Tag: waiting

House Hunting 102 – Searching

September 9, 2021

House Hunting 102 – Searching

Searching… They say the hardest part of doing something you really want is waiting and planning. They might be right.

We keep getting to the search part.

We are looking for land or a house on land within 10 minutes of I95 in St John’s County, Florida. The hard part is our budget isn’t high. I just want a place my kids can run free, have their pets, explore, we can have eight or ten cars (family lol) over without bothering anyone else, etc.

I’d love old Florida land like property with a touch of wetlands that no one can ever mess up. We are twenty years in and back to our original dream of land and an old house to redo or land and build our own from the ground up.

It feels disheartening sometimes when I realize that we “wasted” (really just rented lol) years because some mortgage company took a risk and we weren’t able to pay the rest in full. I can’t look at it as wasted, though. I have to realize it was just another step. We can never go backwards in time, always forward. We learn from mistakes and teach others to avoid the pits we fell into.

I choose to look at the positive! I choose to move forward. We saved, started the first one. We saved, we were able to do almost all of our business investments in cash (should have paid off house instead and ran the business on loans, but didn’t understand that the only non-forgibable loans are student and home loans lol, lesson learned to pass along), we can, are, and will save again.

I’m a saver by nature. I run on thriftiness. I carpool to save gas, Louis can do all maintenance on our vehicles except for major rebuilds (did to both to avoid new vehicle payments), the one daughter who has a car has one paid in full, we stretch food so that is a minimal expense (no eating out, lots of grown foods ourselves, lots of beans and rice or spaghetti dinners, canning, leftovers, bulk cooking, etc.), we get clothes and shoes from hand-me-down bags (I usually only buy underwear and socks new), and our extracurricular activities are limited to those places family works for.

My kids even say, I’m a scrooge.

So now, we have a pre-approval! (I know, I shouldn’t be excited just yet.) We can’t do a construction loan just yet, but they said a new home loan (builder has to sell it “done”).

If dreams happen, then we could find a builder willing to build on a rural property with total cost was than 265000 and a simple floor plan

My plans 😂

Simple. (Except my pantry is huge 😂)

In our search, most homes have huge oversized bedrooms and stop at 3. It’s tough to find one with 6 bedrooms… and they’d still be sharing! (That’s because I can’t separate some duos even if I wanted to.)

We have prayed.

Like everything in my life, I have chosen to give the sum nd total of it to God and He will direct us where He wants and we will move on from there. If that means awesome new build with exactly what we want small and simple or a 700sqft existing 2br/1ba that we add on to… We are waiting and praying.

Thank you for praying and reading our journey!

~Nancy Tart

Yummy Harvest

Yummy harvest for us, fried treats for our doggies!

August 4, 2018

Yummy Harvest

Primrose (Christina’s 4-year-old Aussie mix) is waiting by the stove while we walk in and out.  Nothing is cooking there yet, but she knows this is harvest day, and she knows Rebeccah’s special treat is to fry up livers in butter.  Mom likes them, but it started as a treat for the doggies.

Funny how they know.   Sheba (our family’s 11-year-old Aussie mix) pretends she’s too old to move and half-wags her tail from her favorite spot in the house – curled up on top of the air vent in the den.  She strategically puts herself in the room where most people congregate, next to the shoe shelf so as they are leaving she can shoot them with sad eyes to see if she can guilt anyone into talking her outside.  Sheba perks up each time one of the kids comes in the back door, but since no one is carrying the big canning pot yet, she knows it’s still sleeping time.

In I come with the canning pot – Louis has decided to barbecue the chickens, but only three fit on the grill, so the fourth and all the trimmings are in that pot.  Usually, all the chickens are in the pot to be dissected, wrapped, and put away.   The gizzards and hearts are wrapped and frozen (I’ll fry them next time we have fried chicken).  Today’s harvest was tender young chickens and the preferred method of cooking is grilling or baking, whole.  So the fourth is wrapped and frozen.  This leaves the trimmed skins and livers.  The skins are saved for broth (I’ll add the bones and whatever trimmings from the birds being barbecued and simmer with some seasonings, this round should net about 2 to 3 quarts of “concentrated” broth.)

Rebeccah takes control of the livers.  Now Sheba and Prim are sitting by the stove, wagging their tails and almost begging.  They know that stuff is going in their bowl.  Livers don’t freeze well.  They are best fresh.  The only one in the household who likes liver is Mom (me), but I don’t like to eat a ton of them.  So I’ll take a few ounces and leave the rest for the pups.

Finally!  Rebeccah is done (it really only takes about three minutes, but looking at the dogs, you’d think they were waiting for years).  She rinses the pan in just enough water to make sure all the yummy goop is washed into the dog bowls and splits the contents of the pan between the two dogs.  They’ll get all the skins and other meat bits off the bones after I’ve boiled and strained the broth the next day too, but fried livers are their every-two-month treat, and they LOVE it.

Our theory is that Prim realizes the chickens are the liver treat source and therefore protects them jealously from any other animal – but she’s never hurt a chicken because she likes the finished product.

Yummy barbecue for us, yummy treat for our canine protectors.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

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