Finally a bit of motivation to update: we received our tax rebate today! We didn’t get the full $7500 first-time homebuyer’s credit as we owed a bit of money this year (Jules and I both worked a full year and made over double last tax year) but at least it was a positive balance! This is the first time it has paid to itemize the deductions rather than taking a standard one since everything got pretty complex (significant charity donation, purchasing a car and a house all in the same year.)

The first thing I did after I saw that the money was in the account was write the final check to the home improvement Visa card we got when we had our major plumbing and heating system done in November. The nice thing about that is it is interest-free until the beginning of March so we didn’t lose out on the deal by financing it. This is major, since it was no small sum of money. We have one payment left on the roof and then we are free of the debt caused by home maintenance incurred simultaneously. Then, finally, we can begin to enjoy a positive cash flow and begin paying back debts to family members and actually saving again! I have been stashing away a little bit of money the last few paychecks so we have a small amount of savings, but it’s nothing like what it was prior to buying the house. Oh well, at least it’s all gone to improve our home and thus isn’t wasted! Feeling much better about finances now.

I am still going garden-crazy. I got Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening and have been getting a lot of good ideas from it. Hopefully if the weather is nice this weekend we can go to Home Depot and buy some cedar lumber so I can construct the beds. At the moment I am considering making 3 4′x4′ beds so I have room to work in them but we also have room for our outdoor furniture without overcrowding. I have the food scraps compost bin in full swing and no longer feel bad tossing away kitchen scraps as they are going directly into the soil! (Well, they will when they break down, that is.) I received my wire bins for leaf composting this week and hopefully will also get a chance to set those up. I’m getting pretty excited about harvesting the “black gold.” West Seattle has a plant nursery near the cats’ vet which seems pretty well-stocked from the outside so soon we’ll have to make a trip over there to check out their selection of compost, peat moss, and see if they stock vermiculite. Filling these beds is going to be pricey but at least it’s a one-time expense since I’ll be filling them with compost after this.

I have one square left to go on my Tetris blanket. Annoyingly, I had purchased just enough yarn to finish HALF of the final square, but no more. Now I have to wait a week before the yarn arrives from my online purchase. Still, there are plenty of threads to weave back into the blanket so it will probably take at least that long to finish. The end is in sight!

Here’s hoping for a beautiful weekend without rain or snow!

By now you must have heard about the bush fires devastating southeastern Australia. Though my friends and family there have been fine, some have not been so lucky. If you have $5 to spare, please consider giving a donation to the Australian Red Cross. Even a little bit helps.

It was a lovely, relaxing weekend. Nat was on the other side of the country visiting Howie Mandel so we had the place to ourselves. We played a lot of video games and got a lot of exercise!

The weather was really great so I spent all of Saturday afternoon raking up the leaves from the front and back yards which I had left in several giant piles over the last couple months while we were gone and the contractors were working on the roof and chimney. I hadn’t expected it but the piles had already started to compost so there were tons of worms and slugs in there! I ended up with 6 bags plus a garbage can full of leaves! Great workout, and the yard looks clean again. (It’s been driving me crazy for weeks!)

This was also my first opportunity to take photos of the house since the roof and chimney work have finished. We’ve been leaving for work and coming home when the sun is off doing something other than lighting the Pacific Northwest so I haven’t had a chance to see it in daylight, let alone get a good photo! I am quite pleased with how it turned out, and it makes the house look a lot sharper. Hopefully this summer we’ll have a chance to repaint the chimney so it blends in again. We also recently installed some solar-powered path lights for the front walk, which work much better than expected. We have decided that we’re going to plant some more trees and bushes in the front yard this summer or fall and get rid of the stupid tufty grasses in the parking strip area and possibly replace them with some raised beds for flowers.

Speaking of which…! I have excitedly been preparing for planting a garden this summer! I brought our steel shelves up from the basement and put them in the sunroom in anticipation of starting some seeds in a few weeks. We have a 25′ long strip along the fence in the backyard which is perfect for putting in some raised bed gardens. I cleaned it up a bit when I was raking leaves on Saturday and did a bit of assessment of the area. Parts of it are a bit lower than others so I will probably have to fill in the ground a bit to level it out, but it should be good. We’ll have to pull up the paving bricks in that area but we can probably reuse them so it’ll be good. My dad has been a great help thus far in giving advice in planning. I haven’t been this excited about anything in a really long time, so I have had tons of energy now! More details to come.

Ally has been getting along quite well with Emily and Roscoe this week. (She has been sneezy recently so we took her to the vet who said she probably has a cold.) She hasn’t been hissing or batting at them as much as at first and they are “kissing” each other quite a bit. It’s been a much easier transition than Emily and Roscoe when they met.

Other weekend activities included watching Twilight Zone episodes, catching up on Battlestar Galactica, and installing a new mail holder/keyring rack in the kitchen and a much needed towel rack on the bar. (Also, here is our new wine rack.) We played Rock Band 2 for hours, basically until we were too exhausted to continue. I crocheted quite a bit and watched Jules play Valkyria Chronicles and on Saturday evening we played some Left 4 Dead with Ross.

This morning Ally got into the cat food and all three of them fed themselves breakfast. She is actually intelligent, probably too much for her own good. We need to rethink our food storage tactics, but we’ve tried just about everything. I think we have finally discovered a cat who is more food-crazed than Emily.

This shop is next to our cats’ vet. You never have to tell him what style of haircut you want–he already knows.