We did it!

We did it, we bought a house! Actually we bought a house almost 5 days ago but things have been so ridiculously busy that I have not had time to update. Closing was a breeze, I have never been in a law office but I'd imagine this it was the most laid back law office ever. We were greeted at the door by a dog and the paralegal who walked us through closing was wearing yoga pants and the lawyer was on speaker phone. It took us about 30 minutes and then we were back home to get Charlie and Grandma Ren and off to cleaning we went. Day 1 we ripped down wall paper and cleaned the windows. Day 2 / day 3 we shampooed carpets, filled in wall paper holes, started demoing the bathroom, started cleaning up outside ( they left us with 3' of weeds!) we moved a load of stuff over and did a coat of paint on the living room. Day 4 was fun, we came in to water dripping through our downstairs ceiling from the toilet upstairs so we now have a 3' hole in the ceiling and some pipes that need to be fixed! I finished painting upstairs, trim is all that is left and Eric finished demoing the downstairs bath and painted the vanity so it's ready for flooring and to be installed tonight. Well better get to work, going to run Eric lunch and then over to the house for the Internet to be hooked up and to organize the mess of boxes downstairs! 

A new place to call home

Eric & Charlie infront of the house

After living in a series of really bad rentals during college and apartment living for the first 2.5 years if marriage Eric and I finally decided we were ready and able to buy our first home in January. We started searching the houses in our price range (under $90k) and realized that the only way we were going to get anywhere near all of our wants and needs was with a foreclosure so that's where we focused our search. Told you i was cheap. ;) 

After viewing what seems like a million houses (really more like 20) and driving by over 100, and 3 offers we finally got a house, and we got a great deal. The house does need work but overall it is in pretty good condition and the best part about it? We got it half off! We paid $60k for our house that last sold in 2005 for $135k. Now that's a good deal in my book. 

We have so many DIY projects in store for this house that I can not wait to share with you. For now it's packing and prepping for the move which is just a few days away. We close on May 23rd and have 1 week to move everything from our apartment over to the house and then it's time to let the projects begin. Here is a sneak peak of our new home: 

Dining room and living room, The door on the left is to the kitchen, the stairs go up to the 3 bedrooms and 2 full bathrooms. 

Kitchen view from the dining room, the stairs in the corner go down to the den, a half bath and the laundry/mud room.

The Den (check out that paneling! ha) and main bathroom (upsatirs)

Not shown are the 3 bedrooms, master bathroom, mud room and downstairs bathroom.

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Our little garden plot

LSince this blog is about saving money I thought I would share our garden. (insert pic) when we moved out to North Carolina in 2011 we rented an apartment in a huge complex, we love our apartment and while it does have an outside area it gets zero direct sunlight. I grew up gardening, Eric and I have had a garden of some sort since the first summer we dated. The first year it was in a raised flower bed at the 50 year old house we were renting and we grew tomatoes and peppers. The next year we were in a hundred year old house and grew a few things in pots and tried hanging tomatoes and failed horribly, the next summer before we moved out to North Carolina we planted a small garden in a few pots and one of those raised kiddie pools. We got a late start that year and moved early August so we didn't see very much for us efforts or expenses. Last year around December I was reading about gardens and stumbled across a post on community gardening-that was new to me, I had never heard of such a thing. I did some research and found that they are becoming pretty popular in cities and even smaller towns and even better a city recreation center about a mile from ur apartment was starting one. I immediately signed Eric and I up for the first informational meeting where we paid our $15 annual fee. For such a low fee we couldn't pass it up. We got a 4'x22' raised garden and as an added bonus they hosted planting parties and even provided lots of free seedlings and seeds as well as guidance for inexperienced gardeners. Last year we loosely based our planting off of the square foot gardening method and while we did have some issues we were overall pleased with the outcome and had a great yield. I froze so many tomatoes that I am still pulling them from the freezer!

Anyways on to this year, I will admit I didn't quite have the time to plan out this years garden and pretty much completely missed out on cool weather veggies (except lettuce, spinach and radishes) but I have no doubt that we will once again have a fantastic turnout. This years decided to set a goal of 200lbs of produce from our garden, I am not sure if we can reach that goal but I sure hope so.

Here is what's already planted
Tomatoes : 4 varieties for a total of 7 plants
Peppers: 3 varieties for a total of 10 plants
Lettuce:4 rows of leaf lettuce (4' rows)
Spinach : 1 row
Radishes: 1 row
Bush beans: 6 hills
Onions: 16 square feet of onion sets

What still needs to be planted
Cucumbers
Carrots
Squash (1 plant only!)
More beans (probably pole beans)

What has been harvested
April ?? : 8lb of carrots ( these were a surprise, we planted them in the fall after Charlie was born and never checked on them!! They were huge)
May 4: 8 oz of radishes
May 8: 7oz of radishes & 7oz of lettuce
Total: 9lb 6oz

 

Lettuce from today's harvest. I trim lettuce with scissors so it will grow back in a couple of weeks! 

Carrots from earlier in the season

Charlie's first harvest! 

The girl behind the blog

Hi everyone, thought I would take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Sara and I am a 20-something stay at home mom. I have a wonderful 7 month old son, Charlie, an awesome husband, Eric, and 2 fur babies, Molli and Luci.

I have a BS in Business Management from Missouri S&T but rarely use it, but happy that I have it. . . not so happy that I have the student loan debt that came along with getting it but as my Grandma told me "no one can ever take it away, its yours forever"

 I am a DIYer.. I am in love addicted to pinterest.. I think I spend at least an hour a day on there searching for new money saving ideas, new crafts, new recipes, home projects.. you name it. Eric makes fun of me because he will bring up a project and I say I have a pin for that!  I am a small business owner and I love it! I am a half decent cook. I love to garden, I love the fresh produce and I love that its cheap!

Welcome to my blog

Hi Everyone, Welcome to my blog! I will admit I have tried several times over to blog but I just can't stick with it. Frankly I wont be very surprised if I don't stick with it this time either.. but I think things are finally balancing out in my life where I actually have something interesting to write about and Charlie is starting to self entertain.  So what am I going to blog about? Well if you read the title of my blog you can probably guess-cheap stuff! I am cheap, frugal, crunchy.. whatever you want to call it I am that! Its not that I don't like shopping and nice new stuff its that I hate spending money on the stuff I want so I am all about finding the least expensive way to get what I want and keep money in my pocket (or my husband's pocket since he's the working one)! In this blog you will find all kinds of money saving tricks that I use (and some that I don't use), shopping deals, couponing tricks and some of my hauls.  I hope you stick around and maybe some of my frugalness will rub off on you!  Thanks for reading, if you want comment and let me know where you need help saving some money, I'd love to hear from you.