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Gazebo Engineer

16 May

So as I’ve blogged about in the past, we ordered a new canvas cover for our back yard gazebo back in March.  The company claimed that is we matched the exact model gazebo frame we have, along with the exact store it was purchased at, their custom covers will fit!  It wasn’t cheap, coming in at around $170, but in the end, cheaper than any alternative we could come up with.  They carried our exact needed cover in which the manufacturer doesn’t make gazebo frames anymore, so it was perfect!

However, when it arrived, my husband couldn’t stretch it enough to fit it onto our existing frame.  “Sure it will fit if I rip it!” he said.  He tried so hard that he even popped one of the grommets off.  We complained of course.  The company stood by their product.  They handled it very professionally, fairly and quickly.  They asked us to send them a picture of the frame and we did, along with the original paperwork that came with our gazebo.  They verified that the cover we ordered should fit and sent us a second cover completely free of charge.

Without getting our hopes up, it came in the mail after a couple more reminder phone calls to them!  And of course, it didn’t fit, it was identical to the first one, as we expected.  We really needed a cover, and now had 2 for the price of one.  My husband decided he could get a special saw blade and cut through the metal frame of the gazebo, cutting off 2 inches on each of the 4 sides and then the cover would fit.  It seemed like a really big job.  Unbolting the corners, blazing loud saw while standing on a ladder, I stood by the entire 4 hours, helping while I could and holding my breath while crossing my fingers!  We forgot we also had to cut the pipes that hold the netting on the sides.  At one point, my husband he nearly drilled through his thumb, but nearly is key!  Our neighbor exclaimed that my husband is a construction wizard and a gazebo engineer too!!

The cover fits!!  Yeah!  And now we had another spare to use after this one wears out.  We are so happy to have shade in our southern-facing backyard again!  It only took 2 months to complete the job, but it was well worth it!  We even ate dinner outside the other night, under the shade of our gazebo!

 

 
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Posted in Family, Running a Household

 

Garden Planted

15 May

A few months ago I made a generalization that I “throw a few seeds in the ground” every year.  The comment was met with a break-out of laughter and a repeat of the phrase.  OK, I say it that way because I’m not a professional gardener and I don’t really take it seriously.  After years of trying to obtain that perfect image of the kids helping me plant, water and then eat the healthy home-grown produce, I have given up on the fact that they will ever get involved with the process.  I also still remember dumping at least a dozen cucumbers on my neighbor’s porch last year (we had way too many) and the neighbor responded not with “Thanks, we love these,” but with “More cucumbers???”  OK, I’m getting the picture.  Last year I was ready to forget about planting anything but my husband surprised me with the news that HE really wanted a garden.

The truth of the matter is, the garden lives on!  I just planted beans, sugar snap peas and cucumbers!  If we do decide to plant tomatoes, I usually buy a live plant and not start them from seeds.  Last year though, we had as many tomatoes as we did cucumbers, and I threw them in the trash.  We’ll see what the bunnies don’t eat this year!

 
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Posted in Family, Mom Role, Running a Household

 

Happy Belated Mother’s Day!

14 May

I feel relaxed and rejuvenated with a renewed sense of appreciation and gratitude that was expressed by my children and husband yesterday on Mother’s Day!  It was a lovely day!  I can’t thank my children and husband enough for all their special gifts, surprises, flowers, treats, home made cards, special pictures and hand written poems.  I hope you had a lovely day as well!  Since it appears true as the saying goes, “A Mother’s Work is Never Done,” it is always nice to bask in the appreciation even if it just comes once a year!

I hope you got a chance to see the “Google” home page yesterday.  It was a very cute, well done scene with the children making up the letters “o” sneaking up on their their mother which was the “g” and presenting her with flowers and hugs!

This morning on the radio there was a completely random pole of 10 mothers called and asked to rate their mother’s day on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best ever.  The mother’s didn’t know they were going to be called and that is why the results are unbiased. The final results of all 10 mothers polled was a 7.5.  Not bad ha?  I’m glad most mothers had a great day of honor.  I’m sure it was deserved!

