hqueen's collection of Far From the Usual stuff.

[Denim Deb]

I'll get back to you on all that. And, I've heard of that brand of oils. I used to know a woman that sold them. She attended my church. But, she started to get all kinds of strange ideas, and left. I still miss her. I always counted her as a friend.

 

[hqueen13]

Bummer, Deb. That is disappointing when that happens.
Feel free to message me if you want more information.

 

[Denim Deb]

Will do.

 

[hqueen13]

So this is what greeted me when I had to go out into the back of the pasture to round up the last of the horses that would not remove themselves from the hay feeder. There are 23 in the picture, but there were 28 total that I counted. And of course, that is just what I could see... There was also something scrounging in the woods, but I never could see what was rustling the leaves. Its a crying shame that we can't hunt them here, we'd have a freezer FULL and be eating an awful lot of deer meat. It would be like the list of shrimp in Forest Gump....

So that's what I've got to deal with. They eat the hostas off the front of the house in the summer, and in the winter they have even taken to eating the azaleas! They aren't even supposed to like azaleas! That started the winter after we had the snowpocalypse and snowmageddon one right after another and everything was buried under 40+" of snow (which has NEVER happened before).

I have read Bee's information on creating a single strand electric fence to keep out the deer, and now I need to go about doing it. We live in an 80' single wide trailer that has a front door that is probably about at about 1/3 the length of the house. Across the front is a bed that is probably about 8' deep that runs the length of the house and wraps around each end, It has azaleas and alberta spruce (which look pathetic), and then the hostas in it in summer. I am thinking that the front porch (just a wooden porch, the house sits up four steps) will be a good staging place for the electric hookups for the hot wire, and then run it in opposite directions towards either end of the house. Beyond that, I have NO clue what I am doing. I hope to get that set up here in the next month or so to protect the azaleas from any more winter damage so that they might recover and look like respectable bushes here in the next few years, some of them have sustained pretty rough damage between the deer and deeper snows. Eventually I would love to replace the alberta spruce with something that looks a bit better. The azaleas are taller than the spruce and that isn't saying much!! Right now it doesn't appear that there is much in front of the house from a distance as the house sits a little lower than the driveway as it comes past the house. I should take pictures of all this when I can...

Also in my plans for next year are a compost bin made of a band of chicken wire so that it is about 4' in diameter (or the width of a pallet, whichever is smaller). My grandfather used this method, and it worked well, made it easy to keep neat rather than a sprawling pile. I'll sit the wire cages on a pallet so that the crazy trees won't grow up through it, and probably line underneath the pallet with plastic as another layer of protection.

Then comes the plans for the garden. I would like to can beans, which means I'll be growing pole beans (Kentucky wanderers is the variety that my grandmother and grandfather always grew, and they can well), and maybe a squash plant and a zucchini plant, and maybe a tomato. Since I haven't really grown anything on my own, I want to make sure that I start really small (well, with enough beans to get A can at least, LOL). It is going to be a challenge for us to manage with our time being as short as it is. I also have plans for the garden to have a wire fence around it as well (also to keep the dogs out!), so that will need to be hooked up. I hope by the time I get to the garden I'll have the hot wire thing figured out. So the thing I haven't decided is whether to go with pots for the garden or try to make some kind of beds. It won't be much space, but I also don't want those dang trees growing up through my plants, either... So many decisions!!

 

[hqueen13]

Christmas was good, spent catching up with old friends and new friends alike. We realized that we just don't get to see enough of our friends often enough.

We had a good Christmas of mostly kitchen and house stuff. We managed to score a 5 qt pro line Kitchenaid mixer for only $200.00 on black friday (with free shipping so I never had to set foot in a store!) - Merry Christmas to us! My grandmother gave me a medium sized pot, since I didn't have one (and you have no idea how frustrating it is to not have a medium sized pot...). I got new measuring cups and spoons from my sister, which will come in really handy, and my aunt gave me a mixing spoon and a homemade seasoning for meat that smells good.

So today will be spent rearranging the kitchen trying to figure out where the heck to PUT the Kitchenaid mixer... I guess we should get to that before we run out of day. Somehow I like sitting on my butt doing nothing a lot better

 

[Denim Deb]

Can't say I blame you for that one bit!

