Donation Tally #2 and Annie's Mini-Bio

Up to $30.76 today! Thank you!

My friend Annie:
Annie is pretty. Annie is so pretty that we considered putting a picture of her on this website next to a button that says "Donate Here" and nothing else. We probably would have made our $19,900 goal within a few weeks with that method, but Annie's eyes have been known to hypnotize and we didn't want anyone to starve to death while enraptured by her photograph - so we decided on this blog option instead.
Annie was a model but now she's focusing on her education, going to school for her pathology degree. Her favorite movie is "Silence of the Lambs" but she also likes "Mr. Bean."

Donation Tally #1

As of today we have collected:

$26.18!!!

I want to thank everyone who donated to us over the past week - it was very kind and we really appreciate it!

I also wanted to apologize for getting this update out late. I was so sick this weekend I couldn't do more than sip Sierra Mist though a straw. From now on every update will be on Friday, I promise. Thanks again!

Spare a Dime Online!

Maybe you've already heard of the phenomenon of e-panhandling - where enterprising individuals publish websites asking you to send money to finance something, like a credit card bill, plastic surgery, divorce, or house (hint hint).

The premise is that your dollar, which seems like an almost insignificant amount today when lunch can run you $20 or more, can compound with somebody else's dollar and the dollars of other generous web browsers to make something extraordinary - esssentially, you can feel a part of the success of the person you donate to.

One dollar is not a lot, but $19,900 is (to us, at least). But the population of the United States is approximately 300,000,000 or three hundred million. It's not crazy to think that 0.0663% of those people have a dollar to spare - a dollar they might like to send the way of a trio of enthusiastic kids working through their degrees in health care (hint hint).

Plus, with us you know exactly where your money is going. If you give a dollar to a large charity organization online, it's a documented fact that a large percentage of that dollar is going to administration, not the cause. And if you give a dollar to a bum on the street you might think you know where it's going (maybe to the McDonald's across the street, like he said), but then you still can't be sure.

With us, it's simple - every dollar of the money we receive through this site is going into the West Michigan economy (which is in a regrettably poor state right now) in the form of a house that otherwise might stay on the market for years, as it already has. We're proud of our community and we want to give back by improving it, but our aims are also a little bit selfish: when you rent an apartment you are essentially throwing away a large percentage of your paycheck because you will never get a return on that investment. Not so with a house.

We're tired of paying $500 a month for a bedroom in a noisy complex. We want our own house to decorate and throw parties in. I want to stop getting complaints about my dog. Kelli wants to play loud music. Annie's excited about the giant spa bathroom we're going to put in.

So if any of that sounds like a good reason to shell out a dollar or two, the Amazon and Paypal donation buttons are in the top right corner of the screen. We will postevery Friday on the running tally of donations, and Sept 14th will be the first of these updates. Look for it!

Barristas at Starbucks on Country Club and Speedway are not snooty, make quality product.

Keep up with me now - I made the title of this post say the exact opposite of what is true. It's called irony, I think. Because every time I go to the Starbucks on Speedway and Country Club, without fail the barrista always looks down her nose at me as if she is curing cancer back there behind her cash register, and fifteen minutes later hands me a beverage that is either too weak or too bitter.

Unfortunately I don't go to Starbucks enough that boycotting them and putting away the $4 I would have spent on each latte will itself add up to the $19,900 we need to buy the house on Baxter St - but if you can go without a caramel macchiato this morning, send that $4 our way!

If only 4,975 people donated the cost of a Starbucks beverage to our website today, we'd be buying that house tomorrow! Think about it - money adds up.

Real World: New Orleans Mansion

One of my favorite shows is "The Real World" on MTV, and one of the best parts of watching it was seeing how extravagant, luxurious and over-the-top the mansions could be for the newest season.

New Orleans was the locale for Real World 2000 - the kids stayed at the Belfort Mansion.

This is the office - the grandfather clock is actually a fish tank!

Unfortunately there weren't any pictures of the spa for the Belfort mansion otherwise I would have posted them. We're definitely going to have a spa. We might even put it on the balcony!

