She came out of the hospital on March 1, 2022. It was a long road, but we made it and we thank God for her everyday. Her recovery has been a long one, but if there is one thing I know about her is that she is determined.
What did I learn? Don’t take those you love for granted. Every day is a gift from God and we should live our lives without regrets. Hug your loved ones. Don’t end a conversation with anger or frustration. Every time I am able to say, “Hey Siri… Call Mom” I thank God for being able to do so.
So, what’s new?
I’m currently sitting here waiting for jt to finish recording a video for one of his tutorials so that I can begin to edit. We started a website where we will host some of his classes and hopefully be able to at least pay for the new laptop we bought.
I also started an Etsy shop. Anvil and Pier – Handmade Goods. I currently have wreaths in there. Haven’t made one sale – but the Etsy shop is there. I’m trying to figure out if I want to keep going, maybe find a niche with the wreaths. But we’ll see. I don’t want to give up on it. I truly enjoy making wreaths and I would love to be able to make some extra income with it.
The main thing that we are working toward though… Buying our first short term rental. There. I said it. So now it has to come true, right?
Really though, we are truly passionate about this new journey. So we will begin to document that here. We are in the saving money phase. Not quite there yet to buy our first one, but it doesn’t stop us from dreaming. And with us documenting our journey, we will try to be as transparent as possible.
The facts:
We both work full time W-2 jobs
We are approximately 10k in credit card debt
We have a 20k car loan
If we were completely debt free, one of our incomes could be fully discretionary
We spend way too much money on food/groceries
We like Disney too much and find any and every excuse in the book to go to the parks
It’s been 52 days since my mom was admitted to the hospital. It’s been a rough few weeks for sure.
On day 50, I was able to take her flowers for the first time since she was admitted. We haven’t been able to see her in person. I was allowed to see her a couple of times through the window, and once in person for an hour and with a waiver waiving my rights to sue if I get sick.
But on day 50 she tested negative twice, and her restrictions were lifted. One person per day.
We’ve gone through ups and downs. But our faith won’t let up, and she’s still with us. She’s weak but she’s still fighting.
She was accepted to a long term acute care hospital yesterday, and today there might be a bed available for her to get transferred. Everyday for the past couple of weeks we’ve been getting a bit of good news on her improvement. This is another small bit in her long journey to recovery.
And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them
We’ve been married for more than 12 years now… wow time flies!
We got married when we were very young and money was tight. This led to most of the wedding being DIY. I’ve always loved to figure out how to make things myself, so our DIY wedding was no big deal.
One of the things that I never did was look into how to store my gown or my flowers. Heck… the cake top ended up in the freezer like tradition calls for, and we totally messed that one up. It was disgusting.
While we were packing for our move back to NM, I inevitably came across my “stored” flowers. They were forgotten about in a shoe box. I seriously considered throwing them away. In these 12 years, we’ve moved a total of 13 times. These flowers have survived all of that! They deserved more than the trash can. So I decided that I was going to figure out what to do with them by the end of the year.
I came a across a photo on Pinterest of a jar with dried flowers in it. I thought that would be perfect for this. They can be displayed on a shelf without looking too wedding-y.
What I used:
Glass Jar – large enough to comfortably fit the flowers without breaking them
Scissors
Hairspray
Plastic Wrap
Dried roses/flowers of your choice
Let’s do this!
Here goes nothing! Said a little grateful prayer before cutting into my wedding roses just in case I was about to pulverize them.
I carefully cut the stems off and picked the roses that were still intact and set them apart. Once that was done, I lightly sprayed them with hairspray to help them stay intact.
Then I carefully placed each rose inside the jar, making sure I didn’t leave any obvious empty space between each rose.
Once I was done placing the roses inside the jar, I cut a piece of plastic wrap in the shape of the opening of the jar. This is to keep most of the dust off of the roses. I didn’t use a tight seal because I was afraid of what might happen if the flowers don’t have any air flow.
And there you go! Better than in a shoebox!
I placed the jar on my shelf in the living room, and I’m really happy they’re there.
All things fall are upon us! For us New Mexicans, that means green chile season… YUM!
