First House Picture

I'm not sure why it took so long, but we finally got our first house picture! It was really fun, and I am so so so so tempted to post it, but I've decided to use it as a christmas card instead, so watch your mailbox come December :-) (or email me if you just can't wait that long).

Politics

Yes, today is Election Day, and I'm actually campaigning for someone, isn't that cool? Ever since going to a city council meeting and trying to get our parking changed (see previous post) we've come to realize that we NEED different city councilors if we are going to get anything accomplished in this city. So, for the past 4 weeks we've been involved in a group of neighbors campaigning for a new Disctrict B councilor: Ruth Rojas, and some new and one old Councilors at large: Carlos Matos and Nilka Alvarez-Rodriques. And today, I actually spent about 1.5hrs making phone calls reminding people to vote. I think city elections are fun because you can actually make a real difference (and we are happy to contribute 8 votes from just our house :-). Here's what I got to say today on the phone: Me llamo Melissa, Yo vivo en Lawrence y estoy haciendo llamadas para recordarse a votar. Yo quiero pedir por su apoyo por Ruth Rojas y Carlos Matos. Gracias :-)

Nature vs. Nurture???

Austin and I are trying our best to prove that nurture is stronger than nature. Take Theo for example; he obviously has been handed genetics by his parents that should make him completely unhandy, not able to hang a picture frame, let alone complex home repair tasks despite their biggest efforts. But, Austin and I are changing his future: "Theo can you hand me the hammer" and "now use the drill right in this spot" are common phrases we use when imparting him our home repair knowledge...and well...I think it just may be working...see for yourself:

Bathroom

We finally finsished our last major project, our 2nd bathroom on teh 2nd floor. We decided to tile the tub ourselves and I made a cool mosaic in the middle. The blumber was sure there was no way we could fit a full tub, sink, adn toilet in a 7ft by 5ft room but we did it and it looks great...so see for yourself...

Clean-up Weekend!

We had our first House Clean-Up weekend this weekend. Nathalie, Deb, and I spent all day Sat cleaning up our craft room and study and re-arranging so that we can soon fit Austin's piano. We also successfully created what is known as the "man-room". What we mean by that is an area in the basement where there's a couch and a TV and playstation. And, I finally took some pics and got them onto this computer, so here we go:

First, our newly arranged study and craft room:

And a BEFORE picture of the basement:and an AFTER picture of the man-room (in use with men and chips!):

Successful Freecycle

So,
I've been subscribing to freecycle for about 3 months but yet have to actually participate. But I had my first successful give away today :-). We have this box of random computer stuff as well as 4 computer "brains" (as my mom calls them, you know- desktop computers but without monitors). These have been sitting in our hallway and study for many many months while we tried to figure out what to do with them. We had the best of plans to take them to the recycle day at the next town over only to find that they just throw them away!!!! So I decided to post them on Freecycle (for those of you unaware of freecycle, check it out at www.freecycle.org - it is just an email list by town for people giving things away who don't want those items to go into landfills). I listed the box of random stuff and got 3 responders within 3 hrs!!! The asked the first one if they also wanted the computers and they said yes and came to get them this morning. Now I want to go looking for more stuff in my house to "freecycle" What a great way to get rid of stuff you don't want/need without throwing it away! People list the strangest things that may be of any use to anyone and people always want them.

So, I just had to share my excitement about this. I want to post about our new bathroom but I lost the cord for my camera so am tryin to figure out how to get those pictures onto my laptop so i can post them, cause what good is a post about a new bathroom without pics???

Basement Clean Out

Austin and I did a little basement cleaning, it was pretty amazing what we got done in about an hour. But even more amazing is how much additional stuff has accumulated down there since people have moved in. We decided to make a little area in the basement that will look like where some 35yo guy who still lives with his mom hangs out and plays video games- complete with an old couch we'll pick up from the salvation army and a tv with a playstation hooked up. This way we can get all the video games out of the living room, which will be nice. But, we have to convince some people to get rid of some stuff first cause we've managed to mostly fill 1000 square ft of open space with junk? Why do we accumulate so much junk? hmmm...

