Back on the blogging train!

June 9th.  JUNE 9th.  JUNE NINTH!!!!
That was the last time I blogged on here.  I'm pretty sure that I will never become a professional blogger with that kind of lapse in blogging.

Where did the summer go?  We didn't really do much in the way of vacationing or BBQing, so where in the world did it go??

We are about ready to start school around here.  I have spent months researching curriculum and changing my mind and then changing my mind again.  It reminds me of when I was pregnant and would spend months researching baby names only to have Hotsauce look at me like I was crazy or agree quickly to a name because he knew I was going to change my mind soon!  I had my mind made up a few months ago that we would be doing my "perfect" curriculum, only to realize that $1,500 curriculum doesn't fall under "gazelle intensity" when it comes to paying off that snowball!

Last year I changed curriculum to go to a much cheaper one.  I was all for buying it as cheap as possible.  Besides, how different could it really be?

Ugh.  While last year's curriculum was academically great... perhaps even way above par... it was boring.  I mean, stick a fork in my eye this is soooo boring!!

So while I can't justify paying $1,500 for curriculum this year, I also can't put the turkeys through another year of boredom.  We decided that after 5 years of doing this homeschool thing that I can pick and choose from several different publishers and find what I need (aka want) at a price that will not jeopardize our debt snowball momentum. 

I was also given a first time amount for curriculum... In that I got a set amount to buy what I needed to get started for the year.  We also made a budget plan for items that I would buy later on in the year to supplement with other books, manipulatives, and this and thats!  After getting some great deals on Ebay and other sources I came in under my start up budget!  :)  Woo-hoo!  Who loves me now Dave Ramsey??

In other news...

The other day a neighbor of ours who attended FPU with us came over and asked us if she could do her happy dance!!!  Who are we to say no?  If the lady wants to happy dance it up in our kitchen then so be it!!!  After dancing she shared with us that her and the hubby had paid off $10,000 in debt in 6 months!! 
We joined in the happy dance with her!  This stuff works!!  And it's worth celebrating!! 

We've also been approved by the elders to lead a FPU class this fall.  We're just waiting for the money portion to be approved and then we'll be on our way!  I can't wait to encourage others on their Total Money Makeover journey ... to give them the tools that they need to succeed financially... so that they too can come over and happy dance it up in our kitchen!!

I once blogged...now I'm lost?

The worse part about blogging about our journey is that all of the "good" blogging things happen when I'm at my busiest.  By the time that I'm ready to blog I forget all everything that I was going to write about.

So I guess we're all going to have to deal.

Since moving Turkey Bottom Haven into our garage... it's now set up as our shop... we have definitely seen an increase in business.  Perhaps it's because people now have an opportunity to come out and "touch" the items they'd like to buy or because we've finally determined that if this is what we'd like to do then we need to get on it!

And that we have.

Traffic on Turkey Bottom Haven increases when we add new pictures of new product.  It holds true that foot traffic also increases when we are consistently adding new products in the shop.  The thing about adding new items in Turkey Bottom Haven is that we have to have money to buy items... makes sense doesn't it?  Fortunately our in house budget nerd has a great business plan and budget that is helping us put money into the business and into our debt snowball all at the same time. 

We recently met a man, Jim, at an auction.  We ended up buying 6 sets of lockers at the auction and he asked if we would be interested in more.  That night he gave us some.  Isn't God faithful?  We weren't planning on going to the auction and here we not only walked out with lockers, but we also began a friendship with Jim. 

One of my favorite things that Jim has said to Hotsauce went something like this:
Hotsauce: So why are you getting rid of so much of your stuff?
Jim: My kids want me to get rid of it before they have to deal with it themselves.  Besides, you and your wife are believers.  I can trust you.  I've never trusted anyone else to go through it.

It has always been our desire that we would conduct our business in such a way that we would glorify God.  The super exciting thing is that we never told him that we were believers.  Ben just listened to his story and offered to pray for him when he shared some of his hurts and concerns.  So while this new friendship has been a great benefit to us all financially, it is our hope that it will benefit the kingdom of God even more.

In other news, do you remember me talking about S.O.S... aka Sister Of Sorts?  She moved in with us last fall-ish?  Well, she's decided to take a summer position at a Bible camp that she's been serving at for many years.  In addition she's decided that when the summer is over she will be ready to move back into an apartment. 

