Showfest

Showfest is a huge truck/car show that has been around since about 1996. I've heard nothing but good things about it. We decided we'd take the trip this year and go. It was May 13-15 in Tunica, MS.
With the Great Flood of 2011, we honestly didn't know if we would be able to make it. Showfest moved it up a casino or two and it was on!

We were seriously excited. We had only hear great things about it. How bad ass it was. Um...These people are liars or they have very low expectations. I was NOT impressed. There were hardly any vehicles there that wasn't your every day lowrider you can see on the streets.

Here are a few pics of the ones that did stand out. I promise this though, unless something drastically changes, we won't be making the trip again.

My Luck Turning Around???

I don't have good luck. I'm not one of those people that good things just happen to. I have to work for pretty much everything in my life. (Some things are easy, I can't lie about that)

In the past 3 weeks, I've won two contest.

My first contest was for a Sigma brush. A travel sized E25. I can not explain how wonderful this brush is. Applies the product perfect and effortlessly.
*I would link back to the blog that I won this from but for some reason it is now gone. :(

Then I follow iPhone AppStorm on twitter. They were having a contest, giving away a free OtterBox Defender case for the iPhone. Well, guess who won!!??! Yeppers!!

I love it! Maybe I should hit the casino?!?! Kidding!!!

We've Decided

We've been talking a lot lately about what the future holds for us. We knew this wasn't our forever house but with the economy absolutely bottomed out, we honestly didn't think we could sell.
And honestly, we still aren't sure if we can sell or not.
But...we are going to give it a-go.

We talked to a mortgage guy and were actually thinking of just refinancing. He told us we really just have to stay here 6 months after closing. That would save us some money, but really not enough to tilt the scales in that direction.
When we bought this house, we got a pretty damn good interest rate. (when my mom bought her first house after the divorce, I think her interest was like 19%. can't imagine)

After getting the numbers back from mortgage guy, we talked it over and decided to let him run our (K's) credit to see what we could get approved for. I was seriously nervous about this one. With them being so strict on the mortgage rules, you just never know what they will say.
He text me Friday and said let's set up a meeting and discuss the numbers. Um...What?!?! Holy shit! I honestly, don't know if I was hoping he'd say "at this time, I think it's best you stay".
Now my nerves are fully shot. We have *so* much left to do to get this house on the market. Of course, my husband begs to differ but he doesn't look at all the little things like I do.

So today, I got up and cleaned my ass off. K has to work all weekend (and late tonight) so I'm thinking about breaking out the steam cleaner and/or the paint tomorrow. Ack!!!

BTW, (if there is anyone reading this, I realllly need an answer) should I repaint my 'office'? It's a bright ass sunshiny yellow. It's fresh-ish paint from the previous owners. I'm thinking I should, but good gawd, I do not want to paint an entire room right now. But, I will do what I have to do.

So that's where we stand now. So much to do. So little nerve pills to get me through it. :P

♥

WW/Life Update

I had my weigh in Wednesday. I have officially lost 10 pounds. Yay me! It's been a very slow process. There for a while I was ready to give up. Then something clicked. I had my lightbulb moment. (dont you just love those)
I just kind of woke up one day and thought, you know, this shit ain't working. Time to change something.
I had bought a smart water from Kroger the other day since it was on sale for like .50c Best decision I've made in a while. For some reason I'm in love with the bottle. I've been filling it up 2-3 times a day with either water or Crystal Light lemonade. Stick it in the freezer for a little while, let it get good and cold with a little ice and down it.
I've stopped snacking. It's not that I dont want to, it's just that I'm just controlling it. I had originally bought some fireballs to curb the sugar crave. I changed it up this time to jolly ranchers. Just so when I get to absolutely craving something sweet, it'll help me through it.

