The Countdown is On!

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My date for settlement is officially less than 10 days away!

Last week, my mom finally got to see the place for the first time although without any electricity. The electricity unfortunately didn’t get turned on until the day after she got to see it. I have no clue whether she actually liked the place or just thinks I’m insane.

Thankfully, finally having electricity meant I could schedule the inspection, which was done on Saturday morning. No major surprises. Everything worked, despite being old and likely original or needing minor repairs. Given that this place is a fixer upper, it was exactly what I expected. Either way, not so cheap upgrades are in my future. I’m just glad they aren’t necessary right away.

Once the inspection was over, I signed my life away, acknowledging that I’m purchasing the property “As-Is.”

The rest of my weekend was spent packing things up little by little. My plan is to get out of my current home ASAP before chaos ensues, so knowing that settlement is happening on the first day of the semester, I’m planning for my time to be limited thanks to being busy at work, as well as classes, and renovations.

Current {Ambitious} Timeline:

August 27 – Settlement

Remove Any Unwanted Leftovers (e.g. mirrors, nasty fridge, window decals, ceiling fans in bathrooms –seriously why?)

Replace Carpet

Remove Wallpaper + Borders and other nonsense on walls

Clean

Paint*

September 12-13 – Move In

*The painting is negotiable. I really want to have the place painted before I move in, but I also want to get in as soon as possible so I may move and then paint as I go.

Fingers crossed nothing else goes wrong.

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Exciting News!

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I know I’ve been neglecting this blog lately, but I promise, I have a good excuse.

*Drumroll please*

I’m moving!!!!

Two months ago, if you had told me I’d be purchasing a home, I’d have sworn up and down you were crazy. Turns out I must be the crazy one because I’m in for one crazy end of the month. In a 2 day span, I’ll be settling on my home and starting a new Masters program. Of course both of those events would happen to fall on the craziest week of the year at my job because why not just go all out crazy.

For any of you who were following along with my previous posts, yes I did get the place I fell in love with. I’ve been planning like crazy on Pinterest, and I’ve admittedly had the whole place planned out for a while now.

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The past 3 weeks or so has been spent saving money, selling stuff, scouring Craigslist and other stores for deals, and making money in whatever way I can. My favorite find was a almost brand new queen sleeper sofa for $250.

Up until last night, I’d been feeling as though I was just doing some really expensive window shopping. It got real last night though because I submitted the loan paperwork. It really wasn’t until this morning it hit me though. I’m EXCITED.

So be on the lookout for future posts. The home’s in need of some TLC, so I’ll definitely have no shortage of projects to write about.

Here’s my first projects on the list before I move in:

  • Clean it
  • Remove all wallpaper
  • Paint all the rooms
  • Paint kitchen and bathroom cabinets
  • Remove floor to ceiling mirrors in living room.
  • Replace blinds
  • Paint
  • Replace carpet with laminate (or wood if I can find a good deal)

After I move in, I plan to do some little things like replace the outdated lighting, and install a kitty screen in the patio door so the cats can go in and out as they please when I’m on the balcony.

Pictures coming soon. 🙂

Happy Friday!

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A Better Cat Bowl – Bistro

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If you’ve spent any time reading my blog, you’ve likely discovered I’m a sucker for gadgets, making my life easier, and my cats. Today, I bring to you something that combines all three.

For those of you who do read my blog, you may remember back in April I raved and then shortly afterward complained about my purchase of the Wireless Whiskers Auto Diet Feeder. Despite their awful website, for $160, I really expected quality from this cat bowl, and I’m sad to say it’s absolute junk. It cracked less than a month into using it. It’s constantly telling me to reset the clock which takes about 5 minutes due to the poor interface. Top that off with their customer service being absolutely awful and humorously trying to tell me that they were better than Apple, I 100% completely regret this purchase.

Sadly, there’s not another bowl on the market that meets my needs:

– Reduce the amount of time/number of times I spend “feeding the cats”

– Prevent my overweight cat from overeating and in turn throwing up.

– Also prevent that same cat from eating the other cats’ food causing them to get nothing.

Up until yesterday, aside from the awful excuse of a product above, the only options were to let my cats free feed which wouldn’t work solve 2 of the above needs, or spend my days carefully feeding and monitoring the three as I feed them specific amounts making sure they don’t eat each others food.

