Category: Life

Update and What Did You Miss?

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Nothing exciting happened this week, like people breaking their teeth, or any other body parts.  Which is a blessing in my opinion and I’ll take it.  I like it when our days are quiet and smooth.  I cannot believe that it’s already November.  Christmas will be here before we can blink.  I want to put up my Christmas tree now, so that I can actually enjoy it, before it’s time to take everything down on Old Christmas.  It always seems so rushed to wait until after Thanksgiving to get out everything I want to put up and display.  I have six Christmas trees from tiny to ginormous and three nativities at last count.

I have to say, I disagree with all of the – wait until after Thanksgiving people – over when to decorate for Christmas.    It may stem from Denton’s years in the Marines and living so far from most of our family.  For ten years we’ve had Christmas with my family at Thanksgiving and at least one year we actually did have Christmas in July with Denton’s; you learn to celebrate when time allows.  And, my decorations only enhance how thankful I am every year that we have our families around us to celebrate.  When you do put up your Christmas tree and take it down?  Curious minds want to know.

In other random news, it’s my favorite time of the year – time for us to fall back! – and it did, last night.  I am going to enjoy it while it lasts.  I love feeling like I gained an hour each fall, but I am going to absolutely hate it come spring time and we theoretically lose an hour by springing forward.  As much as I love “gaining” that hour, I agree with Darfow, a sweet, sweet Korean War vet I know who says we should just split the difference and leave it alone from now on.  He calls me every week and it makes my day to have a conversation with him.  He is a giant of man, with a heart that is even bigger than he is, and he reminds me so much of my Papaws’.  They were both very different men, but so much the same because of their love for all of us.

I posted the picture above on my Instagram yesterday.  I love Instagram.  It’s beautiful, its quick to scan each day, and there is zero drama.  Unlike that other social media site we all love to hate. Or is that just me?  Anywho, that tree lives at the house next door to our local library.  So, I call it the Library tree.  I look forward every single year to this magnificent tree showing off its gorgeous foliage.  Even if you hate Fall, you have to admit it’s worth it just to see this sight every year, right?

Here’s what you may have missed this past week:

Sunday Quote: Isaiah 43:2

Quote of the Week: Margaret Bonanno

Fried Potatoes

*Expired* FREE Friday Download from Kroger. 11.02.18

FREE: Amazon First Reads Book for November 2018

FREE: The Laundress Laundry Care Sample

What I’m Reading Right Now 10.31.18

The 100

What’s for Supper? Weekly Meal Plan 10.29.18

And here are all of the lovely houses I found for us!

$75,000 | Society Hill, SC

$7,500,000 | Raymond, ME

$98,500 | Texarkana, TX

$90,000 | Mayesville, SC

$149,500 | Atchison, KS

$16,500 | Higginsville, MO

$95,000 | Waynesboro, PA

I hope you had a great week and didn’t break any teeth or other body parts!  See you tomorrow.

Update and What Did You Miss?

Published on by TracieLeave a comment

On Friday I stopped by the “trash store” as Liv calls our Goodwill Outlet.  It was very quiet and calm that day.  I had an interesting conversation with two ladies and one of their daughters.  Usually everyone is avoiding eye contact unless it’s to stare you down, hahaha.  I did find some jewels on this trip.  Books!  The book finds were great.  I haven’t worked up the courage to ask what happens to the poor rejects that no one buys.  I can guess where they end up though and it breaks my heart.

On Saturday I had another interesting conversation with a very elderly man in the Dollar Tree.  We happened to be passing one another in the candy aisle; I smiled and said hello to him.  He looked startled for a minute and then asked me if I had seen any of those white and red striped soft mints.  We spent a few minutes looking about, but we didn’t find what he was specifically looking for.  He very sheepishly said he wanted them because he was trying to quit smoking, that he had quit about 8 years ago, but he had foolishly (his word) started up again.