Exercising isn't going so well. My ankle is killing me. I know I fucked up by trying to do the EA Active Sport 2. There is a lot of jumping and squatting and etc that my foot is just not use to. See, I was born with a club foot. Looking at me you would never know. But, I've been told I walk different. I think because my foot turns in when I walk. IDK. I once ran into a friend from elementary school that told me she recognized me because of my walk. That has stuck with me forever. Do I really walk funny!?!?!? lol
So anyway, ff to now. I'm hurting. I've tried soaking in Epsom salt but that didnt help. I've bought some icy hot that I'm going to try keeping on it to help dull the pain a little.
It pisses me off. When I actually want to get up and exercise I freaking can't. I got on the elliptical the other day and tried pushing through. Yeah that didnt last long. It's like, the bone at the top of my ankle needs to pop.

So, I'm down for now. :(

Other than that nothing much is going on. K has been working the past 2 weekends. Gotta love that over time. :D We're going to go ride four wheelers this weekend. Time for a get away.

BTW, I'm buying myself a happy for my 10 lbs loss. I'm thinking this... Coastal Scents warm palette. I already own their ultra shimmer and love it.

Houston, we have heat!

Y'all have no idea how cold it has been in my house these past 3 days.

I came home from the grocery store Tuesday morning, unloaded the groceries and plopped down in front of the computer. I noticed it was a little chilly in here. Then I got to thinking, this air blowing is mighty cold.
I went to check the thermostat and it was reading 63 but it was set to 68 degrees. Uh oh. This can't be good. I turned it off since it was just blowing cold air. It kept blowing. Um....I'm no HVAC service man, but I don't think that is suppose to happen. No matter what I did, it kept blowing cold air. I had to flip the breaker.

K came home that night and got to looking at it but didnt see anything out of the norm. Of course it was too late to call someone to come look at it. I wasn't about to pay an after hours fee.

The next day we got my dad to come look at it. He about had it pin pointed. I googled (I love me some google) and found a guy that had the exact same problem and said it was something else. Well I went with his advice. I shouldn't have. Again, it was too late to do anything by the time we basically got it sorta kinda but not really figured out. Plus it was sleeting/raining/snowing it's ass off. My dad had to haul ass home before it got too bad and K wouldnt make it in time after work.

So FF to today. Since K's work decided it was going to be a blizzard, they didnt schedule any cars for today but 2. By 8:30 this morning he was done. He talked to the boss and told him about the heat so he got to leave at lunch. He stopped by the HVAC place and got the part we thought it was. Wrong! He gets home puts it in and voila! Nothing! FUCK ME!

We said screw it and called a service guy out. I wish he would have brought some lube for the fucking he was trying to give us.

Here's the run down.
Service call $72
Part+installation $214
Pick up part $106

Yep, they were going to charge me $106 to go pick up the fucking part! I very quickly declined his service. I will never call these people back out to my house. Fucking ridiculous.

K and I loaded up and headed back to the HVAC place we got the first part from and got the gas valve thingie we needed. We bought that and the plumbers glue for under $40. Came home and K fixed it.

I have heat!!!

House Projects

Well, we have sorta kinda but not really started back on house projects.

So far, we have started refinishing a dresser of mine. I honestly dont even know where it came from or how long it's been around but it has seen better days. We stripped it and have started re-staining it a red mahogany color. It's not as red as a cherry stain but in the same family.
The stripper we bought is wonderful. I was a little pissed that when we bought it, it was on a shelf marked for $8 or so and when we checked out it was $17. But, it's totally worth it. Works miracles.

K also built me some floating shelves in my front bathroom .. nook. Whatever that waste of space is. The bullshit cabinet my dad rigged up in there was not working. It was that cheap particle board covered in plastic made to look like wood. It was non paintable. So we ripped it out, fixed the wall and my non wood working husband built me 3 floating shelves. Yay!
I did a little research and found this tutorial. Very helpful!

I'll try to get some pictures later and update. The shelves still need painting. So far they only have a coat of primer. I might get on that today. Maybe. ;)

*Trans Am*

Every since I was about 19 or 20 I've been in love with trans ams. The first one I fell in love with was the '91/'92 year model. They had the pointy nose on them. My future brother in law just happened to own one at one point in time. It was the second manual transmission cars I drove. It turned me on like no boy ever could. :P

Fast forward a couple of hundred years. (yes I feel that old some days lol) We finally bought one. It's a '96 with a LT1 motor. Which I know most of you are like huh?!? when it comes to that. lol I understand. It's not the body style that I wanted but it has the motor that K wanted. So what we are going to do is get the front cap off of a newer model and replace it. That way I get my body style and K gets his motor. It's a win/win situation.
Well, that is until we priced replacing the front cap. It's not cheap.

