Real Estate Investing -

It's been a long time since I posted in my Joy in the Burbs Blog. I decided to add these post into this blog. So let's catch up. In 2018 we sold the house that we had been in for 14 years. We took the equity and started investing. I will do separate post for each home we renovate. We turn these homes into rental properties. So let's start with house #1: Boy oh Boy we picked a doozie! This 3 bedroom 2 bath home is in a well established neighborhood that gives you access to a major interstate in 5 minutes. Location Location Location is what it has going for it. This house has an atrium in it and there was a huge tree in the middle that we ultimately decided to remove due to the risk it posed to the house. The house was built in 1974 and has a 70's contemporary vibe going on that I loved. The previous owner owned it for 10 years. The house was not habitable in my opinion although he had a mattress on the floor and no running water. Let's look at some before pictures:

So this gives you an idea of what we were dealing with. There were vines growing through the walls. Both bathrooms had to be gutted. The kitchen cabinets were actually in good condition. They were solid wood. We removed the double ovens (they were NASTeeeee) and created a pantry where that was. We opened the wall between the kitchen and dining room. All the floors were removed in the house and replaced with luxury vinyl plank. The demo part of this house was huge. Here are pictures of some of the demo.

Now let's take a tour of how this house turned out. I am so happy with it. We painted the kitchen white and added granite countertops. The interior was painted Agreeable Grey by Sherwin Williams. The main exterior paint is Snowbound and the front door and garage doors are painted Jogging Path. Paint does wonders! Master Bath:

I hope you enjoyed the tour of our first investment home. We had multiple applications to rent it. Stay tuned for house #2 Let me know what you think.

Making Better Bacon

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted and all I’ve got to talk about it bacon.  What is wrong with this picture.  Anyway,  we’ve had some sickees around our house this past week.  Keith has been really sick and Leah has a confirmed case of the flu.  Paige and I are praying we don’t get it.

Anyway, back to bacon.  Last year I made a decision to remove pork from my diet.  I love bacon so I started buying turkey bacon, but its just….lacking.  You know what I mean.  I recently saw this idea either on a TV cooking show or online somewhere and tried it and now the turkey bacon is palatable.   Here’s the recipe:

Package of turkey bacon

light brown sugar

cracked black pepper (I use a pepper grinder, but you could probably use regular pepper)

Lay your turkey bacon on a baking sheet and sprinkle the light brown sugar and then grind black pepper over the top.  Put in the oven and bake  until done.   I think I usually leave it in around 15 minutes.

You end up with much better flavor.  It really, really helps. 

Enjoy,

♥ Joy

LiveJournal Tags: recipes

My Reality Show

Right now Reality TV shows are all the rage.  Whether you are a

Kardashian

 

or a Duggar,

it doesn’t matter.   People are  putting their life out there for others to see,  and a lot of people seem to be watching.   Soooo, I don’t have a film crew to follow me around all day, but I thought I would give you an idea of how I grew up.   It wasn’t Duggar style or Kardashian style, but it was a happy childhood.

I grew up in Central Florida.   Palmetto bushes and Pine trees filled the landscape and Spanish moss waved from the oak trees.   My parents purchased a tropical fish farm when I was little.  [I know some of you may not have any idea of what that is.  I’m trying to get some pictures of it and I will show you in another post.]   Anyway, they worked hard together running a successful business off that 25 acre farm.  We also had a horse named Candy and a bunch of cows.

Below is a picture of my second birthday.  Parents, Grandparents and Great Grandmother are all pictured.

Here is my dad.  My cousin and I are on the horse.  The fish farm is in the background.

Some of my cousins lived just across the street (I’m the one on the end):

I’m the oldest in my family.  I have one sister.  Here we are posing for a picture before church one Sunday.  My mom made most of our clothes.  She was a great seamstress.    This was probably Mother’s Day.  My mom always had us wear a corsage on Mother’s Day.   She also loved to give me perms for some reason.  Those curls are not natural on my little head.

Just a little glimpse into my little life. 

♥ Joy

Hi My name is Joy

I feel like I need to introduce myself.  Where have I been?  I really don’t know.  I blinked and it was Christmas..now a new year and I haven’t written a blog post since September.  I’ll do a brief catch-up:

October was pretty uneventful except for Halloween.  My neighbors had a costume party and I dressed up as Beth Chapman.  She is Dog the Bounty Hunter’s wife.  They have a “riveting” reality TV show here in the U.S.  Riveting might not be the right word, but it is quite a cast of characters.  Trust me I do not do her justice.   It was a fun night:

  

In November we celebrated Paige’s 15th birthday.  She is truly growing into an amazing young woman.   I can’t believe she’s 15 and takes me back to the phrase of blinking…There is a country music song called “Don’t Blink” by Kenny Chesney. It is so true and makes me cry when I hear it.  When Paige was little she called country music  ~crunchy~ music.  Love that.

At the end of November was Thanksgiving and we decided to do something different this year.  We drove 10 hours to Destin, Florida and rented a beautiful condominium on the beach.

My parents and nephew joined us there and my in-laws and Keith’s cousins stayed nearby.  We all spent Thanksgiving together and it was wonderful.  Who knows, maybe we’ll make it a tradition.  Here is one picture at the Thanksgiving table.  This condo was great. It had a huge dining table and a perfect kitchen for all the cooks.   We had turkey, dressing and collard greens, sweet potato casserole and some cranberry stuff (which I never eat) and much more.    What do you think  of our fine china?  Ha.

We woke up  Thanksgiving morning and some talented folks down the beach had created this beautiful sand art.  Pretty cool.

The water was a little too chilly for me, but when you are 10 and 11 years old I guess you don’t feel the cold.   Here is Leah and my nephew:

Well, that catches me up thru November.  I’ll stop here and not make this post any longer than it already is. 

Happy New Year.  Hope you are living and loving the life God gave you and giving the ones you love a squeeze along the way. 

♥ Joy

September Serve

Each year the Missions Pastor at our church organizes September Serve.   Everyone is encouraged to find a mission or service type project to work on in our community during the month (and hopefully continue through the year).

On Saturday the 24th over 25 teams from our church spread out all over the Houston area working together on various projects.  Some hosted a camp for 125 inner city youth.  Others painted a Habitat for Humanity  house and our family signed up for this project:

We helped paint, clean and do maintenance projects at Harper United Methodist Church in Monaville, Texas.    This church was founded in 1881.  It is tucked back down a country road and is home to  a small, mostly elderly congregation.   I’m not sure how far back this  building dates, but it was probably built in the early 1900’s.

We painted the front porch, scraped and cleaned the windows.  Worked on ceiling fans and light fixtures, and other miscellaneous items on the ‘to-do’ list.

It was a blessing to work together as a family and with others on this beautiful church.  This historic church needs much more TLC, and hopefully we can go again and help to scrape the wood and re-paint the rest of the church. 

Here we are working away:

The group hard at work on the porch:

I just noticed on their sign it says “Catch the Spirit of Love”  There was definitely a spirit of love on that day in Monaville.

♥    Joy