We're going to refinance the house. We hadn't really planned it, but we went to get a holiday loan to pay for Orlando, and the woman involved was trying to refinance our house for us. Only her rate really blew, so we thanked her for her time and looked at each other with disbelief. I was thinking, wow, I should think out bills paid every month was a good thing! So, I called my accountant and asked him for advice -- what should we do? Is it worth it to refinance, should we get an equity loan, or what? He gave us the name of a friend.

The guy can refinance our house at a boomin' rate -- a full percentage point lower than what we were paying and only one point! The other gal was offering us 2 percentage points higher and 4 points! When I heard our credit rating, I realized I was being had by the holiday loan person and was soooo mad.

We are trying to get the house appraised for a very high amount, obviously. We think that if we can clean it up nicely, it'll appraise for more. I spoke to our old realtor and she sent me some comparative stuff for the area, and I think we're going to have to work our tails off. We'd been concentrating on shelves in the bedroom, but I think we ought to concentrate on redoing the kitchen cupboards. I need to talk it over with Mike. The fact that we have had the oven's innards completely updated and revamped and updated the stove top with a glasstop jenn aire are to our credit. However, the other stuff, we're not so sure of.

We're going to toss a coat of paint in the kids' bathroom, reorganize the livingroom, by putting stuff on shelves in the bedroom. I stained a decorative shelf for our bedroom, too, to put over the computer desk to hold the printer, fax machine, printing paper, and cd's.

Ideally, we should sand down the kitchen cupboards and restain them and put cute little pepper knobs on them. Not gonna happen this weekend, is my guess. I can dream though.