All out of routine.........

I am a person who likes a routine.  I like to plan out my week ahead.  I do not like spur of the moment changes.  So getting sick wasn't part of the plan this past week.

However despite being sick I did manage to get the part of the basement painted that I planned on painting this past week.  It wasn't done until Saturday morning, but it was done.  Part of the issue with this basement decorating is that I can't do it all at once, it's too much for my hands.  Also I went and booked a company to come and clean the carpet and stairs down to the basement at the end of the month.  So I have a deadline; which is not something I normally do.

A bonus this past week, was getting more books read than I planned on doing this month, therefore cleaning out more books that have been laying around.  I will say though, the Jane Austen books are on hold as I can't handle them at the moment.

My goal for this basement for the upcoming week is to get it all painted and finished.  That will then give me another good week or so, to clean out cupboards and drawers down there and finishing tidying up in the laundry room before the end of the month.  That way I can do another trip to the charity store to donate stuff.

Oh and finally we got rid of the last of the snow........I hope I am not jinxing myself by saying this; as it is nearly the middle of April.  Hubby actually got out on Saturday and did the first of the winter cleanup.  It's far from being warm, but it's above freezing so we will take that as a win!

That time of year.....

 We have had a couple of very hard frost's which means the heating is on a little more now.  It also means that the cold will have killed the mosquito's!!!  So it's that time of year to remove the screens from the windows for the winter.

This is a close up of a screen, we have them over every window that opens to prevent the flies from coming in.  As I said this is a close up, we can see out of the windows clearly with them up.

Also removing the screens makes wiping the condensation up from the bottom of the window each morning easier.  We get maybe an inch until it gets super cold.

I will say you it was a lovely sunny bright, but cold morning on Monday.

I do store the screens either in the basement or in the spare bedroom.   However I have to wash them first.  I have put them in the bath tub so that Tuesday morning when I have a shower, I can scrub them while in the shower........multi-tasking!!!

Do you remove your screens for winter if you have them?

All done for 2023

 It was a nice day on Sunday, so we tackled the last of leaves to be picked up outside.   We have been picking them up for a while now.  The trees with the leaves on are oak.  Sometimes they drop at this time of year, other times it's not until the new year.

The back yard looks so much better tidied up for winter.

Front all spruced up, it was such a lovely morning.

To try and save the amount of bags we used, hubby mulched all the leaves, using his leaf blower.

Can you see the green bits on the floor of the shed?

That is grated up Irish Spring soap.  We have had a mouse problem all summer.  One of the things we were told to do is grate up Irish Spring soap as the mice don't like the smell.  Neither do I....but we have the freshest smelling shed around.

We have got rid of the mice, but only because we inserted steel wool in all the ventilation gaps in the shed.   We figured out they were getting in there.

As I said another bonus now is our shed smells so fresh!

Have you  got your garden put to bed for the winter?

First day of Spring.....

Spring, you image warm days daffodils flowering, lambs frolicking in the fields........

Meanwhile in Southern Ontario, the sun is shining, the skies are blue, the winds are bitter cold and snow is on the ground🙄

I went for my first walk of 2023 on Monday and thoroughly enjoyed it, despite the back of my thighs and the back of my knees saying otherwise.  It was nice to walk around the subdivision to see what was going on.  To the east of our subdivision they are building another 600 houses.  I see they have made a start:

It doesn't bother me, and although there will be a road through at the end of our street, we shouldn't see much of a difference in the traffic by our house, as there are quicker ways of getting out of the subdivision than via our house.  Plus there will be other ways of getting out of the new subdivision.

The temperatures are supposed to be getting warmer for us throughout the week.  I hope that results in getting rid of this snow.  I am over winter now........just saying!!!

Enough already........

I was "talking" to my niece in England on Facebook yesterday and she was saying how she loves the snow😕 So after I had ranted on about snow and how sick of it I am, I took some photos of snow to show her how much was around our house:

 Not quite 10 inches has fallen since Wednesday of last week.

 Compared to other's we have very little.

 However I am completely done with Winter.......

If I don't see snow again until December 24th 2018, I won't be upset..........

Are you done with Winter?

$1.15 Million over asking price........

With the housing market being as crazy at the moment; but this article caught my attention.  The house was listed for $1.19 million and sold for $2.3 million.  This house is in Toronto but when you look at it, I wouldn't pay $500,000 for it, never mind over $2 million.  It looks better on the inside than on the outside.  I wonder if the buyers are going to tear it down and build a mini mansion in it's place?

