M is For Mama - where quiver full meets Pinterest

[IntrinsicallyDisordered]

I just spent 20 minutes looking at her instagram, her house looks like the ones I design for my rich sims.  That wood covered stove hood!  I am also very jealous of her floors.

I hope Ezra really does love babies and little kids that much.  

[JermajestyDuggar]

I seriously want to paint a random piece of furniture in my house that deep teal color in her kitchen. It’s gorgeous. I can’t stop thinking about painting something that color.

[danvillebelle]

Random thoughts after perusing her blog and Instagram.

1. Someone needs a copy of Strunk & White's Elements of Style.  TOO WORDY.  SHUT YOUR PIEHOLE.

2. That's a big-ass house, even for 9 people.  Whatever floats your boat I guess, but I wouldn't want to live in what looks like to me a magazine spread.

3. All I see in all her decorating is what I see in magazines and décor books from the library (i.e. nothing original).  There comes a point where your "thriftiness" is contrived.  She passed that point about 5,000 miles ago.

4. People who shout about Jesus all the time but live in big, luxurious digs really chap my hide.  Personal hang-up of mine.

5. She lives in my neck of the woods.  Watch, I'll run into her in the next week. 

 

ETA: from what I can gather, she does NOT live in my city.  whew

[JemimaPuddle-Duck]

1 hour ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I seriously want to paint a random piece of furniture in my house that deep teal color in her kitchen. It’s gorgeous. I can’t stop thinking about painting something that color.

Right? Like, it would seriously look great everywhere. A dresser in the entryway, a bathroom vanity, table legs....

[TuringMachine]

14 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

God I hate that I love her style so much. I fucking adore that deep teal color on the cabinets and that fun floral on the microwave. I love it so much but I can’t stand her. Argh! 

This is basically how I am reading her posts. Like, gah you suck, but man I want to see more pictures of your house.

13 hours ago, luv2laugh said:

Genesis World is currently hiring for a mid-level software developer (2-7 yrs) and flat out states the salary range as $55-70,000 depending on experience: https://genesisworld.com/careers/#softdev

Can someone tell me if is low or high? To me, that's low for even an entry level software developer role, but I also live the bay area where there are software jobs everywhere and the CoL is much higher.

[danvillebelle]

14 minutes ago, TuringMachine said:

This is basically how I am reading her posts. Like, gah you suck, but man I want to see more pictures of your house.

Can someone tell me if is low or high? To me, that's low for even an entry level software developer role, but I also live the bay area where there are software jobs everywhere and the CoL is much higher. 

For East Texas that is a very good salary.  The median income in their metro area is 42K.

[EowynW]

36 minutes ago, danvillebelle said:

For East Texas that is a very good salary.  The median income in their metro area is 42K.

That's very fancy ass for east Texas. Many people here think they're doing good just to hit mid 30s. 

[LeftCoastLurker]

54 minutes ago, EowynW said:

That's very fancy ass for east Texas. Many people here think they're doing good just to hit mid 30s. 

Got curious about SF Bay Area. A Senior Software Engineer in San Francisco pay range appears to be 107K to 166K. I live in the approximate area and worked in the software industry...left the job almost 20 years ago and was making 70K even back then.

[luv2laugh]

His day job is a software engineer and they list an opening for mid level position as $55-70k for the role straight on their website for 2-7 years of experience and he's been there for about 9 years so he's probably getting around 70-75k.

Apparently, according to Google, he also runs his own side gig company where he does projects like building out websites with coding and such for clients and on top of rental properties they own, he has multiple income streams. She wrote on her blog that he works "his day job" on top of using summer vacations as "work trips for clients".

For rural East Texas, sure he is "making bank" but he would be solidly leading a middle class lifestyle anywhere in SF, NY, Chicago, or Detroit. They could not live in a mansion in any of those cities nor afford 8 (and counting) children on the lifestyle they are living. My cousin is a software developer in a city and is making ~275k and says that is the typical pay for senior developers. It seems like it varies quite a bit regionally.

My issues with her are that she makes the Quiverfull lifestyle appear to be glamorous and attainable for everyone when that is not the case. She's also the queen of humblebrag and comes across as super into herself and obsessed with appearances. I also think she is selfish to make the older sons raise the kids. What kind of person publicly thanks their oldest for being a "third parent"? She buys the children Goodwill clothes but splurges on herself and on decorating her house. She reminds me of people who get pregnant for attention. She also frequently writes how they've "hired my mom" which I find condescending like, who publicly writes that their parent works for them?  She has also said she does not care if her kids go to college. I don't think they'll be budgeting for their 8+kids to go to college and not because of they just can't afford it but rather, because of their selfishness.  They clearly would rather spend the money on maintaining a certain lifestyle for themselves. She definitely seems to thrive on portraying her life as a luxurious, lavish perfect one, who has time for it ALL (decorating, teaching exercise classes at 5 AM, homeschooling, DIY everything), a perfect marriage, perfect home, in spite of their "passel" full of kids. Things are not always what they seem.

