Category: Home & Garden

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Found the Cutest Bird Feeder!

I was looking for a hummingbird feeder, but came across a different, adorable bird feeder and I really want to buy this one! What do you think? Hummingbirds or regular songbirds?

I just liked the idea of a tree having a window with an angel or fairy looking out the window at the birds. I think I would have a fairy in the window instead of an angel, but I can switch that out myself if I buy it.

I already have two beautiful, glass hummingbird feeders, but I was thinking that if I bought one or two more that I might attract more hummingbirds to my yard. I have two in the Dogwood tree, where I can see it from my living room window.

I was thinking about putting a new one in the oak tree by my kitchen window. But maybe I’ll do one for the songbirds, instead. My only concern about feeding songbirds is that it attracts squirrels. I don’t like to encourage squirrels in my yard, because they are so destructive. I had a lot of trouble with them getting into my attic and chewing through some electrical wires. That cost me several hundred dollars to pay an electrician to come fix that, plus they could have started a fire!

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Pumpkin Decorated like Cinderella’s Coach

I found a photo of a pumpkin decorated like Cinderella’s coach and it gave me the idea to do this at home. I bought 3 pumpkins at Fred’s Discount store for only $2 each. I also found this little plastic Cinderella doll and the rhinestone crown in the toy section of K-Mart for only $3 for the doll and $6 for the crown. I can’t find the Prince Charming doll anywhere locally and I shopped all the different store toy sections looking for him. Maybe I will check Amazon and see if the Prince Charming is available there. I would not mind paying another $3 to have Prince Charming greeting Cinderella.

 

I’m going to embellish my pumpkin with bling and put it on my porch so the kids who come trick or treating can see the vignette and I won’t be too worried about teenagers vandalizing or smashing my pumpkin like they did last year when I had it closer to the road. I dare them to come up on my porch and try that shit!

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Getting Ready for a Yard Sale

This time of year my neighborhood has “Yard Sale” signs popping up on every street corner every weekend. It’s the perfect time to get serious about clearing out your clutter and getting ready to sell it off to strangers who happen to drive by and see all your stuff in the yard – or garage. Most of the houses on my street have a garage that faces the street, so if it happens to rain during the yard sale, we just move it all into the garage and people will come.

I’m the first one to admit that I have hoarder tendencies, but I try to  keep everything organized and clean. About twice a year I will do Spring Cleaning and toss a bunch of things that I don’t want into some big plastic tubs that I keep in the garage in anticipation of having a yard sale. There are some things that were easy to discard, such as all the old VHS tapes that I’ve had since the 1990’s, a bunch of old CD’s that I have to admit that I don’t listen to, and this weekend I will be purging my closet of clothes that don’t fit.

Today I realized that I have 4 media shelving units full of DVDs and they are covered with dust. I seriously cannot remember the last time I walked over to the shelves and looked for a movie to watch. Everything is pretty much on demand digitally, so why are all these old movies taking up space and collecting dust? I’d be better off selling the old DVDs for a little cash and put that money toward my vacation this summer.

My last boyfriend was a big movie fan and loved to collect DVDs. It seemed like every time we went to WalMart, he would pick up one or two movies to add to our collection. The only problems is that they are all guy movies. You know, the action movies with Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson. A few comedies with Adam Sandler or Ben Stiller. And those crime dramas with Robert De Nero or Al Pacino. As far as I’m concerned, once I’ve watched those kinds of movies, I’m not really interested in watching them a second or third time. So, what’s the point of having them on the media shelves?

There are probably only 4 or 5 movies in each different genre that I can watch over and over again. Maybe I should grab 10 desert island picks from each genre to keep and then just sell off all the rest. My boyfriend left them all behind when I had to kick him to the curb, since I’m the one who actually paid for most of him while he was “looking for a job” for so long. It will be nice to having a little extra money when I head to the beach in August, and selling the DVDs – that I don’t even watch – in a yard sale is a pretty painless way to raise that extra cash.

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Scored Big on my Yard Sale!

Tonight I am exhausted but over $600 richer than I was this morning before my yard sale. I really scored big on getting rid of so much stuff today. I even sold my futon for a good price and now I have a ton of room in the spare bedroom to organize all my crafting and sewing supplies.

I had set the alarm clock for 5:30 am – which is almost a crime for a Saturday morning! But I knew I needed to get an early start on setting up the tables and hauling all the stuff out to the front yard. At first I was going to just use the driveway, but realized that there was no shade over the driveway, so I used the front yard where I could be a little cooler in the hot sun. Good thing – the temperatures almost hit 90 degrees today. But there was a little breeze and the shade made it much cooler.

I was able to unload two old TV sets, a small bar with 2 leather seated bar stools, lots of kitchen gear that I never use (who needs three crockpots, anyway?) the futon, and some old jewelry that I never wear anymore. I sold about 40 CDs for $5 each. I didn’t think anyone would pay $5 for a music CD, but this younger guy stopped by and said he was starting a mobile disc jockey business and needed to get a lot of music together that people like me would dance to at weddings.

All together, it went really well and I had almost nothing left over – just a few clothes and old pocketbooks. So I tossed them into a big box and dropped them off at Good Will. That $600 is going to my vacation fund – that will come in really handy this summer!