One of the things that we promised ourselves when we moved back was to go out and explore this wonderful state more. The saying, “you don’t know what you have until it’s gone” holds very true here. Moving to Austin, we encountered quite a bit of people that would vacation in NM… like come here… on purpose. I kid, of course. New Mexico is a beautiful state. For us, growing up here always felt like we were stuck. That’s why we always wanted to leave. Well, that’s probably why they call this the “land of entrapment”, because somehow it managed to finagle us back. And we’re totally ok with it.
This weekend we decided to pick our own green chile. We never really knew you could do that! When we saw an advertisement on the news for Big Jim Farms we were all for it.
The farm consists of 9 acres. It is free to get in, and you only pay for the chile you pick or the fresh produce they sell in their farmers market.
They have all the chile sectioned off from mild to extra hot. We went straight for the extra hot.
We found that the trick to finding the biggest chiles was to head straight to the back of the farm and skip the first few yards of each row.
After you are finished picking, you can get your chile roasted for $5.
yummy!
The experience was awesome. My mom and grandma went with us and they had a blast too. We will definitely be doing this again next year.
Our TV wall was looking very bare. I was looking at buying bookshelves for each side, but being on a tight budget, that wasn’t happening any time soon. I was browsing Hobby Lobby one day when I saw that their metal brackets were 50% off that week. I grabbed the one bracket they had and drove to another store in hopes that they had 5 more. Thankfully I found the motherload of brackets at the next store and got the 5 other brackets that I needed.
After a quick trip to the Home Depot, I had the materials I needed for my shelf.
We cut the 6 foot boards in half at home, sanded and stained them with the Special Walnut wood stain. Then we used the stud finder to help us find studs, which in turn made the decision of where the shelves were going to go.
After the shelves were put in place on the brackets, we secured the boards to the bracket with a screw at the bottom.
Result
We plan on hanging the TV sometime in the near future, so the wall isn’t exactly complete yet. But for a total of around $70, this shelf and some Halloween decor makes the living room feel a bit more like home.
Curtains, curtains, curtains. Why are you so expensive?
One of the biggest expense when you move in to a home are the window treatments. Thankfully, the windows to our home came with 2″ faux blinds, so curtains for those windows could wait. The sliding door window though, that one was left out. What are you supposed to do with sliding door windows anyway? Thaaat’s a project for another day… we needed some privacy ASAP.
In the past, I usually give up on finding long enough curtains that barely “kiss” the floor because they’re hard to find and expensive. This time, I was determined to find a better and inexpensive solution. Even if it was just for a season or until our budget allows. And, nobody wants their windows to look like they are wearing high water pants!
While I was on my quest of finding inexpensive or DIY curtains in white, we put up adhesive wall hooks and hung what we had on hand, which were a set of typical 84″ curtains.
If you’ve ever looked up DIY curtains, you are probably familiar with drop cloth curtains. I was excited to try them out. So I followed a tutorial on how to bleach and whiten curtains. Off to Harbor Freight I went. I bleached my curtains for a few hours… and they came out looking the same. Turns out, the drop cloths at Harbor Freight are not 100% cotton. The drop cloths have to be 100% cotton in order to bleach. Oh well.. I put them up anyway. But, they were too close to the color of the wall for my liking. So I left them up anyway while I found 100% cotton drop cloth.
This was our lovely setup for a few days:
Until… I was browsing around at Target and found these!
$18.99 for a white tablecloth that is 60″ x 104″. Yes please. I bought two of them.
All I needed was the curtain clip rings, which I already had.
Before I hung them up, I measured them and gave them a wash.
Before wash width
Before wash length
After a wash they did shrink about an inch in each direction. The second tablecloth was two inches shorter. In the end I was left with two panels that were 101 and 99 inches, so they don’t match exactly in length. In the future, I will probably buy the next size up, which is 120 inches long and I will hem the ends. This will make it look a lot better once they are up anyway.
I ended up leaving the drop cloth as well. I thought the added texture served this window well. I’m excited to have the rest of the curtains up. Next up, bay window curtain rods. Oy vey.
The very first project we wanted to tackle was finishing the garage. We love our old cars and we love working on them ourselves. The garage being a place that is easy on the eyes and a place that inspires us to work on the cars is a must.
We were so excited that we forgot to take before pics. So here is Zero. He’s excited you’re here. Look at those before walls.
Before
The very first thing we did was texture the garage walls. Our home came with very basic taping that covered the screws on the drywall. Thankfully my uncle is a taper, so he came over to finish and texture the walls.
