Category: Life

DIY: New Front Entrance Lighting

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You know my love of finding new to me items at yard sales and thrift stores.  Well, sometimes it just isn’t going to happen.  I have actively looked for a matching set of sconces for the front of the house, for a couple of YEARS.  (FYI:  You know I’m going to find a pair now that I’ve actually bought these!)  They didn’t have to match the fixture in the back, because,  I just didn’t care if they matched that one.  It’s on the back of the house where almost no one except us will ever see it, and I like the one I found for that area.

The ones on the front of the house had to go.  They were originally brass and the previous owners spray painted them black.  You know I love a good spray paint job on anything, but these had seen better days.

They were also not in proportion to the entryway.

I searched and hemmed and hawed for quite a while.  When I am actually going to be giving our hard-earned money away for something I deem expensive, it can take an eternity for me to make a decision about what to actually purchase.  Just wait until I tell you about our new washer and dryer. 

Finally, I narrowed it down to just a few and I dumped the entire thing into Denton’s lap.  He never has a problem deciding on something.  This is the one we chose.  Or rather, that Denton chose from the hundreds I had culled out for him to choose from.

I bought them from Lowe’s with the App I have downloaded on my phone and my very nice delivery man placed them on my porch two days later.  I love that.  I also didn’t have to pay shipping, which is also lovely.

Here is how I changed them over:

First things first.  Turn off the power.  Then you can unscrew the small screws holding the fixture on.  This is all that holds them up there.

Unless you count the wiring.  Notice how white wires are with white wires, black wires are with black wires, and copper wires (ground) are paired up with copper wires?  That’s what you want to do too.

You’ll be left with this when you remove the old fixture.

I just noticed that the old fixture has a sticker inside telling you which way is up, to mount it.  Hahaha!

The new one does too!

Put your ground wires together…..

Then, put on your wire nut…….And then do the exact same thing with your white wires and the black wires.

Place your lovely new fixture over the threaded screws that align with your fixture and screw your nuts onto them to hold everything in place.

Isn’t she a beauty?

Getting her glow on.  By the way, have you ever heard that yellow light bulbs keep away more bugs than white ones?  I have no idea if it’s true or not, but mosquito’s love me so much, I’m willing to try just about anything.  So yellow light bulbs it is.

Look how lovely.

Don’t mind the clutter, it’s going away instantly.  Also, don’t mind the fact that the front porch needs pressure washing.  AGAIN.  Or the evidence that I need to finish painting the front door, with a color I am not happy with – hence the reason that it’s still not finished.   And the fact that I need to paint all of the trim?  Along with replacing my broken doorbell.  Did you notice all of those things?  Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything…..

Have you ever noticed that every time you finish a project another one is right there waiting for you to tackle it too?

Never mind all that.  We’ll just stand here for a little while and enjoy my new light fixtures.

DIY: New (to me!) Ceiling Fan in the Kitchen

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As always, I feel like I have to tell you:  I am NOT an electrician.  If you do not feel comfortable working with electricity – DON’T.  If you do, turn off the electricity at the breaker box for the room you are working with and test the area with a voltmeter before you begin.  Safety people!  It will keep you alive.

Remember when I told you that my kitchen was the temperature of the sun?  Every single time I turn on my new oven lately it immediately becomes as hot as a crematorium in my kitchen.  When I was little, one of my grandmother’s cooked on a wood stove.  Have you ever been around a cooking wood stove?  It was absolutely unbearable in the summer – without air conditioning.  Can you even imagine?  I honestly don’t know how she just didn’t die from the heat.  My family would have starved.  Or they would have eaten nothing but watermelon, cantaloupe, and cucumbers until October.

Anyway, that’s what my kitchen reminds me of right now.  Never mind that I have central air that cools my house to whatever digital temperature I want to set it on.  In case you are wondering – I CANNOT STAND TO BE HOT.  Sorry for the yelling.   One of the reasons and they are many, is that my face doesn’t sweat.  Isn’t that weird?  Denton and I worked out in the yard last weekend and I thought that my head was just going to crack open.

Sweating is one of our bodies ways of releasing heat, just in case you came here to get a health lesson, and when your face and head do not sweat, all of that heat has nowhere to go.  Which makes Tracie a very crabby person.  Soooooo, now that I’ve had my squirrel moment…….Let’s get on to the DIY!

I found this little beauty at my local goodwill.  I have to tell you that I balked at the $20.00 price tag.

