Free Stuff And A New Fence

Last night I was browsing the free section of Craigslist, just for fun.  I saw a duvet cover, and noticed that it was in our town.  When I clicked on it, I saw that it was in our neighborhood, about a 7 minute walk from our house.  It’s now in the washing machine, and will soon find a new home on our guest bed.  The comforter on our guest bed dates back to my college days (mid 90’s) and even then I got it at a thrift store.  It has seen better days.  Now I have a beautiful dark rust colored duvet cover for it.  The old comforter will be getting a new lease on life.  And the guest room will look a bit more modern.  The tag says Linens n Things, and on their website the king duvet covers are about $70 – $100.  Very sweet deal that we got.

Our neighbor was having a garage sale this morning, and then it started to get very stormy.  She was struggling to get everything put into the garage, so I went over and helped her get it all inside (never did rain though – it was just a teaser).  As we were packing it up I saw a bag full of over-sized legos, perfect for little hands (and too big to go in little mouths).  I asked how much she wanted for it, and she insisted that I just take it.  So now I have a great toy for our little guy once he can sit up and play with stuff – for free.

My husband is at Home Depot right now, buying fence for our yard (I will be very glad when we don’t have to go to Home Depot every three days – this fence should be our last project for a while).  The HOA told us to paint the fence – we have a white picket fence, but most of the white is gone; it’s more of a grey wood fence with white patches.  The sprinklers in the greenbelt behind our house strip paint off the fence, and the sun fades it… it takes a beating.  We’re planning to stay here forever, so we decided to invest some money and get a fence that will last.  So we’re putting in a vinyl picket fence.  The best part is that the posts for the new fence will just slide over the posts that are already in place from our current fence, so this should be a relatively simple job.  I’ve estimated that this will cost about $600 – I’ll let you know when we’re finished.  It’s a lot of money, but since we were able to paint the whole exterior of our house for $360, we figure it’s ok to spend a bit on the fence.  It will look so much better, and the best part is that it will be maintenance-free.  I suppose I better go start working on the fence instead of just blogging about it.