Here are the seedlings after three weeks of growth. They are all going strong and should be good for transplanting to larger pots very soon.

Jules and I were able to get the soil into the beds about a week ago and since then the days have mostly been rainy so it has had ample opportunity to settle. Hopefully I will be able to get some more work done on garden-related this stuff this weekend if the weather is nice.

Our area rugs from Flor arrived this week so the sunroom and living room both look a bit more inviting and sound less echoey. Our bedroom now also has a carpeted border running along the edge of the bed so mornings are less cold on the feet. I had wanted to hold off on buying them until we had a bit more money saved up but I got a special coupon for free shipping that overall saved us about $120 so I felt it was worthwhile.

We had a bit of unfortunate news last weekend, when our washing machine began leaking out the bottom and leaving behind soaking wet clothes. Because the washer is not energy efficient and the Harvest Gold dryer is probably pre-’70s and squawks like a goose whenever it runs (we affectionatly call it Robo Goose), we decided it was probably a good move to simply replace them. We got a really good deal at Home Depot and ended up saving $500 outright with a $100 rebate coming from the city for buying a water-wise washer. This will be good in the longrun. Using the Home Depot consumer card gets us 12 months without interest, which we should be able to pay off in about 2 months.

In general are working hard to get rid of our consumer debt and it is looking like we will have it all in hand by mid-to-late April. We have opened a retirement account at work and now a discount brokerage account to begin investing. Once we get some cash saved up we will be able to buy into a mutual fund, which we plan to do directly through Vanguard. I can’t wait for everything to be settled again, but there shouldn’t be too much more waiting on that.