Then K comes home the other day from work and tells me a friend of his will trade him the front cap off the body style we want for K helping him do a motor swap. Hells yeah! Done deal.

This car is your typical used car. She has her issues. We've been slowly working on them and figuring them out one by one. We've about come to the conclusion that some idiot owned her before and did a hack job under the hood. A lot of wires were broke, spark plug wire replaced with one that didn't fit. It's seriously a miracle that she ran to begin with.

Want to see her?!?!?

Isn't she a beauty!?!? I've named her the mistress since my husband loves her more than he loves me some days. :P

Thought about it..

I thought about either deleting this blog or starting over with a new one. I've kind of given up on this one. I feel like it got started at a totally different point in my life.

But I have decided to change it up and stick with it. I can always change the title of it. If I actually stay with this one and actually make a real blog out of it I will change the link, move it, later.

Nothing Major

Nothing major is going on right now and I can't complain. At least not in that department. lol

We just finished watching True Blood season 2. And holy hell. Now I see why so many ppl are addicted to that show. Um, we also just added HBO to our line up just so we could finish watching this season. *blush* Yeah I know. haha

We went riding 4 wheelers last weekend. Had fun but not as much as we normally do. It just wasn't the same. We are so use to having ppl ride with us that actually ride. This time it was just daddy, us and one of K's childhood friends. This was his first time to go so we had to show him all the ropes. ha!
But, we must not have done too good of a job since K left to go help some people out that just drown out theirs and R (his friend) falls in a huge hole and the 4 wheeler rolls. The hole was seriously so deep that he was able to go under to keep the 4 wheeler from coming over on him.
Everyone was ok though. 4 wheeler and R. Embarrassed, but OK.

We didnt go ride this weekend. We couldn't have if we tried. The knuckle is messed up on the axle on ours and we have to get it fixed before we ride again and really mess some stuff up.

We are now the proud owns for the second time of a 96 Jeep Cherokee. The woman we sold it to, fried the motor. So she said to give her $400 for a down payment on another vehicle and we can have it.
I swear she's a moron for that. Instead of fixing this one she goes out and gets a bigger piece of shit.
Oh well. Her problem, not ours. Now we get to re-sale this one and make more money. LOL

I guess that's really it. I know, boring right? Sometimes, I like my life a little boring. Always having something going on is not fun in my book. It gets old quick.

Old Blue

Old Blue is my husband truck. He has loved this truck since his grandfather introduced him to it.

"Papa" finally decided after they blew the head gasket and K's uncle let it sit and rot for 2 years, to give it to K. He was absolutely ecstatic! Me on the other hand, not so much. I grew up around people working on vehicles. I know how much it cost. I also know how much it cost to build a 'hot rod'.

Well after it's been sitting for years, K has decided he wants to start working on it. We got the cab off of it the other day and brought it home. *it's stored somewhere else*

Here's a few pics of the poor little rust bucket. ;)

By the way, my phone sure does take some damn good pics. lol

K's birthday

I love spoiling my husband. It's my job.

This year was no different. I've been researching HD tv's for quite a while now. We've wanted one for quite a while now. lol

We got up for his birthday and headed to Sears. I told him he had a $50 limit. Use it wisely. I kept hinting at going to electronics to look at movies or a game. He reluctantly headed that way and never ventured over to the tvs. I swear. lol I try to hint and the boy just doesn't get it.

So I just flat out walk over there and start looking. We looked around for about an hour before deciding on one.

We got the LG 42". Its quite nice. lol We went through absolute HELL to actually purchase it but it was/is worth it.

Of course we immediately came home, hooked it up and watched Avatar on BluRay.

Small update

K went back to the doctor June 10th. He's basically fine. The doc said that he can and will do the surgery at any point and time. It is 100% up to K. This isn't something that has to be fixed right away. As long as he can handle the pain, he is OK. Basically he has arthritis in his shoulder.

