-Panda Panda   Monday- BLT’s Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday- I went ahead and made up another salad and we are eating leftovers for sure. Friday- definitely eating out!

Dinner- Saturday- Chicken Alfredo with bow tie pasta  Sunday- Everyone had left-overs  Monday-The favorite Leftovers again, I really need to clean out more of the fridge!  Tuesday- Spaghetti. Wednesday-Chicken nuggets and french fries Thursday- Cheese quesadilla and Mexican rice    Friday- Pizza

Five things Friday

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  1. Fun Fact of the day that explains how busy my life really is. The last time I posted a 5 things Friday was March 20th, almost two months ago
  2. We are currently still in a significant drought. We did get some rain a week ago but we are quickly using up all of our rain barrel water. I am hoping that we can keep enough water to support the gold fish and algae eaters that we purchased and put into two of the rain barrels. My current plan is to use regular water in addition to Epsom salt to the barrel for the tomatoes. We don’t have enough to fill from rain barrels so hopefully the Epsom salt will be beneficial.
  3. Kendall graduated from Davidson Davie Community College yesterday. This marks the beginning of the end of the year. Next week both Zach and Kendall go to school but the following week, neither are required. E and I have a full week after they finish but that is only three weeks till Summer Break begins!
  4. Matt and I are scheduling lots of fun trips this summer.  I will get to visit Disney World for close to two weeks!  We also have a beach trip planned to Myrtie Beach as well.
  5. I am hoping to have some extra time this summer to rest and recharge!  We have been doing some extra cleaning both inside and out. Last year, I paid a maid for the first and last cleaning but I don’t think that will be necessary this year!

Seven Things Saturday

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  1. I had every intention to post a five things Friday yesterday but it just did not happen.  So I decided to change it up and post seven things today.  One of the reason that I was not able to post was that Kendall and I spent the entire afternoon at Catawba College where she was interviewed for a full ride scholarship. Although we will not know about the scholarship until March this visit helped to solidify her decision that she would like to attend Catawba next fall.
  2. We are preparing for a major ice storm and some really cold weather over the next couple of days. The current temperature is 25 at 5pm, feels like 14.The temperature is not expected to be above 40 until a week from Monday. We are predicted to reach between 1/4 and an inch of ice. The overall hope is that we do not lose electricity and get to stay nice and warm. Or the kids hope for all snow to play in.
  3. Because of the weather, our church has already cancelled activities for tomorrow. Both the school districts have sent home remote activities. If the weather remains close to the predictions, we all may be home for the next week together.
  4. We have done some things to prepare without going overboard. I took Mom to the grocery store on Wednesday night as we had a swim meet on Friday. We have created an access point at the front of the house which would allow us to run a generator to run space heaters for keeping at least part of the house warm. Chickens have been fed heavily with good bedding and water is full. We will keep a check on the water for the next couple of days.  All warm items and flashlights have been assembled. We have spent lots of time charging things.  Lots of things have talked about and planned. And we currently have load number 5 in the washer. My plan is to wash a sixth load tonight and wash probably 2 additional loads tomorrow. The worst thing that could happen is that we have all clothes clean.
  5. One of our garden beds broke with the bottom falling to the ground. Unfortunately, this was the bed that I planted garlic in. Matt and I braved the cold and moved 21 garlic bulbs. I hope this will mean we get some garlic in the summer but who knows.
  6. I did have a chance to go through my seeds.  I am actually not planning to buy any seeds this spring. I am going to buy some basil plants and some flowers but that should be it.   I will have to buy more dirt as we are adding a green stalk planter. The other big expense will be a watering system to go over the top and connect to the sprinkler.
  7. Food is always  a big deal, I made a huge breakfast bowl for lunch, Lily made sushi bowls for dinner and I have made breadsticks and Chicken gnocchi soup for dinner.

Christmas Reflections

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This Christmas has definitely had a different feel.  Some things are positive and some are negative and some I just know but can’t give a name.

One of the things that has been on my mind is the fact that my “littles” are not going to be at home for many more Christmas celebration. I wanted to soak in every minute and just enjoy this season of life. We started by visiting Disney at the beginning of December. It was awesome and many core memories were made.  I really enjoyed hanging out with the kids with less distractions!  Christmas Day was really laid back for us as all three kids had a cold/virus.

We lost a member of our church to a tragic accident the Saturday before Christmas, this was very unexpected and hard for everyone. I can not even begin to imagine the grief felt by his wife and three kids.

We had to replace our HVAC system, the Friday before Christmas which has some financial implications.  One of which is that we have been eating at home for the past two Sundays.  This has saved us money but we have enjoyed spending time with friends during home meals.

