February 26- home things

Good morning everyone 

I spent a lot of this week cleaning and such around our home.  Things had just go out of whack for several reasons.  

I put the leaves back in the big dining table 

and put out a few Saint Patrick’s decorations 

  

Husband’s little garden plants are growing 

 

They seem to like our sunny bay window ☀️

Our living room 

I bought a vented storage wood box  to hide the antenna and roku boxes on the mantle,  put my assortment of birds on the mantle and on the shelf over the sofa 

and made a rag strip wreath for over the loveseat (some of the grands helped make the wreath) 

Cooking this week 

Smothered steak in the crockpot on a day I had a busy afternoon 

I cooked a hen and will make it into soup or more chicken and noodles this weekend 

And we had a new kind of frozen pizza that was really very good for a frozen pizza.  

   

During the cold spell, we ran our heater and our gas fireplace so much!  We did conserve when told to but that wasn’t until the middle of the 2 weeks when it never warmed up above freezing,  

I’ve heard natural gas prices increased astronomically too, 

I was concerned what our gas bill would look like and it came this morning.  

I’m not sure how it is so small and I’m very thankful we had heat during those very cold days.  

Ducky played with grandkids 2 days and spent 1 day at the doggy day camp and spa.  

It all made him so tired.  

But doesn’t he look clean and fluffy?  He smells good too! 

Hope you all have a good weekend 

❤️ Rhonda 

February 25- hello again 👋🏻

Good morning ☀️ 

Last week was nothing but rough!  It was so cold and snowy and icy.  

Thankfully we never lost power or water and the conservation things we did like keeping the water, gas and electric usage as low as possible, were not fun but we made it.

 

Melanie asked about our meals - before the coldest weather came,  I cooked several entrees and we reheated portions in the microwave as it used the least amount of power.  

We also had sandwiches.  

Below is a recipe we tried from Joanna Gaines.  

I divided it by 3 for just my husband and I.  But made as the recipe is written, it would be super family style meal.  

The salad was so good and so simple.  I made the salad a second time and we had it again last night with a different meal.  

The salad is a diced English cucumber, tomato and onion with just a little olive oil and lemon juice for the dressing.  

Apparently the weather got Walmart all out of whack and I could not get a grocery pickup so I went to the store Saturday.  

There were lots of bare spots but I found everything on my list except the caramel sauce. 

Walmart normally sells maybe 50 kinds of sliced bread but on Saturday, they had only 3 kinds.  We liked 2 of them so that is what we bought.  

And we ended up buying the ice melt at a local cleaning supply business.

Our house was very much in need of a good cleaning.  

I didn’t vacuum or steam mop when we were watching our electric usage and the floors were extra dirty because of tracked in snow and ice melt and grands being here.

I also didn’t do laundry.  

So I made my to do list on my iPad this week and I’m so happy most of it is done. 

Today, I’ll work on laundry.  

When we went to Walmart,  we also went by a thrift store.  I saw a vintage metal tole lamp on their Facebook page and I was so happy they still had it for sale,  

I’ve been changing the lamps in our home from lamps with cloth shades that get so dusty and are hard to clean to lamps with metal or glass globes that can be cleaned easily.  

Apparently I’m not the only one as these are listed at high prices on EBay. 

That’s the exact same lamp! 

Ours was $9.99 and my husband spent $17 on some new lamp parts to improve it.  

I’ll take some photos and show how nice it looks in our living room soon.  

I helped 3 grands with their virtual school the first part of the week and now they are in actual classes at their school 2 days a week. 

However 2 grands that have been going to in person classes most all this school year are back in virtual school because the town is have water problems, not weather related but a pump failure.  They should be able to return to school as normal next week after being out for 2 weeks.  

Seems like since the virus arrived, it’s always something, isn’t it? 

A holiday to plan for 😊

And I think this Instagram post sums up my feelings during so much of this last 12 months.  

❤️ Rhonda