Full Up

Well, our house is all full. It has been since June...but an interesting thing has happened now: we have a waiting list! Back in January we had some friends ask if they could be a part of the house this August and sadly we had to tell them no, but that we should have room summer of '08. And there's another friend who is commuting 1hr45min to work in Lawrence until October and I wish we could offer him a place. And now we have more friends who WE would love to have move in...not sure if it would really be an option for them, but if it was it's too bad we had to say, "we'll probably have room in a year, and definately in 2 yrs". So, I just find it interesting that while many people say we're crazy and they could never live in a community house, we seem to be overflowing with people who'd like to be a part of it. I actually think it's pretty sad that there aren't more of these cause think about how much people could benefit from sharing resources and saving money by sharing rent and gaining deeper relationships. So, why aren't there more? After some contemplation, I think it's just because no one wants to take the initiative to start even a small community house, like buy a multi family house and rent some units to friends or even ask some friends to rent a big place with them. Maybe it's that pervasive fear of buying that seems to be prevalent around here. But, I just wish we could expand and make 3 more places like ours, and I know they would fill up fast.

So, any brave souls out there? There just happens to be a 3 family huge brick house 2 streets up from us that is for sale for $179K (too bad there wasn't a deal like that around when we bought). It sure would be nice to have the "Garden St House", the "Summer St House" and maybe even the "Orchard St House" and oh wait, and yes, the "Jackson Terrace House" (which partially exists already, but another would be nice)....well I can always dream :-)...and hope someone out there decides to do something crazy...

Water anyone?

I’ve decided I need to be more “green”. That is I need to start reducing the amount of resources I use and how much waste I produce that goes into landfills. Not an easy task, but there are some simple things I can do that are not difficult. I was inspired the other day when I read a news story that the mayor of San Francisco has banned the purchase of water bottles with city funds. I looked into this a little further and found these facts about water bottle usage.

*8 out of 10 plastic water bottles used in the United States become garbage or end up in a landfill (Container Recycling Institute)

*The energy we waste using bottled water would be enough to power 190,000 homes. But refilling your water bottle from the tap requires no expenditure of energy, and zero waste of resources. (PBS Point of View 2004)

*Making all of the bottles for the US requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually. That's enough to fuel 100,000 cars. (Earth Policy Institute)

*In the United States in 2006, bottled water consumption reached a record 8.3 billion gallons, 185 million gallons of which was imported. The total amount spent on bottled water was over $11 billion. (Beverage Marketing Corp.)

*In contrast to tap water, which is distributed through an energy-efficient infrastructure, transporting bottled water long distances involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels. Nearly a quarter of all bottled water crosses national borders to reach consumers, transported by boat, train, and truck. (Earth Policy Institute)

*It costs more money to drink bottled water than to put gas in your car--up to five time more--due mainly to its packaging and transportation.(Earth Policy Institute)

*Bottled water companies do not have to release their water-testing results to the public, whereas municipalities do. (Natural Resources Defense Council)

Well, That was enough to convince me. I purchased a Nalgene bottle (I lost my previous one) and got it in the mail today. I’ve also taken the Refill Not Landfill pledge to not purchase or use bottled water for the next year (and hopefully never again). Will you join me????? (check out http://www.refillnotlandfill.org/ for more info and to buy yourself a bottle)

Finally, a plumber, hooray!

Well, we officially have a plumber, and he's coming next week to get us a new bathroom :-). This is very exciting since with a few changes in some of our schedules in the last few weeks, now four of us like to get up and take a shower around the same time (but ony two bathrooms for that!). This guy came highly recommended so I hope he's as good as I've heard. As long as he doesn't let my cat outside (to be missing for 3 days), I'm happy :-)

Coffee anyone?

