A couple of weeks ago I think I had a Thrifty Thursday post go live without photos, so here are the photos of the used Pottery Barn quilts I bought for $10 each:
I think they are cute and will serve my younger boys well.
Archive for html404
Fatal Attraction?
Talk about living in critterville….my daughter went outside this morning only to discover another dead mouse had joined the first dead mouse in the stainless steel bowl. Fatal attraction? Ha! 😉 Is it the itty bitty amount of food that is the attraction, the stainless steel bowl or a dead mouse spouse? My daughter just said that was awful but I am a little giddy this morning after my super hero candies! Seriously. We were given some candy this week and when my husband brought it home I started, “I wish you’d tell your mother not to send that stuff home.” Only to find out it was gifted by another. Ooops. Should have thrown it out but we have been eating it. Or should I say I have been eating it. The children had a treasure hunt yesterday with some of it.
Anyhoo….candy has nothing to do with the fatal attraction of the dead mice, only to do with my sugar high!
So what do you think is attracting the mice to the bowl?
Appliance Woes
We had a lovely Thanksgiving day yesterday. We spent the day at home relaxing and just being together. We started a new tradition of a “Thanksgiving Tea”, which the children loved! Then we made our Thanksgiving dinner. Everything was going well until it was time to bake our pies and our stove went on the blitz! We tried until bedtime to get the oven to heat up and it would not. Talk about being bummed at no pumpkin or apple pie for dessert!
Waking up before 5am this morning I got up and turned on the oven…..voila! It worked! So we had our Thanksgiving pies for breakfast, but shhhhhh…..don’t tell anyone! 😉
Appliances are wonderful inventions. I love mine, as I am sure you do too…. except when they go on the blitz. Three years ago a couple of days before Thanksgiving our 15 year old stove stopped working and we had to buy a new one and have it delivered the day before we were to host Thanksgiving dinner!
Our appliances stayed at our townhouse since our rental provides all the appliances. We have noticed a drastic reduction to our electric bill since we still have our second refrigerator and three freezers over at the townhouse. We need get rid of two of them because they cost so much to run due to their being older appliances. Let’s just say they are not energy efficient. We are not sure what to replace them with, but we like the look of the space saver Beko fridge freezer (image to the right) because our current freezers take up so much room in the garage. With our family of ten Cheap fridge freezers provide us with extra space for food storage. If either of our houses were big enough then commercial sized appliances would probably be more practical, but neither home has a huge kitchen so they won’t work. Maybe if we ever build.
Appliances can’t live without ’em.
Unwanted Critters
Happy Thanksgiving! (Still working on those two posts….)
Living in the country has presented a variety of critters around our place. Back in the summer we were all sitting around the dining room table and got a whiff of skunk through our patio doors. Yep, let’s just say that was unpleasant to say the least. From that time on our boys swore (not literally) that a skunk lived in one of the pine trees on our rented property! In reality we have no evidence of a skunk living on our property.
Then we have had some mice visit us. The first made its appearance in the garage, which was quickly vacated by a mouse trap. More recently one was found in our basement. We think the basement mouse was just a visitor because there was no evidence of him being there long…if you know what I mean? (I mean there was no mouse poop/droppings.)
This past week the boys informed me that there was a dead mouse in one of my stainless steel bowls they had used to take out veggie scraps to the compost pile but left the bowl outside….to catch a mouse. Uggh. Just what I need to lose a bowl over. Really. That bowl won’t be found in my kitchen again!
Road Kill Critters
Our road is really, really busy for being a country road and cars go really, really fast. So one weekend morning we woke up and one of the children had gone out to play (yes, they go out all times of the day and night now since there are no neighbors to bother!) and came running back in to say there was a possum dead out front (where the road runs by). Sure enough there was a dead possum almost off the road. Of course, everyone, but me and baby, had to go take a look at the road kill.
I can only imagine what that possum or skunk would have done if we had chickens!
Possum photo to come, but I have to change computers to upload it!