While we all agree that the decision really is best for us all (it's hard living with friends) it has caused a little bit of a panic for me.  The loss of income "hurts" the budget.  Hotsauce, the eternal optimist, is not worried about it.  On the other hand, I am the eternal pessimist, and believe that the budget sky will fall on me.  The good news is that I'm already matching, if not exceeding, what we were making in S.O.S rent money at Turkey Bottom Haven.  The bad news was that we were getting used to having both extra incomes. 

God has not yet failed to meet our needs. 
How quickly I am to forget the goodness and faithfulness of God.

Speaking of the faithfulness of God.  Towards the end of May I started praying that God would increase the number of likes on our Turkey Bottom Haven page.  I specifically asked that by the end of June that we would have 600 likes on our page and that by the end of the summer we would have 1,000 likes.  Well, here it is June 9th and we have 643 likes!  How exciting is that??

Like I said earlier the more traffic we have on the page the more sales we do... and sales help us pay off a little more debt every month.  And every month we come a little closer to the day that we can finally adopt.

Oh, how I long for that day. 
How far away it seems... how very, very, very far away it seems. 

Hmmm, maybe this is another time when the faithfulness of God comes into play!?!?

Blow fund: yes. Diabetes: no.

We have been budgeting every penny for 9 months now.  And it is paying off big time for us!
By the end of this month we will have paid down $30,000 in debt... plus paid all of our bills (on time), fed our family of seven, saved for Christmas, saved for an emergency, and had a little fun along the way.

By the way, we live in an essentially one-income home, with two people who are willing to get any side job possible to help get to our goal a little sooner.  There are some weeks that we look at each other and say, "Hey there, who are you and what are you doing in my home?"  ;) Hotsauce is especially busy and seems to take his work uniform off just to put on his work boots and grubby clothes to go work on a remodel job.

And though we don't get quite as much time together as either of wish, we realize that this is the situation that we got ourselves into and it's our responsibility to get ourselves out.  Personal responsibility is incredibly important to us and we have found great joy in the process of paying off that which we owe others.

With that being said, one thing that I believe both Hotsauce and I would say, is that having a "blow fund" or "pocket money" is so incredibly important to both of us.  With every penny budgeted and no real "wiggle" room in the budget we need a little bit of money that is our very own to spend (or not spend) as we wish. 

We get paid our blow fund every two weeks.  It is a glorious day!  Hotsauce will spend his blow money quickly.  Typically on these gigantic cups of fountain pop from the gas station.  Or to bring his favorite wife a candy bar when she's had a rough day raising "his" kids! ;)  On the other hand I tend to save my blow money.  I use it to buy "bigger" items that the regular budget doesn't allow for ... typically for me this would be clothing (above the budgeted amount) or something old, rusty or with chipped paint!

The rules with our blow funds are pretty simple.  I get mine. He gets his. He doesn't get to tell me what to do (or not do) with mine. And, more importantly, he doesn't have to listen to me when I tell him what to do (or not do) with his... even if he's on the fast track to diabetes.  :P

I actually feel "richer" than I ever have before.  I have my own guilt-free money.  I know a lot of moms who would love to have this.  I must admit that in the beginning I had a really hard time using it on me, or at least only on me.  I would buy pizza for the whole family or a snack for the kids and I when we were out running around.  I have since changed my ways a little bit.  Those were old habits. Going out to eat because I was too tired (aka lazy) to cook or buying a bunch of junk food at a gas station because I wanted a candy bar (I love candy) and had to appease the turkeys by getting them something too.  Now I am seeing the benefits of saving my money for something that I really, really, really want.  That's not to say that I've stopped buying candy all together...

If you've started budgeting and haven't allowed yourself a little pocket money you may be doing yourself more harm than good.  Having a little space to treat yourself to something that you want will actually keep you on track and help you avoid discouragement.  So go ahead, give yourself a little treat.  Make sure that you're being reasonable in that amount too! 

So how much should you give yourself?  That's really up to you and your spouse (if you're married).  We each get $25 for a two week period.  In addition to that we give ourselves 10% each of any extra income that comes in... though we are considering dropping that to 5%.  It does make it a little easier for me when Hotsauce is working a second job, knowing that our time away will net us a little fun later on.  Though I'd much rather have the time with him!  Also anything that I make at Turkey Bottom Haven will give us each a little boost in our pocket money as well as helping to pay off debt.  It's a great motivation for those days when I'd rather just take a nap... or eat candy. ;) 

All this talk of candy.  Maybe Hotsauce isn't the only one on the fast track to diabetes.

Loving life.

