Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Half Price Halloween Fun!

Looking for cheap fun on Halloween?
Who isn't?

Here is a list I compiled of Free or pretty-much-free
things to do....
(This list is for the Denver Metro area)


Chipotle Booritos-Every year Chipotle has cheap burritos, salads, bowls, or tacos
for all customers wearing a costume.  This year they are $3
(Do you remember when they were free if you wrapped yourself in foil?)

Jamba Juice- Free kid size smootie for kiddos under 8 years old
From 2-7 pm Halloween night!

IHOP- Free HUGE buttermilk "Scary face"
 pancake for kids12 and under.  
The pancake has a candy corn smile, oreo eyes, a strawberry nose,
and a ton of whip cream.  All day Halloween!

Sonic- $.50 corn dogs all day on Halloween! 
Go between 2-4 pm and you can also
get your drink-on for half off!

Krispy Kreme- Free donuts for All customers that come in a costume!


Sweet Tomatos- Kids under 12 eat free on Halloween with a paying adult

Shaun and I at Chipotle for $1 booritos, 2011 Halloween!

Halloween Decor

Halloween is my 2nd favorite holiday,
second only to Christmas.
This is the first year we will be 
living in our House on Halloween...
Last year at this time we were waiting for
the inspections etc to go thru.

So we were super excited to decorate 
our home this year for Halloween!

It doesnt get much better than decorating a
101 year old home for Halloween.

I don't have a lot of Halloween decorations (yet)...
But here are a few of my faves, and here are the crazy
cheap prices I paid:



 The lamp was my great Grandpa's...and I found it in my Grandmas basement.
My Grandma no longer wanted it, and she gave it to me!
It weighs about 12 pounds and I LOOOVE it.

The smaller candle stick was a thrift store find, and I paid $1.98

The taller candle stick that resembles a hooka, was a clearance find at Burlington,
I paid $4

The metal owl Halloween countdown was from Joanne fabric,
I paid $12, because I used a 40% off coupon

The little windy pillar candle holder is from Yankee Candle
 (the only place worth buying candles at, FYI)
I bought it during there semi annual sale for $2.50

 This is our sunroom, one of my favorite places in the whole house.
I put up cheapo spider webs and 
jack-o-lantern string lights.
The lights were from Walgreen's, I got them 2 weeks ago 
and paid $5 a string, because they were already 1/2 off!



Caden helped me put the spider webs up in the living room windows....
and then decided to rearrange the black spiders
every day....hence,
HA

Caden spent 30 minutes picking this bad boy out...
and I have never seen a more perfect real pumpkin in my life!

The little gords were 3.75/bag of 6 at Target...
and Caden set these ones up himself
 


 On top of our dining room table sits
A silver candlestick that was my grandma and grandpas...
I found it in her basement laundry room,
and she told me to take it...or she was gonna sell it in her garage sale.
Ha, you don't have to tell me to take it twice!
It is super old, and I love that the silver no longer shines...

The pumpkins were at her garage sale, and I paid her a whole
$2 for them....they are ceramic and I cant believe no one else bought them!

The candy corn string was from TJ MAxx and I paid $12 for it back in 2008!

Monday, October 28, 2013

The haunted dresser

I wanted to save this story for Halloween time,
So here it is:
I went to an estate sale back a couple months
Ago, in search of a dresser for our
Boys room.
I wanted to find a solid wood dresser that 
I could paint a lime
Green color.
Their room is brown, and lime green 
And I thought an old dresser
That was painted would be the perfect piece to make
The room complete.
I searched Craigslist and found two 
Estate sales just down the road from us...
I stopped at the first one and walked into
What I think had been an abandoned home.
It looked like there hadn't been anyone living there for 
A very long time.
It also looked like it had belonged to a hoarder.
The garage was jam packed full of anything and everything
You could ever want to fulfill your Pinterest dreams!
I first checked out the bedrooms
 and found exactly
What I was looking for....an old, solid wood dresser!
Ecstatic, I quickly ran to the lady
Who was running the sale
And asked how much it was
(There wasn't prices on anything).
She asked what I wanted to offer, and I said 
$10, figuring she would counter my offer....
But she didn't!
Next stop was that garage!
"Oh how I wish I had a truck" was exactly what I 
Thought as I carefully stepped over old furniture
That was begging me to
Take it home and
Pinterest the hell out of it!
I found a wooden garden bench and offered her $2,
And I also found two bookshelves and offered her $10 for the set....

I asked them if I could come back later to pick everything up
 With a neighbors truck...and they offered to drive it to
My house!

I paid for the items, and they followed me home.
Little did I know that along with that dresser came something else.
Not sure why, but as soon
As they uploaded that dresser onto my driveway, I no longer wanted it.
I did not want that thing in my house anymore.
All my excitement about painting it
Was gone...
And I even considered setting it out on the street with a 
"Free" sign. 
I have no idea why I had that feeling about the dresser.
But to make a long story short,
it never made it inside our
Home.
It went straight to the shed until I could get rid
of it....luckily, that week it was gone....onto the next home!

Was it haunted?
I think so.....
This is the garage at the estate sale....

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Church Pew Redo!


 




I have FINALLY finished revamping 
 the old church pew I bought last Summer!

It took so long because I did not know which room I wanted it 
to go in...and I have a 17 month old which keeps me busy.

I finally decided on putting it in the
mud room, which will have a 
vintagey-nautical
feel when it is completely decorated.


