Author: admin (Page 23 of 89)

First, some pictures of the replacement of the back door project.

The back room blocked off to keep the rest of the house warmer.

Work in progress

the end of day 1.

End of day 2 – door with window and storm door.

Beautiful window lets more light in.

Just by way of explanation – We had found a door without a frame, which had a plain, boring window and we’d also found a window for a door, that we got for free. But then, we had to buy a whole new, cheap door to get the needed door frame. At the end of day 1, we just had finished putting that frame and door in. On the second day, Dad traded that door with the one we’d bought and replaced the window in. Make sense?

And now for some Christmas decorating pictures:

Small Santa collection

Hutch with usual decoration and two Christmas turtles.

Penny rug runner on counter

Christmas tiles on the perpetual calendar.

Handmade nativity scene

Medium Santas on the organ

Small tree with Grandma McCrea’s handmade ornaments

Whirlygig decoration in waiting room

Old fashioned lamp and Santa

Nativity collection on entryway table

Wreath on decorative door in fitness room

Tree just outside waiting room

Shelf-hanger Santa

And, finally, we couldn’t keep Pippi from jumping over the baby gate, so we put in something  a bit higher, and easier for us to navigate, as well.

Dad hooked up the old computer to the new monitor and keyboard and I’m good to go, with all my sign-ins and passwords. So I can post again. The old computer, it seems, was not the problem, but since we didn’t pay anything for the new system, I don’t really care. Dad is using the new laptop and I’m happy as a clam with the old computer, now that I can see the monitor again.

I had my first group lessons this week Monday and Tuesday. They went very well. I learned some things that I needed to tweak between the Monday and Tuesday groups – making things easier or getting more material ready, so Tuesday went more smoothly, although the one Monday class was the largest – 5 kids. The others were all two or three. I had fun and I think the kids did, too. The main event was a Jeapardy-type game on music theory concepts. If nothing else, they learned/relearned a lot of material. Then we did some rhythm recognition and some style recognition. And the five person class played duck-duck-goose, because they were done early!

Today I did some of the cleaning for tomorrow, plus made Sherlock’s rice/meat dog food and granola and cookies, as long as the oven was hot. 🙂 And gave the dogs a bath.

We are having steak tomorrow, but with all the other normal Thanksgiving things – cranberries, stuffing, rolls, pie. (I see way too much poultry, what with making Sherlock’s food every 10 days, to get too excited about turkey.) I won a $50 gift certificate for the local grocery store, so I bought everything needed for the day for only about $10 of our own money!

Happy thanksgiving to you all!

It actually ended up being a not-very-photogenic snowfall. But I did take a few shots for those of you without snow. The first three were taken through the screen on the dining room window, which is why they are not very clear.

I got up to no snow at all and checked the radar and it looked like we were right under the whole big system of weather. But apparently it was mostly clouds over us. But, then, about 6:00 a.m., it started to snow that very tiny, almost misty snow. But that stuff still piles up quickly, so it is starting to look significant.

Cameron schools have closed for the day and Bloomer is closing at 1:00 and canceling all evening activities.  It will be interesting to see what Chetek does. Today is the fall choir concert, but that is a rather insignificant activity in the whole school picture. No one would want to send kids home, then have it clear right up, but I’m sure no one would want a whole school-full of kids that can’t get home because the buses can’t get through!

10:45 Update – they announced that the kids will be sent home at 1:00 and that the concert is off for tonight. So I can just stay home and shovel the sidewalk!

We have not been able to pick up internet from the living part of the house, although we have it up in the office, where the computer is. The main inconvenience of this is that when I want to watch Netflix, I have to unhook the router and something else from the computer and bring it, attached to a long and often tangled wire, to the back of the house and plug it in the bathroom outlets. The same thing, in reverse, when I am done. Plus, Dad can’t use the internet on the computer when I’m using it for the t.v.

So the other day, I had a brainstorm. I have perfectly comfortable chairs in the waiting room, and plenty of room, and it is just on the other side of the wall from the office, so the internet would work on the Netflix if the t.v. was moved to the waiting room.

So I did the move today. It involved disconnecting all the wires involved in the t.v., dvd player, Wii machine, video player, etc., as well as unloading everything from the drawers of the entertainment center and moving the furniture around. But I got it all done and hooked up myself. (Dad was gone all day). I just took pictures of all the connections before I unhooked them, then hooked them up the same way when it was all moved. And everything worked fine. Then I moved the dvds from the dvd shelf unit (that has seen better days) into the drawers of the entertainment center, got rid of the dvd shelf unit, and rearranged the living room part of our house, now that it has a lot more room. There is even room for a small recliner, if we happen to find one.

So, movie and Netflix watching will be done in the waiting room and reading and listening to music will be done in the living room. I actually do as much of the latter as the former, so I’m very pleased with the transformation. Dad said he likes it better, too. (And he doesn’t have to figure out how to get the internet to the back of the house, now!)

As you probably know, we’ve been following Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover plan. We started 29 months ago, in May of 2012, thanks to Nathan and Amy presenting us with the complete kit to learn and get started. We had a lot of credit card debt.

