Five on Friday - Destination wedding & insulation project

1. As I’ve mentioned, we are happily going to our oldest niece’s formal wedding in Palm Springs at the end of May. It is a costly endeavor however due to airfare, accommodations, new clothes, etc. Our older son and DIL are also going and used home exchange points to get a place for all of us to stay for just the cleaning fee. Saves us about $825 on hotel costs even with us offering to pay the cleaning fee. We will also be able to cook breakfasts, etc. and have more space including a kitchen. And it leaves feeling comfortable renting a car although we haven’t checked prices yet. 

2. Our insulation & air sealing project is done except for the inspection. The only new discoveries of shoddy prior work were that the kitchen fan had a damper but whoever installed it put a screw right where it held it open all the time (hence the cold draft), there was a big hole around the vent pipe also leading from the attic to the kitchen (another cold draft), and the duct used to put a register upstairs is not to code and is a potential fire hazard. The latter was not fixed in this round but the first two were. We are getting permits for work but obviously not all work by the previous owners had permits, was done to code or even correctly. The story of our home ownership across 5 houses.

3. Hubby fixed a tiny problem with the shower doors (due to another poor quality installation prior to our owning the house) which made me very happy and saved money. 

4. I tried a new recipe which we won’t make again but we finished it.

5. I was sick all day Tuesday and am grateful that was the extent of it.

The ongoing “joys” of home ownership

As I spend my day - and will again tomorrow - hanging out at home most of the time (with breaks traded with Hubby) so our attics can be better insulated, I am thinking again about the challenges and reward of home ownership.

Right now the challenge is listening to the old insulation being sucked out of the attic lol. The things we are learning about how poorly some work was done not long before selling the house (a large open hole in the floor of the attic where the kitchen fan vent pipe goes through!) explains a lot about why the kitchen is so cold for example.

Our bank account will be smaller at the end of the week but our home more comfortable. That means we have finished almost all the work identified in the home inspection before we bought the house 2 years ago plus landscaped the yard.

Still on list for the are replacing the cheap carpeting upstairs, putting in a new stair handrail to code, and replacing the aging water heater and perhaps the stove and dryer. 

Dinners & the week ahead

Our mini-pie for Pi day. Isn’t the pi decoration a nice touch?

Did anyone else feel discombobulated all week from the change to Daylight Savings time? All of us including the dog certainly did.

We have this coming Wednesday and Thursday blocked for the attic insulation and air sealing but are hoping it doesn’t take the full two days as we will have to monitor the dog all the time they are here. He copes well but the coming and going of the workers means we have to make sure he is staying in the house. I may have to take him to our son's for a while and hang out quietly while they work.

Other than that, I have the library mystery book club and a haircut on my calendar. I’ve made good progress on clearing the desk and dining table of aging paperwork and hope to finish it all this week.

I don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s day but it was my grandfather’s birthday and I have such fond memories of him so that makes it a special day to me. As to the first day of Spring, I can feel it in the air and have seen a few daffodils and tulips blooming along with lots of flowering trees and shrubs. Lots of birds calling and the crows making a ruckus as they proclaim their territory. However we have had 2 hailstorms!

Hoping to continue to enjoy our yard and longer walks if we have good weather. 

What we ate for dinner last week - it was an especially simple and easy dinner prep week

Monday - Tuna chef salad with cornbread from freezer

Tuesday - Black bean tostadas, roasted butternut squash

Wednesday - Trader Joe’s frozen dumplings, broccoli 

Thursday - Sautéed small potatoes, green pepper, onion and sausage with leftover butternut squash and broccoli 

Friday - Trader Joe’s roasted vegetable pizza, pie for Pi day

Saturday - Ground turkey pasta skillet, coleslaw (new turkey recipe; easier than chili but too bland)

Sunday - Round turkey & macaroni skillet, coleslaw

Five plus on Friday

Happy Pi Day! We are planning to visit a food truck midday to pick up a small pie to celebrate math and  🥧.

1. Glorious Spring weather on a few days so I took some long walks by myself for the exercise and to enjoy the sun and flowers plus I did some yard work. Our yard re-landscaping choices have paid off in very little yard work thankfully.

2. Hubby gets the top 2 money saving wins. He noticed the tv we recently bought was now on sale and still within the return window so eligible for price matching. A significant refund! Then he replaced the latch on the crawl space door as it was falling off. He also patched and repainted the rotting wood where the old one was. No handyman costs. 

3. My thrifty efforts were mostly food, home admin, and library related as usual. Exciting things like using up the food we have on hand, to make (mostly) enjoyable meals, paying occasional bills online for no charge/postage/lost mail (car registration this time), running the dishwasher and doing laundry at lowest electric cost time, getting lots of library books. I did spend a chunk on ordering new PJs, but they are needed. Hope they fit or can be altered to fit. I also bought new glasses and of course picked out expensive frames. I like them a lot though as they have a bit of color so more fun.

4. Happily our floor over the crawl space doesn't feel as cold since the crawl space air sealing and insulation was completed. Next is sealing both attic spaces and putting down new insulation to code.

5. Updated the paper copies in our GO BAGS due to health insurance changes, etc. This was part of my get the "d*** paperwork that has no deadlines" done push. I'm not enjoying it but I'm slogging through it. Then it is on to updating documentation of home improvements, taxes, etc. The fun never ends.

