First Gen American.com

Author: Sandy L

  • The Chicks are Here

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    Sandy L
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    Tweet This is going to be a short post, but I just wanted to throw a couple of photos up of our new chicks that we have at Babci’s house. They are sitting in her living room right now. My whole family was out of commission all week because of a horrendous virus, but luckily…

  • The Difference between a Hoarder and a Packrat

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    Tweet Babci regularly pulls things out of people’s trash.  As I try to make room for a chicken coop at the back of her garage, I regularly curse her hoarding tendencies.  Where did all this stuff come from? How do I keep all her empty spaces from filling up with junk?  It’s been a struggle…

  • Babci’s Home Remedy Experiments

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    Tweet The other day, I wrote about how we have a minor Babci crisis involving a wound that is not healing and I promised everyone an update.  Yesterday after her 4th visit to the doctor in 5 days, it actually started looking better. Some of the redness went away and it looked like the antibiotics…

  • Credit Cards and Babci’s Stubborness

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    Tweet Babci has this saying that doesn’t really translate that well into English, but I’ll do my best.  It goes something like this:  “The girl didn’t have enough work to do, so she bought herself a pig.” Pigs are messy and a lot of work.  For years I’ve been trying to simplify my finances and…

  • Spendaphobia – I think I have it

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    Tweet I’m house hunting. It’s clearly something that’s right for my family.  The thought of living in a bigger home that can house my mom on a little more land is SO appealing…but I’m going through sticker shock.   The good news is that having bought 2 fixers already, I can clearly see the potential in…

  • Househunting and Tradesman’s Posh Digs

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    Tweet You may or may not have read in previous articles that I’m doing a little house hunting of late.  It’s not that we’ve outgrown our home, but we feel it’s a good time to invest in the real estate market and trade up to some digs that are big enough to house babci someday,…

  • Babci Story: Surviving on Milk Soup

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    Tweet If you’ve been  reading the blog a while, it’s no secret to know that the key  to Babci’s thriftiness is in great part due to the abject poverty that she grew up in.  In the winter, when food was running low, there was no meat ever.   The family’s only source of protein came from…

  • Babci’s Getting Chickens

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    Tweet I had my first house hunting letdown this week. We found a funky fixer upper on 10 acres in a good location and after 3 visits decided to put what I thought was a very attractive offer in. We gave the sellers an offer at the home’s assessed value and given that properties have…

  • Rotten Dead People Owe Babci

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    Tweet A few posts ago, I revealed that we are going to start house hunting in an effort towards implementing “Operation Live with Babci.” The last few weekends have been great fun. We’ve seen at least 2 dozen homes and driven past about 30 more and even have a few favorites.  The problem is that…

  • Skiing and Making the Most of What You Have

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    Tweet One of the great things about living in the Berkshires is that it is filled with outdoor activities year round.   I literally can see the local ski mountain as I drive home from work.  It takes all of 10 minutes to get there from my house.  Bousquet was one of the first ski mountains…