Now if you read carefully, you’ll notice I said “up until yesterday.” That’s because yesterday, a campaign on Indiegogo popped up for a new and improved “smart” cat bowl called Bistro. Not only does it control how your pet eats, but it also monitors food AND water consumption as well as their weight which is sent to a companion app. For the really creepy pet owners, you can even watch your pet eat from your phone and share it with other fellow cat enthusiasts. If that weren’t futuristic enough for you, this all works, not by clunky collar tags, but by facial recognition. Yes, you read that right.

In less than 24 hours it’s nearly halfway to it’s goal, and right now you can score almost 30% off of one of these bowls if you support the effort.

As an owner of multiple pets, knowing how much or little my pets are eating even when I’m not home is a great idea, and it could alert you to problems and save your pets’ lives.

If you haven’t checked out Bistro, please do.

If you use the link below and choose to support the campaign, I’ll get $15 off my Bistro. {With a new house in the future, all the money helps.}

Click Here to Learn More About Bistro

Check out Bistro and enjoy your day everyone.

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Creative Frugal Choices Pay Off

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I have a bit of a confession and a big lesson learned for anyone reading this.

For the past couple years, I’ve been living at home helping my mom with her finances. Living at home definitely has it’s perks. I won’t lie. One of those perks I took advantage of was not having bills. Aside from the $900 I gave her each month, I had very few “bills” and even then they were more like conveniences (Netflix, Birchbox, etc.) The result – I blew my money away like no tomorrow. If I saw something, I bought it. A trip to the grocery store for dinner for one night might have been $40 bucks. Seriously what was I thinking?

Word to the wise: don’t do what I did. I’d be in a much better situation without the $2K in debt. Thankfully that’s all I have.

Fast forward to today, I’m looking to buy a home. If my offer on this home goes through, by the time closing comes, I’ll have nearly $13,000 in the bank to put towards a small downpayment, a part of closing costs and some minor expenses when I move in. All I can think of is had I saved my money instead of blowing it, I’d have more money to put down, and more money for repairs afterwards. But, live and learn.

So not wanting to put more money on credit cards and wanting to be as thrifty as possible, I’ve started getting creative with options, and here’s what I’ve accumulated over the past week and all for free:

– $95 in Home Depot gift cards from Nielsen Mobile Rewards and MyPoints

– a side by side fridge

– a George Foreman grill – why not?

– a blender

– a full set of silverware

– gifts of $2500 from family – THANK YOU!

Sure it’s just a start and it’s going to take work to get everything that I want done, but even so that’s significant amount of savings that I won’t need to be paying out of pocket or on credit cards when I move in, which means more money left over that can go towards the new floors and saving for other improvements and paying down the credit cards.

In fact knowing I made nearly $5 in Amazon gift cards this afternoon alone gives me hope that provided I curtail my spending {I have to…}, stop buying retail first and check out thrift stores, and find other means to do things has given me a new goal – Try to pay for everything on Amazon with gift cards and cash back offers as much as possible.

Next on the list, sell some of my old things I don’t use – tons of American Eagle Jeans and other clothes, a full size Yamaha digital piano, an acoustic guitar, some old text books, and a few other gadgets here and there.

It won’t be instantaneous, but slow and steady is going to have to win my race because as far as I know, I’m not getting a raise anytime soon {although if any of my employers are reading this, one would certainly help out the financials :)}.

Thanks for stopping by, and hopefully I have good news shortly.

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Today’s a Big Day

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Well folks,

I never imagined I’d be saying this, but I may soon be a homeowner.

I scoured the internet for places I could afford. I also learned afford and what you qualify for are totally different things. Somehow I could qualify for a home that costs $225,000 but of course, I’d be eating rice everyday and sitting in the dark. Not much fun there.

As much as I love the idea of owning a house, as a single woman, I knew yard work and major exterior projects were just not my cup of tea, so I set out looking at condo or at least town homes that did the yard work.

I quickly found 3 places, oddly enough all roughly on the same street

There were two 2 bedroom-1 bath condos. They had some upgrades, but nothing major, and wonderful windows. I’d still need to replace most of the appliances, redo the kitchen and tear up the carpet. Both had traffic noise AND both happened to be on the fourth floor. I was winded after just carrying my Vera Bradley wristlet up with me. I can’t imagine moving furniture in or bringing groceries up, or just walking up every day. I’d need to add another 1000 calories to my diet or something. Both had at least one balcony, but one had two. Sadly they were completely unusable because they were either too small or off the master bedroom.