In June of 2013, 13 months later, we made the last payment of the last of the credit cards and we have been debt free since then.

The next step was to have a fully funded emergency fund. It was hard to estimate what we would need, since we both get income from various sources. So we decided on $10,000. We had the original $1,000 set aside, but needed to save another $9,000.

Today was the day I put the final deposit in the emergency fund, so we now have $10,000 set aside for emergencies! That took us 16 months and it seemed like a long 16 months. We have had several financial changes of direction during that time – deciding not to build a house, my deciding to quite my job, buying the Knapp Street property and moving out of our rental. But we just kept throwing money toward that fund, as much as we could.

So the next step is to get all of our rental properties mortgage free. The actual mortgages are paid by the renters, but we are going to be putting an extra $800/month toward paying them off one at a time. If all goes well, we’ll have them paid by the time Dad retires from Marshfield Clinic. With the income from the rent, then, as well as Social Security, and Dad’s retirement funds, none of you should have to support us in our old age!

Three years ago, I was not sure that would be the case!!

I’m very happy!!!!!!!!!!!!

I second what Erica said. All of a sudden it feels like winter is actually coming. It isn’t so much the temperature, because it is still above 32, but it is the blustery wind. Makes you want to wrap up in a warm blanket and not go anywhere.

Monday was the middle school concert and I remember that last year we had a significant amount of snow on the day of the fall concert. It was quite slippery walking and cold in my concert clothes and shoes. It seems to me we had even less wintery weather for the Christmas concerts.

Living in such an odd place, I’m not sure how many kids would find us for trick or treating, so I’m just giving my piano students a candy bar at their lesson and telling them I’m not going to be open on Friday night for treats. I don’t expect any other kids, and since there was no one living here last year, I can’t imagine anyone will be disappointed.  And I can have a quiet evening. I’ll have to lock the door and turn off the front room lights when the 4:00 and 4:30 lessons (all in one family) get here, so the place looks deserted.

Sun shining on wall outside bedroom window. Some days the bricks just seem to glow!

I just added the hanging lamps, that we got from my Mom’s house. I think it dresses up the room nicely. And not having a floor lamp gives me a lot more room on my side of the bed.

A couple shots of the back yard, now that we have the fence up and painted and the barrier fence between us and the cafe. Notice the hobby horses from my mom’s leaning against the barrier fence?  They are brand new and we found them up in one of the store rooms. Wonder who they were for. Also notice my mom’s cute little car sitting past the fence. We’ve ordered a hard top for it, since the zippers don’t work any more. That will make it a lot easier to load things in the back, as well as make it quieter and warmer! The drape and upside down tub are covering other things from Dembee Ranch that still need to be cleaned and sorted.

It seems like it just was Friday. Dad and I were both rather under the weather a lot of the week. We have this virus that is going around and we just can’t seem to shake it. It has a cough and I, for one, start coughing at the most inopportune moments. I just skipped New Auburn choir Monday, because I knew singing would set me off coughing. I finally feel like I’m getting over it today, but I still have cough drops in my pocket. Dad’s went into his head, so he’s been dealing with a stuffy head, too. Fortunately mine just stayed in my chest. But he has been sick two weeks longer than I have, so it has been almost 6 weeks for him.

I finally did a good cleaning of the house yesterday. It really needed it. I don’t know why it gets so dusty here, but it does. And with so little floor to walk on, the floors get pretty dirty pretty fast. But I also did cabinet fronts and dresser tops and things like that, so everything is sparkling clean for a couple days, at least.

Dad brought another load of stuff from Grandma’s, when he was down for the funeral, and we have to find a place to put it all this weekend. One thing is a second chest freezer which will go in the basement once we redo the steps, but for now it will have to go in the fitness studio. I really need it though – I can’t fit one more thing in the freezers we have after all the squash I froze!

I’m hoping it is nicer tomorrow, because I have one 4 foot section of the picket fence to paint yet and we won’t get many more chances before winter. Have a great weekend, everybody!

I don’t think I mentioned that the college up in Rice Lake hired me to play for student vocal lessons. There are four students – two one hour lessons and 2 half hour lessons, for which I get paid $45. I go every other week. And it is really fun! I just love the new voice teacher. She is very much a college level teacher, so expects a lot of the students – something that was definitely not the case in the past. Like she tells them they should know the notes and rhythms before the first lesson on the piece. One girl actually does, but the others struggle with that. In the past, not only did most of them not know their notes at their lessons, but they still didn’t know the notes and rhythms when they came to me to prepare for the recital.  Their teacher was just playing their notes with them at lessons.

Three of them sang for a masters class at the college last Friday. There was a husband and wife vocal team that was down from UW-Superior to put on a concert on Saturday and they did this class on Friday afternoon. I learned so much!

Today was my first day to practice for the first concert at the Chetek Schools for this year. The 7th and 8th grade choir is pretty small, but they sing well. The 6th grade choir is larger  than 7/8 combined, and they actually sing pretty well, too. The concert is Monday. And so it begins for another year.