Looking at the Sky on Friday - 42

I’m so glad there’s a meme like Looking at the Sky on Friday, because it means all the time I spend looking at the sky, and taking pictures of it, has a purpose! Click the badge for more info.

I didn’t get any pictures of the sky this week.  I’m not even sure why.  So I thought I’d go back a few weeks and share this sunrise.  I went into Cory’s room to pet Tillie, who was laying in one of her favorite spots on the end of his bed.  I thought I’d be nice to her and open the blind so she could look out.

I liked the way the sun made the lamp sort of glow.

If you enjoy skies as much as I do, be sure to check out Looking at the Sky on Friday.

2010 Homebuyer Tax Credits

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Coldwell Banker. All opinions are 100% mine.

Beth keeps talking about moving out, and now she's talking about buying a house, with her boyfriend Tim, which probably isn't the best idea in the world, but she wouldn't want to hear it.  You never know, maybe things will work out for them, and they'll get over the drama and live happily ever after.  If they are going to buy a house, now would be a good time.

The government extended the First-Time Homebuyer Credits into 2010.  Not only that, but they have added credits for Move-Up Homebuyers too.  That means first time buyers or buyers who have not owned a home in the last 3 years aren't the only ones who can benefit from the tax credits now.  Current homeowners who have lived in their primary residences for 5 consecutive years out of the last 8 qualify, too.

Some of the highlights of the 2010 Homebuyer Tax Credits are:

• Buyers must have a signed contract by April 30, 2010. (and close by June 30, 2010)
• Income limits are now $125,000 for singles, $225,000 for married couples.
• First-Time buyers can qualify for up to $8000 and current qualifying homeowners for up to $6500.
• The cost of the home purchased must be no more than $800,000.  (Seriously, anyone who can afford to buy a house that costs $800,000 or more doesn't really need a tax credit, does he?)
  

You can learn more about the 2010 Homebuyer Tax Credits by visiting the Coldwell Banker website and watching the video there.  I'm not always in complete agreement with all these tax credits the government keeps wanting to give out, but if what he said in the video about home sales adding jobs and putting money into the local economy is true, then this program has the potential of helping the economy more than some of the other ones seem to.

If you're thinking that now is a good time to buy a house, you can even start searching right on the site or contact an agent who will be happy to answer any questions. 

About that Cat Food

We’ve been feeding the cats from their own dishes for a few days now.  It really has helped us see how much each cat eats.  We were right – Teddy eats the most.  We measure 1/2 a daily serving into each dish in the morning, and Teddy always eats all of his.  Then, the rest of the day he does his best to convince someone to feed him more.  If Tillie or Weasley are eating, we have to keep an eye on Teddy, or he’ll push them away an help himself to their food.  He has a hard time understanding that he has to wait until mid-afternoon when it’s time for him to have more food – which he promptly eats.  All of it.

Tillie and Weasley don’t eat all the food we give them.  One day Weasley ate all his in the morning, but didn’t finish the food in the afternoon.  Both of them like to eat some, walk away, and come back later to eat some more.  That means I have to keep an eye on them so I can pick their food up when they walk away – or Teddy will eat it for them.  It might almost be fun just to measure food out and keep feeding that cat until he thinks he’s had enough – just to see how much he really would eat.  All I know is that, if we don’t limit him, he would eat a lot.

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It Could Have Been Worse

...or Beth could have just driven a car with a cracked bumper.  A trip to the body shop, and the bill comes to over $1500.  Honestly, I don't know how bad it really was because I didn't look at it, but if we didn't have insurance coverage, there is no way we could've afforded to fix the car, not without 100 or so eczema treatment reviews and cell phone reviews, and links to various and sundry things.  (and you thought today was bad!)  

That $100 deductible isn't sounding so bad after all...

If It's Not One Thing, It's...

In the last couple weeks it seems there have been all kinds of extra expenses:

• A trip to the vet for Weasley to get a check-up, shots, and fixed - approximately $300
• An oven that just stopped working - approximately $300 to get it fixed
• Beth hit a coyote and cracked the bumper on the car she drives - $100 deductible
• and yesterday Jeffrey's car got hit in the side by a big chunk of ice - another $100 deductible, I'm sure

Seriously, if it's not one thing, it's another.   At least you don't have to hear me talking about diet products or fat cell mass - but I'm sure that would end up costing us, too!

Clips from Kentucky

This is slightly late, but I just wanted to post a video Cory did here. He shot a bunch of stuff in Kentucky when we were there and then edited it together for his Tuesday (1/5/10) video on the 7awesomebookworms channel on YouTube. Only a couple weeks late, right?  But  I thought it was fun.



That watch is HUGE!

