just how life is

if we don't have all the luck i don't know who does (ha ha) Jared was let go again from his job in salt lake on Wednesday, i was okay until i found out that his brother had fixed our truck for $700 that same day and then i was very not okay. I probably would have still freaked out even if he did have a job and it cost that much. Still on February 9th he will start training for a job that he has been studying and testing for, so that will be good its just that it is like 3 weeks away. He just got home from an interview i guess it was straight commission and not worth the try but his brother called and said that the place he works had someone quit and they need someone to do grunt work so that is even better news. We might be able to fill in the gaps! I'm going to hand out cards at union station tomorrow for some guy and make $100 for 6 hrs work so that's not too shabby either. (wow that sounds like it could be sketchy huh? i promise its not). We'll make it, i hope you guys have better luck than us.

the Attic

this is a picture of the ceiling the gray things are vents

I know you are all dieing to see pictures of my dusty messy attic so i decided today would be the best time to post them. Anyway yesterday was my first time venturing into the great unknown which is my attic, and if you know me you know i love a project. I've thought about how i would build stairs to access the attic for over a year and i have had most of it planned out before i even saw it. When i saw it yesterday i was way excited to see that it has plenty of standing room and lots of potential. It would make a great third bedroom or just a perfect bonus room for entertainment. The steps that we would have to take goes as follows..
1. have someone who knows what they are doing take a look at it and see if it can be done / make lots of money or budget a way to complete project pieces at a time
2. build stairs leading up to the attic so all of the tools and materials can easily be brought up.
3. clean up all of the mess in the attic/ design and blueprint the desired layout of space
4. lay 3/4 inch plywood flooring over whole space
5. build frame for both drywall and to support roof and remove beams that cut into the whole room
6. Have electrician wire for plugs and lighting and baseboard heater
7. insulate walls and ceiling
8. reinstall a new window
9. drywall / mud and tape / sand
10. build shelving/ window seat
11. carpet/ paint/ install fan
12. decorate and enjoy :)


view of the southwest corner and our crappy insulation

entrance into the space above our kitchen

the front of the house where there once was a very large window the old window is off leaning to the side

Jeans

This is pretty much gonna be a bragging post but informative... I went shopping with my mom and sister and we went to down east outfitters and i got 2 jean pant and one Capri all for about a 1.50 each totaling $4.81. I was in desperate need of jeans cuz most the ones i have that fit have holes in them the rest that don't have holes are too big a round on me so i was super thrilled to stock up. the last time i was there i got 3 pairs of pants for $8 but right now they are having a 50% off their Clearance so all my pants were originally 2.99 still a screaming deal. So if you are a patient shopper you can definitely find something worth not passing up there. oh ya and the really cool part is that one was once $89 and another was $79 the other didn't have the original tag but they are hot.

Personal Finance Class

Tonight our ward had a personal finance class and I learned some things that I should have done a long time ago. So if your like me and just didn't bother to think about it I'll help you do some stuff that is ridiculously obvious. First off I have never checked the temperature of our water heater, the guy who taught the class said that he puts his water heater on low and that gives him just enough warm water to do the little things he needs to do with it. Well tonight I went down and checked mine and it was on the highest setting possible I have no idea why it would be; but were kinda dumb and like to pay lots of money for years and years on heating water to the highest level especially when were sleeping and nobodies using it. So naturally I changed that and it made me feel better about life. CHECK YOURS! Another thing I did for the first time in our two and a half years of living here was change our furnaces air filter. When I went to walmart i found out that we were probably using the crappiest filter allowed in a furnace. So now i have a new efficient air filter without moths and years of dust stuck in it. If you cant figure out how to change it or where its located (it took us three tries to find where it was even was) call me and I can help you out. Next thing I learned about was the use of a periodical expense fund, kinda like a savings account but just for known expenses ie Christmas, car registration/ safety and emissions, vacations. What you do is add up what they all end up being (a close estimate will do) divide it by 12 and put that dollar amount into an account every month and suddenly you have those damn random but predictable things taken care of, the cool thing is its only like in the low one hundreds a month depending of course on how expensive you are but it sure beats coming up with that cash periodically. They also talked about savings being mostly a special "me" fund its for all the crap you see and you want but shouldn't go into debt for. Then there is the "rainy day" or emergency fund, this one I've had forever and things have to get pretty darn near impossible for me to break into it; but that's because I only had it and savings not the Periodical Expense fund and if I were to make it part of my budget it would grow to be a lot healthier than it currently is. He also suggested to put this emergency fund in a flexible CD which i didn't know that existed so I most certainly will check it out and move it out of my plain old boring savings account. The rest of the stuff taught wasn't new but I'm glad that i did learn something that will eventually ease up our pocket book, hopefully something i typed is new and might help you too.

ode to the old ladies who tell me how to live

I had the opportunity to chat with a "delightful" old lady not too long ago and she informed me that we must have someone to shovel our driveway (mind you its gravel and not too easy to shovel), My decorations above my kitchen cabinets will kill me in an earthquake, my daughter is tired and needs a nap and the salon is too cold and it will be the death of her if she has wet hair in it. She is one of Melissas clients that is right now getting a perm. The heater was turned on the minute I walked in the salon so it would warm up, I know it takes a little time but she surely wouldn't die. So I invited her in my home while we waited for Melissa to get here and while inside she let me know what a hazard my glass objects above my cabinets are if an earthquake hits Ogden. My thoughts are if there is an earthquake close by my home it will brake the Pineview dam and my house will no longer be on its foundation; as for the glass things it would probably be better for me to die by getting hit by them than killed by drowning in the icy cold, debris filled water from Pineview. Yes my daughter is tired, she has a hard time sleeping, she cried in her crib for an hour and I got her out and decided to put her down later, no a dolly or stuffed animal will not get her to sleep. As for the driveway, two days in a row I was able to shovel half of it, yes your car will get out of the driveway it isn't parked in a snowdrift just in tire tracks from our car that easily got out of the same place yesterday. When I get old I just don't plan on being so breakable. I know I should care more, but when it comes to buying some bags of rock salt or bare necessity foods I'm gonna go with food that's just been our situation lately. Although tonight i probably will go pick up a bag and salt down some of the slick parts even though it will snow tomorrow. Man I feel better!

Christmas day pics and an anniversary

We had left jareds camera at his parents home on christmas eve so in the morning we used a 1.3 mega pixel camera that could only take 12 pictures at a time for the event, I'm just happy some of them turned out and with alittle tweeking i was able to lighten them up cuz they were very dark.

Yesterday was mine and jareds 3 year Anniversary. We celebrated by going to church :). I made a nice dinner and we tried to keep warm in our cold house :) Today Jared is back at Fat Pipe down in Salt Lake. Its delightful to have the house to me and makayla for most of the day and to have him off making money. We'll see how everything turns out, he isn't getting paid what was before and we are still looking into him getting another part time job but for now this will suffice. We played games with friends on New Years, its been so long since we've hung out with anyone it was pleasent to be with fun company. I've heard that the first three years of marriage are the hardest so this last part of the third has been a *itch, its all been things out of our control not problems in the marriage, if anything the hard times help you grow closer and become more greatful for what you got or had. When drinking hawiian punch in your home is a luxury you know times are tuff :) . its sad to say but i'm so happy the holidays are over i think i would cry if i had to go through another one anytime soon. So thats the update!