Check out the website http://www.realworldhouses.com/index.html - it shows pictures of all the mansions from New York in 1992 to Sydney in 2007.

The Design Instinct

If your idea of a great weekend is the "Trading Spaces" marathon on TLC, or you've spent a whole morning at the Home Depot picking out supplies for a home improvement project, or you've just found yourself watching MTV reruns at 2:00 in the afternoon and wishing you could live in a Real World mansion, then maybe you know where I'm coming from.

We moved around a lot when I was a kid. I remember four different rentals before my mom and stepdad settled in a little three bedroom house in Glenside. This house came pretty cheap because it was a bit of a fixer-upper, so we spent most of the first year situating wall hangings ("Is it centered?" "A little more to the left. No, too far!"), painting walls and rearranging furniture - which was all great fun to me. And my mom took a lot of her design ideas from "Trading Spaces" on TLC. "Design on a Dime" and "Decorating Cents" on HGTV were also favorites, beause my mom loved bargain hunting, but my favorite show was "Flip This House."

On "Flip This House" a camera crew follows an intrepid person or couple as they take a house in some state of disrepair and attempt to raise its property value by making renovations - usually updating the kitchen and bathroom, throwing on a new coat of paint and landscaping the yard. At the end of the show they tally up the initial cost of the house and what they spent on renovations and compare that amount with what the house eventually sells for.

Maybe because the show usually ends happily (with the people involved selling the house, making a tidy profit and learning a lot along the way) it gives me a good feeling about house flipping and makes me think that we can do the same.

The only difference here is that once Kelli, Annie and I have finished renovating the house we have no intention of selling it and will probably live there together for a very long time. : D

Three Girls - One House - $19,900

Thanks for visiting this blog!

Take a look at this house on Baxter Street - a four bedroom/two bath historic home, only a bike ride away from Grand Valley State University, downtown shopping and the health sciences district -

and it's going for $19,900!

There are two main two reasons: firstly, the economy in West Michigan is, to quote a friend, 'in the toilet'. Unemployment rates are high, wages are low and people just don't buy real estate in that market. Secondly, this house is what you would call a 'handyman special' - which is a nice way of saying that it needs a lot of renovations, but also means that it's a blank canvas for design!

My name is Melanie. I'm a student working toward a pharmacy technician certificate in Tucson, AZ, where the sun always shines (except during a monsoon!) and there are plenty of jobs for everyone. Now that I've seen another part of the country, I'm definitely ready to come home. Enter Kelli and Annie, my two best friends. I've known Kelli since kindergarten and Annie since fourth grade - we went to the same high school and always planned to live together one day. So the three of us are moving to Grand Rapids for the Fall 2008 semester so Kelli and Annie can finish their degrees at GVSU.

Well, we were talking one day about where we wanted to live. Initially we just planned to rent an apartment, but that turned into renting a house, and too many episodes of "Flip This House" convinced me that if we bought a really cheap, run-down house, we could renovate it into a college dream pad to rival a Real World Mansion! Kelli and Annie basically got swept along with by enthusiasm.

But we're students who work part-time, and while we're saving as hard as we can, it would take years to raise enough money for the down payments on the house and renovation loans.

So welcome to this blog!

With a firm belief in the generosity of strangers, our ultimate goal is to raise $19,000 in donations to cover the purchase price of the house, and draw a little attention to West Michigan in the process. We especially hope to continue the blog after we've bought the house, so you can watch the Kelli, Annie and Melanie version of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (It's also a secret hope that we can get on a TLC or HGTV 'before-and-after' show).

In the meantime, we'll be posting lots of interesting entries - little bios for each of us, spotlights on the cool new trends in interior design, answers to interesting emails and FAQs, plans for the house, helpful information about home loan applications and building equity, and an update every Friday on our progress toward the $19,900 goal. So stop by when you get a chance! If you like what you see, paypal us a couple of dollars - if you don't like what we're doing, or can't afford to donate, or you're in a bad mood because the barrista at Starbucks gave you a bitter latte this morning, or WHATEVER, we'd love to hear about it! The official HandyGIRL Special email address is handygirlmelanie@yahoo.com. And thanks again!