Hi, lavender, I feel as if we're old friends from Smaller Homes/Old House sites, so I came looking for you, after reading your current threads in discussions. Thank you for the 'shout-out' about my hood. It was kind, as every post of yours that I've read has been kind and helpful. Also--keep your chin up! We've done what you are proposing, on a very small budget, 'paying as we go', although that did involve refinancing our home several years ago, for the biggest project, a 30'x12' story-and-a-half addition, with a partially covered concrete porch. In all it's taken 16 years, and I'm not finished yet! When we bought our house, it had been a rental for 10 years, on the 3-acre remnant of an old dairy farm. Many potential buyers had viewed it and said that it would take too much work. But I had a vision (actually not my vision at first--my parents saw it and convinced me that the property would work for our then-young family). The yard had been neglected, and sadly all the original woodwork and trim had been removed, but the structure was basically sound. As our family grew, we added rooms and made other improvements (new roof and septic system, as needed). We are DIY'ers, and have an extended family-and-friends network of contractors, woodworkers, excavaters, and painters, so our projects have been made much more affordable than if we'd had to hire out all the work, but you may have the same resources, too. I just want you to know that I understand your dreams, love your ideas and pictures, and I know it can be done!!

Yes, FOAS, I agree about multiple servings per meal. But, the next time you order pasta in a restaurant make a guage of how much is on the plate knowing that 1/2 cup is 1 serving. Here, a plate usually has 2-3 cups (I've had plates with even more than 3 cups). That's too much pasta & it's also likely white pasta. I'd be surprised to learn that Americans are not getting enough grain in their diets. Whole grain? Yes, not enough but white flour products...no. Many people who eat the huge plate of pasta for dinner also have had a large sandwich for lunch (likely a roll that's more than the 2 servings of bagged sandwich bread) and possibly more grain for breakfast (English muffin, toast, cereal, donut). Also, with the pasta dinner...often it is served with a crouton containing salad & garlic bread...more grain servings. I eat 5 meals/day...always have. I started doing that when I was young because I was always hungry. Eventually, found out I had thyroid problems, had surgery, but still continued with the 5 meals/day just much smaller. I was fortunate in that my jobs allowed me to duck away somewhere & eat pretty much whenever I felt the need. I know/understand that not all jobs have the benefit of flexible schedules. Still, mid-day snacks can quite easily be upped to mini-meal status. Something like hummus/pita crisps & a piece of fruit. One benefit of more meals/day is to help keep blood sugar levels even & not get ravenous unless you're a lumberjack, or equivilent. Piling all your grains (carbs) into an evening meal is also not condusive to weight loss. Better to have that restaurant pasta meal at lunch. My point is that I believe that due to supersizing many Americans do not realize what's a "serving". Our perceptions are also supersized. While I'm ranting (and I'll quit after this)...people also eat too fast! It takes our bodies about 20 minutes of chewing to feel satiated. If we gulp our meal in 12 minutes we'll likely still think we're hungry even after an appropriate amount of food. If we just stop eating though our bodies will eventually catch up with our forks & register that we're full. So, just slowing down is a great weight management tool. Eating too fast is a pitfall of many singles & families that don't eat meals together. Eating together around a table & enjoying a conversation naturally slows down our eating. My DH is struggling with this issue now. After 6 years of living apart Mon-Fri he had started gulping his dinner down in front of the TV. Now, together full-time he's being forced to slow down because I'm talking to him. He'll still gobble a sandwich when he's alone in 3 minutes flat. :) /t

Scott, forgot to mention the other day that I am glad that you and your son was not hurt during the storm. I had a close friend that lost his little girl many many years ago during a bad thunderstorm. She was opening the door as a power line came down and the electricity arced from the ground up through the door. She'd be in her thrirties now, if she were still with us. I'm REAL careful now, especially since I now live in the lightning capitol of the world. I've seen lightning "balls" move through a room after it entered an outlet where a lamp was plugged in. When it comes to sensing "ghosts" I once saw a documentary about a study the military did, with the belief that humans actually have extra senses in addition to ESP. It is believed that some people can still tap into some of that, but over thousands of years,( due to not using our full senses), have lost most of our abilities in that regard. Most of us still have good gut feelings though, which I believe is part of all of that. Cats are fascinating creatures. My vet thinks I'm a bit soft in the head when I mention that I feel they communicate with each other via telepathy. I've witnessed where nothing else could explain certain behaviors. One of my cats also knows the second I open my eyes in the morning, and he is not anywhere near our room at the time. I can also put the flea control on one of them, out of sight and smell, and immediately the rest of them know and go hide. There was a story in either a magazine or newspaper one time that told of a cat that lived in a nursing home, for the benefit of the people that had to live there. The nurses knew when someone was going to die soon because that cat would go and sit with that person, and not leave their side until after they passed on. Haven't figured out who the conversation police are, but I think we've made it clear that we are all pretty independantly minded, and don't care what they think, or even if they like us for that matter. We're certainly not hurting anyone, nor are we bogging down the forum. Worked on floor plan stuff this weekend. I was very cranky and not very pleasant to be with. My poor husband! He knows I like lofts and told me to design one in. (Anything to get me out of my bad mood....). But, you know, I keep talking to people that have awfully huge electric bills this year that have lofts in their homes. The other thing that made me think twice was looking at some really cute tiny log cabin package deals with the Cracker Style Log Home people. The kits are a fraction of what it would cost to build a nicely finished loft, AND it would be considered an outbuilding for tax purposes. We would just factor in the materials rather than get a kit, since I feel it's a bit less expensive to do that, and I can get the windows I want through Home Depot. (I like Andersons). I do think we are getting close to hammering out the blueprints. If I have trouble posting the floor plan idea, would it be O.K. to e-mail it to one of you? Sandy

When my husband and I were selling our house last year, we went through a string of bad luck. We staged our home and put a lot of stuff in his office (he had his own business). Needless to say the building the office was in burned down and we lost a lot of pictures, but mostly just junk. We finally sold the house only to have the first buyers back out 4 days before the closing, but we were locked into buying our new house. We then put our home back on the market and prayed we would sell it in a newly SLOW market. Anyway we had many potential buyers come back and view the house 3 and 4 times but after 5 weeks still no offer. With the stress of holding 2 mortgages we were desperate. One day when my husband was commuting home from work it just so happened he was sitting next to a realtor. They got to talking about our house and she mentioned to him when ever she needed to get a house sold she would burn sage leaves to ward off evil spirits. That weekend we were holding an open house. Unbeknownst to me, as we were leaving the house my husband ran back in to "get something." He was taking a really long time so I ran in to find out what in the world he was doing. I saw him running through the living room with a smoking piece of aluminum foil and the overwhelming smell of burning herbs which smelled very illegal! I wanted to kill him. At the same time our realtor arrives and was nearly knocked back at the smell. At the time I didn't think it was funny and I was fuming. Needless to say, we got an offer that day, and we closed in 4 weeks. The ironic thing was our buyer was a Drug Enforcement Agent. He must of knew it was sage and not something else.