Bye bye tax return

It feels like we're always working on some kind of home improvement project, I guess that's what comes with owning a home.  I feel like the money flies straight out of the checking account about as quickly as we can get it in there...  But since the adoption fell through, and we have more time and money on our hands, we decided there's no time like the present to get working on a few things we were saving for.  So this last week, we've very quickly spent our tax return money! 

First we put up corner trip pieces in our home.  There are a lot of corners where the paint color changes as well as a lot of high traffic corners where dings and dents happen often, and we don't even have kids yet!  So we put up some inexpensive corner trim and after trips all over town to different hardward stores, we finally found enough of them.  For some reason every place was out of the one color we needed!  So Jeremy got to use the saw he got for Christmas and with a little bit of caulk, voila, clean edges!  They look so nice and really complete the look of the rooms for us!

Then we had our radon mitigated in our crawlspace.  When we moved in, our radon levels were just barely above the "safe" level.  Not really of concern, but still important to get fixed.  (Especially if we ever intend on selling the home, not for a long time though!)  So the guys came to install a fan and put down plastic that sealed it all off.  They sent the fan through the roof of the garage and outside.  They also sealed off the sump pump.  When it was first tested, it was 4.5.  When it was retested, it was like a .3!  They said that was lower than outside!  Yay, it worked!

Then our computer kind of bit the dust.  It was becoming an hour long process just to turn it on and try to get the internet to work.  It has been slowly fading away for a while and when a really sweet Presidents Day sale came up, we jumped! So the first bit of our return went to purchasing this new one, which is oh so nice and very fast!  Yay!

Finally, we had GutterHelmets installed on our exterior.  We got a flyer in the mail last spring for them and saved it because it sounded like a good idea.  We have 5 trees in our yard with another in the neighbor's yard that hangs over our house as well.  Of these 6 trees, 4 of them are those maple trees that drop the helicopter seeds (those things were pretty cool when we were kids, not so cool now that we have to rake them up...).  So needless to say our gutters fill up with leaves and seeds pretty darn quick.  Jeremy had to climb up there and clean them out over and over again last year, and that was just on the front ones that he could reach.  We hadn't even tried the back, they're too high.  We also had a spot that was sagging a little bit and causing massive overflow into our mulch which led to mulch in the yard and quite the experience when mowing.  So anyway, we called them up, they honored last year's deal since we still had the flyer and although they were pricey, they are going to pay for themselves very quickly!  They also come with a lifetime warranty and if for some reason the gutters were to ever get clogged, they'll come clean, fix, replace for free. 

So bye bye tax return.  And hopefully hello to more value added into our home!  And hopefully we'll need our savings for another adoption in the near future...