I give her credit for her cute style, fashion, sense of decorating, and her knack at creating an artificial facade, but that is IT.

[JermajestyDuggar]

When you live in a LCOL area, it’s not just the home and land prices that are low. Clothing, food, taxes, gas, and daycare are also less expensive. If she’s buying her children’s clothing from Goodwill, she’s paying very little for it. Even though she’s feeding 9 people, her grocery bill is probably not as high as you think. I imagine they are doing just fine financially. 

[nastyhobbitses]

5 hours ago, Firebird said:

So one of the pictures shows Ezra with some beautiful shelves holding all these cutesy decorations, and all I could think was what a horrible waste of space. That could hold a lot of books.

Ezra doesn't need books if his only purpose in life is to be molded into his mom's son-spouse. 

Fundie parentification of firstborn/older sons (in particular, Solomon Anderson, Timothy Rodrigues, to some extent John-David Duggar because his older brother was too much of a fuckup to be parentified) creeps me the fuck out. 

[TuringMachine]

18 minutes ago, LeftCoastLurker said:

Got curious about SF Bay Area. A Senior Software Engineer in San Francisco pay range appears to be 107K to 166K. I live in the approximate area and worked in the software industry...left the job almost 20 years ago and was making 70K even back then.

Yup, that's why I asked. Here, 70K for 7 years of experience would be downright insulting.

Also good luck finding enough land to build that large a house.

[JermajestyDuggar]

14 minutes ago, nastyhobbitses said:

Ezra doesn't need books if his only purpose in life is to be molded into his mom's son-spouse. 

Fundie parentification of firstborn/older sons (in particular, Solomon Anderson, Timothy Rodrigues, to some extent John-David Duggar because his older brother was too much of a fuckup to be parentified) creeps me the fuck out. 

I agree. It’s not just done to the oldest girls. Lawson Bates had to help his parents out financially. I always wonder if that’s partly why he hasn’t gotten married yet. 

[BobJonesBabe]

On 5/30/2018 at 8:47 PM, dripcurl said:

God. I am looking at her insta as an excuse to procrastinate on Kinesiology homework, and this looks like a fun new rabbit hole. While it’s cool she got that scary looking fluff thing (a hat?) for $63 after “sweet talking” when it was supposedly worth like $400, if your “grocery bill is depressing” and you have that many kids, $63 is a lot. She could’ve bought like 30 pineapples.

 

I am mean, but I can’t stand it when people try to do Quiverfull luxuriously. Someone ends up suffering for it, usually the kids.

She loves to humblebrag about how "frugal" she is. But it's kinda obvious they gots the money. 

"She's also the queen of humblebrag and comes across as super into herself and obsessed with appearances." 

Indeed. This could really be her insta tagline. 

I love some of her style and some of her decor. But as a "Christian" she's odious. 

In reality, her good financial situation and lots of help from her mom and community are what will/have allow/allowed her kids to turn out normal-ish and to appear successful. But she'll attribute it to her "consistency" and "hard work" ("hard is not the same as bad") She's incredibly privileged, but refused to acknowledge this, and passes along self-aggrandizement in the form of Christianized humblebrags. 

[EowynW]

2 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

When you live in a LCOL area, it’s not just the home and land prices that are low. Clothing, food, taxes, gas, and daycare are also less expensive. If she’s buying her children’s clothing from Goodwill, she’s paying very little for it. Even though she’s feeding 9 people, her grocery bill is probably not as high as you think. I imagine they are doing just fine financially. 

Houses can be cheap in my part of east Texas, but it isn't the norm. And rent is high. Many places start at 950-1200. We got super super lucky with 700. And land, LOL 18K for three effing acres. It's not as cheap in many parts here as people think it is  

 

[AuntKrazy]

I thought the salary was rather low - but I'm used to IT people who live in Tyler and do remote work for DFW, and drive in to Dallas when necessary. . . 