Walls after texture. We chose to match the texture inside our home, which is a skip-trowel texture.
We did tons of research on what we wanted to do to the floor. Our YouTube analytics are all over the place… We knew we wanted to finish it with something that is durable and easy to clean. Rustoleum has several products like epoxy that are easily accessible in home supply stores.
In the looks department, we are gray tone kind of people and we didn’t really want the flakes that these products usually come with. At first we thought we wanted the gray metallic finish, but we also didn’t really like the commitment of the swirling that has to be done. Our swirling skills are unknown, so we landed on keeping it simple. We chose Rustoleum’s Rocksolid polycuramine in Dark Gray without the flakes.
Prep
As with any project, prep is key. When you’re applying epoxy or in our case, polycuramine, prep is VERY important. After our research we learned:
Even if you have brand new concrete, you still have to prep
Sanding is preferable, but more expensive
Acid etching is “easier” for the typical homeowner
There are different types of acid to use. Muriatic acid is the most popular and least expensive, but it is also the most difficult and is harsher to use.
After much debate, we decided we would acid etch. If we didn’t like how the acid etch worked, then we would go the next step and sand.
First thing we did was sweep, blow out and vacuum the garage. We also scraped any pieces of plaster and unknown gunk with a small scraper.
Etching
We used Rust-oleum Clean & Etch. It was the safer choice for us as we were afraid of killing our plants if we got too messy on our driveway. One gallon of Rustoleum’s Clean & Etch was enough for our 2 car garage. The key was to keep the floor wet. We didn’t let it dry as we scrubbed.
Once we finished, we had 16 0z of baking soda mixed with a gallon of water on hand to neutralize the acid. Not sure if this is actually necessary with this type of acid… but we did it anyway. Cause we’re paranoid.
After the baking soda, we power washed the garage floor. The instructions to the Clean & Etch say to wash it out 3 times, so we figured the power wash was good. We did this a few times. The power washer helped with any residual gunk we didn’t capture with the scraper or the acid.
We were pretty happy with the etching. They say the floor should feel like 100 grit sandpaper. I was never convinced… but it did feel raw.
This picture eased my mind. You can see the pores.
Then… we let the garage floor dry for a couple of days.
Time for Color!
Before we got started on the fun part, we blew the garage out again one last time to make sure we didn’t capture any lumps.
We grabbed two 2 1/2 car garage kits. All the videos we watched said that you will need more than what the kit says you need. Also, a lot of videos stated that the colors were a bit different with each batch. So we used one bag from each box and mixed it in a bucket so that our colors would be consistent.
Another thing we did was buy our own rollers. A lot of reviews said that the rollers that are included with the kit are junk, so we bought two 1/4″ mohair nap, good quality rollers, one for each coat of paint.
We woke up early to beat the heat. The temperature was supposed to be 90 degrees by noon, so we started the epoxy at 7 am when the temps were around 80 degrees.
After following the instructions for mixing, we started cutting in the edges. The entire process took about an hour, which is exactly what the pot life of the polycuramine is. You can definitely tell it is thicker by the end of the job. Side note: not one of those tutorials we watched said that the polycuramine smells like urinal cakes.
This is after the first coat:
You can definitely see the spots where we went light on the roller.
But no worries! We did our second coat about 12 hours later that day. It covered up all the imperfections of the first coat.
Ultimately, we are very happy with the result. We waited four days to drive on it, and so far so good. We’ll see how it holds up. 😊
The end result with some stuff moved in and walls painted white.
We were just a couple of years into our marriage and we decided we wanted to live in Houston, TX. We packed up the car and drove to Houston to see what it was like. We loved it. We went back home with big dreams and were excited to see if this dream would work out. So we tried to get job transfers started and all that fun stuff. Well, we never got that transfer and we ended up building our careers in Albuquerque.
Fast forward 10 years later and here we are living in the Austin, TX area. We moved here in 2019 in hopes of furthering our careers, eat good BBQ and finally get to live in Texas.
A few months in to our new life in Texas, COVID hit and we were stuck in our apartment. It has been a trying time for the world to say the least. For us, it has been a time for reflection. We decided that we needed to be where our family is and that is in NM. Texas will always have part of our hearts, and maybe one day we’ll be able to make it work. Just not right now.
So here it is… our first post. Let’s get back to Albuquerque!