There's another strange and CRAZY idea rolling around in the heads of Austin and Missy. I don't know if it's my deep drive to do things people think are crazy and them prove them wrong? Or my LOVE of projects? But, there's another project on the horizon, and I think it really just might happen. But, let's review the crazy decisions Austin and I have made: Buy a condo when you only make $28K combined a year? Are you crazy? Sell your condo when you don't have anything else lined up? are you crazy? Buy a house in scary Lawrence? are you crazy? Buy a 2 family, and convert it to 1 doing all the work yourselves? Are you crazy? Live in a house with 11 people? Are you crazy? Get rid of a paid off car cause you can get by on one? Are you crazy? etc... and all of these ones have worked out...so why shouldn't another one? hmm... well, I don't want to reveal too much cause I'm still working out my plan...but if you want to know what our crazy idea is, just ask, and maybe we'll let you know :-)...maybe if YOU're crazy enough you can be a part of it with us.

Adventures in Cleaning

Well, this is the second time for me to write this post. The first time I did it I clicked on Publish Post during teh 5 seconds my internet was down and so I lost it :-(. But, I'll try to remember everything I just wrote.

This morning I went cleaning crazy. My chore for the week is bathroom cleaning so that got me started. The catbox was overflowing again, EWWW! so it took me 30min just to clean that out (with 4 cats in the house our automatic box needs cleaned about about every other day).

Anyway, first I made some countertop kitchen cleaner. I had made one before with baking soda and water but it left white streaks, so I made a new one with 1 cup vinegar, 3 cups warm water, and a pinch of dish soap. It worked really well (see my clean countertop :-).

I then decided to try making dishwasher detergent (since it's cheap and easy and we do about 2 loads of dishes a day in this house). That one was 1 cup borax to 1 cup washing soda....and my dishes came out great!

Next I decided to try out the laundry detergent. This was a little more of a process, I used the following blog to help me out: http://heartkeepercommonroom.blogspot.com/2006/03/laundry-soap-our-recipe.html So, I made 2 batches. One as recommended above using borax, washing soda, and Fels Naptha soap (a laundry soap). But since the Fels Naptha had a scent and I wasn't really sure what was in it, I decided to try out the recipe using Dove Soap (sensitive skin). I'm not sure how that one will work out, but I'll let you know. With my front-loading washers we only need 1 Tbsp of solution per load, pretty cool!

Oh, and I also used my water and tsp of baby shampoo solution for mopping the bathroom. The tile came out looking great and I was able to use the water to pour over the plants afterwards (although it did rain shortly after so they didn't necessarily need it).

CUTIES!

What cute little men we have in our house!

Cleaning :-)

So, lately I've been on this kick to get rid of all the hazardous chemicals in my house. I read somewhere that there was a study showing that stay-at-home women had a 50% higher cancer rate than those who worked full time and the study attributed that fact to being around and using household cleaners all the time. So, I did some research to find out how to make a lot of my own stuff (after I read on our bottle taht said "kitchen cleaner" that it should not be used in food preparation areas!). I found there are recipes out there to easily make your own laundry detergent, kitchen cleaner, dishwasher detergent, floor cleaner. So, I had the chore of floor mopping this week and I tried one out. I went with a simple recipe: 1-2 tsps of Johnson's baby shampoo to 1 gallon of hot water.

Here is my finished floor, it came out great: shiny and clean and not sticky at all (like the lysol cleaner often leaves it)
For many of the recipes I needed some materials I didn't have on hand: washing soda, borax, and fels naptha bar (specifically for laundry detergent). Here's what I got, I'll let you know it goes when I make and use the laundry detergent.

AHHHHH Parking

So we have a problem with parking. Our house, and almost all the houses in my neighborhood were built around 1900 before many people had cars. Therefore, they do not have driveways and people have to park on the street. So, you know, that's not all that bad, it's not like we've ever had a garage anyway. BUT....the City of Lawrence has an ordinance (and henceforth street signs) stating the following:

Sign on the odd side of the street: No parking, even number days, 12:01AM to 6:00AM, MON-FRI, STREET SWEEPING.

Sign on the even side of the street: No parking, odd number days, 12:01AM to 6:00AM, MON-FRI, STREET SWEEPING.

