They are many people in the opposite situation i.e. moved into a place that has gas hook up and try to get rid of the electric dryer. So, we have been looking at craiglist.com for a reliable ,less than two years old used electric dryer for a couple weeks. We did find some very good deals. But T was concerned about hauling it home and bring it down to the basement, and it’s not worth hurting our backs doing that.

We finally decided to get a new one from the store today, so we don’t have to worry about delivery and installation! We went to Sears to check out the GE dryer that we saw online. It was priced at about $750 on sears.com.(not including all the taxes and delivery charges, which will be about $100+)

But then we saw a LG dryer that in the same price range, has the same functions and a larger capacity, but was on clearance due to a scratch on the top of the dryer. We don’t mind the scratch as it ’s hardly visible and saving of $200 is a substantial amount of money for us who are just starting out.

So, we decided to buy the LG dryer instead. They are going to deliver the dryer on Tuesday morning and I am looking forward to clear the laundry piles.:-)

In this economy, the appliances and furniture stores are not doing that well, so if you shop around, you can really get some good bargains on discount furniture and appliances, especially if you pay cash!

It is difficult to do housework when you are all bundled up. I moved the portable heater to the kitchen and was able to take off the sweater and do some housework. If not, probably can’t do anything but hiding in thick blankets all day!

Was able to unpack the food stuff brought from home, stock up the pantry and organize it into a functional kitchen. We went grocery shopping yesterday and spent $120+ on grocery. The big boy’s cooking in the last two years consisted mainly microwavable convenient food, so he didn’t even have sugar and salt in the kitchen!

Now we have uncooked chicken, fish and pork in the refrigerator and a kitchen cabinet filled up with food instead of dust.:-)

It’s a big old house in the downtown area, we will be living on the second floor.

We use the side entrance and stairs leading up to the second floor.

The balcony and the view of the family room from the outside.

The dining area. I like the fact that it has plenty of natural light from the windows.

The living room.

The bedrooms before moving in the furniture.

I like what I see so far. The big boy knows I would fall for the wooden door and window frames, built in cabinet and those decorative panels that scatter around the house. :-)The rich brown colour and its beautiful grain has character, don’t you think? Though some people say they make the place look a little darker !

The big boy has already moved in some of the furniture and lived at this place. But he hasn’t unpacked most of stuffs, they are still in the moving boxes. He would have to change the mailing address and get more kitchen appliances too.

Hey, the house is ready, why am I still here? Unfortunately, it’s going to take much longer before we can be united. Uncle Sam hasn’t started to look at the papers. It was like throwing a rock into the ocean, we have not heard anything back. I bet the papers are collecting dusts somewhere at a storage or warehouse. We sent in an expedite request last week, hopefully we would hear some good news next two weeks !

Though we have sold some furniture few months ago, but we still have some electronics items and furniture to get rid of before the move. May have to put up an ad and do a yard sale after the surgery.

We still haven’t gotten any buyer because we are upfront with them, we told them that they need to spend some money fixing up the car, it needs an overhaul! The bearing of the engine needs some work. We have replaced a few things recently. Though it’s easy to get a used Nissan radiator and it doesn’t cost as much as a new Taurus Radiator, it still cost us a few hundred getting the radiator and water pump fixed.

Moving house especially moving overseas can be very mind boggling, we aren’t snails who just move with the shells. We accumulated stuffs as we go through life and we don’t want to part with many things that have sentimental values. The moving preparation, packing and deciding what to let go is best done by ourselves.

Thank goodness for internet, you can get packing and moving guides on www.internationalmovers.com to help you to do the job more efficiently. It might not be possible for you to bring everything in two luggage that you are allowed, you can get FREE quotes for international moving on the same site as well.

As we are sorting out the boxes that had been sitting there since the last move and empty the drawers, found many missing stuffs and duplicates. We have found so many unused batteries and a few safety cutters in different drawers.

We must have gone ahead to buy a new one whenever we couldn’t find the one that we had!!

Don’t know what happened to the part time cleaner! Hasn’t been able to get in touch with her for a few weeks. When contacted, her cell phone rang until it got into voice mail. Looks like she has just evaporated from the surface of the earth, though most probably she had moved to another town.

The only way we can truly tell whether we are getting what we want is to examine a piece in person, so that we know it’s comfortable, durable and has detailed finishing. Barring that, you best bet will be buying it from a reputable dealer, study the listing carefully, call and ask questions and then make sure they have a return policy before you purchase.

When you are ready to purchase your first piece of furniture online, do check out the www.greatpricedfurniture.com for quality and good selection of furniture.

The faucets installed by the developer were nothing like Delta faucets, they were some cheap and badly made faucets. We have thought of replacing them when we bought the house, but my dad said why fixing something when it’s not broke? This time the plumber actually broke one of them when he tried to unscrewed it! So we decided that it’s time to replace them.

We understand that cleaning the house is not one of your favorite past times (which sane person does anyway?) and it’s so unfortunate that the floor and the glass windows do not come with self cleaning function. So, unless you can live like a swine and do not mind your living quarter turns into the equivalent of a sty, cleaning is ALMOST inescapable.