He was so sweet and he brightened my day.  He also made me long to go sit at my Mamaw’s kitchen table.  Any of my Mamaw’s – my Mamaw Miller, Mamaw on the Mountain or my Mamaw Sylvia’s kitchen table.  I’m so, so glad that I have those memories with all of them.  This last trip home we were all sitting at my Mama’s kitchen table and my brother was telling one of his hilarious stories and I knew to store all of those feelings up until the next time we get to go home.  I’m so glad that our kids will have those memories of sitting around the kitchen table too.

Now I’m going to go clean off my dining room table – that’s my kitchen table – because you can’t see mine at the moment and I’d like to be able to sit at it and make memories with my family.

Here’s what you may have missed this past week:

Sunday Quote: 1 Peter 4:8

Quote of the Week: Drew Carey

*Expired* FREE Friday Download from Kroger. 10.26.18

Adoptable Love. Honolulu, HI

Leileinoa (Noa) 1

* Last Chance * FREE: Amazon First Reads Book for October 2018

FREE: Redbox Movie Rental on October 28, 2018

http://blog.redbox.com/back-to-movies/take-the-pledge/

Books: Top 20 Best Books of the Year…So Far

Educated: A Memoir Tara Westover

Amazon Magazine Deals: $0.99 for 4 Month Subscriptions

Country Living

What’s for Supper? Weekly Meal Plan 10.22.18

FREE: Derma E Hydrating Day Cream Sample

And here are all of the lovely houses I found for us!

$74,900 | Clarinda, IA

323 S 18th St, Clarinda, IA 51632$1,700,000 | Cape Charles, VA

111 Creekside Ln, Cape Charles, VA 23310

$59,000 | Oxford, AL

300 Main St, Oxford, AL 36203

$75,000 | Cold Brook, NY

4446 Norway St, Cold Brook, NY 13324

$77,500 | Clinton, MO

112 E Clinton St, Clinton, MO 64735

$62,000 | Americus, GA

1216 S Lee St, Americus, GA 31709

$30,000 | High Point, NC

2058 Brentwood St, High Point, NC 27263

I hope you had a great week!  See you tomorrow.

Update and What Did You Miss?

Published on by TracieLeave a comment

Last week as I was crunching happily on my favorite wasabi peas, I realized that something didn’t feel right.  It didn’t hurt; it just didn’t feel right.  Later that night, as I was flossing my teeth, I knew that something was seriously wrong.  Still didn’t hurt, but my gum was sore and my molar felt wrong.  By the weekend I knew that I had damaged my molar by EATING.  After the tragedy of Denton’s cracked tooth last year, which I never did tell you about, I knew not to wait any longer.

Quick recap of last year:  Denton, who has NEVER had a cavity, cracked one his molar’s – all the way through the root – by eating, we don’t know what.  Thus ensued many, many trips to the dentist, oral surgeon, dentist, dentist, dentist and dentist.  He ended up having to have his tooth pulled and a bridge installed after a long bout with infection, pain, pain, and more pain.  Not fun.

First thing Monday I called our dentist who worked me in during their lunch.  I didn’t crack my tooth, I broke it off.  Yay.  Dr. B and Dr. R assured me that they would fix me right up, but not to be surprised if I end up with a crown later on, because this tooth had already been filled on THREE sides already.  Gahh.  I actually broke off the good part of my actual tooth.  Anywho, I am all fixed now.  For the moment.

What fun things did you do last week?

Here’s what you may have missed:

Quote of the Week: Chinese proverb

Easy Velvety Spaghetti

Sunday Quote: Jeremiah 29:11

All the Things I NO Longer Need ~ 10.14.18

FREE: Sample of Folgers 1850 Coffee

What’s for Supper? Weekly Meal Plan 10.15.18

Clean and Organize the….. Unknown Kitchen Drawer

What I’m Reading Right Now 10.17.18

* Expired* FREE Friday Download from Kroger. 10.19.18

Adoptable Love. Charleston, WV

Sunday Quote: Luke 1:37

And here are all of the lovely houses I found for us!