Yes, very confusing. But the summary is that every night we must all park on only one side of the street, supposedly for street sweeping. Well, as you can imagine, we rarely have actually seen a street sweeper. We called the city to see when our street was being swept and these are the answers we got: "there is no schedule for street sweeping", "Thursday nights", Wednesdays", "there's a big white board with all the street names on it, and they sweepers work their way through the list until they are all done and then start over".

Hmm, interesting. Meanwhile, for those of us who live here, if we get home before 6pm we can usually find a spot on our street or the cross street on the correct side for that day and be ok. But, if we get home after 10, there is next to no spots left, and if you get home after 11:30, forget it. And, if you forget one time, or even if you remember at 1:30am and go move your car, there WILL be a ticket, EVERY TIME. So, pay up your $15 to the city. Or, if you park within 10 ft of a hydrant (which I've done), pay up your $100 to the city. Or, if you park within 20ft of the interesection (or even 22ft away as Spence and Steph did once), pay up your $20 to the city. Or, if you move to the opposite side as last night and forget tomorrow is the 1st but today is the 31st so you weren't supposed to switch, pay up your $20 to the city. And, this whole system continues in the winter for "snow removal" for every night of the week. But if it's 60 degrees out (like this past winter) and you're on the wrong side, obviously the plow couldn't get through, so pay up.

So, needless to say, we all are a little frustrated that we have to move EVERY night and our street is swept once during the week if we're lucky. So what to do? Well, we discussed this issue with our neighborcircle- a small little group of people that live within a few blocks. We were all frustrated so we did some research. We found out the problem was an ordinance written in the 70's. So we thought, well, let's change it. We did some more research and found out that most reasonable cities have a 4 to 8 hr block of time per week where cars can park only on one side and they sweep then...amazing! What logic! We wrote up a proposal to give to the city's ordinace committee to propose we make the same changes. We also got the signitures of 80 people on our street, and one street up supporting this change. We went to the ordinance commitee (which has 4 city counselors) and got put on the agenda. We got about 25 people to go to the first meeting and all of the counselors seemed supportive, they wanted some opinions from the department of public works and police so they agreed to discuss it in 1-2 meetings. We thought we were golden. We then talked to the police chief- he was supportive. We talked to the head of DPW- he was supportive, we talked to one of the city counselors- he was supportive. We tried to reach our district counselor, but she did not return our calls or emails. There was another meeting- many of us were busy that night so only 3 people could go. Then the winds changed. I wasn't there, but what I heard about it was that our distric counselor was not supportive and we couldn't really figure out why, another counselor said the trash on the streets was the residents faults cause we are sit around watching tv and we should go buy brooms and clean the streets ourselves (hmm, do I even have to talk about how rediculous that statment is?), the one counselor that had supported us crumbled under the pressure of those other two, and the 4th didn't say anything. Also, the DPW director also caved and then said maybe he wouldn't be able to clean the streets that way cause he doesnt have the man-power. So, the tabled the proposal.

We had another neighbor meeting to see where we should go from here. We feel we will get no-where with this city council- there are elections in Nov, so maybe we can vote some of them out since they obviously don't care about the residents. We also decided we needed to go back to the neighbors and let them know where things are and and try to get a larger group so we can be more effective. So, Wednesday night we went out in pairs and 3's and knocked on doors of people who had signed the petition to let them know where we are.

This was a terrifying experience for me. I am so uncomfortable in situations like this, but it actually went really well. I didn't have to do all that much talking since I went with 2 others that speak spanish much better than me, and everyone was very receptive. Several neighbors invited us in to sit and talk and were just very happy that we had stopped by. We got many people who said they'd like to get more involved and would go to city council meetings and other meetings about it. We were also able to invite people to a neighborhood cookout that is happening in 3 weeks so that was cool, we have planned to go out again in 2 weeks go knock on more doors to let people know about the cook-out and the parking and then have a table at the cook-out where we can talk about it more.

This is a new experience but I think it was really great. It's pretty fun trying to fight for something and to join with others in that fight. We feel like we're trying to start a little movement here and we know it is going to take longer than we thought, but I really think we can do it.