The 3rd place was my favorite right away before I even saw it for the simple fact that it was a 2-bedroom 2-bath. Not everyone else agreed. From the pictures it looked horrible. Whoever lived there must have loved red carpet, mirrors, bad mini blinds, and wallpaper, and it hasn’t been touched in over a year. Thankfully, it was also the cheapest and happens to be on the 2nd floor (which is actually down a flight of steps in the building). There’s barely any traffic noise, and it’s even got a fireplace.

The last one won my heart over in an instant. Everyone noticed immediately. I saw myself sitting on the balcony either with friends in the evening or drinking coffee in the mornings, and I started picturing what I’d do to the rooms and where my furniture would go.

But let’s be real here, the reason it won me over was the second bathroom. My real estate agent may have laughed at my reasoning, but I absolutely did not want my toilet trained cats using the main bathroom. Until my cats learn to flush when they’re done (which I don’t see happening anytime soon), that’s just something that is hard to explain and definitely not pleasing to guests. Plus I really didn’t want to share my bathroom with guests.

It’s may be the smallest unit of the three (only by about 10 sq. feet), but it’s also the cheapest. It has the best layout (the others had a lot of wasted space), and with a bit of TLC, it’s the one with the most potential. (Fixed up 2 br 1 ba units on a top level have sold for $40K more than this place is listed.) I know just removing the red carpet, wallpaper, and mirrors will do wonders for this place, and I can’t wait.

Oh and did I mention it’s even closer to my work than I am now?! The location is perfect. Plus I’m excited to actually be moving back into civilization where high speed internet and public utilities exists, and even if I have to deal with week long power outages (which is unlikely) I’ll at least have running water.

So after drafting up budgets, planning to move things to my own accounts (cell phone, insurance, etc), and secretly pinning a ton of ideas to Pinterest, tonight I go to sign the contract.

I’m slightly terrified in getting my own place especially knowing it’s a fixer upper that will require new floors, paint, and a new fridge right away, but there’ll be plenty of blog posts to write if things work out.

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Bedroom Update of Sorts… or Not

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And just as I promise to get back on track with the bedroom updates, my life goes in a completely different direction…

I’m nearly finished with what seems like 2 years at least of planning and renovating my room, and I was incredibly excited to see the end result. Sadly I don’t think the stars will align in quite that way. I’ve decided it’s best to move out and get my own place to avoid any further drama at my current house.

After many unsuccessful attempts of finding an apartment in the area that will allow three kitties, and looking at the absurdly high rent rates, my best option seems to be to actually buy my own place – a terrifying thought for someone who’s largest purchase to date has been a treadmill… Actually, my largest purchase would be the hard wood floors I just installed in my room, but after that fiasco {and still not having the ones I wanted}, and now moving out, I really don’t even want to think about the money I just lost. I actually feel pretty ripped off if you ask me, but that’s another story.

So there will probably not be any more bedroom updates, but maybe {hopefully} new house updates…  I’m terrified at the idea of buying my own place, but I no longer feel like this place is home. It’s unfortunate and sad, but it’s time to go and put this chapter of my life and the people in it behind me. *Sigh*

A friend of mine is going to set up a meeting with the realtor that helped her get her house, so we’ll see where things go.

Here’s to new and exciting adventures, and hopefully a cute new place to call my own.

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Bedroom Project Update

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It was a little over a year ago I first introduced my bedroom remodel to this blog. I never did a great job at posting much about it after that. Today seems as good as any day to start.

A lot has changed in the past year, and I’m happy to say the big projects are slowly getting completed.

The first big change actually happened a year ago – PAINT. I do have to say, I’m still incredibly fond of the pink and green paint scheme I came up with at 15. I’m also proud of the painstaking multi-step process of painting, tracing, and then taping a level stripe around my room. It was a labor of love that I was truly sad to see go. {Plus it’s pretty hard to be sad or tired when your room looks like a bag of Skittles exploded.}PicMonkey Collage2

But we all have to grow up sometime, and bubble gum pink and lime green while still two of my favorite colors, screams high school not adult. After 8 hours of work, I wanted something a bit more relaxing. As you can see from the pictures above, I had some help from Mr. Chase, who at this point is more skilled at climbing up ladders than some of my human family members. I also committed a blogger no-no and forgot to take pictures BEFORE I started patching the walls. Whoops…

I actually had a family friend paint the majority of the room while I was at work. I ended up going with Behr’s Skyline Steel (the darker grey) for the bedroom, and Twilight Gray for the bathroom. Since my bathroom and bedroom share a wall, I needed to come up with something creative and better than the harsh vertical white stripe I previously had separating the two rooms. I opted for stripes on the wall they share which not only makes the transition between rooms work, it actually draws your eyes to the bathroom wall a bit and the wall definitely looks larger. I agreed I’d do the stripes on my own since I had experience with stripes before. These were a lot easier, and the whole thing took maybe an hour. This time around I had help {in the form of them sleeping…} from Zoey and Remington. Zoey was not impressed with the bow I made her out of painter’s tape.