So sad that a 28 year old has to live with pain like this. I guess that is what happens when you basically take care of yourself growing up and had to work to buy your own school clothes and everything else.

It sucks.

The doc did give him 2 months of anti-inflammatory. If it gets too bad we'll cross that bridge then. For now he's slowly learning to slow down.

Where to begin?

I have a habit of doing this. For those of you that haven't deleted me off your blog roll yet, Thank You! lol

For starters, we've decided not to sell the house right now. The market here is not good. At all. We would barely be able to sell the house to make enough to break even. It's just not worth it.

I guess that is a good thing since we have completely stopped working on house projects. I think there is just still so much to do and we got burned out on it.

Then the selfishness comes in. It's four wheeler riding season and a lot of our money goes to that. With us putting selling the house on hold, I dont feel too bad about putting money into the four wheeler. That is also our little vacation. For one day a week or most of the time twice a month, we get to say fuck the world. No phones, no bull shit, no bills. Just us having an absolute blast.

We've also had a little drama with K's work. It's settled now but for a day we thought all hell was going to break loose for a month. Like I said we got it straightened out but good grief it was stressful.

Now, back to K. He's been having shoulder pain for a month now. Called our doc and they set him up to have a MRI done. He gets the results and we are told that he has a tear in his shoulder. They send us to a specialist.

We get to the specialist this past Monday. They did a xray on him. Diagnosis: not the tear that is giving him problems, it's because his collar bone is rubbing against his ?? . I'm not sure what he said. So he gave him a steroid shot. Well....after the doc had been pushing on him and then the needle going in his arm, K comes this [] close to passing out. Scared the shit out of me. Not really the passing out but the shaking.
He goes back in one month to get the final diagnosis. Either this steroid shot fixes it or he has to have surgery.
Oh! He kept saying that the pain was radiating down into his hand. Nope, not this problem. It's his C6 in his neck. So if the steroid shot doesnt fix that too, he has to have have a MRI done of his neck and we'll proceed from there.
*sigh*

On top of all of that we just spent $200 on 2 new tires for the car. This is all happening with in 2 days. Monday and Tues of this week. It's been hell.

So that is what is currently going on with us. It's not fun but we'll survive. :)

I'm tired

Seriously. This tiling shit is for the birds. I haven't sat down to balance the check book, pay bills or plan my menu. But, my kitchen/dining room looks DAMN good! lol

I promise to get all of that done today and get some pics posted. OK I lied I don't promise. My arms are killing me. I dont even have the energy to type this. lol But, I will get it done soon. :)

Front Bathroom

We've got the tile laid. The cabinet is half ass painted. We've repainted one of the light fixtures and still have one more to do. We bought a cheap can of silver spray paint from Dollar General to repaint them. Of course they were just cheap builder brass fixtures. I'm not putting a lot of money into this house when we are NOT going to get it back.
We still have to replace the counter top. There's a place downtown that is Surplus something. I think we're going to check it out next weekend to see what they have. It probably won't cost us around $40 or so to replace it. Not too bad. It's a small cabinet.

So anyway. Here's a couple of pictures. Now warning, this bathroom is still disaster area. We've got more to do and a lot to clean up before it's finished.

Laying the tile. The teal was the color of the bathroom. K blames me, I blame him. It's gone now. :)

New paint. 

Better paint picture. 

Finished tile. Still waiting on quarter round at this point. It's now installed.

Cabinet is almost completely white now. I still have the doors to do.

Weekly Menu

We went to the grocery store Saturday so my menu started a little early this week.

Saturday night was Sesame Chicken with fried rice.

Sunday: Beef and Bean Chimichangas.

Tonight: Spinach Lasagna Rolls. I've had this before but a little different version.

Tuesday: Chicken Fingers w/ IDK yet. lol

Wednesday: Meatloaf. Actually, THE best meatloaf I've found yet. Again with the sides, I have no idea yet. I'll cross that path when I get there. :)

Thursday: Broccoli/Cheese Soup. If I was talented I'd make bread bowls. I might research it by then and decide if I really want to go that route. :)

And that's all I have. Friday we might take my dad out to eat or grill a steak for him. He's coming up this week to lay the tile in my front bath while my husband is at work.