We were out and about on Saturday having a drive by looking at some houses that caught our eye on MLS.  If you have bought and sold homes before, you like us know that the photos don't show everything.  We drove by three and of the three only one was a possibility and then it was too gut; which at our age is too big of a job for us.  Plus when I spoke to the real estate agent by telephone he was very abrupt, so that put me off.  A good sales rep would have asked questions about what we are looking for etc.  We are in no hurry to move so can take our time looking for the perfect home to retire too.

We are looking to move as we are fed up of paying condo fees that by this coming June will have increased by $120 since we moved here three years ago.  For what we get for that money it would be better in our pocket!!

We also got rid of our guy who shoveled the driveway of snow.  He confused the heck out of us, as we never knew when he was coming and most of the time we ended up doing it ourselves.  Plus it won't kill either of us to do it.  Mind you we got a blast of winter here on Sunday, so out came the shovels........

Winter Freaking Wonderland............I think not!

Not sure about the rest of Canada, but I think I can safely say that if you live in Southern Ontario by now you are probably well and truly fed up of this winter?  I know I am and if I never see anymore snow it won't be a big loss.

I have had to blow out the driveway the last three days in a row.  I am having to dig out the mail box and it is four feet high as the drifts are covering it.  It's bloody cold and the heating is never off.  

The poor horses haven't been out in the paddock in weeks as under the snow there is ice and it's much too dangerous for them.

All my skin now is as dry as sandpaper.  Just put body lotion on myself.  One problem with that is you see how long your hair is on your legs.  I am at the braiding stage and it's only the end of January.  I normally don't shave my legs all winter, but may have to give in soon before it's trailing along the ground after me....LOL

Just in case you haven't gathered I HATE WINTER!!!!

Getting back to normal........

little by little.

After blowing out the driveway on Thursday I set about putting away some of the Christmas decorations.  I now only have the tree up and the cards up.  I hope to take the tree down this weekend and I'll leave the cards up until the 12th night.  I enjoy having all the Christmas things in the house, but like to have the house back to normal right after Christmas.

We got this from dd best friend "K" for Christmas.

Inside was this; a lovely Crabtree and Evelyn gift set for Gardeners Hands.  I told dh he could use the case as a new lunch box, he said he would pass!!  I am going to use it to store some sewing supplies in.

I saw this great idea over at Cindy's blog.  If you dry out your potato peelings for 24 to 48 hours, you can put them on your fire to help clean off the creosote and build up on your chimney.  So on Christmas Eve this was what was sitting on the hearth:

You still have to clean your chimney, but thought this would help.  The peelings burn at a high heat when dry.

Took a photo of across the way on Thursday afternoon.  Winter bloody Wonderland, for those who don't have to shovel!!!

Yep, I still hate Winter!

A day out........photo heavy!!!!

We had a trip to Erin, Ontario on Wednesday as it wasn't raining and it had been years since I was there.  Now will say don't go by what your GPS says, as it took us to Hillsburgh, Ontario?  Took us ages to flipping well find Erin, as there were a couple of closed roads.  Plus we were driving towards that huge cloud.

Looked a bit brighter to the west, but we weren't going in that direction!!!

We finally found Erin, and this is a shot of the main street.  Typical small town Ontario, very pretty.

After we left a store called What's Cookin'(where the tin man is in the photo) a lady ran out and asked me if I had a blog.  It turned out to be Elizabeth over at Kitty Cafe  I will admit I was stunned for a couple of minutes, that someone would recognize me, but I should have taken a photo of dh's face, as his face was a picture of not sure what on earth was going on...LOL

Anyway Elizabeth thank you for stopping me in the street and I encourage everyone to pop by her blog and say hello.

We stopped for lunch in Tintagels Tea Room, which is a British style restaurant.  Dh even took a photo of me waiting for our meal.

The green lamp on our table was a period piece and this photo does not do it justice, I loved it.  We also liked the badger picture, but at $190 it was a bit pricey for us!!

I ordered a Ploughman's Lunch, minus the Branston Pickle and the celery sticks, along with a pot of tea.  Didn't eat the carrot sticks or the dill pickles either, and dh had the roll with two pieces of cheese as he was hungry.  The egg was pickled, and it tasted horrible, which surprised me as I always loved picked eggs?

Dh had a ham and Swiss cheese quiche with a slice of bread, organic greens, with some weird looking dressing on the top of it, and a coffee.

While I was paying the bill ($34) I noticed the really neat tea urn.  I had never seen one like it before and the lady said they had only had it a couple of weeks.

