Month: July 2012 (Page 2 of 3)

Well, we are on our second posting on Craig’s List for the house for rent. Both of the families we checked out and said they could have it decided against it. I think they were both distance issues.

So I posted it again last night before supper. We got 3 calls last night and there were another 11 calls when I got home today at 2;30. It took me a while to call them all back and let them know where they are on the list. We are supposed to be showing to person #1 around 5:00 – 5:30, but she still hasn’t called to say she is on her way.

Meanwhile, we listed our upright freezer for $100 and someone offered us $75, so we are selling that tonight. Not the $100 that we hoped for, but we didn’t realize it was over 15 years old and not frost-free, so I guess $75 is fine!

I learned how to do pictures with the camera card directly into my laptop. So, here goes:

This was one of our projects – clearing all the stuff from in this porch area and putting the double glider rocker there. In the shade!!!

A couple of very pretty flowers blooming in the backyard today.

Green beans are only a couple days away!

The next room to tackle – laundry room.           And our stuffed dining room.

I should be getting used to it, but the heat kind of makes me just want to stay inside where it is cool. I managed to get bread baked, the laundry pretty much done and finish my garage sale yesterday. (I had the garage sale Friday afternoon and Saturday morning – made $45 after I paid 10% to The Garage, but I didn’t have any big stuff, so it was okay.) After supper I decided I had to get busy and get the cleaning done, so I did the whole list of weekly cleaning jobs, because I hadn’t done anything all week and the house was a mess. I even managed to find the small vacuum under a pile of bags of clothes and got the love seat vacuumed really well, so now I can see if that was what was causing a flare up in my hives. The house looks just lovely this morning, so it was worth it! This week, I’ll do some on Thursday, Friday and Saturday instead of all in one day! Plus I plan to work on the monthly cleaning jobs on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday so I’ll just clean a bit every day.

For those of you that want to save on groceries:

Brown sugar (did you know you could make your own?)

Put 1 tablespoon unsulfured molasses for every 1 cup of granulated sugar in a mixing bowl. Mix it until it looks like brown sugar.

It takes quite a while. First it will make little black balls of the molasses and a bit of sugar, but eventually it all evens out and is brown sugar. You can also do it by hand with a fork. Or you can do it in a food processor. If you buy your white sugar in large bags, I’m sure this will be cheaper than brown sugar in a bag.

Oatmeal Pancake Mix (you store it and use it to make oatmeal pancakes later)

4 cups oatmeal

2 cups white flour

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup instant nonfat dry milk

3 tablespoons baking powder

2 teaspoons cinnamon

5 teaspoons salt

½ teaspoon cream of tartar

Mix all ingredients well. Store in a sealed gallon size plastic bag or airtight container. Yield 9 cups.

Pancakes from mix

1 cup oatmeal pancake mix

½ cup water

1 egg

2 ½ tablespoons canola oil

Beat egg in a large bowl. Gradually beat in oil. Add pancake mix and water alternately. Preheat oiled griddle. Pour 1/3 cup batter on griddle for each pancake. Makes 5 pancakes. (or more, if you make them smaller, like we do.)

I think these are really tasty pancakes. And they are a bit healthier than regular pancakes!

Nothing like a nice long hot stretch to make you totally appreciate normal summer days. And I have so much more energy when it is just 10 or 15 degrees cooler. Hope it has cooled down a bit for everyone.

I decided I would have a garage sale – in Chetek Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. It is worth it to haul everything up there for the additional people you get. We just have to give the Garage 10%. Anyway, I priced this afternoon and got everything not only priced, but cleaned up and polished to a shine. Did you know you can polish books? You can. And it makes them look a lot more appealing.

Now the idea. I know that not all of you are on this Dave Ramsey Money Makeover thing, but I think you all are in the position where you want to be financially conservative. So I was thinking that maybe this year we could limit gifts to things that you found at a bargain price from a garage sale or Goodwill or Savers or on ebay or whatever, or to things that you made yourself.  (Well, I guess ebay isn’t always cheap. But where you get things is up to you.) The point would be to try to give meaningful gifts without spending an arm and a leg. I know there are a lot of people to buy for and it could really add up. That would mean probably not posting lists, because it is hard to know what someone would find for you. I know in the past few years there have probably been as many gifts given that were not on the lists as were on the lists.

