The folks on the Yahoo groups that I belong to are frequently writing about how they keep a small flock of backyard chickens to help keep the ticks at bay. In addition they say that they enjoy all of the fresh eggs that they could possibly want. From time to time they offer up some chickens for sale and my hubby and I discuss the ins and outs of owning chickens. My biggest concerns involve predators and who would care for them if we went on vacation. I really don’t think we just dump a bunch of chicken feed in a trough and leave them for a week.

The fan we use right now is one that takes up space on the floor, and although it does what it is supposed to do, I really would prefer a pretty ceiling fan in there; I think it would make the room look more like a luxurious retreat. Whenever I find any great deals from lowes stores I am more than happy to accompany my hubby there so he can buy whatever lumber or pipe or cable he needs while I go and fantasize about my dream bedroom.

When my hubby and I split up and I moved out i brought that spice rack with me, intended to mount it on the wall of my new kitchen. Wouldn’t you know it, all of the kitchen walls were completely filled up with cupboards so there was no space to put that rack on the wall! I did find space for it on the counter, though, beside the stove and there is where it stayed for a good number of years.

Eventually all of the original bottles from the spice rack broke and I could not find replacement bottles that fit, so the little rack got “freecycled” away when I moved again. Now I store my spices in my pantry, and have tried various methods of storing them, but I really have not found a suitable system for the spices. I miss that rack!

For the past couple of years I’ve been wanting to design a pattern for an address plaque that would complement the painted mailbox that we have. My hubby brought a plain plaque home last fall and told me that he wanted to use it but I’m not quite sure exactly where he was planning on putting it. At first he said he was going to put in on the mailbox but I really don’t see the need for that since the mailbox is already hand painted and numbered quite well. It will be interesting to see what exactly it is that he does with it!

When my hubby and I moved into our first house, we were so excited to share our joy with our friends. So we had a big Independence Day party; complete with a pot-luck barbecue and pool party. The guests were completely enamored of our litter of five week old keeshond puppies, which were confined inside their six foot tall chain link kennel run.

One of our guests (which I did not want invited but hubby insisted) decided that he would light a string of black cat firecrackers and throw them into the kennel run. The quick bang-bang-bang and yelp-yelp-yelp brought my hubby and me running quickly to see what in the world was going on. When we saw the inebriated guest laughing at the upset puppies, we asked him to leave the party. Needless to say, feelings were hurt.

The next morning when we went out to feed the puppies, we discovered that someone had removed them from their kennel and put them inside the fenced in pool area. The puppies had all drowned in the pool. My heart was completely broken. Later that day we went to the pool supply store and bought a pool cover for our swimming pool in the hopes that this kind of tragedy never happens again. And I never spoke to that guy that had thrown firecrackers into the puppy pen, as we suspect that he was the one responsible for relocating the puppies. It would have been impossible for the puppies to escape their pen and enter the fenced in pool area on their own.

The entire discussion reminded me of a few years ago when my sister accepted a job out in Los Angeles, and had to find some Los Angeles movers to help her with her relocation process. She told me that she had hired a Los Angeles moving company to do everything that needed to be done – even the packing! I thought that was amazing, I had never heard of a company that will do the packing for you in addition to the transportation! I wonder if the LA movers are the only ones that do that, or if it is a service available around the US and I just live under a rock.

Apparently the company told her that even if she moved out of her house that she would still be responsible to pay the remainder of the contract. Her house is currently for sale because she cannot afford the mortgage payments anymore and she is trying to get out from under it. So when we found out that our own mother went out and bought herself a security system instead of taking over my sisters, we were really upset. This crazy family needs to learn to communicate better – my mother could have taken over the contract and had a perfectly wonderful system!

The reason that I think this would help them save money is because if they only delivered mail to a neighborhood centralized clustered mailbox then they would reduce the amount of time that the delivery person had to actually go to deliver the mail. In addition, if they used commercial cluster mailboxes that had a lock and key to them, the mail would be very secure.

And delivering the mail only five days a week instead of six days a week would reduce costs tremendously, don’t you agree? I know I wouldn’t mind not getting the mail delivered on a Saturday – sometimes I don’t even like to leave the house on a Saturday to go down to the mailbox and get the mail!

Whenever I go into that bathroom, when I wash my hands I always look at the sink and think about how much I would enjoy doing some reverse painting patterns on
vessel sinks and I wonder if I bought some and painted them whether or not I would try to sell them or keep them. I have found that when I do some decorative painting on objects that I sometimes have a hard time “letting go” of the object when I’m finished with the job. Do you think that is normal or do you think that is odd?

One thing worries me, though. If I recall correctly I saw a special about the Tom Kincaid dynasty and I worry that my sister is over-valuing her collection. Sure, they are limited editions, but there are thousands of them out there. Not quite as valuable as if the limited edition only had less than a dozen. I guess only time will tell, and for now she is just as happy as a pig in mud with her collection, so who am I to rain on her parade? As a famous advice columnist advises from time to time “MYOB.”

The first time I noticed that type of arrangement was when I saw my mother-in-law was using a mailbox with a padlock on it as a drop box. She had a padlock on the box, and she explained that the office’s courier had a copy of the key so he could pick up and deliver correspondence independently of the US Postal service.

I was trying to use thewww.texaselectricityproviders.com/ website to figure out what the best options were for my energy utilities. I really need something I can rely on. At my one of my old houses, we had some problems with the provider. My husband and I always felt like we were being overcharged and it seemed like the electricity would cut out randomly for what seemed like no reason. We both decided we really wanted to do our research for the next house and avoid the same problem. We are set to move into our new house next month. We are both really excited. It is a lot bigger and a lot nicer than our first house together. However, since it is so big, I am a bit concerned about the price of our utilities and if we can handle it. My husband told me that he really thinks we will be fine. I just get a bit concerned because electricity is essential. I do not want to be strained for money so making the decision for the most cost-efficient and reliable source would be ideal for me right now.

Our hope was that the waterproof dog beds would be able to be washed off easily enough for the odor to be eliminated, but that was not to be. After a couple of weeks of constantly cleaning those dog beds, we ended up just putting them outside in the hope that the sun and the rain would deodorize them.
You may suggest that we “get rid of “ the cat, and although we did discuss that as an alternative solution, his advancing age was also something we had to consider.