The last few months have been a bit of a roller coaster for our online business, Turkey Bottom Haven, and on a few occasions I honestly wondered if this was the end of the line!

Turkey Bottom Haven is what we're calling our hobby business.  We are slowly trying to build it up into a business that we can run full-time.  But, we are not willing to go into debt to try to hurry the process along.  After all, the sole purpose of having an online business is to help us get out of debt!!

 As I've mentioned many times before my friend, Emily, was letting us sell items in her shop The Pickin' Shed... which was fabulous!  The advantage of a brick and mortar store was huge for us!  Lots of people love to touch an item before they purchase it and obviously an online shop cannot provide that benefit.  Early in the month we made a difficult decision and removed our remaining items out of The Pickin' Shed.  We made this decision based on a lot of different factors, but the biggest was that we wanted to go out on our own. 

It was time to establish our own identity. 

I was beginning to get lazy and thinking that as long as The Pickin' Shed was doing well that Turkey Bottom Haven would do just fine.   That's a great way to kill your business (and possibly your friendship). 

We are very grateful to Emily for her friendship and her desire to help us grow.  Very few people in this world desire to see others succeed, especially if they're in the same line of work.  Emily Smock is a quality gal and we kinda like her! :)

I've wanted my own shop for quite some time now... but I knew that we are in no place to pay rent and utilities and in general be strapped down with overhead costs.  But, I am also not comfortable having people come into our house to shop.  I love Turkey Bottom Haven, but my first job is protecting my babies and having strangers roam our house is potentially dangerous.

So Hotsauce came up with a plan.  He started clearing out one side of our garage and we turned it into a "shop" of sorts.  My business will remain an online shop while the garage stores our inventory.  But instead of having everything shoved into the space like a storage unit we decided, "Why not make it look like a small shop?"

And so we started filling the garage up and I kept thinking "I'm so glad this stuff is out of my house!" 

But, as soon as I thought that, I would think, "You know, I really like that shelf/cabinet/rug/quilt etc., maybe it should go back into the house!"

There are also a few items out there that will eventually need to be pulled out so that we can do some work on them.  For instance in the picture below here a bit there's a wonderful pie safe that needs a drawer repaired (and we are fortunate enough to have all the original pieces!)

So we find ourselves in a bit of a transitional time, but we are also finding ourselves in a season of God's blessings. 

This past Saturday we went to a building supplies auction and found 8 sets of lockers that we wanted... of course we had to wait several hours before bidding began on them.  While we were there a man recognized Hotsauce and started up a conversation with him.  When he found out that we were there for the lockers he told us that he had three lockers that we might be interested in.  They're pictured above.

He also told us that he had two semi-trailers full of items that we might be interested in and that we could go out the next day and take a look at them.

Holy.Moly.  He has a LOT of stuff!  Apparently his children don't want to have to deal with it when he's gone and that it would be a help to us both if we went through and got want we could use.  All he asked was for a fair price and we could take just about anything we wanted (with the exception of a few family heirlooms).

We only had an hour to go through his semi-trailers, but we made good use of that time and were able to find enough items to fill up one trailer load and the back of our Suburban.

We will be back though as there are many treasures that we had to leave behind on that first trip!  And once we're really able to start digging who knows what we will find!

I love this "job".  I love that it's helping us become debt free, but even more than that I love that Hotsauce and I are doing it together and both truly enjoy it!

God is so good to us!

By the way, if you ever make it up to our neck of the woods, please stop in and see all our goodies! :)

Locker Wars

There are some growing pains going on at Turkey Bottom Haven.

And some times I just want to throw my hands up in the air and just quit.

Returning home from our vacation means that we are forced to get back to business.  Something that we haven't spent a lot of time on recently.  Hotsauce has been very busy with remodel jobs and just doesn't have the time or the energy to head into the basement to work on the millions five projects that I have in mind for him.  Because he can't get to the projects that I want him to do, I'm kind of stuck. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

I also haven't showed a lot of motivation to work on something else that doesn't require his help.  But, if I mentioned that it would be self-incriminating right? ;)

We recently purchased a set of lockers that has had a lot of interest from potential buyers.  This is normally a really great thing.  In my experience there are always people who express interest in something, but in the end something comes up and they never show up.  It is very frustrating from my point of view because I'm counting on that income.  It is also very likely that once interest is expressed from a potential buyer that I'm telling other people that it is "sold pending pickup." This squelches their excitement for an item and since they don't think they have a chance to buy it they move onto to another item.  When the original person doesn't show I have now lost two potential buyers and am left "holding the bag"...