6. We made a donation to the 8 year old’s school PTA for her doing the school's 12 day read-a-thon. That is our local impact donation for March as they fund extra science and PE class time. I think I'll donate the county food bank for our other monthly donation.

7. We are amazed at our super reader 2nd grade granddaughter. She was very focused and read for 22 hours and 6 minutes over 12 days! She read everything from graphic novels to reading out loud on a pretty hard book to jumping feet first into Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

 8. I’ll end with some big things I am really thankful for this week.

• As always that our sons, DILs and the grandgirls are healthy, happy and want to spend time with us. By the way, I mentioned that I think of them as the Grandgirls as they are grand and that got a smile out of the 8 year old 🥰 We want them to feel very loved and accepted as well as encouraged and recognized as individuals by us grandparents.
• That those sons and DILs encouraged us to get a puppy almost 3 years ago by all offering to take him if we ever became unable to take care of him. Our happy, friendly, funny dog brightens up each day and has helped us meet many people since our move.
• That we remain healthy in our 70s.
• For the ability to purchase things like home improvements or new glasses without having to pinch pennies. That is in part due to our own efforts but also a lot of luck including inheritances. I was poor during college and remember having to be really careful to be able to afford to go out occasionally with a friend for a cup of tea and pastry so our current situation is a joy.
• For lucking out once again by having kind, helpful and friendly neighbors.

March Reads - First half

I checked off   prompts this month for the 52 Books Reading Challenge. My favorite genres continues to be  Cozy Mysteries, Historical Mysteries and Detective Mysteries.

Prompt: I think it was blue (referring to the cover!) - Pretty generic mass market cozy mystery. 2 stars out of 5.

Prompt:Set in summer - A decent beach read. 3 out of 5 stars because I wanted to keep reading.

And then there were the library mystery book club read.

I did not enjoy this one as I don’t like dithering, waiting to be rescued female main characters. I do see how she was a representative of cultural and family norms though. That trope is also common to Romance novels which this was primarily with a side of a mystery. It will be interesting to hear the discussion next week.

 

Dinners & the week ahead

I am determined that this week with lots of rainy days forecast that I will finally get through most of the paperwork that has been sitting around for months! The plan is to clear the dining room table and desk piles.

Other “big” plans are to try to pick out/order new glasses, stop at the farmers market, go to Pilates and try to figure out why my seeds haven’t sprouted. Exciting? 

I’d like to make a pie for Pi day and share it with the family although I may buy one from a food truck in front of a local nursery instead. Perhaps also go to a free activity or two during the week.

I didn’t menu plan for the past 2 weeks and noticed the lack of planning in our grocery list and in knowing ahead of time how to best use our food supply. I suspect we spent more too. I’ll have to make sure to do it for next week.

What's in mind for dinner this week? I'm considering veggie tostados, chicken stir fry, tuna chef salad, turkey chili, and salmon as main dishes.

What we ate for dinner last week - A fairly uninspired week for meals. I did bake blueberry muffins for snacks as well as cornbread and again using flaxseed instead of place of eggs worked out well.

Monday - Turkey burgers, salad, cornbread

Tuesday- Chicken with BBQ sauce, large dinner salads

Wednesday- Cauliflower & cheese ravioli (Trader Joe’s) with Parmesan, broccoli 

Thursday - Really interesting and good takeout pizza and salad at son’s house after we helped cover a couple hours of 2 year old care. They had last minute schedule conflicts so we were glad to help and it was fun.

Friday - Leftover turkey burgers, cabbage and carrot slaw, boiled new potatoes

Saturday - Sautéed shrimp and red pepper, leftover coleslaw, mango - it felt like an island dinner 😁

Sunday - Pork chop, boiled potatoes, peas, applesauce

Five plus on Friday - My week in review

Oops, perhaps I requested too many books at once from the library,

1.  I visited the library to pick up the books requested including 2 requests through the state wide inter-library loan system. Now to read them to prepare for the coming two library mystery book club meetings. Our county system does not charge for this. 

2. The pooch and I went across the street to have a catch up chat with a neighbor who is just back from 3 weeks in Guatemala. She has offered to pet sit when we go to the June 1st wedding and we wanted to start getting pooch comfortable in her house. He had fun sniffing his way around. No decision about which house she will be using but we are only gone 2 nights so he will have to cope either way and he does really like her a lot.

3. I got TurboTax (bought earlier on sale) to work on my new laptop and powered through doing and filing our taxes. I find their software clunky but it gets there in the end although last year’s TurboTax had us really overpaying our estimated taxes though. We did get a tax credit for installing our mini-split heat pump last year. Onward with life admin tasks that fall into the “do the hard stuff” (really the I just don’t want to do them) category.

4. Hubby and I watched much of the Oscars and enjoyed it. It seemed subdued and more formal than previous years which I think was their intent given the LA area fires.

5. The first part of our insulation upgrade was completed. Our crawl space is now air sealed and under the floor is insulated. The attics are later this month.

6. Had some nice family time including last Friday’s dinner and a movie with the 8 year old grandgirl, going to Saturday swim lesson to visit with family and friends of theirs, and last minute short babysitting (along with the pooch) for the 2 year old followed by dinner at their house. This is why we moved.