Saturday, April 14, 2012

Time For A Cool Change!

This week has been extremely busy. I am still working fulltime and counting the days down to quitting time at the end of May. We have done three home showings and all have gone very well. Our home is almost twice as large and costs twice as much as the average here so not everyone who likes it can afford it and it will take longer than the average home to sell so we are trying to not get discouraged. Hubby is busy building his company and is on the verge of signing three more contracts for work.

We are getting a little tired of keeping the home spotless and yearn for the days when we can be messy and sleep in again on weekends - both of which are difficult when selling your home. I have been trying to cook good nutritious meals but it is harder when people are coming in and out of your home and hubby has been on the road with his business.

I suggested to hubby that we downsize our camping equipment used exactly one time in the last nine years for camping and one time in the yard when hubby put up the tent to show the younger kids their first scary movie - yes they were old enough but now they are too old to enjoy that kind of thing. If we get the urge to camp we will rent a cabin as we tend to not be tent people.

We managed to get $150 from one buyer for: Coleman lantern, three sleeping bags, tent and five sleeping pads you put under sleeping bags along with an older coleman cooler (we have another as I had a newer one when Dave and I got together that we are keeping). The man who purchased the lot has relatives coming from Germany to visit this summer and they want to do some camping here.

Total downsize crap sold to date: $2290 - the truck is the next item to be sold and will go up for sale this week.


Two weeks ago I made a huge pot of crock pot stew and just threw in what I had in the fridge, freezer and pantry. The result? Yummy! The first meal fed four of us (the younger kids were over) and then we froze the leftovers and ate the rest this week on one of those busy nights.

Ingredients:
Box beef broth
1 small steak and 2 small porkchops (I don't normally mix meats but didn't have enough of one or the other and it came out great anyway)
dry barley
Potatoes
Carrots
Celery
Onion
Salt
Pepper
Garlic
Bay leaf
1 small packet beef gravy (yes I cheated but it was in my cupboard)


We also happened to be out of bread so I whipped up this batch of biscuits, again only using what I had in the fridge and pantry. A little bit of sour cream and seriously these are the best biscuits I have ever made - now my go to biscuit. Very much like the Biscuits found at Red Lobster that I love but rarely go to due to being thrifty.

The recipe for these were found on allrecipes.com: Cheesy Drop Biscuits

I don't use self-rising flour so used the work around at the bottom of the recipe.

Finally, a video that hubby sent to me that represents our new life by the sea - he is a sweet man.



Cool Change by The Little River Band


3 comments:

  1. Your soup looks yummy! We love homemade soup in our Florida home. We just turn down the air conditioning!

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  2. I will be trying the cheesy biscuits - thanks for that link.
    I know how you feel showing people around your home, trying to keep it immaculate all the time, virtually impossible and very draining. Good luck with that, I hope you sell soon.

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  3. I just sold a big house at double the price of others in our neighborhood. One thing I learned is that even if you price it right (and you know the value is there), be prepared that the bank's appraisal might cause a problem even if you get a good offer. We had to have a second appraisal done and that really slowed things down. Comps were the problem. Also, we would have never been able to sell to someone who was going FHA... so just be aware of that too. And good luck! Boy do I feel your pain.

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