Further up the Main street is Holtom's Bakery.  Honestly where do you start to make your choices?

We purchased two strawberry and rhubarb tart, two peach tarts, a pumpkin tart, a raspberry tart and seven scones.  Should have been six but she popped an extra one in for us.  All in all well worth the $9.10 we paid for them.  That's the best pastry I have eaten in an awful long time.

Further up the road is Beaver Mills Design.  Now this is a rotten photo, but the table in the window was stunning.

They are a design studio and antique dealer.  The lady was tidying up this tapestry cushion cover which was gorgeous, again my photo does not do it justice at all.  Should say the edging on the cover was no where  near as old as the centre panel.

This is what caught my eye though a full wall of shelves full of Farrow and Ball paints.  A paint lovers paradise.  I thought I had died and gone to heaven!!

I would added more links to the place but honestly I was surprised at how many companies don't have web sites.

When we got home we did a couple more preparing for Winter chores done.  Putting the tarps over the winter wood, so it'll be nice and dry when we put the fire on.  Also putting a tarp on the back of the garage roof, as it is raining in, and is a must do job for next Spring, when we have burned all the wood.  Also as it's going to cost around $2,500 to do it, I need to save up the money first.

Just a reminder if you haven't entered my giveaway, please do so here.

Something is missing.......

This is a photo of my left hand:

I am missing my wedding ring.  I have put a little actually a lot of weight on since we got married nearly 29 years ago.  Enough weight that I can't get my wedding ring off, despite trying all the usual things, soap, oil etc to try and remove it.  So I had it cut off on Saturday, as when I get my hand operated on at the end of the month, my whole hand including my fingers will swell up.  So I had to have it cut off before I get my hand operated on.  I am guessing it will be off now until sometime in April.  I have never not worn my wedding ring, so it is as though I am missing something.

Funny thing happened while she was cutting it off, she kept stopping as another customer was not happy with a repair or something so she kept talking to her.  Then she carried on turning this device to cut off the ring, meanwhile my hand is starting to ache like crazy.  In the end I had to tell her to please get on with it and tell the annoyed customer she would have to wait.  The woman who was cutting it off was very apologetic; not sure about the other customer, can't say I really cared, my hand was killing me by the time it was all done, as I had to hold it at a strange angle for me.

If you are married do you wear your wedding ring all the time?
When we were out and about on Saturday we called in at TSC to get some salt for the water softener.  I saw the veggie and flower seeds on sale with 20% off.  The one thing I am missing in seeds are some beets, so picked these ones up.  It says on the package there is enough for a 21 foot row, so that should be more than enough for us.  Lots of pickled beets in our future!!

Have to say from a money point of view a very low spend day on Saturday, as lunch was paid with a gift card.  Salt and seeds was paid with cash I had saved.  Dh bought us a coffee and muffin at Tim Hortons and that was all we spent.  Even put some money in our change jar.

By the way Winter is here and it's flipping freezing cold this weekend.  Even have a little snow.  I had to even wear my coat when I was out on Saturday as even I thought it was cold, I rarely feel the cold!!

Planning on hibernating today!!!

{SIGH} back to square one AGAIN......

We got another dumping of snow yesterday and as I am writing this the snow plow is just going by and is no doubt dumping a pile of snow at the end of our driveway.  No doubt any of the bulbs in my garden have shot back underground again.  I wonder if they will ever want to pop their heads back through again.

It's been an awful long winter this year.  I don't know if this is month four or five now.  I know we got snow in December, but have a feeling it was snowing way back in November as well.

I posted a couple of ads on Kijiji yesterday of these light fixtures:

No idea if they will sell or not, but thought I would try and see if it worked and it is free to post on there.  I posted more than the one photo on each ad to give people more detail.  I put a price of $75 for the blue pair, as I saw this one on another site and they want $95 for it and it is similar.  The single on I put $35.  I am willing to take less, but figured I would try for more to start with.  I have a nearly new stove hood/extraction fan downstairs I think I will post that for sale as well, as it is just taking up valuable space.  Figured if I asked $25 for it someone may buy it from me.

Out and about this morning, then I will no doubt have to snow blow when I get back in.  Enjoy your Thursday and hope you're not covered in snow where ever you live! 

Last day of February........YEAH!!

Well I have survived the longest horrible-ist (no such word I know) month of the year.  If you read this blog on a regular basis you already know I detest February, because of the rotten weather we always get.  March generally brings forth brighter warmer weather.........I am touching wood (my head) as I write this.