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With the room painted, I turned to furniture. With my wallet $1000 lighter, and 2 cars full of things from IKEA, the construction was on. That night I started putting things together. Brimnes headboard from IKEA went together without a hitch. I love how it gives me the option of storage without having nightstands on either side of the bed. {My cats have claimed that space already with their cat tower and food/water.} It went together so easy, I started on the storage base, but that was a whole different story. Hours later, after stripped screws, sore hands, and even tears, I accepted this bed was not happening, and opted to sleep on the floor for the night. The next day I put it together just enough so I could sleep on it instead of the floor, but it stayed that way for nearly 2 months. Multiple trips back to IKEA for replacement or missing pieces later, it’s finally put together although missing some minor screws because I just got tired of fighting with it.

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So now, onto a sneak peek of where things are heading… *Drum roll*

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It’s coming together nicely, but admittedly my room does NOT look like that right now. It’s actually empty, and I’ve been sleeping in another room because, tomorrow’s the big day, the day the hardwood floors go in! With three cats, I’m ready to say goodbye to the smelly stained carpet. My allergies will also surely appreciate the lack of dust filled carpet as well.

More updates soon, and I promise this time it won’t take a year for the next one.

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May 2014 Favorites

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Happy Thursday everyone. I’m back with my favorites for May. To my surprise, a lot of my favorites this month unintentionally helped me simplify my life which happens to be great considering that’s my goal for this year.

Skincare Addiction Reddit

Seriously where has this been my entire life? The advice in this subreddit is priceless. I can’t remember the last time my skin was this clear. The best part, I didn’t need to go out and get a ton of expensive products. Everything I’m using is affordable and I can get it just about anywhere. Not only am I saving money, my skin’s loving it. The best thing I’ve learned – Stop using St. Ives Apricot scrubs.

Cowashing

Yet another Reddit find, but this time in the Hair Care Science subreddit. I know you aren’t supposed to wash your hair everyday. It’s awful for your hair, but let’s face it showing up to work with greasy hair isn’t great either. I have incredibly long, fine hair that was greasy by the end of the day, and dealing with an adjustment period of oily hair was just not an option. Then I stumbled upon cowashing (conditioner-washing) and Reddit changed my life once again.

Now I wash my hair with shampoo and conditioner once per week. On the other days, if I even wash my hair, I just use Suave Naturals Conditioner. I coat my hair with it after I get in the shower and work it into my hair and rinse it off a few minutes later. Not only is Suave Naturals ridiculously cheap ($1.50 a bottle), I also save myself some time in the shower. A month later, my hair’s not overly oily. I can even go a day without washing it. It’s softer and shinier. Even more suprising, it has more volume and body than ever.

Bare Minerals Ready Foundation

I used to use Maybelline’s Mineral Power Powder Foundation in addition to many others in my old super complicated makeup routine, but it’s gotten increasingly hard to find, and I believe they discontinued my shade anyway. I splurged on some Bare Minerals foundation haven’t looked back. Thanks to Bare Minerals and the Skincare Addiction reddit mentioned above, I was able to replace a lot of the foundations I was using for various reasons and wear a lot less makeup in the process. Instead of using powder to just set my makeup, I’m using the Bare Minerals as my normal foundation. With my simplified makeup routine, for the first time in a long time, I actually ended up being the first one ready. Being able to wake up and be out the door with a bit of mascara and foundation make waking up on the weekends for breakfast or an impromptu road trip much more enjoyable. One thing I do want to point out is that if you’re looking at this thinking pressed powder will be less messy than loose powder, think again. Lightly touching this powder with a brush is enough to get enough on the brush.

CARROT Fit App

This app is a trip. Each morning, I do a mini-workout just to wake myself up. I’d been using the LOLO 7 Minutes app, but switched over to CARROT Fit because why not get yelled at by a hilarious robot in the morning too. Now instead of doing T-Stand pushups, I get to do Dragon Mating Dances and instead of a plank, I get to do Extreme Lying Down. It kicks my butt just enough to wake me up and it’s silly enough to keep me laughing.