How would you rate your day?

 
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Posted in Family, Mom Role

 

Garage Sale Season

11 May

This is spring after all, garage sale season!  Our subdivision hosts an annual garage sale in which they advertise for us in the paper and leave signage and everything else to residents.  This is the shortest notice I’ve ever received from our subdivision that we are in fact, having a community wide sale this year.  I need to spring into action!  Yesterday I quickly pulled out several items from my linen closet that I will try to sell.  Some things are hard to part with and I may have a need for these items in the future.  But for right now, I’m going to try to sell, sell, sell!  The weather forecast looks nice which usually translates into more customers.  I’ll be pricing my wares this weekend!  Our one big-ticket item we’re going to try to sell this year is our old 42″ Sony TV.  Since it’s about 8 years old, it clearly is larger than today’s flat-screen technology.  I have listed the TV on Craig’s List several times over the past few months and we haven’t had any takers yet!  Maybe we’ll get lucky!

 
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Posted in Current Times, Running a Household

 

Muffins with Moms

11 May

I participated in the wonderful PTO sponsored event this morning at my daughter’s school called Muffins with Moms.  There are so many excited moms who participate that they have to open it up to TWO different Fridays because we can’t all fit in the building on one day!  For a reasonable fee, you and your child/ren are treated to huge, tasty muffins and either coffee for moms or a juice pouch for children.  The event is usually even profitable for the school, so it’s for a great cause!  Although the cafeteria is VERY loud and it was VERY crowded, you are knocking into your neighbor, and you are sitting at elementary school lunch tables built for tiny kids, it is all worth-while!  It is a nice event and I welcome the opportunity to be involved in my daughter’s school!

 

 
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Posted in Family, Mom Role

 

A Busy Back Yard

10 May

Now that the temperatures are inching higher every day, we’re spending more time outside which of course translates into more exercise, a healthier life style!  But our back yard is busy not just from us!  We have a squirrel that visits from his home in the neighbor’s tree, a chipmunk, whom lives under our patio & digs too many holes and I don’t like him, but admit he’s cute, a whole clan of rabbits that eat hundreds of dollar’s worth of my plants every year, several species of birds such as morning doves, gold finches, purple finches, sparrows, red-winged black birds, and one pair of beautiful cardinals.  But the most fun is our mallard ducks!  There is one set of a male and female and one injured, limping female on her own.  I remember them from other years too!  They visit at nearly the same time every day, several times a day and are becoming quite tame.  They are so fun to watch waddle across the lawn!  They love the bird seed we set out and we discovered they also really appreciate a bowl of water too!  When their pile of food is exhausted and we slowly creep out the feed them, they slowly waddle to a corner of the yard to watch while we replenish their food!  When we go back in the house, they waddle back over for the feast!  A couple times we have mistakenly, loudly rushed into the back yard to play simply to notice “the ducks are there.”  They get priority of course.  They simply look at us with our loud noises and weird movements as we retreat into the house and leave them to their peace.  Now we just need names for them!

 
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Posted in Current Times, Family, Mom Role, Running a Household

 

Outdoor Fieldtrips

09 May

I have had it with outdoor field trips!!  A few weeks ago I chaperoned my daughter’s field trip to a Pioneer Village/ Farm with lots of fun history to explore such as a live blacksmith presentation, making our own cornbread and cooking it over an open camp fire, sawing our own firewood, and braiding a rug.  Unfortunately the ENTIRE field trip was outdoors and it was about 43 degrees, cloudy and the wind was gusting at about 30 knots.  Bottom line is we were all freezing!  Our noses were frozen, our toes were so numb it felt like they were going to snap off when you bent them to take a step forward!  It was hard to enjoy yourself and the environment of the trip and learn anything when we were all so cold.

