So what do y’all do to make Thanksgiving a little more affordable?

Here’s what we do:

1. Have a potluck with all your stuck-at-home buddies (or ask your guests to bring a dish). This year there’s only four of us, but dividing  the cost and preparation of dinner will reduce the cost (and work) for everyone. We’re on mashed potatoes and stuffing duty this year.

2. Quality, not variety. Sometimes you have to make an extra dish or two because of family tradition, but remember you don’t need nine different kinds of vegetables or five kinds of mashed tubers. Just make one kind of each dish, but search out the absolute best recipe you can and make sure that there’s plenty of it. (This year is: Turkey, stuffing, potatoes, green beans and rolls. Mmmmmm…)

3. Don’t get trendy. Every year the celebrity chefs come out with crazy new takes on our favorite dishes. While it’s okay to experiment, you don’t want to deal with 5 lbs of leftover stuffing the no one wanted to eat.

4. Make as much as you can from scratch. Sure, dinner rolls in a can are easy, but the cost of making them by hand is incredibly low for the quantity. If you have trouble keeping up with all the work, enlist some volunteers to help with specific dishes.

5. Get creative with your leftovers. It doesn’t have to be sandwiches. Try a turkey based “shepherd’s” pie to use up turkey and potatoes. The stuffing could be part of another casserole.

6. Remember you can freeze leftovers. I don’t know about you, but after three days of turkey on white for lunch, I start craving post-Easter egg salad. When you get sick of leftovers, pack up a few meal sized portions and stick ‘em in the back of the freezer. In a month or two, you’ll look forward to turkey again.

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I know, I know, everyone is freaking out about the recession. But if you’ve already gotten the whole ‘not spending more than I make’ and ‘secure job’ thing down, now is a great time to buy a house.

With all the foreclosures going on, the same amount of money that would have gotten you a decent townhouse can now get you a decent detached house a little farther into the suburbs. (For those of you who want to stay true to being an urbanite, it can net you a sweet condominium, townhouse or apartment that some idiot can no longer afford)

That said, there are a lot of pitfalls to buying a foreclosure:

1. There are two main kinds of people who are foreclosed on. The kind of people who no longer give a shit about the house and do their best to break, destroy or steal things and the kind of people who really care, but can no longer afford to take care of the house. You will be spending roughly 10%-25% over the purchase price of the home on necessary repairs (I don’t recommend buying a house that needs more work than that). Since your mortgage won’t cover those costs and borrowing off of your equity on a new home is idiotic at the moment, you will need a LOT of cash on hand to make the purchase.

2. Dealing with a bank owned home is a lot different than dealing with an owner. The banks drag their feet on things, are unwilling to negotiate and often the selling agent for the home is working with a ton of other foreclosures and doesn’t have the time to make a full effort.

3. The initial appraisal on the house will be VERY low. This means that sometimes you will need to make up the difference between what the bank will give you for a mortgage and what the actual selling price is. The FHA appraisors are especially brutal. It also means that you will have very little equity until you spend the dough to fix the house up.

4. Your property taxes can still be as high as if the house were in great shape. You can ask for a reappraisal of course, but the local government will drag its feet and their appraisers inflate as much as the FHA deflates the appraisal. (1)

5. There are always hidden problems. This happens all the time with homes, but it’s especially bad when the home hasn’t been taken care of for months.  Your inspector may not catch them because most of the time the utitilites have been turned off for months and things may not start leaking until weeks after they’re turned on.

6. Speaking of inspectors, Foreclosures are almost always ‘as is’. Even if your inspector catches the problem before purchase, the bank is going to tell you to take it or leave it.

7. If you see a house you want, you’ll have to jump on it immediately. You will have very little time to deliberate. I can’t tell you how many times Mr. and I missed out on a house after it had only been on the market for a few days. (The houses you see on the market for months usually have something horribly wrong with them.)

8. Moldy basements. Not a little just… ugh, I can’t even tell you some of the levels of mold and mildew we’ve seen.

I honestly think that buying a foreclosure is a great idea if you have the cash and time to fix it up before moving in.