$34,900 | Victoria, VA

$4,195,000 | Portland, OR

$234,900 | Canton, OH

$99,000 | Elizabeth City, NC

$139,000 | Springfield, IL

$95,000 | Gouverneur, NY

$92,500 | Wilmington, OH

$99,500 | McComb, MS

 

 

Quick Tip: Gift Card Balance

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Do you use gift cards?  I’ve had several in my wallet for the past year, but I hesitate to use them because I never know what the remaining balance is.  I mean, do you know how embarrassing it is to try to use a gift card when you don’t know what the actual balance is – you know that there IS a balance – but they decline your transaction?  Yeah, that happened to me at Wal-Mart last week.

I wanted to insist that I wasn’t a scammer trying to hijack the items on the conveyor belt, since the pitying look the cashier was giving me made me feel that way.  GAH!  This is why I stay home in my yoga pants and order things from Amazon, people!

One of the solutions I came up with was to write in permanent marker directly on the card, but you can see above that even that will rub off and then I’m back to square one.

I’ve seen other people stick tape or blank labels directly onto the cards to write the balance on, but that can sometimes interfere with the cashier swiping the card.  So this is my solution:

A post it note.  It will stick to the card, and I can write directly onto it, but I can whip it off and hand the card to the cashier or swipe it myself and stick the updated post it right back onto the card.  Easy-peasy.

How do you keep up with your balances?

P. S.  Gift cards make excellent gifts!

You can find my other Quick Tips here.

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. Check out what that means to you here.

Quick Tip: Fingernail Polish Remover

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Of course everyone knows that fingernail polish remover removes fingernail polish.  But did you know you can use it to remove other things too?  My Mama taught me this.  Shopping at yard sales will teach you to find ways to circumvent problems that cause other people toss out perfectly excellent items over.

Case in point:

Don’t mind the part where I forgot to take a proper BEFORE photo.  I had already started to clean it off when my brain kicked in.  You can see the residue that the dry erase markers have left over time.

You can use any type of remover.

Just dampen a cotton round, or cotton ball, or even an old t-shirt you’ve cut up for rags.

Rub it over the entire surface of the white board…..

Until the surface is clean.

I also use this method on my giant whiteboard that I keep my running grocery list on.  It should work on any whiteboard.

P.S.  Use at your own discretion!  Please do not sue me because you ruined a priceless whiteboard (is there such a thing?).  Test in a small, inconspicuous area if you are concerned!

 

Quick Tip: Cereal Bags

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Last week I told you guys what I do with just a handful of leftover cereal, and this week I wanted to show you what I do with the leftover cereal bags.  About ten years ago, I found a brand new box of wax paper sheets at a yard sale for a $0.25.  A quarter, you guys!  It had over 1,000 sheets in the box.  I just ran out of them this year.  It was a sad, sad day at my house.

The main reason that I used those sheets, was to separate my hamburger patties when I put them into freezer bags each time I had extras.  They won’t stick together and create a huge clump of raw hamburger meat this way.  Otherwise, what was the point of spending all that time patty-ing them out?

Every time I empty one of our cereal boxes, I save the liner. 

I just open the entire thing up….

Like so.

Cut it in half……

Again, and again, and again, until I get the size I want.

They make perfect separators for my hamburger patties.  And they are FREE.   Which is one of my favorite words.

Quick Tip: Hand Soap

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Have you ever been in a public bathroom, you get ready to wash your hands and you find that there is NO soap?  Or paper towels?  This happens to me more than it should in my opinion.

I always keep a small bottle of hand sanitizer in my purse, because hello, thrift store and yard sale freak here.  But, I don’t want to count on that to kill any of the germs I come into contact with.  I want to WASH my hands for pity’s sake!  And be able to dry them, too.

Here’s my tip:

I reused one of my small hand sanitizer bottles and filled it with hand soap.  Then I wrapped it with a handkerchief and tucked it into my purse.  It’s small, doesn’t take up much room and now I can actually wash and DRY my hands no matter where I end up.