Yes, yes, I know that you think I’m cheap.  But, as I tell Denton all of my actions have reasons behind them.  Those reasons may or may not be relevant to him or you, but still.  When we bought this house we spent almost $1,000.00 to upgrade all of the lighting in it.  Our house is almost 3,000 square feet and that’s a lot of light fixtures.

In the first year alone, we replaced the living room ceiling fan THREE times.  These were not yard sale fixtures people.  They were all brand new from Lowe’s.  So I decided that I would not buy another new ceiling fan after I found a 52 inch Hunter ceiling fan at a yard sale for $10.00.  It’s still in my living room whirling away, NINE years later.

The first thing I did was remove everything from the box and take out all of the things that I knew I wouldn’t need.  Although it’s pretty, I don’t need this cover because I am using the light fixture that came with the fan.  I also didn’t need the drop bar. I removed the old fixture, which entailed unscrewing one screw in the middle.  Admire my manicure skills, while you are here!  Actually, I never paint my fingernails, my toenails yes, but not my fingernails.  Liva and I were testing colors and my thumbnail was conveniently right there.

Remove the wiring nuts and unhook the wires from one another……       

Hold up the new mounting hardware and realize that you are going to have to remove the old one first so that the new one will stay up on the ceiling……

Tada! And this is the point that I forgot all about you guys!  I’ll try to walk you through the rest of what I did.  On each side of the mounting hardware there are two smiling faces – see them?   Two round holes with a rectangular hole beside it, on each side?  Those are the slots for the ceiling fan motor and light kit to hang from.  You slide them, carefully into those slots and then you can wire everything without having to hold the whole shebang in the air the whole time.  Genius.

Once you’ve wired everything together correctly – white with white wires and black with black wires – slide the cover over it all, use the screws to attach the cover to the motor, make sure everything is secure, attach the fan blades with your handy dandy screws and you are done!

This has been one of my most helpful DIYs to date.  It has already made a difference in how hot or cool it is in my kitchen.  I highly recommend it.  It may not be haute couture in the world of light fixtures, but it is keeping the levels of heat down to something that is bearable!One thing I will have to add is a longer pull chain for the light fixture.  Liv cannot reach this one.   Another detriment to being a flat five feet tall, but it’s easily remedied.

Do you have a ceiling fan in your kitchen?  I’m always curious about these things, do tell!

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Killin’ It as a Gardener ~ Sarcasm Intended

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If you are like me and you can kill just about anything that grows in the ground, then this post is going to interest you.

The year after we bought our house, a bunch of my family came to visit.  While they were here my Mama and my Aunt Mary Jane asked if they could divide some of my flowers and take them home.  Of course, that was fine by me.  They are always giving me starts from theirs and this way, if I kill mine, ahem, I know where I can get more to murder.

Side story:  Denton spent his teenage years in a beautiful little town called Mount Dora, Florida.  If you’ve never been there you should go, it’s awesome.  Every year when we visited his Mama and Daddy, I insisted on going to the Daytona Flea Market.  They have a lovely nursery there.  And every.single.year, I would buy a Meyer Lemon tree.  Because I managed to KILL the one from the previous year.

Each year the same sweet little guy would help me to pick out my new victim to take home and torture to death.  Now, this guy did not remember me each year because I’m sure he would see thousands upon thousands of people each year buying Meyer Lemon trees.  But, I remembered him because he was absolutely filled with knowledge about all the plants and trees they have there. 

The last year that Denton’s mom and dad lived in that area we stopped on our way out of town for me to buy my last Meyer Lemon.  As he was checking out my items, I casually asked him for tips on how to keep this one alive.  Something in my tone alerted him that this wasn’t the first lemon tree I’ve had.  He stopped ringing up my plants and asked how many lemon trees did I have.  When I told him that I had had a bunch of them, but they all keep dying, he looked like he wanted to cry.  I actually thought he would take my new tree away from me for a minute.  He seriously loved his job.

That story was to tell you that if you are a plant murderer like me, you are going to want to invest in some of these Bearded Iris’s.  They are one of the hardiest plants I’ve ever encountered.  And they are beautiful!

Back to my original story – my Mama and Aunt Mary Jane were dividing up my plants, and I decided that some of these Bearded Iris’s would look good at the base of this tree.  When they left that morning it was chaos as always when a bunch of us are together, and I just laid these down next to the tree to plant later.  You can see where this is going, right?