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Lightning Bug Season

Tonight I went for a short walk with my dog around the block. When I got to the hill, I looked across and saw something bright. At first I thought it was the eyes of an animal. We have skunks roaming our neighborhood at night, and I was worried that a skunk would come after my dog. So I stopped and looked a little harder. Turns out it was not a skunk and not the eyes of anything critter. It was a lightning bug! And then another one lit up near the first one, and then the yard seemed to explode with little twinkles of light. It was pretty magical and I was so grateful that it was not a skunk!

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Baking Up a Storm in the Kitchen

When the weather turns cold and rainy, it drives me into the kitchen and I start baking up a storm. I love to cook, and I especially love to bake. I think that cookies are my specialty, but I make a fantastic cake – from scratch! – and a pretty tasty fruit pie, too!

I am going to try some recipes today that call for buttermilk. I have not used buttermilk before, but you see it featured on a lot of boxes at the store as something special: buttermilk pancakes, buttermilk waffles, etc. So I am going to make some pancakes and then a recipe that I found calling for buttermilk and fresh berries.

If it is still cold and rainy tomorrow, I will be back in the kitchen working on some cookies. I have a few things in mind that I have not tried yet and if they turn out well then I can take a couple dozen to my vet’s office and share them. I love my vet and doing something nice like baking cookies is a great way to show your appreciation to the staff there!

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Learning About Flowers

One of my girlfriends took a temporary job last month as a delivery driver for a flower shop on Valentine’s Day. The job was just supposed to be for two days, and she just wanted to make some fast cash.

As it turns out, the owner of the shop got mad at his regular delivery driver and fired him after Valentine’s Day. So called up my girlfriend and asked her if she wanted to take the job full time, in his place. She said that the delivery part was fun and she could use the money, so she took the job. I think that is cool how things worked out for her.

Part of her job is not just delivering the flowers but also helping around the shop in the mornings when they get their daily deliveries of fresh flowers. she has to help unpack the boxes and haul buckets of fresh water into the flower cooler case. And she helps prepare the flowers by cleaning off dead leaves and thorns from the stems.

Now she is all excited to be learning about flowers and how to arrange them. I wonder if she has an undiscovered talent for floral design? I talk with her every night and she tells me everything she has learned about flowers that day. It sounds like a very cool job.

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Have You Been to a Dog Park?

Most days I take my dog for a short walk in my own yard every morning. Then, in the afternoon we walk up and down the street in my neighborhood. That’s the only safe place I know and that all the exercise we get. I’ve never taken him to a dog park. In fact, I don’t think there are any dog parks anywhere around this area. I think there is one about an hour from here, but that is awfully far to go for a walk in the park with my dog.

Oddly enough, there was a movie on cable last night called, “Dog Park.” It’s about several people in California who have dogs and develop romantic relationships because they meet at the dog park or dog obedience classes or they work together. I admit that I did not watch the entire movie, but watch I did watch was awful. It is a really lame story line, the sound track sucks, and the actors are pathetic. I have no idea how this movie even got made. Do not waste your time watching this awful movie, even if you are sick in bed with the flu and can’t find the remote control to change the channel. The dogs in the movie are the only interesting characters, especially the two Boxers.

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Funny photo of jack-o-lantern with piglets

funny photo of jack-o-lantern with piglets

Isn’t this photo of these piglets adorable? I carved out three pumpkins this year to put on my porch and it never occurred to me that I could put anything inside of them to take a picture! Of course, I don’t exactly have any piglets at the house. But I could have borrow a couple of kittens from my neighbor – that would have been a great photo, too!

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Laundry Drama

Now that the glow of a new purchase has worn off, the new washing machine that we bought is starting to bug me. There are a lot of things wrong with it. It works – the clothes get clean. But there are a lot of things about this front loading washer that I hate.

In the first place, the settings do not allow you to select a cycle that just rinses one time and then spins it dry. So, if you open the door and find a puddle of soap suds, you have to run an entire hour long cycle again just to get the excess soap out of that load. That is a waste of water, electricity and time.

Next, the drawer that you pull out to pour in the soap bleach and fabric softener is too high. When a short person is pouring bleach into that drawer, it can very easily splash back right into her eyes. That is extremely painful and dangerous.

Next, the drawer has three channels for adding the liquids and they are very shallow. When pouring any of the soaps, bleach or fabric softeners into their proper channel, it is very common to have a lot of splash into the wrong channel. It really pisses me off to be pouring bleach and have it spill over into the fabric softener channel. That means during the rinse cycle there will be bleach coming out and onto my clothes and that won’t get properly rinsed out. Since there is no separate extra rinse setting, that mean you have to wash the entire load over again.

I hate that it takes a full hour to wash a single load of clothes. It does not matter if the washer is totally full or you have only a handful of undergarments that need to be washed by themselves, it takes an hour. That is way too long – especially for a small load of undergarments. Those should only take about 20 minutes to wash. An hour is way too long.

I hate this washer and hate the so-called engineers who designed it. I would never ever buy a GE front load washing machine again and hate to be stuck with this awful one. If I could sell it and get even half my money back I would rather buy a new washing machine that put up with this crappy one much longer.