Summer is cruising by and we have been keeping busy.
I read a great murder mystery book by an up and coming new author. Okay, the book was penned by my sister AND I got a copy for free, but I still enjoyed reading it.
Frugal Boy has finished up his summer reading program and now has a bag full of coupon goodies.
After many months of trying to hawk the Microsoft Surface tablet that we won in a cereal box sweepstakes we finally found a buyer and unloaded it for $325. Then the buyer had problems registering it and was upset so we found a happy resolution at $225. Whatever, we found $225 in a cereal box. Color me happy.
In less drama filled gadget news, Shae’s Fitbit wristband doodad gadget had started to peel and bubble around the display. She wrote in and asked if there was something that she could do to fix it and they just sent her a brand new one. When she asked if they wanted the old one back, they said no, just toss it. Guess who has a ‘new’ Fitbit. 😀
We had a pizza party and movie after Frugal Boy got his 100th potty training sticker.
We have also been playing with ‘blocks’ (Lego Duplos) a lot lately. I gave Frugal Boy all of the parts to build the fire engine and this is what he came up with on his own.
It has been hard to sleep at night because of the heat and humidity so people have been getting naps in wherever they can.
The babysitter was shocked to find out that we don’t have air conditioning. What I didn’t go into detail about was that we are saving up money for a downpayment on an investment property. If we end up pulling the trigger, I’ll do a more in-depth numbers post, but for now, here are a couple of the properties that we have taken a look at.
I picked up what should be the last load of lumber for rebuilding our front porch.
The 23 boards above are for the skirting that goes around the bottom of the porch. I stopped updating my porch rebuild spreadsheet, but based off where I left it and a general idea of how much I’ve spent since then, I figure this whole project will come out to around five grand.
I decided to get cutesy with the skirt design and stole inspiration from here. It wasn’t too hard to recreate.
The treated lumber that I picked up from Menards has been utter crap. They looked alright when I picked them from the stacks, but the high humidity has been causing all sorts of grief. Hopefully, they won’t completely twist, split, shrink, or crack when all is said and done.
Our garden has been outputting daily vegetables. Japanese beetles have done a number on our bean plants, but tomatoes and carrots have been doing well.