Here's the flyer we gave out

Party!

So, we've decided we need to have another party. We haven't had a real party here since the pie party (I was just reminded of this when going through some old pictures :-





Anyway...we were discussing what type of party to have: costume party, dessert party, appetizer party, murder mystery party....ect. We came up with an idea that we'd been thinking about for a while....

Charity Poker Party!

What, you may ask is a charity poker party? Well, everyone comes with some info on their favorite charity, we each share the info with each other, put like $10 in the pot, then have a poker tournament, and then whoever wins the tournament gives the money to their charity.

Sound like fun?

We're still working out a date, and will send out an e-vite when we get a date...but we hope we've sparked your interest :-)

Bathroom!

So our big project right now is the adding of a 2nd bathroom on the 2nd floor. For some reason 1 bathroom for 7 adults just wasn't enough...hmm...

I'll try to chronicle our progress via pictures...here it goes.... (I hate the picture adding process of blogger but i'll try to be patient)

So, our plan for the bathroom was to actually put the entire room inside an already existing bedroom and then put a door to the hallway. We started by austin cleaning up the area a little as seen here :-)...and by laying out boards on the floor for where the walls were to be.

OK, i guess I didn't take any pics of the walls up, but after we put them up, I patched and painted the side that was to be steph and spence's room and then for a while we had an empty bathroom with no opening (very creepy :-).

So the next task was to put a door into the room. Spence and Austin cut a hole in the door.

Theo helped by doing some hammering.

And another day Austin and Missy put the door frame in...

And here's what the inside looks like now:

The good news is that we finally got a plumber to run the water and drains (we could do it ourselves but we're trying to do things the correct way by getting someone liscenced). We are going to buy the tub, toilet, and sink this weekend, then the plumber will come in a few weeks to do all the work. Then we are going to tile around the tub (costs less $...but Kevin we may need your help!!!)

But this is our last major inside project so we'll be so happy to have it finished!

Frugality

So, I've been thinking a lot lately about frugality...something I haven't necessarly been good at but want to make a bigger effort to strive for. Maybe what got me thinking along these lines was that in living with a bunch of other people (and especially kids) leads to a lot of clutter and "stuff" (add up 5 households that were fully furnished before and what should you expect?). Well, i've found myself actually feeling anxious about it and wanting to at least reduce what I own and use to as little as possible. I did a huge weeding of my books and clothes and other items and am now trying to think much more before any kind of purchase of something that is not absolutely necessary that will take up space (since we do not have a lot of it). So, anyway, I've been reading some frugality blogs which is really fun (http://frugalupstate.blogspot.com/ is one of my favorites) and doing some reading, but mostly just thinking...so that's why I figured I'd blog.

I also have been thinking about my finances and why most people my age seem to be stuggling A LOT. I was trying to pin down the choices Austin and I have made that have helped a lot. First of all, I have started a bit frugal minded thanks to my parents (and my mom who asks for a small plastic cutting board for Christmas! and parents who go frequent garage sales, and wait, yes, did make me wear black snowpants from a thrift store as a child to my dismay). So, here are some things that have made all the difference....

1. Cars. Where to start...Austin and I have never had a car loan and don't intend to ever have one...and have decided to avoid ever buying a new car. How did we do this? (especially since austin loves cars???). Well, it involves a deal of searching. We very rarely have looked at dealerships because the cars always are overpriced and you could never sell one the next day for what you bought it for. Our first car together did come from a tiny dealership, but it was a decent price ($5K), a 1993 Honda Accord with $125,000 miles and did I love that car! In fact, it's still running now out in Seattle, being driven by a good friend of ours and I think it'll go to 250,000 miles, if we had not reduced to one car I would have driven it until it died. Ok, but I'm getting off track. Our next three cars were from private sellers and we made offers less than the bluebook value, and yes, they got totalled (another story there), but we have ALWAYS gotten more insurance money after driving the car for a year than we paid for it! We've looked in a search radius of about 2 hrs to find these deals, so it does take a little effort. And our current car (although it is a bit nicer than our other ones) was also a great deal ($3K) under the bluebook value :-). And from the insurance a bit extra we paid it in full when we got it. I can't understand why more people don't do this? But, you must be careful not to get too cheap of a car either...if it costs under 2K there is probably a reason, and you'll spend 3K a year fixing it. So, in our experience, buting a car with around 100K miles for about $5K works best: it will last you several years without significant repairs.

