hqueen's collection of Far From the Usual stuff.

[hqueen13]

I agree, FEM! Knocking even just $100 off the mortgage every month would be helpful! Our lender is concerned about the comps from our area, and he isn't seeing what he'd like to see, so I'm not sure what's going to happen. I told the BF that if we have to wait we have to wait, and it's not a big deal. If we wait until after tax season we might be able to refi anyway if we're able to complete some kind of upgrade to the house, like splitting the bathrooms into 2 instead of 1 or something. Of course I'm not sure if they come in the house or not, I have no idea how this works. SO it's still a waiting game on that front.

Yeah, I really want to simplify my life!! I came up with a new idea for my biz, so we'll see if that works out or not. I'm going to test it on at least 2 people and see what they think of it before I put it out there. Hopefully it won't take a huge time investment from me, and it will be easy to sell. We'll see anyway.

I finally took pictures of the stuff that my mom has that she wants me to sell, so now I need to get that listed in the right facebook groups to get it sold. Hopefully it will go quickly and I can get it OUT of my house and cash in my pocket!!

I need to stop by the phone store on the way home, my phone has been acting goofy. I really want to replace it, but that can't happen until some time in September, so I'm going to double check on that, and see if they have any suggestions for why my phone isn't running right. I did an update on it and it seems that since then it's been acting wonky. Hopefully they can fix it or tell me what's going on because I haven't been able to go live on my facebook page since this started, and that is really irritating!! I want to get my biz out there, and I can't do it if my phone is acting up! It doesn't even have enough signal for me to run my hot spot which means I can't get on the internet at home, either, which is NOT cool.

Other than that, not much happening I guess. Wish me luck getting some of this stuff checked off my todo list!!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Ugh - don't you hate phone problems? Updates seem to do nothing but screw things up! (in my experience anyway). Sorry the comps aren't helping, but that could change. An upgrade might help - and an extra bathroom definitely should add to the house value.

 

[baymule]

You do pet portraits? You should post some pictures of your work!

 

[hqueen13]

Yeah, I'm seriously resisting throwing the phone and the computer out the window... Yesterday I couldn't really do anything. And I had to pay some of the credit card bills, which was almost impossible and had me so frustrated.

An upgrade would certainly help, but we'll see what happens. The lender put in the request for an appraisal, and then once we get assigned an appraiser, then we'll let the lender talk to them first before we go through with it to make sure that they think it will be reasonable. So we'll see what happens. At this point I'm ok if we do it or don't do it.

Yes, @baymule I do pet portraits and things. I haven't done anything in a long time, but I'll take pictures of what I do when it comes together. I need to take the time today to figure out how to get the pictures printed so I have something to work with. I have to have a good clear image to work from, I can't do it if it's printed on regular paper or on a screen. That just doesn't work!

The BF got a break, his paycheck was a bit bigger than normal, so he looked it up when he got home yesterday, and found that one day he forgot to clock out until really late after he was home. So he gave himself a couple of extra hours on accident. It was approved, so that's that. I'm just grateful for the little boost. I was able to catch up on all the over spending, and it will be tight, but everything is covered for the moment. I do need to shuffle a little around to account for the wedding gift that we need to give, but I should be able to do that as long as we don't spend anything else extra along the way. Keep your fingers crossed we can hold it together! I'm just praying that my check will be fat enough to make up for all my over spending from this past month as well. We'll see what happens, but hopefully it will be good. We also realized that he's probably got to use up his vacation time really soon, and he's got about 60 hours right now, so we may be taking some time off soon, which would be lovely. I just have to make sure that I can time it so that it doesn't break my own bank as well. We'll see how that plays out.

Not much else happening. I want to throw my phone out the window, followed by my computer, but hopefully I don't do that. I need to replace the computer for sure, the phone I'd like to replace, but I can't do that until the beginning of Oct once my contract rolls around. I'm not paying extra to replace the phone at this point, it's a POS as it is! So one more month and I can upgrade. I just hope that there's some killer deal on a GOOD phone when I go to do that! I'm pretty sure I'll be paying more, but we'll see what happens. It'll be worth it if the phone functions better than this one!

Guess I should go figure out how to get those photos printed...

 

[sumi]

I need to take the time today to figure out how to get the pictures printed so I have something to work with.

I saw an advert on TV for free phone photo printing. You only pay for the delivery/posting of the pics. I can't find an example to link you, Google is giving me Ireland and UK only sites and apps, but look into it? That may be an option for you. I haven't had a photo printed in so many years, I haven't the foggiest idea how much it costs nowadays!

 

[hqueen13]

@sumi thanks for the tip! I managed to get them printed at the drug store, and it was only $1.40 for 4 4x6 prints, so that wasn't that bad. I was in a hurry and wanted to get them printed, so I have them now. I hope to play around with it on Wednesday to see if I can get a couple of them knocked out so I can send them to their people and get feedback on it. I really don't want to take a lot of time on them, I want them to be fast sketches and then a little letter/reading to go with it, and then pop it in the mail. I want to be able to crank these out in no more than 2 hours tops so that I'm keeping as much money in my pocket as possible. We'll see how that works.