I completely forgot about them.  There they were, just laying on the ground at the base of the tree.  With Denton mowing the grass around them.  They grew.  Completely out in the open, with NO dirt over them.  They grew and they bloomed.  I can’t believe that our vicious squirrels didn’t eat them.  They eat everything.  Maybe they are poisonous to squirrels?

I left them alone when I saw that they were thriving all by themselves, because, hello, they obviously know what they are doing and they most definitely do NOT need my help. 

After all these years, they have multiplied and grown and they bloom every single spring.  I just sit back and enjoy them, because I know that if I try to divide them, I’ll probably kill them all.

They can take over that entire part of the yard if it’s up to me because they deserve it!

You should definitely get yourself some Bearded Iris’s!  Put them into the ground and walk away and they will reward you with beauty every spring.

The LAST Coffee Filter

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How is this even possible?  This is the LAST coffee filter in my house.   I knew.  I make the coffee every single morning at my house, after all.  I almost never drink it, but I make it every day for Denton and Liva.

While I was cooking supper yesterday, Denton and I were talking about it.  I actually can only recall buying coffee filters a couple of times in our entire marriage.  That’s over twenty-three years people.  It just seems that there is an endless, bottomless supply of those things.  Something that replenishes itself overnight.  Every night.  Because I don’t remember ever getting to the bottom of the pile.

Dear coffee filter fairy:  I would like to put in a request for other items to be replenished…

In other breaking news, this is the state of the coffee container.

Ahhhh, the smell of an open container of coffee.  There is nothing to rival it is there?  I love that smell.  I don’t have to drink it to appreciate that smell every morning when I pop that lid off.  It’s already on the white board of my kitchen grocery list.  Coffee.  Coffee filters.

That’s my boring update on what’s been on my mind this morning.  Coffee filters.  Maybe I should have a cup of coffee to kickstart my brain today.  Did anything extra exciting happen at your house this morning, like getting to the bottom of the coffee filters for the first time in memory?

Snow! And a Tree Through the Roof.

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We got almost ten inches of the fluffy white stuff here last night and today.  Only it wasn’t fluffy.  It was very, very wet and heavy.  Liv was not happy.  This is adding onto the school year for us.  But it also caused this:

Good grief.  I hope you never have a tree fall through your roof.  This is NOT how I wanted to spend my snow day!  But it could have been much, MUCH worse.  I am very thankful that it didn’t do any more damage than it did.  At least what we know right now.  We will have to wait for this snow to melt to be sure of all of the damage.

What we know for sure is that our brand new seamless gutters are toast.

Doesn’t he look awesome in a hard hat?  Safety first people!

And that one of the tree limbs came through the back part of the roof and attic; actually came through my kitchen wall.  Our house is sort of a split level.  They built the house on a sloping lot, so the second story is ground level in the back, but the entire downstairs is completely level in the front.  It sounds very strange, I know.

Trying to see how much damage…..

 

Yep, you can see outside from inside my kitchen right now.

My poor patio set.  By the way.  That’s not the ground you see.  It’s all the debris from the downed tree strewn all about on top of the snow.  The tree is off of the roof though, and the hole is temporarily fixed.  The claims adjuster will be here next week to assess the damage for our insurance.  So, seven or so hours later, we are all well.

But it looks so, so pretty! 

My poor daffodils.

It’ll be gone soon!!  How was your snow day?   I sincerely hope a tree didn’t fall on your house!  It’s not a great way to spend your day.  And it’s STILL snowing!

Quick Tip: Essential Oils in the Bathroom

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This is an easy way to freshen your bathroom every time someone needs the loo.

Drop five to ten drops of your favorite essential oils into the cardboard tube of toilet paper.

Every time someone rolls off some TP, your bathroom will be scented with the refreshing scent of  – in my case Limes.

Everyone who visits your bathroom will thank you!

Why Can’t I Throw Away Garbage?

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I have been on my decluttering journey for over three six years now.  You would think that I have this down to a science.  But I still find myself agonizing over the stupidest things.  Things you shouldn’t agonize over.  Things that are obvious trash and need to go into the garbage. Things that cannot be donated to go live a more wonderful life with someone else.  Because they are trash.  Things like this:

That my friends, is a Princess House, 2 quart, made in France, pot.  I loved this pot.  It served me very, very well for years now.   And I will miss it because it did exactly what it was supposed to do superbly.