My daugther’s class went on ANOTHER outdoor field trip today!  I thought the weather was going to be a bit on the cool side but a HUGE improvement from her last outdoor trip!  The forecast was sunny with light winds and temperatures in the high 50′s- still 7 degrees below normal, but again, much more doable!  This time, unlike the previous trip where we weren’t told it was going to be outside, with were properly warned that the entire trip would be outside.  We were told to watch the weather and ensure our children were properly dressed!

This trip was downtown in our little village consisting of tours of older historic buildings in town led by members of our own local historical society.  I made a special point to know the weather very well this morning before school so my child was ready for the outdoor field trip.

Mother Nature had a surprise in store!  I glanced out the window and noticed rain drops on the window.  What?  There wasn’t even a HINT of rain in the forecast today.  Upon further investigation, I saw the ground was getting quite wet and although I could see blue sky, there were also cumulus clouds present.  A few minutes later everything was dry again.  Good I thought.  That wasn’t so bad for the hundred or so kids outside!

But within an hour, it was steadily raining, raining so much, that there were large visible, standing water puddles all over the ground, sidewalks, roads and driveways.  Oh no!  I’m certain my daughter is soaked.  The sweatshirt hoodie which should have been fine for the fore-casted weather, is NOT waterproof.  She did take an extra jacket, but it didn’t have a hood.  I saw a handful of other kids in her class this morning and they had very similar if not identical outer clothing.  This means, everyone watched the weather forecast and it was wrong and I’m certain EVERYONE got soaked.

Another wonderful field trip right?  I can’t wait to hear all about it!

 
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Posted in Mom Role, Running a Household

 

Gold Finch Sock

07 May

My husband brought home a box of 2 gold finch sock feeders and hung them in different trees in the back yard.  By the next morning there were 3 beautiful, graceful, yellow gold finches eating from the sock!  I didn’t even know there were gold finches in the area!  We’ve been extensively feeding the birds this entire spring, filling our 3 feeders nearly every day, but we had never seen a gold finch before we hung the “socks.”  The vibrant yellow males and more subtle yellow-green females are a nice addition to our usual flock of grey morning doves and black birds!  Try one today to see if you can attract gold finches!

 

 
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Posted in Family, Products, Running a Household

 

Painting Kitchen

04 May

A couple weeks ago I painted our family room, with an accent wall and all!  My husband wanted me to put the painting supplies away since we were tripping all over them and quite frankly, it just didn’t look nice!  I disagreed.  If I put the supplies away, I would lose my ambition to paint our kitchen.  You see, our family room and kitchen share a wall so it completely dire to paint both rooms not only the same color, but at the same time.  This is our busy season with our kid’s activities including sports and lots of after school stuff going on, so it’s hard to get a block of time, even on the weekend, long enough to paint for hours at a time!

Before...Linen White walls

 

This is after:

After

Now our kitchen is painted and all the paint supplies are picked up and put away, after two coats of Benjamin Moore Barely Beige have graced the walls!  The kitchen was definitely more time consuming to paint on account of standing on the counter to paint above the cabinets, and scrunching over the paint under the cabinets and behind the fridge and stove.  But in the end, it looks so nice, it was all worth it!

The color used to be Benjamin Moore’s Linen White.  This was a “safe” color that we picked about 9 years ago shortly after moving into our house when we had no idea what color scheme we wanted.  This Barely Beige, is just that, a much warmer color that blends much nicer with ….well….everything!  I would recommend the color to anyone!

 
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Posted in Current Times, Family, Running a Household

 

Kentucky Derby

04 May

The 138th running Kentucky Derby is tomorrow folks!  Are you prepared and ready?  Which horse are you betting on?  From what I’ve read this year, there are 10 or even 12 horses that have the potential to win the race this year; an unusually high number.  Even the experts can’t seem to agree so how is someone who’s not a horse expert like me supposed to come up with a guess?  Get your wagers ready, pretty soon, they’ll be off and running!

For attire, I picked this hat:

From this.....

 

To this:

To this!

What do you think now, honestly?  Maybe Derby hat making won’t be my new hobby!!! LOL.

 

 
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Posted in Current Times

 
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