I had a great lesson on Saturday morning. Storm was in a really good frame of mind, which was so helpful. KN got on and rode pretty much right away (even though I forgot the correct pad at home, we made do with what I had and it worked out fine). She spent about 40 minutes riding him and helping him to really find a change in the way he was moving. I got on and rode for about 10 minutes, and it went really well. I told her at one point that it was like trying to ride a boat that kept bending in the middle. Even though the barn "track" is SUPER dusty, it works really well since it gives Storm a channel to work in. If we were in an arena or open space he might end up walking small circles not having the walls to support himself. While that is just fine, it's also a little annoying when you're working because it feels like you get stuck, even though the horse is still working on things, it feels very stuck when you're doing nothing but turning in small circles over and over again.

I finished up at the barn, and took care of cleaning up and getting my supplements put away and feed made up for the week, and then I headed home. The BF wasn't doing a whole lot when I got there, and then we had a conversation about what we needed to do, and then he decided that he couldn't go get a hair cut because he needed a shower and he didn't want to have to have them cut his hair as dirty as it was. I rolled my eyes and told him he'd better go get in the shower quickly then. After he finally got out (he takes forever, I swear!), we headed out to grab some lunch and stop by Kohl's to get him another shirt. He decided he didn't like the color/tie that he had, so we looked for a purple shirt that would match my dress. We found the exact right color of purple, and it was one of those shirt/tie boxed sets (not that he cared about the tie so much) on clearance for $10.00. THEN I had an additional 15% off in my email, and so the total came to $9.01. Can't do better than that. I think he wants to return at least the tie, which was more than the purple shirt/tie together, so he'll come out a bit ahead! We finished up there, ran into the drug store and grabbed a gift card and card for the wedding, raced home and then he headed out to get his hair cut. He insists on driving to the Great Clips down by his parent's house to get a hair cut, which takes longer, but he likes the people there, so whatever. I got in the tub to soak for a few minutes and shave, and then got out and while my hair was beginning to dry a bit I ironed his shirt. Glad I did because he didn't get home until about 3:30 and we needed to leave about 4. I was almost dressed when he got home and he quickly changed and we headed out the door. We made it to the church a few minutes early which was perfect. It's a beautiful old church, and the ceremony was really nice. Pretty standard as far as most of that goes.
We headed up to the reception after that, which turned out to be really nice. The place they chose is one of those giant reception places that has 3 or 4 "ballrooms" that they can move walls on and stuff like that. There was a Nigerian wedding/reception happening at the same time, which was interesting to walk into the entryway with all of these people dressed in these gorgeous colors with these big fabric head wraps on. It was really neat to see and made me feel boring in the clothes we had. At several times we could hear their music through the walls and it was loud, they were having a heck of a party! The reception was really lovely, and the food was fantastic. They served these really beautiful bowls of Crab Soup that had HUGE lumps of crab in it. They had laid a piece of pastry over the top of each bowl (it was like a little crock), and then baked it, which made the pastry puff up into this big dome over the bowl. It was a really neat presentation, and super yummy with the flaky pastry and the crab soup. We had our choice of steak or a crab cake for dinner. The BF got the crab cake, and I chose the steak so we could share. I didn't realize that BOTH were served with a large serving of chicken cordon blue, too. It was all soooo good. The crab cake was on the smaller side, BUT had NO filler in it, and the pieces of crab were very large, again, and the BF commented that he didn't find a single piece of shell in any of it. That's impressive. There was an open bar, which was really nice too, and we had a really good time. We didn't get home until about midnight, which is way past my bedtime.
Sunday was mostly lazy napping and not doing a whole lot. I had to do barn chores that evening, so I mostly wanted to recover more than anything. I had my hair up for the wedding, and ended up with a bit of a tension headache from it, which didn't go away overnight, so I took another nap on Sunday after we got up for breakfast. Days like that are pretty awesome now and then. The horses cooperated, and I got finished pretty quickly. We managed to make some leftovers for dinner, so we didn't even have to really cook.
Tonight I need to get the house cleaned up since the appraiser comes tomorrow morning. Wish us luck! We'll see how that goes...
Not much else happening this week, other than just trying to get things caught up and taken care of. Looking forward to the long weekend this weekend, too, hopefully we can get more stuff done!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Sounds like ya had a good time at the wedding! Hope the appraiser gives you nothing but good news!

 

[hqueen13]

Thanks, FEM, we did!

The appraiser was nice, we ended up talking more than the amount of time it took him to walk around the house. So we'll see what happens. I really hope it comes through because I think our lender has it arranged so that we'll get some money back instead of having to pay. That would be SUPER helpful in getting some of these things started. I think if there's enough money that comes in we'll get the power upgraded to the house. That will enable us to do the wiring upgrades over time, and it will let us run power down to the barn/shed area so that I can have the water heated and run fans and have lights in the shed. I really can't install the shed without power, I can, but it wouldn't be very good as soon as winter rolls around and things start to freeze. SO, that's probably the first project. Other than that, hopefully there's a little bit of $$ to pay off some debt, and maybe even do the hot water heater, and who knows, maybe put in a water filter, or get the washer/dryer upgraded like we wanted to originally. We'll get to skip a month's payment in Oct, so that will help a little with the extra funds as well. So keep your fingers crossed! This could be a big boost for us!

Not much else in any other news. It's hot again, but looks like it will break by the end of the weekend. I certainly hope so because we have things we need and want to do outside. I'm tired of it being disgusting and dripping buckets every time I walk out the door. It was nice the other week and that was such a tease! So I really hope the 3 day weekend is better.

That's about it for the moment...

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Really hope the appraisal goes your way!!

 

[baymule]

Sounds like a fun weekend. Sometimes you just have to let the work around the place go and indulge in a good time. I hope the appraisal goes your way, even better if it appraises for more and gives you some extra to get some things done.