I bought some Bee Pollen on Sunday.  Bee Pollen is the only known food which contains every essential nutrient needed by mankind for perfect health.

The overall benefits to taking Bee Pollen are:

• Increases the bodies resistance to stress and diseases and speeds up the healing process in most conditions of ill health.
• Possesses age-retarding and rejuvenate properties.
• Great energy booster.
• Appetite suppressant.
• Weight management (weight loss & control)
• Help relieves "seasonal allergies."
• Lower blood pressure.
• Asthma.
• Fatigue.
• Pre-menstrual & Menopause.
• Skin Conditions.
• Feeling of Well Being.
• Alertness.
• Sexual Desire and performance.
• Athletic Endurance.

Now if all that happens I am going to be a new woman!!!

I give Molly 1/4 tsp of bee pollen every day, so if its good enough for her it's good enough for me!!

While I was looking at the Royal Doulton site yesterday I noticed that Wedgwood is bringing out a line of Royal Wedding commemorative pieces, here is a link to them.  Funny thing though it's only showing on the UK site; not that I have any desire to buy one.  Not really into that sort of thing.


One thing I have done though is made dd a fan of Wedgwood, she has dibs on my Wedgwood Christmas ornaments when I die she says!!!!   Like me she loves Jasperware; I only have around nine pieces plus my Christmas ornaments, and infact my Jasperware plates are still wrapped up in boxes from when we moved as I haven't found a suitable place to put them up yet.

***HAVING ISSUES WITH MY EMAIL FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE MY EMAIL ADDRESS, CAN'T ACCESS IT***

*****WILL POST TOMORROW THE SAGA OF MY GMAIL ACCOUNT****

Grocery shopping can be hard work and complicated.....

Friday I decided to go grocery shopping as I needed a few things.   However it's not as simple as just jumping in the car and driving to the store.


1. Look through the flyers to see what's on sale.
2. See what coupons you have to match up to those items on sale.
3. Make sure there are no bonus points coupons for any of the stores that you are going too.
4. Plan route, so you go the quickest way possible.
5. Get ready to go out, which means starting the car and warming it up, as it's still freezing bloody cold.  Due to the cold weather go pee.
6. Get dressed and go to car, remembering to take coupon book, flyers, purse and grocery bags.  Get in the car and remember you've forgotten the bonus points coupons for Zellers.
7. Go back to the house and find the coupons, and gosh it's bloody cold again today, so better pee again.
8. Get back in the car and drive off.


My first port of call was Sobeys where they had Green Works laundry detergent on sale for $6.49, I had $3 off coupons so picked up five of those.  Bill came to $21.67 after the coupons were taken off.  Discovered I only had $20 in my purse, then the cashier announced I had $5 worth of points I could cash in, so all in all that cost me $16.67.


Next stop was the bank, too cold to get out so went through the drive through and deposited my $5 Pinecone Survey cheque as well.


Next stop gas station to put gas in my car.  $1.119 per litre, however had coupon for 10 x CDN Tire money so came out of there with $1.05 in CDN Tire money.  Saving that up not sure for what.


Popped into Zehrs as they had Sunlight Laundry Detergent on sale for $4.14, had $4 worth of coupons so picked up three and 8oz of mushrooms on sale for 99 cents and a dozen bread rolls with 50% off.  Spent $13.01 in there and saved $6.  Made sure to keep that receipt to one side as we save Zehrs cash register receipts for the church.  I think they get 1% back on the receipt.


I then went into Zellers and things went down hill fast from there.  They had Green Works cleaning products on sale and the Supervisor decided I could only use one coupon per purchase.  I had 9 coupons and so I had to do 9 transactions..........totally wrong, but I could only argue with her for so long.  Needless to say cashing out took forever.  I bought a few other things as well and my total came to $26.54 and I used $25 in coupons.  Now I should have had another $3 in coupons, but I see she didn't take that coupon of :o(  I did however receive a bonus of 35,000 HBC points when I put the stuff on my card.  I then in turn paid off the balance on my HBC card.


I then drove to the other town close to me as No Frills is there and a great dollar store.  Picked up some good deals in No Frills, including lean ground beef at $1.88 per pound and pasta sauce at just under 50 cents per can when you bought 12 cans, so stocked up on those things.  All in all I spent another $33.88 there; will say though I didn't feel as though I got a lot for my money there.


