My sister knows how much I am enamored by things that are made of (or look like they are made of) wrought iron, she has sent me the link to a website that makes a variety of wrought iron items. The link is www.wroughtironhaven.com. I have just gone to the website and found that they sell just about everything imaginable out of wrought iron! I especially like the curtain rods that have shelf brackets built right in! I have ALWAYS wanted to have shelves above my windows, and have begged my hubby to install them. But my pleas have always fallen on deaf ears! Now I see that I can buy curtain rods with shelf brackets and install them myself!
Wouldn’t you know it
by Mary AnneWhen I was younger I saw a really pretty spice rack for sale that just “spoke to me.” Now, you might think that is rather weird, that I am a person that speaks to spice racks, but what I really mean is that for some crazy reason I simply fell in love with it. It was a wall spice rack, and it had a country look to it that just made me feel “at home” for some reason. I don’t know, maybe it reminded me of the spice rack in my grandmother’s kitchen and I never realized it. But the thing is I bought it on a crazy impulse and brought it home with me. Wouldn’t you know it my hubby hated it and told me that he did not want it in our kitchen. So it was relegated to the basement for a very long time.
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!
Address plaques add a little personality and a lot of visibility
by Mary AnneOne of the things I enjoy doing when I go to a home improvement store is to go over to the area where the store displays mailboxes. I like to take a good hard look at all of the different custom address plaques and mailboxes that they have to choose from. I squint my eye and imagine how the bronze address plaques would look on our house and at the end of the driveway. Having personalized address plaques both street side and on the house are very important steps to ensure visibility to rescue services, delivery drivers, school bus drivers, and they add some personality to a property that helps to make a statement about who it is that lives inside.
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!
An avoidable tragedy
by Mary AnneGuest post by Linda Bradshaw
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.
Relocating for a new job
by Mary AnneOne of the things that I’ve been reading on Facebook a lot is a debate between folks who are supposedly friends regarding the unemployment situation. Some of the people maintain that there are plenty of jobs “out there” for people that really WANT to work. The rebuttal that I’ve been reading is often that the jobs that are available require relocation, and many families don’t want to relocate.
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.