I sat down to write this evening after putting Micah down to sleep, and right as I clicked the search button, my browser took a detour and landed on the page you never want to see. It was a screen from Comcast. There was a problem with our account. I thought to myself, “What in the world is it this time?”

When I called, I was prompted with a message that said our service had been disconnected due to nonpayment. Now, I know I can be forgetful sometimes, but I surely did not forget to pay our bill three months in a row.  I know I didn’t skip that bill on purpose, either. So I made the full payment on the phone and waited on the line to talk to a customer service representative. As it turns out, she wasn’t aware of any problems with our e-bill service, but said she would look into it. In the meantime, I set up good old fashioned paper billing and automatic drafts, just to be sure. After all, I make my living off the internet; we can’t have it getting shut off again.

After I got off the phone, I logged into MyCheckFree.com to see if I had really forgot to pay our bill for three months.

I knew I didn’t forget — the bill never came!!

I noticed that the account number was wrong and wondered if that had something to do with it. When I tried entering the one listed on the most recent paper bill we had on file (coincidentally the same account number I gave over the phone with no problems, despite the fact that our paper bill was 2 years old), I got an error message saying the account number didn’t fit the typical format or whatnot associated with the biller. Contact the biller, it said.

Ugh.

I was stupid when I set the keys down in the trunk while looking for Micah’s tennis shoes. I was not thinking when I shut the trunk. I was smacking myself in the forehead when I realized that my keys were in the trunk.

Kia was stupid when they made a car, the Rio, without a trunk release. Every time I need to get something out of the trunk, I have to take the key out of the ignition to go open it. Kia was not thinking when they did not include a fold down back seat in a car without a trunk release. I felt like slapping them in the forehead yesterday when I realized I had to completely disassemble my back seat to get the keys out of the trunk.

I unbolted and removed the bottom of the seat to gain access to the bolts for the seat back, which I unbolted and removed to crawl into the trunk and fish out my keys. Then Eric had to help me reassemble my back seat and reinstall the car seat for Micah. By the time I left, I was an hour late.

Sometimes, I really hate my car. I know it was my fault for locking the keys in the trunk, but really, Kia? You couldn’t just put in a trunk release lever right next to the hood lever? That would have made my life so much easier yesterday!

I made a “theater curtain” with about 15 yards of dark red fabric. It took hours and hours to make, but I love the result. After coupons and a fabric sale, it only cost me $46! The curtain serves as both a backdrop for our TV and a divider to separate the room and hide all our junk. The coffee table was a battered garage sale find we scored from my in-laws. A coat of high gloss black spray paint gave it a second chance at life and matched it with the rest of the furniture. The TV and sound system was brought down from upstairs.

The table is our old dining room table. It’s the perfect spot to play cards or a board game now. The chairs came with our “new” dining room table, but were too damaged to use. I fixed the frames with duck tape and spray painted them black to hide the flaws. I added foam to the cushions and reupholstered them with zebra print fabric. These are now my favorite chairs. Aren’t they sassy? We plan on putting up drywall behind the table when we get more funds.

The futon has always been in the basement, along with the bookshelf and arm chair. We added the carpet – it came with padding on the back and was only $0.57 per square foot at Menards. I painted the ceiling white to give it the appearance of a loft – it also helps to visually raise the ceiling. I bought the picture frames from Goodwill and painted them black to match. The photos are the ones I took in downtown Rockford.  (If you look at the one on the far left, that is a portrait I drew of Eric when we were engaged.)

This couch (hiding underneath a Freecycle couch cover) is the one Eric and I were sitting on the first time he said, “I love you.” I will never get rid of it, even if it is plaid.

The chandelier is also a Freecycle find. I really like the look it gives the room. You would never expect to find a chandelier in a basement, but it works!

So, who’s coming over to watch a movie with me?

And, just in case you forgot what it looked like before, here’s a “before” picture:

I got home last night and smirked at my messy kitchen. I raised an eyebrow at my cluttered living room. Then I shoved some of the mess aside and plopped down on the couch to get some work done. Once I finished my work, I sat in our new movie room with a bowl of ice cream. I didn’t clean a single thing and I didn’t care. (Eric didn’t care either, so it’s okay.)