Unwanted Human Critters
The title “Unwanted Human Critters” is more in tongue in cheek than it is to sound mean. Living just 20 minutes from our old town puts us in a whole new culture. Seriously. In our townhouse community, as close as the houses are/were, we could go days without talking to anyone. That is townhouse/suburban culture. Here in the country we have had strangers knock on our door to see if we were selling our chicken equipment. Yes, all because it was in plain view.
Just this week we had a man stop and ask my husband if we wanted to buy his ten chickens because he was moving and needed to sell them. If it had not been fall and we had had our fencing, we might have considered it.
We did not know these people at all.
Then there is the fact that one of our sons decided to roll under our neighbors fence to say hi to their dog making him and unwanted human critter! Yes. Our neighbors on the same side of the road as us are probably an acre or two away and our boys after the conventional soybean farmer had harvested have played out in the acres behind our property (acres we are hoping to rent in the future). Our neighbor came a-knocking to let us know of our son’s escapade. Then they inform us their dog is a guard dog and has a history of biting the UPS man or anyone that comes on the property. Thankfully the dog was in its kennel at the time, but the neighbors have a surveillance camera since they have been robbed before and caught our son in action! We are grateful for the understanding of our kind neighbors, but our son(s) both got a talking to about respecting other people’s property.
Never a dull moment in the country! 😉 We are lovin’ it, in spite of unwanted critters!
Confessions on XFactor Night
Ok, I admit we are XFactor junkies at our house. My husband is a huge music buff (it was at a Christian music concert that he found a relationship with God!) and I…well…get pulled in by the contestants’ stories. When my husband was laid off a few years ago we discovered Britain’s Got Talent through Susan Boyle’s sensational audition that went viral, that in turn lead to us finding out about the UK’s XFactor. I am actually almost ashamed to admit this but we watch the UK, Australian and now the US version of the show. My husband and I usually watch it first, as with tonight’s US show and then watch it with our children. That way any scantily clad dancers, inappropriate lyrics etc. can be screened out of their view. Most of the time the show is pretty much ok, but it’s the music/entertainment industry’s standards that mess things up – at least for our family.
The girls categories on both the US and UK versions are strong this year. It was the boys category that was strong on the Aussie version.
So are their any other XFactor fans out there? Any thoughts? We think Simon Cowell makes the show and the chemistry between him and the other US judges is pretty fun to watch. After all the show is for our entertainment, right?
Now off to my cheap date night with my husband! (I did not get this posted because as I nursed my son to sleep he lulled me to sleep! I know all you nursing moms understand! 😉 )
The results of last night’s show are on tonight on Fox.
I have started three posts this week and have not got back to them, so I am trying to get them posted now.
Remembering Christmas – A Revell Blog Tour
It is hard to believe we are nearly through the month of November. We have had a beautiful fall here in Chicagoland. Now the holidays are upon us. First Thanksgiving next week and then Christmas within a month. Our family loves the Christmas season and Christmas stories. Remembering Christmas by Dan Walsh is one of those books that is all about family and what it means to be a part of one. It is a book to be read over and over again as a reminder of being a devoted son or daughter.
Remembering Christmas is not your typical, predictable romance. It does contain a few well placed twists and turns. What I liked about it is that a wealthy, successful, yet selfish son, Rick, comes back to his hometown during his mother’s time of need. He begrudgingly puts all his needs and wants on the back burner to be there for her. I admire his devotion to his mother.
I also liked that Rick’s trip home forced him to face his old hurts and repair broken relationships that should never have been broken in the first place. It is through the healing process he finds unexpected love and devotion of another kind.
This is a lovely story about relationships. Everyone could learn something from this book. It gets a two thumbs up from me!
“Available September 2011 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.”
Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.