Happy New Year

I hope everyone had a fun New Years Eve.

Ours was very low key but fun. Hopefully by next year we'll have our own land and will be able to have an actual party.

We'll see. :)

Life

Isn't it amazing how stuff just takes over. Life in general.

I don't really remember August 1st and here it is the 20th. Where the hell has time gone? The funny thing is, we really aren't that busy. I guess we are if we're zooming through this summer.

Last weekend was the worst we have had in a while. I get a call Saturday morning that my dad is "missing". Huh? We get up, get dressed and haul ass out the door. We get to his house and it's obvious he hasn't been home all night. FUCK!
First thought in my head, he got drunk last night and either ran off the road somewhere or is in jail. Well guess what? He was in jail. He pissed the sheriff officer off and he locked him up. Daddy doesnt know phone numbers. They are all in his cell phone that is now in his impounded truck.
So he didnt call anyone to get him out. The S.O. was just being an ass. Told him if he could call someone to come get him they'd let him go. Seriously, he just told you that his phone is in the truck.
They didn't even bother giving him a DUI. Just got busted with beer and whiskey in a dry county.

It took me 3 hours of total panic to locate him. I told him that the house he was at, he needs to stay away. They are trouble and the cops are watching her house. He agreed. I just hope he keeps his word. I've never been so damn scared.

Saturday afternoon, I was suppose to go to my friend's kid's bday party. So I text her on the way to daddy's and let her know what was going on. Her response? So this means you're not coming right? Well fuck no. My father is MISSING! Ugh!

Sunday, we're exhausted. Emotional turmoil will take a toll on you. We get home and it's absolutely flooded here. I left Mackenzie outside since we were gone all day. I knew his paws would be muddy so I left him out until it was time to go to bed.
K goes out to let him in and no Mackenzie. Jasmine kept running over to the dog house and back to the door. They have a hole dug out under it. Well since it flooded the hole was filled with water. And my dog. I almost had a complete melt down. He was absolutely soaked and so muddy.
It took everything I had not to lose it. I am the worst furmommy ever.

I've also been highly addicted to afullcup.com That's the site that I have been getting all my coupon info from. My ex-step-mom owns a store and she have been saving her unsold newspapers/coupons for me. Monday I sat here all day because I had 2 weeks worth of newspapers to go through and get the coupons out. I can't tell you how many I have now.
But, it's all worth it. I went to Kroger yesterday and saved $74.41!! I was/am stoked. I've saved over $200 in the past 4 weeks. I still have a lot to learn and I'm excited to keep learning.
It's a long drawn out process but I'll get there.

I'm also not sleeping again. It's my husbands fault. Like last night he would NOT get off me. Usually I can tell him to scoot over and he will. Oh no, last night he was literally wrapped around me. I can't sleep like that. I feel like I'm being held down. Sigh

I slept all of 3 hours last night and I now have HUGE puffy bags under my eyes. I'm officially gorgeous this morning. LOL

Daddy and K have also decided to start flipping cars here and there. K knows of a Honda right now that they can get super cheap and flip it. I'm hoping it works out. His side jobs have diminished and with gas, groceries, (which I'm working on) light bill for a summer in MS, we are broke. We're trying to get all debt paid off and pay our bills too. I'm just stressed. I hate being this stressed.

My brain won't shut off even though my body (bags under eyes) are saying STOP!

OK. I think I've wasted enough of your time. :)

Have a good one! I foresee a huge nap in my future!

Hi!

It's been a hell of a summer and it's really just started.

Every year our summers are a little out of control. I'm not really complaining because it keeps us busy. I can't stand to sit in the house when it's so pretty outside (even though currently it is 100 degrees and that's not counting the index of 111).

Every since K bought the Jeep we have been down at daddy's working on it. Last Saturday he literally spent all day beating the side out where it's been hit. It looks damn good. We didn't get home until 11:30. We would have stayed the night but since we stayed Friday night, I knew I would have a pissed off cat to come home to by Sunday.

