We Moved! Just not to our new home...

Goodbye Upper West Side, Hello South Harlem!

Our previous landlords were unwilling to extend our lease for a month or two until we close on the new apartment we are buying. We needed a place to stay temporarily and we miraculously found it in the same building we are buying in, and even on the same floor!

It's not an ideal situation (we really are mostly living out of boxes) but it's better than we could have hoped. This also means we'll probably push the closing date back a bit on the new place so we don't have to pay rent and mortgage for an entire month.

There's been so many fun things to post, but no time. Hopefully life will settle down a bit and we can get back to all of the wonderful (and cheap =) things that happen in New York City!

Housing Update: Early September 2009 (aka We Signed a Contract!)

Columbia wrote an awesome housing update for August, and for some reason we never hit the 'publish post' button. So here you are with an early September update. Why such a long gap since there was housing news? Because buying a home is stressful! Could someone have told me that... more often... with more emphasis... and then urged me to stockpile some 2 Buck Chuck and chocolate?

To summarize Columbia's eloquence:

- We put in an offer on an apt that needed A LOT of work but was in our neighborhood. We couldn't get the seller's to negotiate and their broker was not pleasant to deal with... at all.

- We started looking at apts in Central Harlem, just north of the park. It was an area a little our of our comfort zone, but was still safe. We saw a few great apts. One felt a lot like a home: was beautiful, had plenty of space and was in a well-maintained, gorgeous old building. We put in an offer (through our amazing broker Rachel) on Friday night and had a counter offer back on Saturday morning. We accepted that offer and had a verbal agreement!

This was 3 weeks ago. We did not plan for it to be so long before we signed a contract. There has been some slowness on the management company's part for various reasons. However, all of that is done with and...

TODAY WE SIGNED A CONTRACT!

And wrote a check that had a lot of zeros on it.

Everything is still not done. We need to wait for the seller to counter-sign before we are officially "In Contract" and the rest of the headaches... I mean exciting work, is still ahead. Thankfully we used the last 3 weeks to reorganize our financials and filled out all of the paperwork with our mortgage broker. It is at times like this that we are very thankful we have professionals working with us. We could NEVER do this on our own. I'm not even sure now why people try.

I am not sure we have an amazing sense of excitement. There has been a lot going on with my family, and the wait time has brought the joy down to a manageable level so that if things didn't work out we wouldn't be too disappointed. Our lease is up at the end of September and our landlords are refusing to extend it a month. Columbia started work early and the munchkin and I are making an unexpected trip to PA to help out my fam. With so much going on and so much to do I am more glad to have this major milestone behind us.

Free Kids Stuff:

The Children's Museum of Manhattan (83rd b/w Broadway and Amsterdam) has a program where admission for adults and children (all ages) is free on the first Friday of every month. We took the pumpkin last month and she had a blast. As it gets busy fast, we recommend getting there as close to 5 as you can, especially if your little one is under two.

Target First Free Friday! (Next as of this writing: Friday, September 4, 2009)
Children's Museum of Manhattan
(212) 721-1234
Admission is free from 5—8pm

Extra bonus? During August's event, there was a Time-Warner ice-cream truck outside (that isn't a typo) selling cups and cones of soft-serve for a buck!*

* More info on that TW ice-cream truck: One hundred percent of the proceeds will be donated to nonprofit organizations that offer science, technology, engineering and math programs for kids. Cool, huh?

Tax Lot Photographs

If you're a fan of "old new york," you might get a kick out of the City's "tax lot photographs," which are now are now available for sale. For $80 total, you can have a black and white 8x10 of your building of choice taken around 1940 ($35) and a color 8x10 taken in the mid-80s ($45). There is also mention of being able to view low-res images of the Manhattan collection for free if you make a visit to the archives.

From the site:

Between 1939 and 1941, and again in the mid-1980s, the city photographed every house and building in the five boroughs. Photographic prints of these unique images are now available for purchase.

Link: Tax Lot Photographs

The Municipal Archives is located at:
31 Chambers Street, Room 103 · New York, NY 10007
Open to the public Monday through Thursday 9 AM to 4:30 PM, Friday 9 AM to 1 PM

Measure Twice, Prep Once

The other night I was sitting with my father, and gleaning a few cooking tips. While there have been a few dishes which he'll never live down (my sisters will jump at the chance to discuss the peanut-butter pork chop incident), he's a great cook who makes flavorful meals -- and that man can make a buck stretch. Dad always had dinner ready for the 6 of us, and even if guests were there, we somehow all got fed.

That evening's advice was about how he saves time in the kitchen. I never realized what a feat it was to be able to scale a dinner up or down with little or no notice. His secret? Keep a cache of cooked, chopped food in the freezer. He always makes sure there's at least 40 (cooked) meatballs in the freezer at any time. He makes sure there's a Tupperware of cooked, sliced sausage ready to drop in a bubbling sauce. While we were there, he was freezing a large batch of pesto he'd made, ready to spoon out a portion just enough to flavor a dish. Your cooking style would dictate what you might keep in the freezer, but you'd be surprised how well homemade food keeps in the freezer.

We could not operate on such a small budget if not for our freezer. We always have packages of ground meat or chicken breast at the ready. Dad's freezer tip is a good way to cut some serious time off of making dinner, and having just the right amount of food available to you when you need it. If you're going to make meatballs, make twice as many. If you're going to make a red sauce, make twice (or three times) as much. The additional clean-up and prep time is negligible, but the time savings at the dinner hour is substantial. This was the kind of handy money- and time-saving-tip that we can put right to use.

Trent (the simple dollar) has some similarly themed advice. Read more about "Eating What You Have on Hand" over at his site.