Earlier this week, I noticed that it had a crack on the outside.  Not a very big crack, but I knew that I couldn’t use it again.  I wouldn’t take the chance that it would explode and kill someone.  It could happen.  Maybe.  Probably not but I wasn’t taking a chance.  But, I didn’t put it in the garbage either.

I warned all of the family not to use it.  “Hey, that middle pot has a crack in the side of it.  Don’t use it because it could explode and kill you”.   But I still didn’t put it in the garbage.  Why?!?

Is it because I have the whole set?  Now it won’t be a complete set?  I don’t think so.  I have other things that I know aren’t a complete set and it doesn’t keep me up at night.

Is it because they cost the earth?  Nope, because you know me!  I didn’t pay the earth for them and it didn’t bother me one whit to use and enjoy them since they only cost me $12.00 for ALL of them.

I seriously think it’s because I truly have a difficult time throwing things in the garbage.  Not garbage garbage.  Used tissues.  Bags that have had meat marinating in them.  Things like that go straight into the garbage bin.

But, you knew there was a but, right?  I have a very difficult time throwing things away that I have convinced myself that might have another useful purpose to someone.

Recycle is one thing.  I have absolutely no problem every day putting things into the recycle.  That milk jug is going to recycle heaven to be repurposed into lawn furniture or a piece of playground equipment.  That cardboard box from our beloved Coke is going to become a cereal box, or writing paper.  Hundreds of times a day I toss stuff into the recycle bin and never bat an eye.  That might possibly be an exaggeration.

Anywho, I have come to the conclusion that I just have to buckle down and get over myself.  Some things cannot be recycled.  (Ceramic and heat treated cookware are just a few of them.  They can ruin an entire batch of recycled glass because they don’t melt at the same rate as container glass – I checked!)  And they are garbage.  Therefore they need to go into the trash.    Like my well loved and well used Princess House pot, since when I picked it up to move it to get to another pot that didn’t have a crack in the side, it broke and sliced my finger almost off.  That too might possibly be a slight exaggeration.  It was really deep and did bleed for a couple of hours though, and aren’t you glad I didn’t show you that?

Do you suffer from these dilemma’s too?  Do you want to own a lovely set of Princess House pot’s?  Here is a link where you can still buy them.  I will caution you that they do cost the earth, but if you are looking to invest in beautiful and functional pots and pans I love these.  Just make sure they don’t have cracks in them before you pick them up.

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Quick Tip: Boots ~ Keeping the Form

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All of the boots at our house looked like this:

To keep them from looking like sad, collapsed heaps, and to help them keep their form, stick a wine bottle (or a whisky bottle) into them!

Easy peasy, and your boots will thank you by not getting creases in the leather in odd places.  It’s also a great way to recycle those bottles.

Here is the link to the Harley Davidson boots above.  They are Liv’s and she LOVES them.

If your boot wearer has tiny feet like Liv, just turn the bottles upside down – like above – and they will fit into even really small boots.

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

What’s going on right now.

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Sometimes I just want to write down what’s happening in our lives.  I want to be able to look back when I’m 102 and feel that pang for things that were.  I fear that if I don’t get them down on paper (or the internet) I won’t remember the day to day things that are so important to recall.

Here, in no particular order, are some random things that I have been pondering lately.

A.)

I envy the mommy bloggers.  They are memorializing all the little day to day things that I know are forgotten from when my kids were small.  Some things stick out in my mind, but so many others are just….gone.

I know that part of the reason that I’m feeling this angst is because Denton and I are literally living out this last season with children at home.  Hayden is at our local community college and Liv is finishing up her last couple of years of high school right now.  I can feel that thread with them stretching thinner and thinner.  And if I let myself think about too much, it’s a physical pain.  To know that we are going to have to allow it to break, so that they can go out and make their lives the way they are supposed to do.  My God how brave our parents were/are.  I don’t know how they stood it.  I was twenty two when I got married.  I had never lived away from home.  I honestly do not know how they stood back and let me take that flying leap.

2.)

In other, less depressing news, Denton and I are making more of an effort with date days.  Apparently we are old (according to Liv) and date nights are not our thing.  Date days though, that a thing for us right now.  Denton laughingly told me that his and my versions of dates are profoundly different though.  The last two weeks we have spent them either at Lowes picking out things for the house or meeting strange people from Craigslist and buying other things we I want.  I can’t wait to show you what I got for my birthday.  Here’s a hint:

C.)