Luckily, in this age of outsourcing, you do not have to do it yourself, you can contract out this undesirable chore of house cleaning to a Cleaning Service like Maidpro. Actually. think about it, it’s not just a cleaning service, but a marriage service, as you no longer have to fight about who should do what and blame each other for not helping out. :-) In fact, thanks to part time cleaner that we have, I could sit here blogging, isn’t it god send and the best thing since slice bread?

We do not plan to sell it yet because the real estate market is really sluggish in this area and the resell value of our house is horrible. We live not too far from a university, it’s not too difficult to rent out the house as the demands for rentals are reasonably good.

We all know the real concrete walls cost a lot to maintain and to keep them from mold and weathering, we need to paint and sand them every couple of years. For this fences made of plastic, you get the strength and durability of stone and rock walls, but it is basically maintenance-free. No painting or sanding is required. You also get a lifetime warranty on the durability and quality construction of the maintenance-free fences

The fence was one of the exhibits that really caught my eyes because it reminded me of the styrofoam walls in the old movies, you can’t tell really from afar that there are not real.:-)

I have problem with clutters, because they do not just clog the physical space, they cloud the mind, and paralyze the mental capacity to think straight.:-) I have been really terribly inefficient when things are not organized.

This students are happy with their treasure hunt, they even left their phone numbers so that they can be notified when I eventually  selling off more stuffs before the move.

So the first thing we need to do when we are settled down in IL is to go scouting for a vacuum cleaner. You think that’s a simple task? With so many different brands of vacuum cleaners and variety of functions what they can do, it can be a paralysing tough choice.:-)

It’s just a simple recliner, not the theater seating sort of expensive chair. Anyway, I love the chair and it’s my favorite place to sit on when I read or cross stitch. It was a factory reject bought at a furniture expo, but it had served us well for the past 5 years.

Whatever that mean! We are glad we can claim the credit, we don’t have to pay a cent out of the pocket this time. Though in actual sense, we have prepaid our property tax for 3  years because this people at the land office screwed up the calculation last three years.:-)

Since I am here alone this year, I won’t be going through all the hassles to prepare the goodies. However, will have the part time cleaner here this Friday to help with the spring cleaning. Our house was rented out before this, the tenant had nails all over the place and the walls and gate need a new coat of paint. We did the painting ourselves last time, but I don’t think I am up to that task right now, not until the packings and all the logistics for the move to IL are settled.

I remember the number of trips we had to make and the numbers of boxes we have used. We definitely need to engage a moving company for our next big move to IL. We would have to start looking for affordable moving services when spring comes around! If you are moving and need to find a moving company, maybe you should check out the tips provided by homebulletin.net to make the process of your move smoother.

The next will be getting a carpenter to fix the kitchen cabinets, then the kitchen renovation will be all set. Hallelujah, I can have my kitchen back, finally! Needless to say, it’s a big mess out there and it will take 2-3 days to put everything back in order.

What do you think of the Dyson DC17 vacuum cleaners? We need a vacuum cleaner that provide powerful, consistent suction for deep cleaning of the carpets around the house. I am trying to read up on the details of each model available and exploring its features and specification on this site. I get to view the products with the 360 degree spin, it feels so real! I like the fact that I can compare features and functions without having to go to a physical store.

They have found some nicely made and affordable window treatments. They were able to add a hip, modern style to their interior without paying a fortune with the ready made curtains that look custom made. The kitchen curtains that they have gotten really brighten up the whole kitchen. Though they do not have a budget for extensive interior decorating after spending their whole fortune on the down payment of the house, I am sure with a little creativity, they can add an extra bit of flair to their home with the fun retro or funky contemporary patterns like those available on www.contempocurtains.com.

Oh no, I thought there was some kind of plumbing problem and it was going to cost me an arm and a leg calling a plumber to fix it. But I took the lid off the toilet tank to have a look inside and there was no water inside. I tried flushing the toilet to see if that would trigger the tank to fill up and it didn’t.

At that point I remembered the washing machine was doing its cycle. I went down and shut off the water faucet connected to the washing machine so I could troubleshoot to see what happened. Well … it turned out that it’s caused by low water pressure. This had happened before when they shut down the water supply for major repair of leaking pipes. Maybe some neighbors were just turning on the taps the  same time as we did and it just didn’t have enough water pressure to fill the water tank? Has this happened to you before?

This is how far they have done after they torn apart the wooden cabinets and started building the kitchen counter-top.

I have to empty the kitchen cabinets, taken out all the food stuffs, silver wares and utensils, they are lying on the dining table now.

Look at the kitchen gadgets collection! You can find all sort electrical gadgets in my kitchen, they probably qualified me to be borderline fetish for kitchen gadgets. I will probably have one of those old fashion popcorn machines too if I can find one. :-)

He is a honest guy who takes pride in what he is doing and has built an excellent reputation. The current faucets we have in the house were installed by the developer and they are not particularly of good quality type. We have thought of replacing them, but the plumber said  “why fix something when it’s not broken?” He suggested we replace our faucets to better made ones like Hansgrohe when the current ones are broken.