 

[hqueen13]

So yeah... all those massive plans to rearrange and such. Humph. Didn't really get done. Now we've got TOO MUCH to do now... I suppose I'll figure it out in the next two days (or die tryin!)
We did manage to pull out the tools from the lower cabinet next to the desk and reorganize all of them and move the big stuff out so that space can be used for other things in the kitchen. We had kept the big tool box and the bag of power tools in there for lack of a better place to put it. We cleaned out a smaller tool bag that was given to us with a bunch of miscellaneous tools and put all the small hand tools in there that might be useful for doing around the house stuff, and then packed all the bigger tools up and put them either in the tool box or in the bag with the power tools, and moved them out. They don't have a home yet (of course not!) but at least they are on their way to being in a better place.

I still have this crazy couch sitting in my living room that I can't get rid of. There are TOO MANY PIECES OF FURNITURE in here!! A FULL sofa, two recliners, and the loveseat that will remain when the couch is GONE. I REALLY want to put my life back in order, but with all this crap sitting here that isn't easy. The loveseat was a freecycle catch, and I am thrilled with it, and so now this sofa has GOT to GO. Giving it a little more time on Freecycle before I post it on craigslist...

I did manage to clear out the pots from under the cabinet tonight and got them reorganized now that my grandmother gave me a medium sized pot. So that is a bit of a help. I pulled ALL of the pots out and THEN it dawned on me that I probably should empty the dish washer and wash the dishes that were sitting around before I got too far along. Duh. Finished that up and left things to sit and dry. Realized tonight that the large frying pan that we have down in the cabinet hasn't been used in months. It needs to get sent back to Calphalon anyway because the teflon is scratched and that is a no-no. We decided we'll send it back and then sell whatever is sent to us in replacement (unless it doesn't have teflon on it, but possibly even then because we need to get those cast iron pans sandblasted and then we can use them instead, and that is much better than the icky metal/teflon anyway.

So part of Christmas is put away. Please ignore the exploded Christmas decor box in the spare bedroom, it doesn't count. We'll be leaving the current things out where they are, which isn't a big deal since the tree isn't up anyway (see above note about furniture....). I just need to get the rest of the gifts put away and the house cleaned up before we head out of town on Friday... plus feed the horses both tomorrow and Thursday.... EEK! too many things to do.

Of course, packing the suitcases will be hilarious when we put in the frozen ham that I am hauling down to my grandmother for their Christmas present. That is going to be really funny!

And now I have to crash because I am super tired. Took care of my friend's animals tonight when they got hung up in traffic and weren't going to get home until late. That was after we had to go take the truck to get it checked because it started doing a KLUNKing thing as I came home today. That'll be another $700.00 repair... Fun fun. About that conserving money thing......

 

[rathbone]

Just stopping in so you know I am here reading and getting to know you. Glad you are here.

 

[hqueen13]

Thanks Rathbone, I appreciate that! Glad to get to know you, too!

 

[hqueen13]

UGH. Today was just not quite what I expected... Did get some good number crunching done at work. And, well, ultimately I made more work for myself. But that is sorta normal for me. I open my big fat mouth and then end up doing more stuff later! I only wish I could do what I wanted to do and still get paid that much for it! Fat chance!

Came home in a hurry to head out into the crazy cold wind to feed the horses. I am grateful that one of the other girls came to help me, I would have been there a lot longer had she not helped out. We'll be giving up a night of feed to her now, and I am sad to lose the income (= money off of board) but at the same time it is a relief to have another evening free. With the other half working 10 hours + a 3 hour round trip commute each day that leaves so little time for us to actually get things done, and that is very frustrating. Hopefully this will ease a bit of the strain and we'll be able to do better for ourselves and cook and keep up with the house and our projects.

Was finishing up feeding and managed to throw out my right knee. I haven't done that in a LONG time, and it hurts bad when it happens. I have to sit there for a few minutes and let the pain fade before I can get up again (I hope my hip/butt isn't bruised from that... I was wearing enough winter clothes that I might have had enough padding ). The real monkey wrench is that I am now moving pretty slowly. I came in and put Essential Oils on it right away, and did a few things to get dinner in the oven and then took it easy. Which sucks because I have SOOO much that really should get done. We are going out of town for a friend's wedding and someone will be staying here to watch the dogs and keep an eye on the place, and this place is disgusting! Not to mention that I haven't started packing AT ALL, and we feed the horses tomorrow evening as well, plus we have to drop the truck off to have it worked on while we are gone.

That was yesterday's misadventure.... driving home the truck started klunking. Long story short we had it checked out and its going to be a $700.00 repair. OUCH. The translation is that we spent the evening at the car shop instead of at home getting organized.

It'll all work out the way it is supposed to in the end... but that doesn't stop the angst now!