[3SecondSideHugger]

1 hour ago, EowynW said:

Houses can be cheap in my part of east Texas, but it isn't the norm. And rent is high. Many places start at 950-1200. We got super super lucky with 700. And land, LOL 18K for three effing acres. It's not as cheap in many parts here as people think it is  

 

That is cheap compared to where I live( which is considered low to moderate in col)....$1600 rent for a 2 bedroom apartment. Houses over 1200sq ft would be higher than that and generally don’t include washer/dryer, utilities, etc

1 hour ago, EowynW said:

Houses can be cheap in my part of east Texas, but it isn't the norm. And rent is high. Many places start at 950-1200. We got super super lucky with 700. And land, LOL 18K for three effing acres. It's not as cheap in many parts here as people think it is  

 

Also, for fun I looked up acreage for sale (there’s hardly an empty piece of land around me) and they’re selling 1 acre lots for $250k... let me buy a few LOL

[TuringMachine]

1 hour ago, EowynW said:

Houses can be cheap in my part of east Texas, but it isn't the norm. And rent is high. Many places start at 950-1200. We got super super lucky with 700. And land, LOL 18K for three effing acres. It's not as cheap in many parts here as people think it is  

 

According my googling, the median rent in my area is $3500. So 950-1200 sounds super cheap to me.

[EowynW]

40 minutes ago, TuringMachine said:

According my googling, the median rent in my area is $3500. So 950-1200 sounds super cheap to me.

That is the highest rent I've ever heard of in my life. We don't even make that in a month. 

[Anonymousguest]

@EowynW it's all about perspective, but that all sounds super cheap to me! 3 acres of buildable land for $18k? Astounding! I searched redfin, and stuck with my zip code, which is a cheaper suburb and the only land for sale is a .55 acre lot for $512K (someone will buy it and build apartments). The only way to build new here is to buy an old house on a lot and tear it down. So I checked, the cheapest house on a lot is $310k for 1200sqft 60s ranch on 6,000sqft lot.

And while software developers with several years experience my make good money, just the average Joe does not. My son, with a college degree is making about $17/hr. He could not even rent a studio apt on his own. 

I'm almost afraid to know what you would consider not either acreage! 

[luv2laugh]

I saw that they sold their last home, prior to the teal blue mansion, for ~$565k and built that one from scratch too.

I am surprised to hear that housing in East Texas can get pricey. The day job he works at is located in Tyler but they live much farther away in a small rural town near Big Sandy where the ALERT compound is.  The Wallers got a great deal on their home but had to do extensive repairs. 

Spinning off a bit from the "How Fundies Afford It" thread, they can live in areas where the school districts aren't the best  since they homeschool and thus are likely to get a nice piece of property. Many of them also will not pay for college. Fundies like JB and her husband have a strong work ethic where they're always coming up with side gigs to bring in money. 

I'll be honest-- she has a nice life right now. I'd love to downsize and do the same thing in a rural small town with a bigger house and land, but we aren't able to. City slickers it is...

[BobJonesBabe]

4 hours ago, luv2laugh said:

I'll be honest-- she has a nice life right now. I'd love to downsize and do the same thing in a rural small town with a bigger house and land, but we aren't able to. City slickers it is...

Crazy! In a lot of places, it now costs more to live in/near the city, and living out in the country is becoming the less expensive option. Someday!! <3 

[danvillebelle]

Ditto on the observations that she's super, SUPER into herself and her appearance.  How many family pictures in front of the door does one need?  Apparently, 3,467.

[Red Hair, Black Dress]

She also admitted on the blog they sold their house completely furnished, including every single dish, knickknack, linens, pots & pans, etc, etc, etc.  Every Single. Thing in the house.  They left with only their clothes.  I also seem to remember they sold the house to some fan of her blog.  Which I find more than a little creepy that a fan would love your lifestyle so much they'd buy it.

So while they may have sold the house for $565K, they also had to completely furnish it.  She's a humblebrag bargain hunter/  self-confessed haggler, but she also loves the Anthropologie esthethic. As in actually bought at Anthropologie. Even on sale/close out Anthro is expensive.

Nothing about her decor style is in any way personal. It looks like a magazine photo shoot.  It is completely Pinterest-worthy, but devoid of all those little touches that signal "this" is the family who lives here, "this" is who we are.

Totally BEC, but who names their son Honor.  It's a girl's name and an obscure one at that. And what's with this girls and boys dorm room thing fundies do?  So the 12-year old shares a room with his not quite 2 year old brother?

 Interesting she's all quiverfull, but comes from a family of 2 children and a working mother (taught school). Given she's only mid 30s, I expect her to pop out at least 2-4 more children before she's done

[hoipolloi]

1 hour ago, Red Hair, Black Dress said:

Totally BEC, but who names their son Honor. 

Doug & Beall Phillips, that's who.

They named one of their younger sons Howard Honor (for DPIART's father) but have called him Honor.