hqueen's collection of Far From the Usual stuff.

Denim Deb

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I ate outside today too. But, I had help. I had a horse and some chickens who all thought that my lunch looked pretty good. :lol:
 

hqueen13

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Awesome Deb. I wish I had such good company when I ate outside! LOL

No such luck today, it was a yucky day. Thankfully the rain that poured when I left work slacked off before I got to my boss's to take care of the horses. And all the horses headed out to the pasture instead of giving me trouble and wanting to hang around on their way out to the pasture.

Got myself organized to order the rest of the ingredients for my lotion bar recipe. I was debating ordering almond oil to save a little money versus the avocado oil, but did a little research and decided against it. As it is with the avocado oil it works out to barely $1.00 per ounce total including the shipping for the stuff that I had to order online. That is a pretty good price! Now I just have to make sure it works well enough! And hopefully I'll get all the supplies before mom's birthday so I can try out making them since it is really for her that I am making them. We'll see how it goes. I hope it turns out well because I would like to sell these eventually. It'll probably start out as gifts for a while, but eventually I hope I can make some money on them. At only $1.00 per ounce for supplies that should leave me enough room to make a decent profit, especially if I include the essential oils for their therapeutic benefits.

Walked in the door this afternoon getting home from feeding the horses and found the thermostat reading 61 degrees with the heat set on 70. :/ Tried fiddling with the thermostat to no avail. Checked with the barn manager (its her house) and she has a home warranty. After the other half got home and checked it to make sure it really wasn't working I called the number. The woman submitted a claim and gave me the information of the company that would be coming out to check it out. About an hour later when we hadn't received a call, I called the number, and got their answering machine. Apparently they don't have any after hours service. Great. The coldest night of the week when the temp is plummeting to 35 as the low with gusts up to 40+ mph, the heat goes out. I came in and fired up all 3 of the space heaters we have, and the temp has slowly crept up. We'll add another blanket to the bed, move the bigger heater back into the bedroom overnight and we have the heated mattress pad, too, so we'll be alright. Tomorrow morning is not going to be fun though! Hopefully he'll get up first and get the living room a bit warmer before I get up :D

Managed to get some laundry done tonight and the folks came and picked up the table. I was so grateful to have it out of the house! And we made $25.00 on the deal (sold the table for $75.00 and bought a new table/chair set for $50.00), so I was very grateful for the extra money. I decided to hang the laundry dry rather than put it in the dryer to save some electricity. I think we'll see about working on a plan to figure out how to air dry all of our loads rather than putting them through the dryer. The towels might get dried just a bit to help soften them up. Stiff towels are no fun! But other than that, I hope we can air dry everything. I think the only way that it will work easily is if we do almost a load a day so that it can hang dry and then I can fold it in the afternoon after I get home, along with straightening up the kitchen. I don't think it will be too much to handle, with the exception of the evenings that I have to take care of horses or something else. We'll see how it goes, it may be that we set it up so that on those types of nights we don't do the laundry. We also have to find out if there is a break point that the electricity costs less at night. If there is, then hopefully we can run the washing machine and dish washer during those times to help conserve even more. I am sort of curious to see how low we can keep the bill. The real issue is going to be the a/c when it gets hot. I know that the a/c that we have is not the most economical and energy efficient.

Called the frame shop and my second picture won't be finished until the third of March, so I will call on Monday to pay the deposit on the 3rd picture so that I can use the last groupon before it expires. At least it makes me feel better to pay for parts of the pictures at a time rather than the deposit and balances all at once...

Weekend should be productive if we can do all the things we've got on our list. We are trying to get some things checked off and cleared up and out of the house! We'll see how far we get...
 

CheerioLounge

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hqueen13 said:
The coldest night of the week when the temp is plummeting to 35 as the low with gusts up to 40+ mph, the heat goes out. I came in and fired up all 3 of the space heaters we have, and the temp has slowly crept up. We'll add another blanket to the bed, move the bigger heater back into the bedroom overnight and we have the heated mattress pad, too, so we'll be alright. Tomorrow morning is not going to be fun though! Hopefully he'll get up first and get the living room a bit warmer before I get up
Been there, done that! Break out the thermals and the fuzzy slippers!! ;)
 

hqueen13

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Yup sittin here pretty toasty with my socks AND slippers on and my blanket over my lap! I'm pretty toasty right now!
There are more heaters in the barn office if I we need it. Depending on when the repair folks call/get here tomorrow we might go get it, too. We have 2 larger heaters and one small one.

