Time to pass on the baton..........

When God was handing out talents, I skipped a few lines; how to mend a car, how to use power tools, you know that sort of thing.  However, I was front and centre when in the "shop until you drop," line😁

The other day I met up with daughter and grand daughters at the mall around 40 minutes from home.  I rather enjoy that mall, Vaughan Mills.  Got a variety of stores and a pretty good food court.  Plus it's a straight drive for me, no going on Highway 401, which is a nightmare I find.

Any how, we got there for 10am and fueled up at Tim Hortons, before we started.  We all had things we wanted/needed to do and I will say we all were in a great mood.  

I came to the store I needed to go into, Kate Spade first.  I have splashed something; coffee maybe, onto my suede handbag.  I am not happy, so wanted advice on the best way to clean it.  Their advice; google it?????  We had a look around, admiring all the bags and deciding, I would drag hubby back there when he is off next to see if he feels like buying me another handbag 😉

We carried on and got more shopping and more shopping, and more shopping!!!  By 12:15pm, my feet were killing me and I left the others in a store to go and find a chair to sit down on.  They came and found me and said lets go to HomeSense.  I said no we're going to eat and dragged them to the food court, so I could sit down for a bit.

After lunch we went to HomeSense and bought a pile of stuff, and headed towards Bass Pro to look at the fish; but after that I was done.  I could walk no more.  I left the mall at 1:45 pm and was home by 2:30pm.  Which means I was shopping for only 3 + hours, but I was pooped.

So I am now officially handing over the shopping baton to daughter and grand daughters, they can get on with it now; I'm getting too old for all this wandering around!!  But let me add, despite how tired I was I thoroughly enjoyed my day, the girls are great to shop with, especially when they have there own money!!

End of an era...........

I sold our push lawn mower this week; got $50 for it.  We have had it years, and honestly haven't used it in  a few years.  Daughter and son-in-law used it also for a few years at their house.  So it has paid for itself, time and time again.

We got it from Lee Valley Tools.  I see they have upgraded it now, when I looked at it here.

So another thing out of the shed.  I am on a cleaning out kick at the moment.  We need to get rid of stuff; especially stuff we don't use!!

I managed to get this lot sorted to go to the charity shop:

I also decided to go through the bill drawer and the filing cabinet to do some shredding:

We had tax returns from 2010.  I checked online here to see how many years you had to keep here in Canada.  It said 6 years, so I kept 8 years just to be on the safe side.  We had info from prior properties we sold, medical receipts from the early 2010's, all stuff we don't need.  Took a while as the shredder kept over heating despite me oiling the blades and only putting a couple sheets of paper through at a time.  

When was the last time you had a session of shredding things?

Air Fryer

I finally gave in and got one.  I actually bought one the other week but when I got it home it was way too small, so returned it.  Canadian Tire had this one on sale for $175.00  As you can see it's the big one, but what I liked most about this one it has two baskets, so you can cook more than one thing at once.

I will say the downside is the size of it.  It is big, so I have had to shuffle things around and may do more moving things around yet.

I decided to start out slow and easy, so cooked some sausages for hubby, and I had bought some chicken breasts and cut off a couple pieces from the chicken.  We were having wraps for supper.  I tossed the chicken breasts in some Greek salad dressing.  Cooked both items on air fry for 20 minutes.  Both items came out juicy and cooked great.

I do not like using the BBQ, so am hoping it will replace that.  I have some chicken burgers I want to try in the air fryer.  Also have some veggie burgers, so will try that as well.

I will keep you updated on how it all goes.  With it being so hot and humid, it was nice that the kitchen was heated up due to me using the air fryer.

Oh and almost forgot, got a bonus $25 in Canadian Tire points for buying this, so that will come in handy sometime.

Passports and pensions....

Our passports expire February 2025.  As you can't travel with a passport that has less than six months on it before it expires, figured we may as well get them renewed well ahead of time, in case there was a delay.

As we have a CAA membership we got our photo's taken there.  Mine was free and hubby's was just over $10.  So if you have a CAA membership make sure you take advantage of that.  

We completed hubby's Canadian pension application online and the CPP was easy peasy!!  The OAS though, was another matter.  The word that comes to mind with that form was "ambiguous."  The way they worded some of the questions was confusing.  They also required copies of our marriage certificate and immigration papers.

Both the pension and passports applications required a visit to the dreaded Service Canada office.  Now depending on where you live this could be an all day job.  However we were warned ahead of time not to visit our local office due to the long lines, and go to another office a 50 minute drive from the house.

Believe me when I say it was well worth the 50 minute drive, as we were in and out in under half an hour.  The person we dealt with was so nice and very thorough.  It helped that we had all our paperwork filled out and we brought with us exactly what they needed.

I will say though I felt that $160 CDN each for a 10 year passport was a little pricy; but it's a need not a want in our case.  They told us it would be back within the month; but it will probably be back sooner, or so I have been told by other people.

As for the pensions; we'll hear back hopefully in the next month or two is everything is good with the paperwork.  As we don't need either of them to start until January of 2025, there is plenty of time to fix any issues that may arise.

Oh and a funny story about the passport photos.  We were going to get our photos taken the week before, but I ended up with a spot/zit on the middle of my forehead for some reason.  I took one look at it and told hubby there was no way on earth I was having a passport photo taken with that huge zit on my face, and having to look at my passport photo for the next 10 years and seeing that zit!!!  

As it happened the photo I took is actually a good photo.  Meanwhile hubby looks like an escaped convict. As I said to the lady, oh no, he's going to get stopped going through customs with that photo!! She just laughed and said yes!!

Sunday Song

This is such a fun song, enjoy!!!

Seriously????

We have had our Patio set for many years and it has served us well.  The only issue we had with it, is storing it and how big the table is.  It seats six.

So we decided to get a smaller one.  I knew selling this one would be more hassle than enough, so decided to give it away for free.  I wanted to keep the chairs as there is nothing wrong with them.

I decided to advertise if for FREE on our local subdivision/estate Facebook site.  Sure enough a local guy said he wanted it.

He turned up and I sent hubby outside to help him lift it into the truck.  Thankfully I didn't go outside!!

As he said to hubby after looking at it in great detail, that no he didn't want it as it was scratched????

Not sure what he was expecting for FREE, but I can guarantee you won't get brand new for free!!

I posted it on our city's free site and it was gone the next day.

Meanwhile we bought this one on clearance in Home Depot.  It seats four and is big enough for us.

Hello July................

We're already half way through 2024, where has the first half of the year gone too?  For me time is flying by this year.  Hubby took this week off from work, so we have been busy catching up on bits and bobs, trying to get some jobs out of the way.  However, poor hubby has been sick with a head cold.  However, when he catches a cold, it also goes straight to his chest, so he has been coughing up a lung and thankfully coughing up green ick.  He has turned a corner and is finally feeling a bit better.

As the Euro's is on, we have been watching a bit of soccer/football.  I caught up with my temperature cross stitch today, and I am up to date with it. It's still hot and humid.  I try and get anything I need done outside done in a morning and then hibernate in the afternoon.

Our daughter-in-law and her sister were telling me about a puzzle they had got but couldn't complete, as it's "The Clearly, Impossible Round Puzzle."

What makes it hard is it's clear perspex which changes colour depending on the light.  It was hard I will admit, and hubby helped me with this.  There is a method to completing this, and once we got into the swing of it; it was pretty straight forward.  However, I totally understand how it could be impossible to do.

I will prepare a few posts for the next few days so you can see what we've been up too.