K also has a side job that he is working on here. He had to put a rear main seal (why does seal look funny to me?) in a Jimmy. Well.....the woman called before having it brought here and the transmission had gone out. So K took the trans out and took it somewhere to be rebuilt. He got it back last night. Well, looking at it, the motor is going to have to be pulled just to put the seal in. He is NOT a happy camper. It was a PITA to take the trans out and now the motor has to come out.

I went to Freds today to buy him a fan. It's just too f'n hot to be out there with out one..

We've also been over spending lately. (speaking of fan) Since we are constantly on the rd and driving to my dads which is 45 mins away it's costing us a pretty penny in gas. Which I might add is steadily going up. Thanks you money hungry fuckers. :D

So, this weekend we're going to have to go back to dad's to finish putting the truck together. le sigh

Oh and you know how my (our) luck runs? Well Sunday I decided to take my computer apart to clean it. The fans were constantly running. It wouldnt even go into sleep mode at night. So I take it apart, clean everything. K goes to Walgreens to get some canned air (which is not cheap and another thing we didnt need to buy) We go to put it back together, the fucker won't turn on. Fuck me! So the processor (CPU) was attached to the fans. It was suppose to stay in but it's glued to the fan housing. So glued I had to pry it off. Well when K put it back in he kinda forced it. (before we removed it from the housing) A couple of the prongs bent. That's all she wrote. Thank GAWD I found one on eBay for a little of nothing. Guy wanted $24.95 + $9.99 shipping. It was a best offer deal so I told him $15 + shipping. He agreed. So $24.95 total.....Woo Hoo!

It's just been a hell of a week and it's only Tuesday.

Weekend In Review

Last weekend was a hit or miss. The weather was NOT nice at all.

K got a side job doing a metal roof with my dad. It was a small house that would have taken just one day to finish if it wasn't for the damn rain. Good money too. :) They started working on it Friday doing what they could in between the rain showers. As soon as it would rain, it would dry right back up. It was weird.
*Last day finishing the roof*


Anyway, Saturday was another hit or miss day. Depends on how you look at it. We were going to go finish the roof up, but it literally rained all day. No way we could do that. So my husband decided to go buy a Jeep Cherokee. *sigh* I swear. The guy told him that as soon as it ran hot that they parked it, towed it to the house and it's been sitting for a year and a half. HA! It's locked up. So there's more to this story than we were told. It's also been hit on the passenger side that K and daddy have been working on pulling it out. My dad has all the tools they need to get it done, so no biggie. That's what they did all day Saturday. FUN TIMES! *not*
*Said Jeep Cherokee*



Sunday, we got up and headed home to check on all the animals. K also had another mechanic side job that he needed to get done. So off he went with that while I stayed home and tried to handle a little household chores before heading back out. Sunday night I was miserable. They had their heads stuck in that vehicle all night. I was bored shitless since I had just finished my book. His computer is slower than mine so there was no point in even trying to get on it. I went to bed and left them outside to deal with that damn truck.

Monday the sun wanted to come out. Slow at first...The day warmed up pretty good. Only one little sprinkle shower where we were. Since we knew it was now or never to get that roof job taken care of, we took off to get it done. hehe git-r-dun...lol
Anyway! It took three and a half hours to finish what should have taken no longer than 2. Lots of breaks, the neighbor came and stopped by, rain storm....You get the point. Oh, K slicing his finger open. Stuff like that.

We were suppose to have a cook out at dad's but by the time we finished the job, yes I say we because I did help a little, it was pretty late. Daddy had to run to the store to refill the tank for the grill too. It was just a cluster of a day.

While we were waiting on the burgers to get done, we had a discussion about us wanting to buy land and move from here. Dad said we could put a trailer on his land until we decide what we want to do if needed. Where he lives, the land is so damn cheap. Probably because it's in the middle of no where. Again, K would have a HUGE drive back and forth to work. He said he's fine with that but I'm not so sure. I hate making big decisions. Dad took us around the corner from his house where some land is for sale. It already has a trailer on it and a section of the land is a hay field. We could always sell the hay for extra cash. It's 54 acres. Only bad part we can see just by looking at it is the creek that runs behind it. It could be flood zone.

We're still not ready to sell this house yet. We've got a lot of remodeling and finishing projects up still to do. We're just looking and weighing our options I guess.

~S