And yes.  I know I could probably buy a small bottle of hand soap to keep in my purse, but I  already had this tiny hand sanitizer bottle that was empty and I am big believer in using what you have.

Quick Tip: Cereal

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At our house I buy cereal for snacks.  We don’t eat it as a breakfast food, because it just doesn’t sustain anyone at my house.  But a sweet snack?  Yep.

Inevitably there is always just a handful of cereal left at the bottom of the box.  Every.Single.Time.

Instead of putting that last handful of cereal down the garbage disposal – because NO ONE wants to eat just a handful of cereal with milk, that would just make everyone grumpy – I stick it into a baggy and put it in someones lunchbox for a sweet treat.

Now there is nothing thrown away, and someone will get a sweet surprise at lunch time.

Quick Tip: Hotel Soap

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Denton and I returned my niece and nephew to my brother this past Friday after a two-week stay with us – two weeks for the nephew and 1 week for the niece since she was at camp the first week – does anyone else have this compulsion to be exact with your words or is it just me?

We took the opportunity to spend the night in a lovely hotel in a gorgeous little town about an hour and a half from where I grew up.  Do you ever do that?  Spend vacation time in a place very near you, but not near enough that you actually explore it?  We normally don’t, but have decided that we are definitely going to start.  I’m already planning out next trip.  That’s another story altogether.

What I wanted to talk about today is hotel soap.  The small soaps that they provide for you in your hotel that are designed for your overnight stay.  That are always left over, because who uses the entire thing in one night?  There are a couple of reasons that I bring this up.  Firstly, I can NOT throw them away.  I am the girl who takes the sliver of soap that’s left in my shower and sticks it to the new bar so that it doesn’t get wasted.  It drives Denton bonkers, but I just can’t do it.  I have a problem.  I know it, Denton knows it and now you know it.  And I’m okay with that.

Second, do you know how many hotel rooms there are in the world?  When I asked Siri, this is the article from 2012 that she sent me to.  Taking that into consideration, you know that the number of hotels has grown exponentially.  The article estimated that in 2012 there were 17.5 MILLION guest rooms around the world.  That is a lot of little soaps, people.

All of that is to say that I never leave them, or throw them away.  I always bring them home with me.  But, that can be problematic.  I never remember until I’m in the hotel that I plan to do this, so what do you do with a small, wet, soapy thing?  I don’t want it in my makeup bag, or thrown in with my clothes.  This trip I had an epiphany.  The bag they provide you with for your ice machine bucket is the perfect carrier for wet, tiny soaps.  Or the plastic sleeve that’s going to be tossed from the coffee cup next to the Keurig. 

Or the sleeve from the water glasses.  Even the fancy hotel we stayed in when we went to Washington D.C. to buy my Honda Pilot had plastic over their glass water goblets in the bathroom.  I understand that they want you to know that those things are sterile, but seriously.  And yes, I drive hundreds of miles to purchase my new to me cars.  You can read all about how I forced sweetly asked Denton to drive two states over to buy Hayden’s car a few years ago.

Barring all of those options – hahaha – I believe that I’ll go slip a normal Ziploc baggie into our luggage so I’ll have it for next time.

In case you’ve stuck around through all of my squirrel moments this time, here is an interesting article that I found while I was trying to discover how many hotels exist in our world.  I can’t emphasize enough that individuals change the world.  One tiny bar of hotel soap at a time.  It’s disheartening to look around at everything that’s wrong with our little planet.  I tell Hayden and Olivia all the time, you can’t fix ALL of the world’s problems, but if you can do one thing, do it, because that could be the catalyst to actually change the world.  You never know what people are dealing with in their lives, so smile at everyone and be kind.  That’s my two cents for the day.

So.  Are you kooky like me and bring your hotel soap home with you or do you leave them at the hotel to be trashed?  Actually, don’t tell me.  My frugal self may not be able to take it if you guys are normal people and just leave them.