Anyway, if we are going to do this, we need to know soon, so we can start looking, because it takes a while to find really good bargains!

And I know that it isn’t really my business what you do with the name drawing and stuff, but I just thought I would mention it as an idea. And I would feel better searching for cool bargains if I knew that others were doing the same thing and that everyone would understand that our motives are good and that it doesn’t mean we don’t love you just as much.

Could everyone weigh in on your thoughts, pro or con?

When we thought we were going to have renters, we just moved all the boxes over and put them in the upstairs rooms. Then it got hot. And I had hives from the dust that was also up there. So they just sat. But in the back of my mind I knew I had to do something about the mess or Dad wouldn’t be able to wire the upstairs, which has to be done before he can close in the ceiling with the evil dust.

So, today was cool and I attacked the project. What I thought would take me several days took from about 10:15 until 3:45, with a short break for lunch. I ended up with 85 boxes cataloged and stored. I had already started the project, though, so I didn’t do all 85 today. Probably about 40. I would label it with a number and a description, log it in the computer, then put it away. A lot of them went in the room with the desk, then the rest of them got stacked in an organized fashion in the same room I was in. As I was doing it, I was sorting out things we didn’t want or need any more and throwing them in boxes for Goodwill or a garage sale.

Anyway, I’m glad to be done and to know that we are ready to do wiring any time Dad is ready.  He put up a new mailbox post at 126, since he’d backed into the old one and broke it off. He also cleaned off a bunch of stuff and put it by the curb for sale. Odd stuff like the extra playset slide, flower garden edging, a couple trailer tail lights, etc.  He put out his old accordian and the guy down the street bought it for $10 (actually an IOU for now!)

We have some people who want the house, but we haven’t checked their references yet. We are a bit hesitant, since they have been bankrupt once and the only one with a job is the pregnant girlfriend. The neighbors don’t want us to rent it to them because they want it to still be available when their house sells and they have to move. But I don’t think their house is going to sell very soon and we need the income.

Is it still so hot everywhere else? I though today was going to be a little better, but it sure is hot right now! I was able to ride my cycle today, though, and the trip both ways was just fine. But I came home at 12:30. Then I went for my bike ride and by the time I got home, it was pretty warm. And now it is beyond warm again.

But tomorrow should be better. And we have air conditioning, so what am I complaining about??

Happy 4th, everyone! We had our annual (is it 12th annual?) brat feed before and during the parade. The numbers at the parade were down a bit because of the heat, but we still did okay. We also had a couple guys with a lawn mower and trailer driving the streets selling water, pop, hot dogs and popcorn, so they brought in a little more money for us. We think we are going to expand on that next year if we can find people to do it. There was a huge demand for water at $1 a bottle ($.75 profit each for us!).

But we are exhausted now. By the time we got home it was 96 degrees. And it probably started at about 88 by the time the parade started and just kept getting hotter and hotter. Some of our volunteers got overheated and we had to send them inside to cool down. July is usually hot, but not quite this hot!

Dad stayed up until midnight and got enough new heat runs put in that we can now run the air conditioning in our house. Because of the furnace situation (there not being one) when we moved in, we really couldn’t check if it even worked. But this year we checked and found that it did work. But we couldn’t use it because all it could do was dump cold air into the basement, which is actually quite cool, anyway. We needed new heat runs. So now we are ready for hot or cold weather in half of the house. We’ll need to do more work when we get around to the other end, but that is going to have a wood stove in it, so isn’t so crucial to have heated.

But I must say that, after riding my scooter home in 96 degree heat (moving heat, but still heat), I was glad to be able to turn the air on and have a comfortable house to spend the rest of the afternoon in. I had plenty of cleaning to do, so it wasn’t really necessary to go outside. I’m going out this evening though, to do some mowing, since the heat is here to stay for the rest of the week, so I’ll have to do it sooner or later, and the evening sounds like my best bet!