2. Student Loans. Well, we've just been mostly fortunate in this category because our parents paid most of our undergraduate costs (my parents made significant sacrifices to do this and I'm very grateful- once again, maybe that frugality paid a part :-). As for graduate school, I had to go for 3 years so I chose the cheapest way to do that- state school. I still ended up with a large chunk of loans, but about 1/3 the amount of many of my peers and we are making an effort to completely pay off the loans over 3% interest in the next year.

3. Apartment/Condo. Well, we can tell you horror stories about our trailer and cheap apartment in college, but assuming you don't want to go there we still made some choices that worked out excellently. We started looking for an apartment before I started grad school but found out we could not afford the $900-1000/month most of the one bedrooms costed in our area. So, we looked into buying a condo, and too our surprise, it was affordable. We were able to get a MASSHousing Loan at 5.1% interest and find a nice little 1bedroom condo near my school for $80K (it did take a lot of searching to find this price, a lot of commuting for austin). But with this condo we were able to pay only $700/month in total costs (including taxes and condo fee). And, we re-capped all that $ when we sold it- we highly recommend people buy affordable condo's if possible becuase in only owning it 2 years it was very worth it. Now we own a house, but again, we searched for a good mortgage (www.naca.com) and bought in a low priced area with low taxes.

4. Lunches. It may not seem like a big deal, but we have tried very hard to bring our own lunches to work/school. Austin of course is not hard to please with his 15 years of eating 2 balognia sandwiches with chips, and I change a lot, but it ranges from left-overs to soup to wraps. I've seen people spend a lot of money on lunches and not realize how much it adds up to. We do meet friends for breakfast 1x/wk, but we would rather spend money doing that then on a lunch.

5. Clothes. Well, we don't spend a lot of money on clothes, but maybe it's just because we don't care about them much. We wear our $1 thrift store t-shirts the most and I've discovered that if I don't love something when I try it on, it will just spend years in my closet. I NEED to be comfortable, so I just wear the clothes I love A LOT. I'm also trying to go more with basic items that won't go out of style. So if I don't feel great and look great, I don't buy it. And I'm picky so those items don't come around all that much :-).

Well, I've been writing way too long, but this is something I want to spend much discussion on. I want to pay off the rest of my student loans and need to be frugal and smart in order to do that. So, please share your great $ saving and space saving tips with me. I have some problem areas such as eating out: I LOVE it (and I love to meet friends for dinner)! Austin and I have found some ways to help, like we love to go to Boston Market and split the 1/2 chicken (comes out to $8.49 total!). We also spend a lot of lunches at Friendly's (but that's getting more expensive). I always get water, but can't convince austin to do that and sometimes get appetizers for the meal...any other suggestins?

Thanks for reading :-)

Family Time

So I had a really neat weekend (missy writing). I got to see my Aunt, Uncle, and cousins who I haven't seen in 8 years! I also got to hang out with my mom who came out from Whyoming so that was super cool. I of course didn't get my camara out as much as I should, but i was able to get a picture (although a bit fuzzy) of me and my 3 couz's, 2 of whom I got to meet for the first time...

and it's always nice to have a reason to just hang around and chat and go do fun stuff instead of put up drywall and what not :-)

Lawrence Pics

Hello all,

For about a week here last week we had quite a house-full of visitors. Steph's parents were here as well as some friends of Deb's (with two little ones!). We had lots of fun and lots of great meals, but now we are back to the quiet (and yes, it feels awefully quite compared to last week :-). So, anyway, steph's mom took some great pics of lawrence while out here and I thought I'd upload them for you all to see who haven't been here...or maybe have been here but haven't explored much..