Clean as a Whistle

My detox is over! I don’t feel so well now. bummer. I have been so excited to eat regularly now, that my body has rebelled. I am sneezing like there is no tomorrow. I don’t remember ever sneezing this bad. I have tried eating sugar, wheat, eggs, dairy, and I can’t handle it. So, today, I have only eaten delicious sourdough bread with butter in addition to my detox diet food (chicken, fish, veggies, fruit, lentils). It has been much better except when me and Zoey went to check out the Goodwill Outlet store on 6th Ave S.

First of all, how could Goodwill have an outlet store?, I thought. Well, in the past 5 years, I have come full circle about buying second hand clothes. I used to not even go close to a thrift store (right Mom? Bonnie?), but since I was pregnant and didn’t want to spend good money on new clothes for just 9 months, I have been a changed woman. I have found so many great deals on clothes that were hardly worn and that I like much better than clothes I had. The best is the baby clothes. You can pick up footsie jammies for as low as 99 cents and they sell them new for close to $10 sometimes.

Anyway, Goodwill, the outlet store is completely incredible in more ways than one. First of all, all the clothes and textiles are $1.29 per POUND. How weird is that to buy clothes by the pound. Wacky. The hard part is you have to sift through about 30 bins to find your good deals. Sifting is tough for me. I like it when it is all on racks and you can look by size, etc. But, I looked and looked and Zoey looked too. It was super dusty. And soon I was sneezing like 6 times in a row. It started to get hard to concentrate. Well, they mostly had womens clothing it seemed like. Not much for kids. So, we only spent $9 and got a couple dollies (one boy and one girl), a Columbia jacket (the best deal–I couldn’t pass it up, easily worth $150) for me, a couple pairs of jammie pants for me, a pair of really nice dress slacks for me, a Hannah Andersen kids shirt (I’m sure worth around $25) for Zoey to grow into, a pair of Old Navy pants for Zoey, and a cool red sweater-shirt from Old Navy for Evan (easily worth $30). There were probably more really cool things there, but I couldn’t handle the dust anymore. So, if you like that sort of thing, check it out. 6th Ave S and Holgate in Seattle.

While me and Zoey were shopping, Evan, the best husband in the world was steam cleaning our carpet. Ahhhh! Thank you sweetie!

The other interesting thing is we have begun to investigate more information for our addition. We had Rick from ModelRemodel come by last week. I had played in a church gig with him last year and kept his card. Gotta love trumpet players. So, he came by and checked out the house. He suggested right off the bat, to add the 2000 sq ft like we had thought about, but then extend onto the second level of the current house! So, now we are adding an extra 500 sq ft! Plus it will make it look better, like it blended in. Anyway, thoughts about adding a Master bed & bath, 2 kids’ bedrooms, an office (or 3rd bedroom), a full bath upstairs, a family or dining room downstairs, a two car garage, a half bath downstairs, and a huge bonus room upstairs! We are trying not to going to price ourselves out of the market for our area, but it will be soooo nice to have the extra rooms especially when all the grandparents come to visit, we can finally accomodate! Plus think of all Zoey’s sleepovers and Evan’s gaming days. Let the parties begin! We can now be the cool house for all of Zoey’s friends. Plus, maybe we will get another kitty and another puppy (but not before!).

Things he brought our attention to (that I didn’t think about) redo all the siding, so it looks like one house, move a wall in the current kitchen to open it up (we may not do that though–thinking we may have enough room when we make the current laundry/furnace room into a pantry), and that garages should be at least 22 ft. long and that we have two "setbacks" from the street since we are a street to street lot. But, we may be able to grandfather something in or bribe somebody or something to get a few extra feet.

Anyway, it has been really fun to make sketches for some house plans. Rick will be getting back to us in a few weeks. He is checking some things out with his architect.

Well, that is just a few of the things going on around here. We are looking forward to school starting! Zoey’s first day is Sept 12!