HOTPANTS (TM), Not Hot Pads
When I first signed up for the HOTPANTS (TM) review, I thought it was just another tummy tucker. Do you know what I mean when I say that? I just thought it was an article of clothing that tucked in all your excess baby weight. But I was mistaken. It is much more than that. It is a pair of biker shorts that was invented to sweat off the cellulite and excess fat in your waist, hips, butt and thighs. Inside the packaging is a flyer “Take the Two Week Challenge” encouraging you to weigh and measure yourself, wear the Hotpants every day for 2 weeks, then weigh and measure yourself again. After doing that share your results on Facebook and tweet about it.
My Results
Since I have only had my Hotpants for over a week and since they are required to line dry I have not been able to wear them every day for two weeks because it took them a couple of days to dry in our house. Plus I wasn’t wearing them to meetings outside our home because one they are not dressy enough and two it has been pretty chilly this week with the wind even with temps in the 50s at the beginning of this week. All that to say I have not seen any results due to my lack of consistency in wearing them.
My Thoughts about Hotpants
However, what I can say about the Hotpants is that they are warm, comfortable and fun to wear. My husband teases me saying I won’t be able to sneak up on anyone in them because they make a distinct “swishing” sound when I walk. Ha!
The Hotpants are black on the outside and yellow on the inside, elastic waistband and have a fair amount of give to them.
They fit surprisingly well. Being on the short side they fall at or just below the knee depending if I am standing or sitting. On taller folks they should fit like normal biker shorts like the photo to the left.
The Technology Behind Hotpants
Hotpants are engineered using Celu-Lite (TM) technology. They use your natural body heat to reduce the fat and visible cellulite. By wearing Hotpants you increase your perspiration by up to 80%. The Celu-Lite (TM) technology heats the body areas covered by Hotpants, promote deeper warming of your tissue leading to more sweating and thus breaking down fat and toxins which then can reduce the fat and visible cellulite. Cool, eh?
The technology behind Hotpants is called bio-ceramics, which has been around since the 70s. The bio-ceramics contained inside the material of the Hotpants, and contain far-infrared reflective particles, enabling the reflection of the body generated heat back into the tissue, warming up the tissue deep below the skin’s surface. (Reworded from this resource: Zaggora’s Hotpants product information sheet)
You can wear Hotpants during your workouts, working around your house or even sleep in them! Studies have shown that just wearing them to bed can lead to positive results in a 6-8 week time frame! Yes, I have been wearing them to bed too. 😉
Where to Buy
Overall, I really like them and look forward to having more time to see what kind of results I get.
Want some too? You can buy your own pair of Hotpants at Zaggora.com. They retail for about $71 US.
Overruled: Government Invasion of Parental Rights
This is a must see for ALL parents! Go beyond the first case as each case presented is a different topic.
Planting Garlic
Farming has its elements of convenience and inconvenience. I love the convenience we have now with living right on the property that we will be farming. It is convenient to grow our own food. The inconvenience comes with weather, the timing of planting and harvesting. For the purpose of this belated Health & Garden Tuesday, I will be covering the inconvenience of planting garlic.
The inconvenience comes in the form of waiting for the first frost and getting the garlic in the ground at the right time. How do I know what the right time is? My timing in most things is not the greatest. In the case of garlic, which is usually planted in the fall for a spring harvest, it is a mixed bag. My timing for ordering our garlic was actually very good. I had fun picking out a few varieties of garlic and making my purchase, but we are just getting to tilling, planting and mulching our 7 or 8 lbs of garlic. I fear if my timing is off it will ruin the quality and quantity of garlic we harvest next year. My inexperience makes me second guess myself no matter how many times I read over the planting recommendations. I am hoping we can complete this little project this week….but at the rate we finish things….hmmm….but it has to get done soon.
Nevertheless, I am excited! I am still a little shell shocked that we are actually farming our “own” land. It still doesn’t seem real. It has been three and a half months since we moved here and the farming aspect is not being lived out in full capacity. After all, we moved at the end of the growing season here in Illinois. At least the growing season for outside. There are many farmers who have high tunnels which allows them to extend their growing season….but that is a whole other topic!
Here’s to hoping the weather stays in the 50’s so we can get our garlic into the ground!
