Mary Anne Carter
Mary Anne has her own blog now
Category Archives: Tips & Words of Wisdom
Jan 8 2012

A moving story

by Mary Anne

Whenever I daydream about selling my house and moving to a far away exotic country, I always snap back to reality with the thought of all of the work involved in packaging up my household and sorting through the listings of Removal Companies to find the best Removalists to entrust with my belongings. My dear friend Alecia moved recently from one end of town to the other and the company that did her Removals broke one of her antique tables right in half. She was showing me the damaged table last weekend when I went to her place for lunch with the other ladies of the garden club.

We all agreed that it was a darn shame that her table was ruined, and to make it even worse the company refused to pay her anywhere near the value of the table because they said it was so old that it wasn’t worth anything! And then they said that a little bit of carpenter’s glue would fix it as good as new. Obviously that was very distressing to Alecia, and she was asking us what course of action we thought she could take. Since she had not had the table appraised before the move, we agreed that there probably was not a whole lot that she could do other than to take the table to a restoration company and ask them to fix it as best as they can.

Categories: Around the House, Life, Opinion, Shopping, Tips & Words of Wisdom, Travel | Comments Off

Dec 18 2011

Don’t cut your hair so short!

by Mary Anne

Seems to me that whenever I tell one of my sons that their hair is starting to look really good, they run off to the barber shop to get a haircut. Having been in high school in the early 1970′s, I’ve grown to enjoy a man’s hair cut to be a little bit on the longish side. Don’t get me wrong, I am not endorsing hair that is long enough to cover the ears, I just have never been a big fan of a crew-cut or a “skin head” look. When the Ken and Allen dolls came out, I liked the longer cut of Allen’s hair instead of the crew cut of Ken’s hair.

As far as I’m concerned, a guy has a better chance to attract women if a guy has a little bit of hair on his head. Now I’m not saying anything negative about guys who are balding; if they have a good hair cut that is not a turn-off at all. But I like a guy who has a little bit of curl in his hair, and my boys have curly hair. So when they cut their hair so short that you don’t see any of the curl at all, it makes me sad because I think that they are trying to repel women, not attract them!

Categories: Around the House, Family, Life, Opinion, Tips & Words of Wisdom | Comments Off

Dec 15 2011

Littermaid self cleaning litter box

by Mary Anne

When I heard about my brother’s problem about his house smelling bad because of the troubles he is having with his cat adapting to moving to his new house, I bought him one of those Littermaid self cleaning litter boxes, hoping that would help with the cat urine problem he said he is having.

I have one of those Littermaid self cleaning litter boxes, and I love it!  You have to use premium clumping kitty litter in it, which I use anyway.  There is a motion detector in the box that detects when the cat is in the box, and after ten minutes, the rake activates and sweeps the clumps into the covered container.  The only issue that I have with the litter box is the expense of the disposable trays.  The original intent of the manufacturer is to have you throw the tray away every time it is full.  That gets really expensive, really fast!  I have to empty the tray twice a week!  I have found that the plastic shopping bags that I get from Wal-Mart are the perfect size to line the trays.  So, I line the trays with a plastic shopping bag and when the tray is full, I tie the shopping bag closed and throw it away, line the tray again with a fresh bag, and put the tray back into the litter box.  That way one of the trays lasts for several months before it falls apart.

I found a cool website that sells furniture custom made to hide litter boxes.  I found one that I liked and bought it to hide our litter box in.  I love it!  When people come to visit us, they don’t even realize that we have a cat!  They don’t see or smell the litter box, and our cat is so shy that when strangers come to the house, he runs and hides under our bed.

Categories: Family, Home Improvement, Life, Shopping, Tips & Words of Wisdom | Comments Off

Nov 3 2011

Bedding

by Mary Anne

Whenever I think about buying new bedding, I remember that so many consumer advocate groups recommend putting off buying bedding until the white sales in January. Recently we did some rearranging of furniture and ended up deciding to move one twin size mattress and box spring set  downstairs and store it under the stairway, but I want to get zippered mattress covers to put on them to protect them from moisture, rodents, and bugs.

Heaven knows that I sure hope we don’t have rodents and bugs down there, but the realist in me acknowledges that we probably DO have some of those critters down there, which is why I am reluctant to store the mattress and box springs down there in the first place. But truth is, we just don’t have any other good place to store them, and we have not used them in a long time. Come to think of it, I bought them back in 1977, so if the critters and moisture ruin them I really shouldn’t be too upset about it; I have certainly got my money’s worth out of them!

Since storage space is an issue, I have not quite decided what to do with the bed skirts that I was using for that set. Donating it to a thrift shop is an option, but I was wondering if I could repurpose it in some way. Yes, I’m one of those pack rats that hates to part with anything, thinking that it can be used in the future. For example, I bet I could use the ruffles on a handmade quilt that I might make in the future! Well, that settles that; I’ll store it with my quilting supplies!

As for the pillowcases that were used on that bed, well those will just go into the linen closet for now and be used in the guest room when we have company. Do you think that it is true that satin pillowcases help prevent wrinkles and bed head? Maybe I’ll try them on my own bed, even though they are just standard size and my bed is king sized. If I like them well enough, maybe I’ll buy some king sized ones to keep on my bed.

Categories: Around the House, Home Improvement, Life, Shopping, Tips & Words of Wisdom | Comments Off

Oct 28 2011

Sharing can increase profitability

by Mary Anne

Sometimes I think that we are very close to living the life of the popular television cartoon family from the 1960′s “The Jetsons.” So many science fiction concepts that were simply wild imaginations are so close to reality that it really is lending credence to the statement “if we can imagine it, we can do it.” One of the things that this new information age has brought forth is the concept of sharing office space.

There are great opportunities for small businesses to lower their costs by taking advantage of serviced offices chicago. These serviced office spaces chicago are set up so that different companies can send their employees to the location and use the facilities, just the same way that they would use their company’s brick and mortar office. This allows for more employees to actually produce more work during their work day than it would to have them spend a lot of time on the road travelling from place to place.

This also allows for more people to not have to dedicate a room in their own home to being a home office, giving them more space to actually live in their own homes. Not everyone has the luxury of having a spare bedroom that they can convert to a home office!

Categories: At the Office, Business, Computers and/or Internet, Life, Tips & Words of Wisdom | Comments Off

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