I am stocked up on laundry detergent now for the year.  Probably have enough cleaning wipes for the next 6 months or so.  Enough dish washing liquid for the rest of the year and enough toilet bowl cleaner for the next six months or more.  Below is what I picked up on Friday, I have another "stash" of dish washing liquid, toilet bowl cleaner, and cleaning wipes downstairs.

I left the house around 9:30 am and got back in the house at 12 noon.  I wouldn't have been so long but for the Zellers fiasco.

I had put my shopping away and of course peed again and was sat down eating my lunch by 12.20pm.  Thank goodness I don't have young children as I wouldn't have been able to do all that in one go.

Oh and the snow plow driver is lucky I am not a violent person, as otherwise I would have hit him.  He drove too close to the end of the driveway and dumped another pile of rock hard ice/snow on the end of the driveway.  Good news for the mail lady, she isn't the most annoying person now, the bloody snow plow driver is!!

Did I mention:

I HATE WINTER!!!!!

Where did the long weekend go to?

One minute it was Saturday morning, and now here I am writing this on Monday night.


As always I had a list a mile long that I wanted to get done this weekend, and as always some things didn't get crossed off the list.  Still we made a dint in the list.  Dh's job was to finished mudding and sanding the drywall in the closets, and he got that accomplished.  It was a horrible job as the closets aren't the biggest of rooms, so quite claustrophobic and very hot in there.  A job when all completed will be so worth it.  I now need to undercoat/prime them to see if there are any imperfections that need sorting out before I paint them. Mind you I have to strip some paint off a door frame; I didn't realize it was painted, and sand and varnish the floors, so we are still a bit away from finishing them.


I got all the grass cut.....YEAH!!!  I even got some whipper snipping done; then I lost the ends again and didn't dare ask dh to sort it all out for me........AGAIN!!  I got some raspberries picked and frozen.  I have enough now to make some jam.  Goodness knows when that will be though as I have a lot of other things to do first.


We did get errands ran in between hands, so it wasn't all work all weekend.  No housework done though, other than a load of laundry and hoovering up downstairs.  Again I'll no doubt get to the housework later on in the week.


I have to work on Tuesday.  I don't know how people work outside of the house and try and look after five acres and everything else?  If you own an acreage and work outside of the house, can you let me know how you do it all?  Dh works hard at work and does all the renovations, so looking after the housework, all the cooking and cleaning and all the outside garden work is my job.  I have found it hard this time working as well.


I picked up a copy of the September/October Hobby Farm Home magazine the other day.  Check out the website if you have a moment.  I saw this recipe on there for Crockpot Potato Soup, that I think I may make sometime.


Also do you think we are in for a cold winter?  The trees and bushes are covered in fruit and berries this year, which I always think is an indication of a long hard winter.

This Mountain Ash tree is covered in berries.

I noticed that they are harvesting the field opposite us..........Fall is heading our way!!!

The new header photo is of a Coconut Lime Echinacea flower I have in the garden.

Bit of a catch up..........

Molly:

Well she likes her new food.  I have her down to 1/2 steroid pill per day, she's chewing her paws, but nothing too drastic.  I am picking up some of this Holistic Blend Organic Bee Pollen now this is supposed to help with the airborne allergens, who knows, it's worth a shot.  I need to get it into her system six weeks before the grasses and trees start growing again, so this will be the right time to start this.  At this point I am willing to try most things.

I ended up donating all her biscuits (had brewers yeast in them), all her old food; fish and sweet potato flavour and her shampoo, it had oatmeal in it, to the local animal shelter.  I also gave the vet her Omega 3 supplement, as that is fish based.........

Finally her back leg seems to be fine, she's a bit stiff going up the stairs otherwise she is fine.

As of Friday I can see patches of grass on The Acreage, finally.  The sun shone all day on Friday, so melted a lot of snow.  Which in turn let me see where all the dog poop was.  Considering Molly is a small dog, she poops a lot!!  I also dug out the end of the driveway where the snow had blown over.  It must have been knee high again in a couple of places.  Right beside the road though it's a mud bath, so that will be the next thing I will be complaining about, all the mud.

I finished the staining on Thursday and as I predicted I had the headache from hell on Friday and still have it.  That stain kills me, but its still much too cold to have the windows and doors open.  However on a more positive note, with the wind chill we are now only in the minus 8oC to 10oC, which is balmy hot!!

Now with having all this sun on Friday, those new blinds of ours came in handy.  Oh and that isn't a dead dog, that is Molly sound asleep on her ottoman!!  She was snoring again, I think that dog needs her adenoids out!!