The lockers in question! :)

Since the interest was so high in the lockers I began telling everyone who contacted me about them the same thing.  I made it known that they would be sold on a "first come, first served basis" and that they would not be put on hold for anyone.  In my opinion it's the only fair where to operate a business.  I even had close friends ask about the lockers and decided that "favoritism" is also a bad business practice that I would not get involved in.

They sold this morning.  Which I should rejoice in, right?  Well, after announcing that they were sold I had one lady that was obviously upset.  I had one set of lockers remaining and offered those to her at a discount.  Her response was that I was unprofessional and that she wouldn't be doing business with me again. :(

Ugh.

I had a feeling this was going to happen. 

My response was that I was sorry she felt that way.  I offered to look for additional lockers for her or that we would even be willing make a wooden storage unit for her at a discounted price.  I'm not sure what else I could do. 

So I will worry the rest of the day if there was a better way of handling it... because if there was I would love to do it better.  If this is just a part of the business I will worry the rest of the day if I'm cut out for it.  Because I honestly don't like hurting other people's feelings or having others think poorly of me.

I would also love it if the rest of you would weigh-in on this... how would you handle things?  Is it best to let people call dibs?  Is a first come, first served basis only a work in a "brick and mortar" store.  What should my response be to those who's feelings get hurt in the process?  I would seriously love to hear your opinions. 

Freeloaders

We just got back from an all-expense paid trip to Denver, Colorado.
Did you hear that Dave Ramsey?... an all-expense paid trip. 

Boo-yah.

Well, actually I like to think of it as a work trip... as in, we were paid to do several construction jobs for Hotsauce's sister and her roommate, Katie.
Did you hear that Bob?... I said her roommate, Katie.

And it's only fair that from this point on when I say "we did several construction jobs" you should interpret that as "Hotsauce made some counter tops and did a few odd jobs while I played Candy Crush on my new phone."

Hotsauce beginning to take out the old counter tops.

The sink came out...

I know what you're thinking... that's the largest pan of brownies I have ever seen.  Not, to disappoint you, but those are actually the counter tops drying.

The house slave was called in to assist in a lot of cleaning projects along the way.  Look how happy she is!! :)

It took some doing, but they finally went in!!  Our work here is done... excited to see what it looks like once they get the new back splash in!!

And now you know why I call him, "Hotsauce!"

 So all work and no play makes for a very dull vacation.  So between those pictures there was a little bit of fun... and a whole ton of eating out!!

I.love.eating.out.
No, wait... I.totally.lurvesauce.eating.out.

And more than that, I love eating out when Jes and Katie pay. ;)

The highlight of the week was going to our very first roller derby bout.  Jes "BobLoblaw" is a blocker for the Rocky Mountain Rollergirls.  And she's amazing.  I'm pretty much an expert at derby now, so if you have any questions you can ask me. Errrr, not so much.

It only makes sense that Bob has a better mustache than Hotsauce.  I'm also pretty sure that her legs are hairy too.

No jammer has a chance against the brick wall that is BobLoblaw.

 Of course the Rollergirls not just won the bout, they destroyed their opponent.  I would tell you who it was that they played... but other than that they were from Minnesota, I don't know what the name of their team is.

Did I mention that the RMRG won by more than a hundred points?  Well, they did.

I must say that all in all, this was by far the best all-expense paid trip that I have ever been on!  Even if it wasn't an all-expense paid trip it would have been an incredible trip.  I love Jes and Katie.  I love how much the four of us laugh when we're together and that we can have passionate disagreements discussions about potentially explosive topics and still think the others are pretty fabulous people.  

Plus, now I know what a Domo is and can start writing my book...

There's a new game in town.

Bean and Lou, our daughters, have made up a new card game.  It's a game with rules all their own ... you know, the kind where you can change the rules at any time so long as the other player agrees.

And if you're the oldest player, it's possible to change the rules at any time, whether the younger sister objects or not.  ;)

Though they've tried to explain the game in detail to me, the point of it still escapes me.   I'm not even sure if it's a game that you can win or lose.  But, they love this game and have even taught a neighbor girl how to play.

So, why blog about it here?

Because one object of the game is to not go into debt.  They make piles on top of a row of cards and these piles are your "debt".  How one goes into debt or gets out of debt makes no sense to me... but I love that the object is to not go into debt!

So what did they name their game?

You probably already guessed it, but they call it, "Dave Ramsey"!

Oh, how I love them!