Sunday Ramblings

Today let us follow the call of Pope Francis to open our door to all who seek entrance. May this Epiphany see a welcoming of all.

Everybody have a wonderful evening.

God bless.

Saturday Roundup

I started a new cross stich project at the end of Christmas.

This is one of the many kits I inherited from my mother (well that Dad gathered up and gave to me after Mom died) and since I decided to work my through them all this was next on the list after the ornaments.

It seems to be working up fairly quickly, which makes a nice change. I hope to get it done in a couple of weeks and then I will move on to the next one.

I also cast a new project onto my needles at the beginning of the week.

I am using some recycled yarn from a sweater I disassembled awhile back to knit an infinity scarf (notice I knit this not in the round) and once the scarf is completed I will make a pair of mittens for myself (I always need mittens, cause I seem to lose them over the course of a couple of winters). Hopefully the set will be done by the end of the month.

Having to stay inside because of the extremely cold wind chills is helping get projects completed. Having to stay inside because of the extremely cold wind chills is helping with the extra cleaning list. Having to stay inside because of the extremely cold wind chills is not helping with my exercise program!

Everybody have a wonderful evening.

God bless.

Frugal Friday

Hoping that I have had five new frugal things for this week.

1.  Downloaded a few books to my ereader. Also downloaded a few I paid for, but they were all very inexpensive.

2.  Took apart a sweater to recycle the yarn.

3.  Walked three days this week.

4.  Used a number of coupons when shopping. I don't think I will ever manage to make it to Extreme Couponer status, but every little bit of savings helps.

5.  Using up, making do and doing without as much as possible.

Here is a picture of our snow for the month of December.

This is the snow bank from blowing the snow in our driveway. I am afraid that soon there will be no place for more.

Hope everybody stays nice and warm.

Everybody have a wonderful evening.

God bless.

Cold and More Cold

The next few days are going to be cold ones. Time to nest here on the frozen prairies if you can.

I got a phone call today and my damaged Terraine was ready to be picked up. This is a whole day sooner than I was told it would be ready. It even smells brand new!!! Feels so good to not be sitting on the ground and driving, my loaner was an Impala and something I am just not used to driving under the conditions we have right now.

So since I now have my own vehicle back I won't be nesting in my nice warm house. Instead I will be making my first grocery run of the new year. I have made my list and will be sticking to it. As it is mostly dairy and produce the bill should not be excessive.

We are setting up the budget for this year and are hoping that prices do not go up as much as we are being told they are. This year we will only be raising the medical, house insurance and property taxes lines.

I will really be watching what we spend on groceries and hopefully will be able to hold the line here. After seeing what the stores are charging for herbs I think I just might extend my herb garden. Herbs are so easy to plant in containers and that makes them very easy to harvest.

I usually plant mint, oregano, parsley, sage, thyme, and rosemary but would like to branch out a bit. I am open to suggestions.

Everybody have a wonderful evening.

God bless.

My Techie Skills

Today my shipment from Amazon arrived. Surprisingly, even with the holidays it came a day earlier then we were given to believe it would.

So far my skills with technology have not been too taxed. Well, perhaps a bit with the plug and play features of the Slim Line external hard drive.

How hard could it be to attach something this small and innocent looking to a computer. Right????

Well, the first time trying to download and install the program that runs this tiny little thing didn't take. So I had to do it all over a second time, restart the computer and cross anything that I possibly could. This time I got the program installed.

Now it was time to backup the computer. Hmmm, did the backup twice and nothing, no files at all were backed up. So after a bit of fooling around I managed to at least backup important files, and set the backup of said files to occur every Tuesday (I will probably change this eventually).

Then I decided it was time to update and sync my ereader. I couldn't eject it as some how it was being read by the external hard drive as well as my computer. What to do? I ended up ejecting the external drive (I will plug it in again next Tuesday morning) and then I could do what I wanted to do with my ereader.

So far the only item that I received today

the USB hub is the only thing that is not causing me undue problems.

Tomorrow I tackle learning how to use the micro SD cards in my tablet and ereader. And since I am busy being techie, perhaps I will save the holiday pictures to CD and clean up the picture files.

Everybody have a wonderful evening.

God bless.

January Goals

I have a few goals for this month. Most will be very easy to complete, some will cause me to stretch, and still others I am keeping my fingers crossed.

1.  Take down Christmas decorations.

2.  Cut out three tops.

3.  Sew two tops.

4.  List Messy Bun/Pony Tail Hats for sale.

5.  Declutter.

6.  Burn our Spain/Portugal holiday and other pictures to CD.

7.  Work on projects to use inherited yarn, and cross stitch/embroidery items.

8.  Have 20 no spend days this month.

Some will stretch my technological know how (I may just have forgotten how to transfer pictures to disc), keeping my fingers crossed for those 20 no spend days (considering we will need to pay for the deductible to repair the car, that is a day I was hoping not to have to spend), and listing things for sale scares me something silly (what if no one wants them???).

Everybody have a wonderful evening.

God bless.

Update On Last Months Goals and Declutter Challenge

Once again I am a bit late, but better late than never.

1.  Get the tree up and decorated.  Done.

2.  Gifts parcel done and mailed to my brothers and nieces. Done.

3.  Cards/phone calls/and ecards done.  Done.

4.  Wash, iron and frame our sons cross stitch gifts.  Done.

5.  Wrap gifts.  Done.

 6.  Finish the Christmas baking.  Done.

7.  Continue with my knitting, sewing and cross stitch projects.  Continuing, each and every day.

8.  Try for as many no spend days as possible this month (I am not going to set a goal, rather I am just going to see how many I can accumulate).   I finished off the month with a total of 24 no spend days. The nasty weather had a great deal to do with this number.

 9.  My new household calendar pages need to be made. Done. I ended up buying a daily journal and making extra pages for my monthly menu, appointments and meetings, goals and extra cleaning lists.

This year I actually managed to remove 1005 items from the house. I will be continuing this as I use up more of my fabric, cross stitch and yarn stashes. I think I just might feel a bit lighter.

Tomorrow I will post my goals for the month of January.

One wonderful thing I would like to share with all of you is that we were under our total budget for the year by almost 7k!!! Hope to do just as well this year by getting the grocery budget even lower.

The costs of the new furnace and the basement redo are from our savings account. Harvey calls them capital expenses and has a totally different spread sheet with those expenses on it. Not doing quite as well with this as things seem to be adding up much higher than expected.

Everybody have a wonderful evening.

God bless.