Country Music

I’ve been on a real country music kick lately. Who knows – maybe I’m finally embracing my lifestyle. Afterall, I do live on a dirt road, have a tractor, and know how to drive it. There really is nothing better than a road trip with the windows down and some country music though, and it doesn’t get much more Summer than chilling outside with good friends, food, drinks, and music. If I had a truck, lived on a farm, and wore cowboy boots and had my hair in a braid, I think I’d fit right in. Now to find a cowboy… I’ll save that for another day…

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May 2014 Recap + June Goals

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Wow! May flew by faster than ever. So let’s see how I did in terms of goals.

  • Get back on track for my goal to read 52 books in 2014. – I’m now only 5 books behind now, so I’m making progress which is good enough for me.
  • Continue working on my room remodel. – Floors have been picked out. I attempted to hang curtains and decided I better leave that for another day because I majorly screwed them up.
  • Continue running and meeting my daily step goal at least. – I’ve run a few days more than usual but not as much as I’d prefer
  • Get one of the three tattoos on my wish list. – Done. As cliché of a tattoo as it looks, I think got a few double-takes at the tattoo shop when I explained it was for suicide awareness in memory of my dad. Brave Andrea also got her inner conch on both ears pierced. Now I can’t wait to count down the days until the piercings are healed and I can swap the BCRs out for simple studs. Until then it’s wearing my hair down at work for a bit so they aren’t too obvious.

And onto June’s Goals

  • I want to get the flooring put in my room for sure.
  • Run at least once a week in addition to my {now habitual} usual morning workouts.
  • Go out and have some fun. This past weekend was full of cookouts and road trips {much more than usual for hermit Andrea ^_^} and I’m actually pretty pleased with everything. And this view…spending an afternoon on the deck outside this restaurant… it doesn’t get any better than that.IMG_3125

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Custom Perspectives in Omnifocus

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One of the hot topics in Omnifocus world is whether the Pro version is worth the extra $40. My opinion on the matter can be summed up with, “YES! Absolutely yes!”

Omnifocus Pro comes with the ability to use the Focus feature, AppleScripts, and custom perspectives. Custom perspectives are a feature I don’t know how I’d live without. Quite honestly, it’s the one thing that sold me on Omnifocus because there isn’t anything else like it.

Omnifocus has it’s default perspectives, Inbox, Projects, Contexts, Forecast, Flagged, etc., but custom perspectives are where this app shines.

I have 4 main perspectives I work from:

  • @Work shows me everything I can do while I’m at work. {No surprise there.} It shows me only available items in my Campus and Devices contexts, grouped by project, and sorted by due date {if there is one.} Essentially it’s a list of tasks I have to be at the office to do and any tasks I can do while on the computer since I sit in front of the computer for 8 hours a day.
  • @Home shows me everything I can do while I’m at home. It shows me available items in my House and Devices contexts but unlike the @Work perspective, it’s grouped by context, not project, and sorted by project. Grouping by context means all my tasks that are in the basement are grouped together which makes it super simple to batch tasks when I’m in a particular area of the house and not have to constantly walk up and down the stairs.
  • Errands shows any available items in my Errands context sorted by project. This list shows me anything I need to pick up from a store or do while I’m out. Grouping by project lets me quickly see whether something is for my room remodel or just general shopping.
  • Waiting is my last perspective and it shows any tasks that have a “Waiting for…” context. If I’m waiting to hear back from someone or waiting for a particular item in the mail, I can quickly move the task to this list which I periodically review. It’s extremely helpful in making sure nothing falls through the cracks.

So there you have it – my 4 perspectives. I work primarily out of these contexts unless I’m tweaking how something is organized in Omnifocus. In that case, I’d right click and choose Show in Contexts or Projects depending on what I’m trying to do. Being able to see only what I can work on while I’m at work without being reminded of all the things I can’t do at home is an incredible feature of Omnifocus 2, and it’s well worth every bit of the $40 even if you aren’t planning on using the other features {which I don’t.}

And it looks this post wraps up my long winded series of how I use Omnifocus. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, and as always, if you have any questions or you want to hear more, feel free to ask.

Up next on the blog radar… I’m going to get back to posting about how my room remodel has been going.

Until next time,

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