An exciting photo of the close up of the blinds!!  If you enlarge the photo you can still see the snow.

The closet situation is on a go slow.  Dh is working six days a week at the moment, and like with any job we start in this house we have ran into problems.  This time its the electrical.  One of the plugs/sockets was to move.  When dh had a look in it, the guy had wired it wrong, and to cut a long story short that is only of interest if you are electrically minded, which I'm not, dh had to rewire it and pull new wires in, or something like that, and that involved taking up part of the attic floor.  I am actually writing this as it saves me telling my dad when I talk to him next.  Then he has to move the telephone jack again not a five minute job, and on and on it goes..........

I have to say it a bloody miracle that neither me nor dh have been shocked with these plugs in this house, dh is rewiring as and when he gets the time.  He's putting in a new electrical panel this summer, so he says.  As I have said before I have little to no interest in all of this, as I am of the opinion why do something yourself when you have someone else (dh) who can do things a heck of a lot faster and better than I can; that groaning and whining is my dad........I am so going to get a lecture next time he talks to me.....LOL

I have added more links to blogs on the section above my header photo.  If your's is not there please let me know, as due to me being nearly a year older, I have a tendency to forget things!!

We are having a day out from The Acreage on Saturday, as I got two free tickets for the National Home Show in Toronto  I was hoping to see if Stihl or Husqvarna were there as I need an industrial strength brushcutter this spring, in the hopes I don't burn out the motor this year!!!

Well that's my exciting news for today.  I will try and remember to take lots of photos at the Home Show.

Did you remember to put your money in your Daily Savings Pot today?

Today's Money Saving Tip:

Ask your real estate agent for tickets to local events, especially if the company she works for is sponsoring the event!!  Remax is sponsoring the Home Show, and our real estate agent works for Remax!!

The first time it was hard work.....

as I didn't know what I was doing.

After further instructions, the second time was easier.

The third time was hard work, and now the fourth time its just getting plain annoying.

What am I talking about, snow blowing the driveway; and it wouldn't be so bad, but we still have at least another three months of bad weather in front of us, if not more.  This snow blowing seems to be turning into the grass cutting.......a never ending flipping job.  Now granted unlike the grass cutting which takes hours and hours, there is nearly 5 acres to cut after all, I can get the driveway done in about an hour.

However we made a mistake and didn't put up snow fences so the snow has a habit of drifting on certain parts of the driveway, especially at the entrance to our driveway.  On Monday the snow must have been at least 3 feet deep on the end of our driveway.  Luckily dh has a 4 wheel drive and was able to get through it, but no one was getting either in or out of our driveway until I plowed it out.  Our snow blower is similar to this one

This is a photo of dh using the snow blower on Sunday:

This is the closest you will come to ever seeing him, he's camera shy!!  My brother Nick has written about snow and driving as well here

Now I'm not going to be about a lot for the remainder of the week, as I am working these next three days....depending on the weather!!  My old work called me in to cover for a vacation leave.   So that will be a change of pace for me, plus some extra pocket money.  I have just typed out a list of jobs that we need to get too this year and although there are only technically 24 jobs on the list, its long!!  This is what we'd like to do by next Fall:

1. finish attic

2. re-grade by basement patio door

3. basement insulation /drywall

4. laundry room

5. closets

6. garage door

7. repair garage sill

8. shed

9. garage rood

10. garage eaves troughs

11. replace electrical panel

12. replace all receptacles

13. receptacles in family room (power?)

14. old basement windows (drainage?)

15. new basement windows (drainage?)

16. new basement floor (hardwood?)/laundry room (tiles?)

17. fireplace boxes to replace

18. mud room, old door to replace

19. grout outside walls

20. mud room new door to repair

21. remove light fixture above front door (need soffit material)

22. family room (remove hardwood and drywall), replace insulation, plastic and drywall

23. family room (remove metal rail) make new half wall

24. insulate mudroom under floor

Now what this list doesn't tell you is exactly what these jobs involve; most are an awful lot of work, but I am going to stick it on the fridge on we can cross them off as we get them done.

Did you remember to put your money in your pot for the Daily Savings Club?

Today's money saving tip is:

Before you buy something, ask if the item will be put on sale in the near future.  I know Sears is good for this, especially in the furniture and appliance departments.

Christmas Eve.....

Thought I'd show you some photos of our place. Yes it has snowed, and we're in for a White Christmas.

O Holy Night by Josh Groban



Twas the Night before Christmas Poem

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tinny reindeer.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

"Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys, and St Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.

His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"