Midlight21's Blog

Yep....I sat down on the sofa pretty darn hard with my heavy (sick) son to feed him a few days ago and CRAAAACK! One arm of the sofa is broken beyond repair. It was already on its way to being gone, but I did it in apparently. So, I've been looking on Craigslist for a used sofa. I've only found 1 so far that is cheap enough. I'll check out Big Lots too, tommorrow.

Since I have to work today, we went out to eat on Saturday. Spent $42.00 on that. For our gifts to each other....I bought him lacquer for a project of his and he "bought" me a rose bush. He thought it was pretty funny since I picked them both out. His lacquer was $9 and my rose bush was $8 so the total for anniversary spending was $59.

Happy 2 year Anniversary to us.

We still haven't paid our property taxes and its because we don't have the money to PAY the property taxes. They are about $5,000 and I've been stressing on this one for the longest. How do I come up with $5,000 RIGHTNOW to get the county paid off so they don't start crawling down my back like the credit card companies? I'm afraid its going to end up in the realm of "gonna have to take out a loan." DH is looking for a part time job and we still have my mom to watch our son. I just had a phone interview for a slightly better paying job. I REALLY REALLY REALLY hope they call me in for a second interview. The job is closer to home too.

Check out this article all you gardener's out there.

http://realestate.msn.com/lawns/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=409676

It gives lots of good advice and links to sites to save money on landscaping plants and supplies. If you've got a plan for your garden this year, saving money should be a part of it.

I finally got my strawberry and bushelmaker tomatoes in. The strawberries are potted and the tomatoes are planted. I also put together the garden arch I bought for only $7.00. Now I'm training one of my climbing rose bushes to it. On my local freecycle group page, I found people that need to get rid of plant pots and bricks. That means I get to give some of my "babies" new homes and the bricks will be used for another flower bed. I also found a new gardening site today, davesgarden.com. There's a lot of good information on the site plus people to trade plants with but its not as cost effective as gardenhere.com because Dave's Garden wants a membership fee to view replies and pictures of plants in the forum.

The best news of the day is that we now have another credit card paid off! YAY! Now all I have to do is call and cancel it. Four more credit cards to go.

I was digging the addition to my garden yesterday with a friend and in the midst of digging, I nearly hit a poor little frightened bunny. I thought it was a dead animal but when I picked it up, it was quite alive. Now this little bunny's mommy was no where to be found and it was most likely a wild rabbit as they roam our neighborhood. I checked with the neighbors anyway, no one lost a baby bunny, so the rabbit went to the friend who helped me dig the garden addition. His fiance knows how to take care of bunnies. Thank goodness someone took the bunny as I would have felt horrible if I had to just let it go in a field not knowing if it would survive and yes, I'm dumb when it comes to rabbits. I know nothing about them.

I was at the grocery store last night and Albertson's had a deal going. 50% off all Kellogg's cereal and a free gallon of milk when you buy 3 boxes. They are also doing 2 free gallons with 5 purchased boxes of Kellogg's cereal and 3 free gallons with 6 purchased boxes. So.....I bought 6 boxes of cereal and got three coupons for free milk. Considering my family eats cereal like its going out of style, I find this a good deal.

I've been gardening! I've gotten a ton of seeds on sale at Walmart and various other places. I also found a rose bush for $4.00, lavender colored blooms. I dug up the dead bushes that I bought at Home Depot and exchanged them under their 1 year warranty for three new bushes. I got 3 mini rose bushes and they are soooo cute! I also bought another climbing rose bush with blooms in a pink color. Now I just have to get the rose garden in my backyard weeded and ready to plant the new rose bushes. YAY!

I found this very cool site at gardenhere.com. It is a community of gardeners that are committed to exchanging and trading seeds, plants and gardening knowledge so that gardening becomes a fun, inexpensive hobby. If you are a gardener, I suggest checking it out!

The only downside is my leg has been bitten to pieces and it itches soooooo bad from all this gardening.

Wanna take a guess as to who got that? My spoiled sister and her equally spoiled husband! They are in the process of building and buying a house and NOT ONCE have they ever done something without the help of DH's Mama! I swear that he's still attached by his umbilical cord. Want another scenario? My sister was recently in an accident and her car was totalled. Well needless to say she needed another car and got one. Well DH decided that if SHE got a new car, he HAD to have one too! ----And they are supposed to be buying a house....you know the drill, put nothing on your credit report unless absolutely necessary. So, Mama gave them 20,000 so it won't make a difference on whether or not they get a house AND two new cars. It's this kind of crap that makes me sick! Why not help someone who needs to be helped? Kids in orphanages, sick children in hospitals, people with cancer BUT no! 20,000 to the most spoiled couple in history!

Today, I got a piece of "junk mail" in the mail. It was an ad/offer to refinance my house on a flexible plan (four different payment amounts to choose from), lower interest rate AND their hook is that they'll pay for our property taxes for 2005. I could skip up to 2 payments on my mortgage as well. It sounds a bit too good to be true but for the sake of saving money, I will call them on Monday just to see how their program works. If it is a GOOD program to refinance our house, we may finally be able to pay off those pesky credit cards! I'm sure I'll be posting here in the next couple of days to tell everyone whether it was a scam or not.

I've gotten to the point where I'm thinking and scheming every day to figure out how to get ourselves out of credit card debt and pay off my student loans. We're so far behind it's ridiculous! To date we have paid off the two lowest balanced credit cards just to get them out of the way. Now I have to work on the "biguns" to get their collections people to quit calling me day and night.

Today I took care of my student loans, applied for a forbearance and a payment lowering plan for the time being so I can stay in the good graces of Sallie Mae and company. I also pulled all three of my credit reports today and took a look at what those missed payments on my credit cards are doing to my credit. Needless to say, I'm not happy about that at all. I also found an account that is not mine on one of my reports and disputed it! The last thing I did was apply for a loan to consolidate all our remaining credit card debt to a lower interest rate. I'm hoping even with the state of my credit reports, I'll be approved so I can get rid of these pesky credit cards for good.

The only thing left will be to figure out how to get my property taxes paid. We were hoping for the tax return money for that but the IRS had other ideas for our money. This one I'm still working on.

I still haven't mastered the art of NOT spending money but I'm working on it. I always seem to find things we need though. Of course, yesterday I went to Half Price Books with two boxes of books and got $20 out it, not as much as I hoped, but good enough I guess. I also have a CD for sale out on Ebay, seller ID midlight21 if you want to check it out.