(Did I say movie room? That was the big secret – we built a movie room in our basement! I am going to dedicate another post to that room, including pictures.)

This morning I woke up and realized that it was Monday. I know it’s Tuesday, but really, in this house it is Monday because I spent the whole morning cleaning up after the weekend and getting back on track. Micah’s napping now and I am enjoying a clean house. The only rooms that aren’t clean are my bedroom and the spare room. The bedroom isn’t really that bad – I just need to make the bed and shove the dirty clothes into the hamper. The spare room will require Eric’s help. We are going to move everything in that room to the newly opened space in the basement. Then we are going to set up the new bunk bed in the spare room. It will continue to function as my office and guest room. The only difference is it will not be my craft room anymore. That was not working because I hate packing up my craft supplies in the middle of a project. It seemed like I was always in the middle of a project when we’d have a guest, and a messy craft room is not a nice guest room.

Micah “mowed” the whole downstairs this morning. He also helped me sweep and unload some pans from the dishwasher. He is a good little helper, and he really loves his new mower. My dad bought him a little push mower at Toys R Us last night after dinner. Micah loves it. Let me reiterate that – Micah LOVES his new mower!!! He played with it all morning. In toddler time, that is like years.

And the picture above has nothing to do with anything, except that it’s really fun to put a toddler in an adult-size t-shirt and watch them run around the house in it. He looked like he was going to a toga party.

I guess that was just a long explanation for why I haven’t been updating too much on here. My web interaction has largely been limited to e-mail and Facebook (which is basically functioning as my second e-mail).

I have been taking lots of pictures. Here are two of my favorites from the past few weeks…

You’ll notice they feature the name of my new business! I have been working hard on my new website. I’ll be sure to link over once I have it the way I want. There is so much content to add and so much planning to do. I also need to acquire my DBA (business license) and write up contracts and other paper work. There is a lot of work to be done, but it is the fun kind of work.

His old job was here in Rockford, just 7 minutes from our house. His new job is more like 37 minutes from our house. Our church is in Roscoe, about30 minutes from our house. Eric’s parents live in Roscoe, also about 30 minutes from our house. My parents live just north of the border, about an hour from our house. In short, everything is north and (almost) nothing is in Rockford. I love my house, but I do not love that it is in Rockford anymore. I love that I live so close to my friend Lindsay (four houses away, to be exact), but I am tired of driving a half hour or more to everything else. Sometimes I feel like I am always in the car. I’m also sad that most of the time no one wants to come over because we live too far away. I love to host and I hardly ever get the chance.

I recently e-mailed my realtor and asked him what our prospects looked like for selling. He is just about the opposite of optimistic. I guess I can’t blame him considering the sales of houses in this area lately. But I also keep checking our home value on Zillow. Zillow says our home value continues to rise. It’s nowhere near where it should be yet, but it’s climbing fast. I am more of a glass-half full type person, and I look at these charts and say, “surely we’ll be able to sell next summer, right?”

We need it to get up to around 150K to walk away. We’ve seen it climb from 96K to 126K in the last couple months! That is why I’m really hoping it continues on that path. It would be so great to be able to live within minutes of Eric’s job and our church. It would be great for Micah to live closer to his grandparents as well.

Hey internet, do any of you want to buy an awesome 3 bedroom house in Rockford? It’s just 3 years old and very nice!!! It has 2 1/2 bathrooms, a vaulted ceiling and a fireplace in the great room, a huge kitchen and a 2 1/2 car garage. It is only 15 minutes from Rockford’s main strip (shopping),  just seconds from the bypass which will take you to the interstate. The neighborhood is surrounded by trees and horse farms. The school district is not Rockford, it’s Winnebago (little town, nice school). You will love it, I promise. I will sell it to you for only 152K! You will make my Roscoe dreams come true!

Eric and I are working on the basement again. This time we are transforming one half of the basement into… it’s a surprise! (If you know, don’t tell!) The project has required me to do a lot of shopping for supplies and details that will make this room a comfortable and fun place to…. well that would ruin the surprise, wouldn’t it?