Other thoughts that have crossed my mind lately are: how do you live out love?  Example:  At Christmas with my family, which was at Thanksgiving, hahahaha, I sewed buttons onto one of my brother’s shirts for him.  He had just casually mentioned one day while we were there that he had a brand new shirt that he couldn’t wear because one of the buttons had popped off.  I told him to bring it up to our Mama’s the next day and I would sew it back on for him.

One of the kids said, “Can’t you sew it on yourself?!?”.  That let to an interesting conversation.  Why yes, my brother can sew it on himself because I used to make him sew blankets for my barbies when we were little.   LOL.  I didn’t remember that!  The point though, to me, was this.  He is a grown man, perfectly capable of sewing his own button back on his shirt.  BUT, while we were home, sitting around with one another and having great conversations and time together, this was something tangible that I could do for him to show him how much he means to me.

4.)

Have you heard about people’s word of the year?  I had never heard of this phenomenon until Crystal at the Money Saving Mom mentioned what hers was a few years ago.  It still didn’t really mean anything to me.  This year she chose SLOW as her word.  That’s when it finally clicked in my brain why she was choosing these words each year.

Once our kids got to be about thirteen or so, that’s when we slowed things down at our house greatly.  We deliberately chose not to…. – I don’t want to use the word force here, but it sort of fits – …..encourage them to join everything.  By this time, all of us felt like they knew what they liked and didn’t like.  Both of them knew they didn’t want to invest the time and energy and money into soccer.  So we took that off our schedules and wallets.  When they were little we wanted to expose them to so many things that they could possibly be interested in, but once they got so old, they had definite opinions about what they liked and disliked.

I have to say it felt so good to slow down.  Hayden honed in on his music, piano particularly and Liv has her art.  They have both grown into their love for each of their things in ways I don’t think they would have if they had continued to do MANY things.

So I get it now!!  I don’t have any idea what I would choose as a word for my year.  But, I’m still liking SLOW.

 

 

 

 

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A Place for Everything. The Shred Pile.

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It’s that time of year isn’t it?  Everywhere I look someone is talking about how to organize and clean, or purge things.  Which I love.  But, sometimes things can be a little or a lot vague.

As we all know, I need a plan to follow or nothing is going to be accomplished.  I can say all day long, I need to organize all those papers……  Unless I have a direction and a objective for getting those papers organized, I might as well just leave them sitting in the pile.

So!  I thought I’d share one of my practices that keep me from being buried alive by all of the paperwork that comes into our house.

I have a large filing cabinet that I keep in my living room.  It looks like a piece of furniture and I love it.  It boggles my Mama’s mind.  She says I’m just like my Papaw Calvin.  One of the many, many reasons I loved that man.  He was a keeper and a filer like me.  That’s where anything that I need to keep ends up.  Tax paperwork, school records, the last years bills that I still get in paper form, things like that.

Someone very close to me told me that they don’t keep their month to month bills.  They look at the amount, pay the bill and throw the paperwork away.  That gives me heart palpitations.  What if your next bill comes and it’s wrong!  What if you need to call and give the people in Whoville a piece of your mind because they overcharged you for whatzits that month?!?  These are the things that can keep me up at night.  I’ll keep my monthly bills for a year thank you very much.

Eventually those things go into the shred pile.  Especially if it has an account number on it.  I can’t imagine why someone would want my water bill with the account number, but still.

Also, I don’t throw anything away with our name and address on it.  I can only imagine some crazed mail stealer waiting for me to throw away a piece of mail with our name and address on it so they can use it for nefarious purposes.  Denton constantly reminds me that our name and address is listed in the local phone book.  I don’t care.  I’m not taking any chances.  Anything with our name and address, anything with an account number, all of those things go into the shred pile.

My shred pile used to overwhelm me.  I had a beautiful piece of furniture to store all of my records in, but the shred pile just sat and stared at me from across the room.  Who has time to shred things all day long?  Not me.  So I put them into a pile to accumulate and I would shred all of them at once.  Usually every couple of months.  Sigh…..  I decided to do something about it.

My shred pile used to sit in that beautiful tray that now houses our air purifier.  And it would grow and grow and become the equivalent of Mt. Everest in papers that needed to be disposed of. So I put them into a container.  Once the container is full, I need to take care of it.  It is also hidden to the left of the filing cabinet.  It’s still very handy to shove all of the papers into, but out of direct site lines of the general public in my house.

See? You don’t even notice my pile o’ papers, do you?

Do you have a shred pile at your house too, or do you just chunk yours in the garbage like Denton does when I’m not looking?