I am excited about the new storage areas that we have and I can’t wait to pack up Christmas in a more organized manner and get things back together in the house.

We are definitely preparing for our pantry challenge. I was able to get an additional casserole in the freezer on Friday. I also canned 5 quarts and 17 pints of turkey broth.  I also got one extra meal of soup in the freezer as well.  We need to finish up a ton of left-overs this week as well.

There is a very personal situation going on that  has “stolen my joy”.

Christmas 2025 was different.

Financial Changes- Life Happens

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I feel like I had finally decided on a course/plan of action for next year in regards to Finances and was actually going to make a post and state some goals.  Good thing is that I did not get quite that far… because life happens!  This time it is in the form of our HVAC unit.
Let’s start with the background:  I noticed in November that the house just did not seem warm so I ended up increasing the temperature for a couple of days without much thought.  The day after Veteran’s Day, I noticed that our energy consumption was the second highest I had ever seen. We called and got it checked out the next week.
Here is a picture of what we saw…
We had to run the fan over it for 24 hours to discover that a “reversing value” was bad. The anticipated cost was $1500 so we went ahead and had the part ordered. A part arrived this past week and on Wednesday they came to install it.  Unfortunately a freon leak was discovered.  After another hour of trying to find the leak and realizing that we were shipped the wrong part.  We were given the decision to make as we continue with the repair knowing it would add another $1000 to find and repair the leak or purchase a new system.  Several factors were presented including our system is currently 18 years old with a life expectancy of 15 years.  Another consideration was that there was no warranty or guarantee with the repair.  In fact we were told that it was very likely that the repair would not fix the problem and in the best possible case we may get another year out of the system as old as it is.
New systems are not cheap to the tune of $8700!  This was a very tough decision to make.  I am not  one to purchase a new anything in case. After thought and prayer. We decided to go with a new system.
After the decision was made, I did some additional research and discovered that we have spent less than $500 on our system since installation.  Matt also discovered that the new system is supposed to be much more energy efficient as well. The new system will come with a 10 year warranty that will be monitored and covered by the same company we have used since the beginning.
The system is actually supposed to be installed on Friday!
Next came determining how to pay for this expense.  I talked about refinancing the house in this post.  During this process we had decided to put some money back in our Money Market account for future expenses.   The bulk of the cost will come from there. The remaining amount is going to be from our budgeted expenses. My plan was to attempt to pay off several credit cards in 2026. This has now changed, we are going to cover this expense and attempt to pay off the interest free account before it expires.    This will be a stretch but one I am going to face head on and attempt to meet.
In reality this means that for the short run we are going to make only minimum payment on all the credit cards (OUCH).  I am going to focus on also reducing our monthly expenses as well, especially in regards to food and other non essential  spending.
   I am planning a couple of posts in the next two weeks with concrete numbers and ideas. Hang around for the journey!

Friday Financial Update

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So this is the much promised post about the big financial change that we have made.  I have hinted at this post on several occasions but did not want to share until everything was complete and final. The reason for this post is very personal, I want to be able to read this in the future, see my rationale and also determine if it worked or not.

We have refinanced the house and rolled the HELOC into it. First the facts, this is a 15 year mortgage with an interest rate of 6.25%. the anticipated maturity date is December 2040. Our age would be 68.

Next, why we choose to re-finance at this time. There are two main reasons that we looked at refinancing now. The first of which is that we or at least I have started to seriously look at and begin to plan for retirement. My top priority going into retirement is to be debt-free. I do not want to have any payments such as mortgage or car. The auto part is really something that I can’t control as much as the mortgage/HELCO.  I knew going in the HELOC was 30 years and my initial plan was to begin making double payments when we pay off the Tahoe in October 26.  The second reason for considering and seriously looking at a re-fi now is that the HELCO was an adjustable rate.  I don’t recall reading this so maybe I missed it. I realized this (my mistake) because the HELCO was a fixed rate for 12 months and then became adjustable. My realization occurred with the notice that it would increase to over 7%.

The problem…. our mortgage was refinanced during COVID at a rate of 2.75%. This has been the one down side and thing that made the decision to re-fi difficulty for me. But when you compare the fact that the HELCO was already high and had the possibility of going even higher then even math said we should re-fi.

We ended up including some cash out when we decided to re-finance in order to reduce our overall debit load and to make paying everything much easier and quicker.  As I mentioned above the interest rate is 6.25% which is less than any credit card at this point.  We will begin making payments on January 1 2026 and begin to make an extra  principal only payment November 2026 which should reduce our term to 8 years or 2034 and our age to 62.