On Saturday, my lovely husband hung out with the little dude the entire day! I was able to run into a store and back out without fiddling with a car seat or finding a cart that doesn’t have a broken seat belt. I was able to grocery shop without hiding the bananas because someone can’t wait until we get home. Nobody threw a tantrum while I mulled over carpet samples and bolts of fabric. I wore high heels with my jeans! I had so much fun. And when I got home, I covered Micah with kisses because his car seat looked so empty the whole ride home.

A few weeks ago I came up with a plan to landscape our yard for $0.

Behind our house is a giant pile of limestone rocks left over from when they dug out our lot. Our neighborhood is practically built on top of an abandoned rock quarry. I can’t imagine how they even dug our basement, because I can barely dig a six inch hole for a small plant. It really stinks for landscaping, planting trees, growing grass, etc. The upside is we have access to all these nice rocks that normally cost people a nice chunk of change. I decided they would make a great border for my garden.

Then I happened to drive by a free mulch yard on my way to Walmart a few weeks ago. (I took a different way in hopes of discovering a shortcut. It was definitely not a shortcut, but I did find the mulch place.) It’s self service – you can take as much as you want as long as you’re a homeowner and not a contractor.

The gears in my head were turning.

I really got excited when some friends of ours mentioned they were digging up two shrubs and wanted to know if we would like them. Um, yes!

The final piece of the puzzle was I was going to have Eric and his dad dig up a tree in the empty lot next to us (it just randomly started growing in the hole there last summer) and put it in our yard.

The only dumb part of my great landscaping plan was I picked the hottest day of the summer to execute it.

I think it hit 90. At least it was dry heat.

Things didn’t go exactly as planned. We weren’t able to get the shrubs because our friends had a family reunion today. We’re going to get them another time instead. Also, Eric and his dad were not able to dig up any trees. It seems all these little trees around us have miraculously grown into the rock and there is no way to get them out. I feel bad for the contractors if they decide to come back and build on that lot. What a mess. In the meantime, Eric’s dad said he’d take me and my sister-in-law, Christie, to pick out a few plants and a tree. He knew I really wanted a tree and was disappointed that my free tree plan had failed.

First we went to Menards. The whole way there I was sitting in the back of the van with Micah in some serious heat. The van’s A/C broke a while ago and so it was like a sauna. No, it was worse than a sauna. I thought I was going to die.

I think I need to carry a cup of water everywhere I go like Micah does. He was sucking that thing down until we got to Menards.

I should mention that the whole day, Micah wanted nothing to do with me because “Gaga” was around. Apparently Grandpa trumps mom now! I think it’s funny that Micah started calling his grandpa “Gaga” today. Gaga? Gaaa!

Menards had nothing but tall $50 trees. We hopped back in the oven and drove to Lowes.

Lowes only had evergreens. Luckily I do like evergreen trees. I picked one out that said the full grown height is around 40 feet. Oh yeah, I’m going to have a humongous Christmas tree in my front yard… in about ten years. I also snagged a cheap fern and a hosta.

On the way home we swung through the drive through at Sonic for happy hour. Slushies (and apple juice) all around! It’s the only reason I didn’t pass out.

We dropped slushies, Christie, and Micah back off at the house, grabbed a few shovels and headed to the mulch place. We put a tarp down and filled up the whole back of the van with mulch. It didn’t take long because one of the shovels was a giant snow shovel. When we brought the mulch back, I had to stop working because I was so hot that I became ill. It was not fun. Eric’s dad and sister hit the road after a bit and then I hit the couch. I waited until it was close to sunset, and then I went back out and finished.

Here is my cute little fern…

My hosta…

My sweet rock border & mulch… thank you, Christie, for helping me find rocks and carry them all the way to our front yard!

We left room for the two shrubs. The larger one will go in front of the hose and the smaller one will go directly in the middle in front of the window. I’m planning on adding flowers and some other plants in the spring. It’ s a little late for that now.

Here’s my cute little evergreen…

As you can see, by the time I finished and cleaned everything up, it was getting pretty dark. Eric was so nice to take care of our little buddy and put him to bed while I was outside working. Micah did hang out with me for a little while in his pack and play. He kept calling my name while I was digging. “mom mom mom mom mom…. ” What a goofy kid!

In the end, we only spent about $12 for everything. It’s not free, but it’s still pretty good. Once we get the shrubs in, it will look a lot fuller. Eventually it will be packed with plants.