Anyways, here are the before and during pics of 
the long awaited church pew...
oh, and of course here was the cost break down:

Church Pew: $9
Stain: $2
Fabric: $11 ( originally $22, I used a half off coupon at Joann Fabrics)
TOTAL= $22


Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Our Old Haunted House





 Shaun and I met in 
a little town called Rexburg, Idaho
while attending BYU-Idaho.
We fell in love, got married and moved into 
a crappy little apartment on East Main street.
Our rent was 350/month for a 2 bed room apartment in 2007...
our kitchen was carpeted with yellow and
orange psychedelic floral pattern carpet
from the '60s.
We never walked around around barefoot for fear of 
catching a disease.

So when a better apartment just a little west on
Main street became available, we moved!

The apartment we moved into was built in 1906.
In 1906 it was a Hotel.
It was an awesome little home, with interior brick walls
and wood floors!
 
 See the current day picture below, the apartment was
the second level of the building just left of the green front building 
labeled  "Mans Image".
 

There were 2 apartments on the 2nd story of that building.
There was one that had the front, with those 3 arched windows facing
Main Street. And one that had the back of the building that faced the roof patio.

Ours was the one in the back.
We walked up a 2 story stairwell right off Main street 
to get to our apartment.
See the Door to the right of the store window that 
is covered with white paper...that was the door to that stairwell.

I took a ton of pics of that apartment before we moved out in 2010, 
and have never been able to find them on the computer (Weird).

The stairs to our apartment were painted black and when you got to
the top of them, there were the 2 apartments down
the hallway to the left, and there was
a condemned door to your right.
That condemned doorway was locked, and it was a walkway 
into the building with the Green Front called "Mans Image".

This is where things got weird....
Story has it that a man staying in
the Hotel back in the early 1900's hanged himself
in one of the rooms.

And anytime you would walk up those
huge black stairs at night, it sounded like someone was 2 steps behind you.

In the second room of our apartment, there was a tiny 2 foot doorway that lead towards that
green front building, but we never dared crawl inside.

We rarely used the room that had that tiny door and I hated having to go in the room
to get something while Shaun  was gone.

One weekend, I had some friends come to town and they stayed in that room,
and when I got up during the night, I noticed that some of
their stuff had been thrown all over the living room....
as if someone was mad they were in that room.

They had a hard time keeping any businesses open 
in that down stair commercial suite.
(the one that has the windows covered in the pic).

In 2010, the owner of the green front building tried to sell the building,
and I happened to be coming home from work, when the potential buyers opened 
that scary locked hallway into the old condemned building....

The buyers wearily stepped inside, as I looked in from a distance.
The hallway was dark, all windows were boarded up,
it smelled like death, and the wood floors were covered in 2 inches of dust.
I could not see into any of the rooms, and I did not want to.
Because I knew a spirit lived there, and he did not want anyone 
taking over his space.

To this day, nobody has bought that Old Building....

 This is a pic of what our apartment building looked like around 1910.
Our building was the one in the middle,
just left of the "BlueBell Candies".




Sunday, October 20, 2013

Not for Sale

The "FOR SALE" sign that has been in
front of our home since July is now gone.
The flyers that sat on 
our dining room table since July are now in the
garbage.
The private showings are O.V.E.R!

And I could not be more relieved!!!!

We had an offer on the home, but we backed out
after they had they asked us to replace every window in the home.
and after that we decided to take it off the market.....

Because snow has begun to fall, and leaving the home evrytime
some potential buyer wants to see it is no longer feasible with two little kiddos.

Here is my "for sale" story:

Imagine this:
try keeping your home in tip top "show quality" shape,
while also trying to potty train a 22 months old boy..
keep a 3 months old chubby baby belly full...
have dinner on the table....
babies down for naps....
etc.....

oh and just as you are about to get the 2nd baby 
down for their nap, the phone rings and wakes them up...
you have a showing in one hour.
Count down starts NOW,
and you still haven't cleaned up lunch,
or folded the laundry....

you race to get all the lose ends tied,
throw the clean unfolded clothes into a box and under the bed...
change all the babies diapers 
(because you obviously didn't have time to focus on the potty training thing),
put the dirty dishes under the sink, because you forgot
to unload the dishwasher this morning,
wipe the bathroom counter,
clean breakfast off the booster seat,
get the dogs on leashes, baby #1 in stroller, and baby #2 in his baby sling.
 and walk out the door just in time for the 1 pm showing.

It begins to rain, yet you are sweating  like a whore in church pushing the stroller
and carrying your own little space heater (aka baby#2),
The dogs are driving you crazy because they can't keep out
of the way of the stroller wheels....

2 pm rolls around and the babies are about to lose their minds because their 
nap was cut short, and you get a call that goes like this,
"this is sally from centralized showings, and the 1 pm showing at your house has been rescheduled for 6 pm tonight"

"Oh Really?"....."that was an hour ago"...."and you have no clue how much
work I have gone thru to make it possible for those "A holes"
to see the house at their preferred time....and that was all for nothing?"

To make matters worse, they have rescheduled to come back during dinner time,
and the babies will definitely be a wreck by then, since nap time was cut short
for the 1st cancelled showing.

I did this scenario and others similar to it for months,
with a one month old and a one and a half year old....
Luckily my good friend would allow us to come
to her house anytime she was home....

Selling a home with young kids at home is hard!
And I love this home...so we are going to hold onto it for
now!

PS their were about 50 families that looked at the home.....
yep, multiply this story by 50!