5 Things Friday

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1. The school year is in full swing and I am busy. One of the main reasons I am busy is the major overhaul project of rebuilding/making useable the metal building at the end of our driveway. We took down the entire structure which was a metal tube frame and are working on rebuilding.  I am hopefully that by this time next week, the project will be complete and I have been taking pictures to share at the end.
2. Zach’s JV football team is currently 2-0. Yesterday, his game was cancelled because of storms. Unfortunately, we had driven an hour, and sat in the parking lot an hour before it was cancelled.
3. Zach was able to get his driver’s license this week.  Our driveway is getting crowded. But it is nice to not have to drive someone everywhere every day. I am excited and looking forward to this new chapter/season of life.
4. I am happy to report that all my meal preparation over the summer is working.   We are also working hard to use up items before purchasing. I was able to reduce our grocery budget for August by $300 and plan to reduce more in $400.
5. We have planned Kendall’s graduation cruise. This is an item she has talked about for several years.  We will be cruising in April.  I hope it will be all she wants!

Saving on Saturday- When Life Gives you Lemons Edition

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This year we have new neighbors move in beside of us.  Nothing concerning until he came over and started asking about the property line.  I did not even get concerned then. Next he said that he was having a fence installed to help keep some of his animals from coming over to our house. Sounds like another great idea as I am not fond of having goats on our deck. Next we noticed that he marked the property line from front to back but still I was not all that concerned. We left for our beach vacation and the work started that same day. This is the view we came home to…

 

Frist this is extremely close to the road, 23 feet from the center with 30 feet being the state right of way.

Next it is just ugly you put the back side of the fence toward us!  This fence goes from the road to the woods.  We began talking about how we improve the appearance from our side. Now is where the saving money comes in.  After talking and checking prices we decided to add pickets on our side.   The total cost for just the pickets and nails to attach was $875.  I am going to estimate that we saved the same amount!

 

Tuesday Thoughts- Camping at the Beach!

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The one rule I stated when we first purchased the camper several years ago was “no beach camping”  I stuck to that for at least three years. But the convivence of taking everything I want together with the cheaper rates that camping offers along with lots of discussion with my kids. We decided to give it a try.

I am a convert, we will be camping at the beach for many trips to come.  I wanted to make sure I had a record of things that worked and things I might do in the future.

I bought a small plastic pool for $10 in April. This worked well as a extra place to wash feet and shoes. We dumped it each day and clean totally at least 3 times. I am going to just use as a shoe catching spot on future non beach trips.

We used the outside shower to rinse several times that just our feet were dirty. We also bought a water hose sprinkler to use to wash off all the beach toys. It was so nice to be able to wash all the beach toys by the camper on the last day. Everything air dried and was put away!

We always keep our bath baskets outside.  But each day before going to the beach we packed our baskets so that no one went inside the camper after going to the beach instead we grab our baskets and headed to the bath house. Even swim suits were washed at the shower and hung to dry!  No extra sand inside!  A huge bonus was that I did not clean any sand from a shower!  The pressure at the bathhouse was high but it did remove the sand.

We placed a “screen room” around the picnic table which was a good spot to keep out bath baskets during the day!  It was also nice to play cards with a few less bugs outside.

Everyone took a turn for vacuuming the camper each night at bedtime. This also made a huge sand difference.

The rain was a big problem with a sand parking spot. Next time we are going to get a concrete pad so that should make things a tad bit easier.

We ended up eating at the camper the most we ever had and we even ate more at the camper than when we stayed at a house.  Ice cream for desert was a treat at least 3 nights but the cost was worth it and much less than meals out.

Five Things Friday

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  1. Today is Zach and Kendall’s official last day of school.  Neither one has been to school over half a day this week. Nor has either one gone every day this week.  I have 7 days left but really only 6 as I have appointments next Thursday so I am taking that day off.
  2. We have been getting a small harvest from the garden everyday.  I have been able to freeze a couple of bags of shredded zucchini and 4 more bags of squash casserole. Zach was able to pick blueberries but they did not make it inside the house.
  3. The weather continues to be strange and on top of that our pool (community) is currently not functioning and we have yet to have a swim team practice.
  4. We have been able to obtain some wooden platelets with goals to build a garden box to grow potatoes with easy opening/dumping door. Increase the height of the greenhouse by 2 feet to allow Matt to use comfortably and as the structure for a hydroponic growing system.
  5. Lily has decided that she wants to pursue a certification that will allow her to work with immigrants. This is an answer to prayer and exciting and scarey all  at once.