The boy does a pretty good job of editing videos and all kinds of other stuff on his computers. Yes, I said computers. He's got two in his room. His dad went searching for KVM switches and found him one so that he can run both computers with one monitor. He just switches between them depending on what he wants to do.

You're Outta Here!

After my last post, you probably expected your reader to be inundated with posts, and then nothing.  I was just trying to build some anticipation!  No, not really.  I got distracted going through some old mail and recycling tons of it.  I can't believe how quickly a small pile of junk mail can grow into a huge one.  I'm sure it's not human growth hormone, but there must be some kind of mail growth hormone.  Arrrggghh!

I try to do a much better job of taking care of the mail as it comes in nowadays, but some of this was from back in 2003.  It had been put away, I'm sure with the intention that we would take care of it later, but then we never pulled it back out.  When we got our tile done, we had to move everything out of the kitchen and dining room, and then when we got the carpet stretched afterward, we moved everything in the living room.  So, a lot of things got pulled off shelves and out of cabinets then - and I am very slowly and gradually working my way through all that stuff, tossing as much as possible.  Eventually all the extra stuff will be out of here, right?

How Many is Too Many?

Image by kcmckell via Flickr

I usually don't post more than a post or two a day - sometimes three.  And some days I don't post at all.  Partially it's because I don't have time to post any more than that.  While I'm busy working around the house doing laundry, ironing, vacuuming, cooking, etc., I'm composing all kinds of posts in my head.  If blogging was as easy as thinking, I'd have tons of posts every day - and you probably would only read a small fraction of them. 

That brings me to the other reason I don't post a whole bunch of posts every day.  I know for myself that I have a hard enough time keeping up with the blogs I want to read and the wonderful people I've met online, but when someone posts more than a post or two a day, I just feel overwhelmed.  I know I'll never have time to read them all, and many times I won't read any of them, preferring to skip over them in favor of reading that one post from a blogger I haven't heard from in a while.  So, I'm hoping that if I don't overwhelm your reader (or your facebook page) you'll be more likely to read what I have to say when I say it.  Then again, maybe not - maybe that's just how I work.

That being said, today I'm going to be posting several times.  I've got to mention things like dermitage reviews and diet aids - there's a whole list, and they're all supposed to be done today.  I spaced them out as well as I could, but there's only so much I can do.  I'll try to make the most of each post, hopefully actually posting some of the things I've been thinking about for a while now but never actually gotten around to posting.  Or maybe something completely new and random will pop into my head, and I might even include a picture of a waffle on somebody's stove just for the fun of it!  Who knows.  I hope you'll read at least some of them.

Note:  I am in no way saying that I keep up with and read all the blogs I want to, even the ones with just a post or two a day.  It would be nice if I could, but...

Make Your Own Natural Cleaner

I'm watching Dr. Oz, and he was pointing out how toxic a household cleaner is and how it has all kinds of ingredients you can't pronounce or don't know what they are like Stimerex ES.  It's a cleaner I have in my cabinet - not because I really wanted to buy it, but because my bathtubs have this nasty hard water build-up that just won't go away.  So I bought some Lime-Away and tried it.  It got rid of some of the hard water build-up, but not nearly all of it.  So, was it really worth the toxicity?  I guess not.  I did buy another cleaner that is supposed to remove hard water build-up, but I haven't tried it yet.  I'm thinking of trying this recipe I got on the Dr. Oz Show first.  If it works, I can take the 2nd cleaner back, and if it doesn't work, I'm really not out anything, because it uses things I have around the house anyway.

Here's the recipe:

Home-made Natural Cleaner

• Dissolve 1T Borax in 3T vinegar
• Add 2 cups water and 1T dish soap
• Shake well

You can also add some essential oil like peppermint oil to make it smell good and shake it up again.

I wonder if it will do anything to my hard water build-up?  I know vinegar is supposed to, but I can't get it to stay on long enough to do anything.  I just would prefer not to use a cleaner that can be really toxic.

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Tired, Tired, Tired

Jeffrey was supposed to have today off, but he didn't.  Instead he went to work, because there was so much work to do, and I think someone else was supposed to come and work with him on a project or something.  So, today was just a regular Monday for me - laundry and catching up from the weekend - not that we had anything special planned if Jeffrey was home.

Thinking back on the day and trying to remember exactly what I got accomplished today besides laundry and ironing, I'm having a hard time remembering anything specific.  But I must have done something, because I'm really tired.  Good thing it's almost bed time!  Jeffrey went and played basketball for a couple hours after dinner, the first time the guys have gotten together this year.  He's looking a little tired, too.  Even if we were in the habit of taking sleeping pills, which we're not, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be needing them tonight.  And I somehow think morning is going to come way to early.  Again.