Mary Anne Carter

Modern furniture gaining popularity

Mary Anne — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 02:22:54 +0000

My hubby has suggested that the next time we shop for furniture, that we look at modern furniture. He likes the clean look of the modern styles, and I have to admit that they look like they would be easier to keep clean when compared to many of the other styles of furniture. When I look at modern furniture, it makes me think of Scandinavian countries, and of a Danish friend that I had when I was a child.

Pest control

Mary Anne — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:19:24 +0000

One of the things that has bothered me ever since we moved down here is how many ticks there seem to be. Almost every time my family spends more than a couple of minutes outdoors, they seem to be coming inside and finding a tick or two trying to make itself at home. I’ve never been very good at removing ticks, it seems that even though I try really hard to remove them correctly the head seems to stay in the bite and then there is a swelling around the bite that takes a very long time to fade away.

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.

My sister’s basement floods

Mary Anne — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 23:31:01 +0000

My sister called me today and told me that she is sick and tired of her basement getting wet every time it rains. A few years ago she noticed some cracks in her foundation and she has been asking her hubby to fix it. Well, it hasn’t been fixed yet, and she is frustrated.

She told me that she is at the end of her rope! I told her that what has worked for me in the past was to tell my hubby that if it was not done in a certain period of time (usually 30 days) that I would call in a professional to have it done and tell them to send him the bill. Works like a charm! Admittedly there were a couple of times when I DID call a professional and my hubby wasn’t too happy about it, but the job got done, and now hubby pays a little bit closer attention to my repair requests.

Home improvement stores

Mary Anne — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:12:30 +0000

When I go to the local home improvement store with my hubby I like walking around different parts of the store, looking for things that I might have never known existed before. Sometimes I feel like I have led a very sheltered life when I walk around a store like that! When I see all of the different beautiful light fixtures and ceiling fans I just stand in awe and try to imagine which room in our house would benefit from some of those being installed. For example, I would love to have a new ceiling fan in the master bedroom – especially one that is quiet so it would circulate the air but also provide some white noise to sleep by.

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.

Wrought iron

Mary Anne — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:17:07 +0000

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

Mary Anne — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:24:03 +0000

When 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!

My son broke up with his girlfriend

Mary Anne — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:10:54 +0000

My son called me from college last night. He was sad because the girl he had been seeing has decided it would be wise to break off their romance. He had seen it coming, because they were going to different colleges with a large distance between them. When they first started dating they had talked about how this might happen, and they agreed that they would still be friends afterwards. But that is harder to actually DO than SAY!

So, we talked about some different strategies on surviving the break up. We talked about how he needed to take some time to heal emotionally, and avoid any kind of rebound romance.

Address plaques add a little personality and a lot of visibility

Mary Anne — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:18:52 +0000

One 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!

Running a cleaning business

Mary Anne — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 09:17:57 +0000

My sister used to clean houses in the past to make a little bit of extra money, and she was really good at that. She had quite a few customers. She hasn’t done that for several years now, but she is still getting phone calls from people asking her to come clean their house!
Where we live, more and more families are two-income families, which leaves them little time to clean house. The demand for cleaning services is on the increase, and I think that this would be a good opportunity for her to make some money running a business that she already is familiar with!

An avoidable tragedy

Mary Anne — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:13:32 +0000

Guest 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

Mary Anne — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:47:40 +0000

One 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.

Swimsuit season is just around the corner

Mary Anne — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:00:43 +0000

The past several days have been very warm. The warm weather has teased me into trying on my bathing suits. I know that we’ll be going boating and swimming later in the year, so it is time to be thinking about what to wear while doing that!

I’ve gained a few pounds since last year, so none of my bathing suits fit! I’m going to have to buy a new one!

This crazy family needs to learn to communicate better

Mary Anne — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:56:13 +0000

For several years now my younger sister has had an ADT Home Security that she signed a two year contract for, and although she has been happy with the Home Alarm System she has been trying to get someone else to take over the contract for her because ever since her hubby died she has been struggling financially. So she has talked to everyone in the family several times about how she is trying to do that, and if someone in the family decides that they are interested in Home Security Systems of some sort to please consider taking over her contract.

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!

I like this kind of winter weather

Mary Anne — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:07:21 +0000

Hearing that the groundhogs have predicted six more weeks of winter weather, all I can say is “Oh yeah, THAT’S what I’m talking about!” The weather has been uncharacteristically wonderful around here the past few days; I have to suggest that maybe it was a delayed January thaw. Regardless, I would be thrilled if the rest of the winter is like what we have had so far around here. Warm and mild. Just the way I like it!

Reducing the costs

Mary Anne — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:58:36 +0000

When I keep hearing that the United States Post Office is struggling financially and is looking for ways to reduce the cost of running the organization, I immediately think about how much money they could save if the stopped individual home delivery six days a week and instead delivered to cluster mailboxes five days a week.

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!