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We close on Monday.

I’m so excited but the amount of money we’re going to be spending on replacing the carpet in the living room and stairs, replacing the appliances (most of them) and new paint is making my stomach churn. Even though we lucked out and don’t need any major repairs, I can’t believe how much money we’re about to sink into this house.

I just keep telling myself that our rent was rising at a rate of $100 a year and in a few years we’d be spending just as much money on our one bedroom apartment. Then I go look at the price of a good dishwasher and want to hurl again.

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Shamelessly stolen from Cute Overload: The Puppy Feed

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I woke up this morning feeling pretty crappy because my periods are hell. Then a  little voice in the back of my head went, “Obama’s going to be the next president. Sweet!” Instant mood booster. Hope is a powerful thing, no?

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A few more pictures of the horrible taste the former owners had.

A lot of them wouldn’t have been bad on their own, but the last batch who bought the house didn’t remove the art deco/modernist accessories before adding their own country kitsch thing. It’s a truly unique blend of poor taste.

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If you’re a lucky New York or Seattle-based Urbanite, you can get a FREE Babeland Silver Bullet or Maverick Sleeve if you bring in your voter registration.

Voting Feels Good

Babeland Rewards Voters with a Silver Bullet or a Maverick

If the Maverick rhetoric in the presidential campaigns is doing anything, we hope it’s motivating everyone to get out and vote. Which is why we’re giving away a real Maverick, absolutely FREE to all voters. All men, not just Joe Six Pack, love the Maverick sleeve ($20 value). He’s always there to lend a hand, he works for every man, and he bucks the status quo.Wait, it gets better. We’ve got one more enticement. A free Silver Bullet ($15 value), because that’s what our country needs right now, a magical solution to difficult problems. Babeland’s most popular compact mini-vibe feels fantastic and is a great stress-reliever during these troubled economic times!

Bring a voter registration card, ballot stub or your word of honor that you cast a ballot on November 4th and we’ll give you either a free Maverick sleeve or a Silver Bullet. This offer is good at any Babeland location in New York and Seattle November 4-11.

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So we just got our package from Babeland recently.

What is Babeland you ask?

Claire Cavanah and Rachel Venning opened the first Babeland store in 1993 in response to the lack of women-friendly sex shops in Seattle. The store offered top quality products, a pleasant place to shop, and most of all information and encouragement to women who wanted to explore their sexuality. The store’s popularity with both women and men eventually led to two more stores in New York and one in Los Angeles, as well as a thriving website.

What this means is that the merchandise is female friendly with lots of items that are meant for couples, rather than a store full of artificial vaginas like those places you find on the side of a highway,

That said, the rest of this entry is going behind a cut so any readers with delicate sensibilities can look away.
Continue reading »

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So yeah, the reason I disappeared for a month was because we are in the last stages of buying our house!

Detached, 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 2 car garage, unfinished basement in Woodbridge, VA – $274,900

Now, if you live in Nowhere, USA, you’re probably wondering why it’s so expensive. If you live where we live, you’re wondering why it’s so cheap.

One Word – Foreclosure

Shopping for a foreclosure is an interesting experience to say the least. I plan to have a series of posts on the subject once I recover from the Halloween rush.

We were extremely lucky and after 3 months of looking, we found a foreclosure in excellent condition. We’ll have to do a lot of cosmetic work (carpets, spackling and painting, etc.) but there’s no major work needed right away. Roof, siding, and water heater are all less than five years old, the only real possible issue is the HVAC is an oldie, but that’s what a home warranty is for.

The mortgage itself is what we’re now paying in rent ($1,700) but after taxes, insurance, utilities and such

we’re expecting to be hitting around $2,500. Definitely a scary number, but I’ve picked up a part-time job I can do from home so I’ll be bringing in about $500 a month so we’ll be able to pay it with Mr.’s first bi-weekly check and my income.

Needless to say, I’m stupidly excited. Once we go to settlement I’ll put up some pictures of the…unique fixtures the former owner put in. In the meantime, here’s a quick peek at what we’ll be removing.

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