The fact that the power isn't on our bill until the 1st is making me happy that this is happening NOW! Only thing that could have made me happier is if it happened during the WARM part of the week and not the cold/wind storm :p Can't have everything I guess!!
 

hqueen13

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Today has been a bit up and down. I slept good enough with the extra blankets, but it was chilly getting out of bed. Went to heat up some water to add to the dog's food to give them something warm in their bellies and found out that the propane wasn't work. He went and looked and one tank was reading 80% and the other was reading empty, so he thought we had an issue with the propane transferring between tanks. The levels always stay the same in both tanks as it is used. He called the propane company and they said they would have a tech give us a call. So we headed off to feed the boss's horses, and then stopped and picked up breakfast at Chikfila since our first choice restaurant is in an area where we get terrible cell reception.
We were pulling back into the driveway when we got a call from the propane guy, and he told him to go out and look at the tank again, and when he moved the tank the gauge went from reading 80% to nothing. We had run out of propane completely. I was very frustrated because he kept saying that he thought that we shouldn't be out yet, and I went back and checked the records and our last fill up was December 12th, and it is almost March, through the middle of winter, and so yeah, it is about time! We've been having trouble with the billing with the propane company though because they keep assessing finance charges, and when we call to pay the bill, they only charge us for the propane, and don't charge the finance charge in addition. So right now we have a $10.00 and change finance charge on the account when there should be no charge at all. So now he's got to call on Monday to get that sorted out and have them make a full deliver. Which BLOWS because a full deliver of 200 gallons is going to cost us probably $600.00 or so, and we don't have that kind of extra pocket change right now. So many things are happening at once and I'm feeling really over whelmed.

I really wanted to finish up some projects today, and so I drug out the photographs and mats and frames that we had that needed to be put together. I got started and realized I was short by 1 mat to complete the pictures, and so I would have to go buy more mat. I just want to be finished with this project, it is driving me nuts, I want these photos to be SOLD so we can make some money!

We did get the couple of wine bottles set up for tiki torches for belated christmas gifts (hey, nobody uses tikis in December anyway, right!?), so those will be cleaned up and out of the house and given to the appropriate people.

The repair guy came, and gave us some supplemental propane until they can come and fill us completely on Monday. However, it is so blasted windy that we can't get the pilot relit. Hopefully the wind will die down tonight and we can get it relit. I am just glad that we aren't paying the power bill yet!
 

hqueen13

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Well, the afternoon has wrapped up a bit better. We headed out to run errands and accomplished everything on our list. Returned and unused part to Home Depot and got a bit of credit back (hey, $4.00 is $4.00!), ran by Michaels to pick up the framed print that one of the docs at work wanted done (It will be good to get that money back into my account!!), and picked up some more glass marbles to fill the bottoms of the wine bottle tiki torches that I made as super belated christmas presents plus grabbed one more sheet of mat board to finish the framed photographs so we can get them sold, and then ran by the bank to activate our new bank atm cards (Yay!), and then fed my boss's horses again.

Came home and dumped the marbles into the wine bottles so they can be given away properly now, and then finished off matting the last photograph. Thankfully the guy in the frame shop cut it down to the correct size so all I had to do was cut out the inside, which made it a LOT easier. Except for the fact that my razor blade was getting dull, and I really should have changed it. Oops. But that project is FINISHED now. Only thing left is to take photos of the pictures and then post them and see if we can get them sold. I REALLY hope they sell quick because we could SO use the money. Any suggestions for the best places to try to sell the photos would be appreciated. He's going to post them on craigslist, and I guess I could try kijiji, too. I wasn't sure if it was worth it to try to post on Etsy. There is a bookstore here that will also hang local artists work, and he found a few coffee shops in the area. I think he wants to try craigslist first and see what happens.

Relaxing now, hoping the wind will stop so we can relight the pilot light on the furnace and have proper heat again!
 

Denim Deb

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I hope it's died down for you. I almost got blown away coming out of the Expo tonight!
 

hqueen13

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Yes, Deb it has finally calmed down, much to my happiness! I have the curtains open letting the sunshine come pouring in, and we were able to relight the pilot on the furnace and so now it is running again! :ya It finally just cut off now that the house is back up to being warm again!

We just scouted out the area where we are going to put the fire pit in. We have to order mulch from the saw mill and I am hoping that they will just give us a couple of 20' logs that they don't have a use for. We'll level out the dirt a bit, and then fill it in with some of the giant load of pea gravel that we got donated from somewhere that we technically have too much of still. It'll make a great filler for the patio! Then we'll have to figure out how to make a bit of a pit and then find a screen cover to put over the fire since I am really not interested in blowing embers onto our roof! I am very excited about it though, it will be a fun addition to our back yard.

Got the recycles organized, the kitchen cleaned up, a few bottles that had been sitting around needing their labels removed cleaned up, folded the load of clothes, and am now going to soak in the tub before we head out to meet friends at an all-you-can-eat Brazilian meat buffet!
 

Denim Deb

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Are you guys going to get the wind tomorrow? It's calmed down for now, but it's supposed to be blowing again tomorrow. :hit
 
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