Trying to make ends meet...

For those of you who are Stay-at-home moms, you know that trying to make ends meet is a little rough at times. Mr. M and I would like to be able to pay off our truck so we can in turn have the income needed to build a house in the not so far off future (1100 sq ft house can only hold so many people). Since I am not bringing in an income, we are trying to figure out ways I can make some money to make ends meet, have the occasional date night, and pay for gifts throughout the year.

Because of this, I have been pursuing my side job of Melissa's Custom Sewing even more. I have also been looking into how to make money blogging. You may find a few more ads here and there. I hope they won't become annoying as that is not my intention. I have also joined Blogvertise. This company pays your via PayPal to write about certain advertisers or have guest posts about advertisers. Lets just be honest here. I can occasionally post an ad post and make $10+. Considering I have 12 people to buy for on each side of my family (24+people) for Christmas and Birthdays, that money ads up.

What I am trying to say is that I hope you will understand my occasional "ads" and that sort of thing. If you are in the same boat I am, which some of you are, you should check it out for yourself! Thanks for the understanding!

Our First Home Part 2

If you missed Part 1, go here for that post. I left you with a sneak peek of the bathroom. I should warn you that I do not claim to be an interior decorator. I am not one to spend much money on decorating. We have always intended to sell this house at some point so I was going for pretty neutral for the wall color, fixtures, and such. Now that we have covered that....

 We ditched any piece of the green!

I love my red shower curtain! My sister bought it for me for Christmas one year and I still love it. It was from Target and it has a quilted look to it. 

Thankfully we were able to relocate the sink which gave us a lot more room!

What used to be a linen closet turned into a large vanity area. The only downfall is that I have to close the door to get into the cabinets on the left of the sink. You are only able to see 2/3 of the vanity in the finished picture. There are matching cubbies on the other side of the mirror. My husband and father in law built the vanity to fit our space as well as the cubbies. I found the baskets (at Wal-Mart) and had the boys men custom fit the shelves. A little secret... I had them turn the bottom right "door" into a drawer. Now I keep my towels in there. You could also use it as a laundry hamper. This was actually my father-in-law's idea!

I was not to interested in having a separated tub/shower surround but since it was a remodel versus new construction, we had to find something that would fit through our house. I didn't want to deal with replacing silicone all the time so this was the best option.

On the decorations, I needed a place to display my Willow Tree collection and they ended up in the bathroom. They are all gifts from special occasions. I made the heart wreath that you can find a tutorial for here. It lives in my bathroom until Valentines Day comes around and then it goes on my front door. I only paid $5 for the clock on clearance at a Kirkland's in Branson, MO.

Come back tomorrow to see what the exterior of our house looks like today! Did you forget what it looked like to start with? Let me remind you- 

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Our First Home Part 1

I decided it would be fun to reminisce about our transformation of our house. We bought our house in 2006. We had been married for 2 years at the time and were renting until this house came up for sale. I have to give God some serious credit on our house and one acre because the price we paid can only be considered miraculous.

Now when you see our house when we bought it you will think we are crazy. To an extent we are. 

However, we have a very handy family. My father-in-law built their home and he is also an engineer that does house plans on the side. As you know if you have been around here long, Mr. Magnificent (Eric) can do anything he sets his mind to. Plus we have a great brother and brother-in-law who are always around to help. Then we have the women for the cleaning, decorating, and of course feeding the hard working men. HaHa.

When we bought the house, there were some things I put my foot down about that had to be done before we moved in. It has been a work in progress ever since. It has been a blast to remodel our house. We have two rooms left but little Jorja has put a halt on our remodeling for a while. Which is fine since we would rather play than deal with sheet rock dust any day!

Are you ready to see some pictures???

The front of the house. 

The kitchen- the refrigerator is behind the door on the right. 

Standing in the kitchen looking at the pantry and what is now my sewing and laundry room.  Yes, those are windows on the interior of my house. I can't wait to show you how I fixed the windows when we remodeled the kitchen!

The living room. Notice the avocado green carpet!! This was the theme color for the house!

What is now Jorja's room. 

 The bathroom. The tile was PLASTIC!! Even the ceiling was green!!

If you are guessing what had to be done before we moved in.....yes the bathroom was the number 1 priority. 

I'll leave you with a sneak peek of Tuesday's post....

Don't forget to come back to see what we did with the bathroom after we gutted it!

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