January Week 4: Final car repair, party prep and warmer weather

More car repairs. This time it was to fix the pulley that occasionally caused a very loud screeching sound right after the car started. It really freaked out the dog! We had to go to the dealer for that repair, but of course they knew right away what the problem was. So new tires and now a new pulley and some other part related to the pulley and alternator. Hope this is it for a long while.

This car despite being 10 years old and moving us across the country only has a bit over 60,000 miles on it.  More importantly the dog's crate fits through the back door so she can travel in comfort and safely. Not to mention it was paid for when we bought it.

After making, baking and freezing a humongous number of meatballs for our Italian buffet dinner party, I went through our latest credit card statement. It is always a struggle to reconcile the Amazon charges/refunds with my orders as they don't bill the same way they ship. However, I did find that they never refunded the money for an item they didn't ship in early January as it was no longer available apparently. Took two tries but finally got the right credit back to my account. $43.22 win! With all of our car repair bills lately I'll take what I can get to offset them.

One of my bunions is getting large enough that it gets rubbed when I walk so I am down to just a few pairs of shoes. Today I managed to loosen my athletic shoes enough to be able to take a long walk without a problem. Another win. However if you know of good brands of shoes for bunion sufferers I'd like to hear about them!

The weather has been unusually warm too so it is lovely to go for a long walk. We have also been able to open the doors and air out the house in mid-afternoon which is great.

I've been trying to notice little changes I can make to reduce our environmental impact. In the "duh" category is that I am only filling the dog's water bowl half full now. I mentioned that she get sick drinking our tap water (softened) so has bottle water. I have cut in half the number of plastic jugs put into recycling by this little change. I also mentioned that we have to put our trash out in plastic bags. I had been sticking with my Atlanta habit of taking the trash out each night (think the buggy South US) but there is no need to do that here. About a 1/3 reduction in trash bag use. I'm also trying to find produce that isn't in those hard plastic containers. A bit of a reduction here as it is hard to find some of the core things we eat sold loose or packaged any other way (e.g. berries, cherry tomatoes). It's a start.

Our laundry room storage unit is the holding area for the non-perishables and borrowed crock pot and pasta pot.

I picked up almost all of the perishables on Thursday. I had already made and frozen the meatballs and some cheese is in the frig but this counter shot is everything else except for bread and alcohol.

Friday I made 2 apple galettes, 2 pans of veggie pasta bake, prepped veggies for crudites, and sauce for the meatballs that are defrosting. We also set up an extra table for drinks, moved chairs and little tables, cleaned the bathrooms, and got out the drinks table supplies.

I spread out the food and house party prep across the week as much as I could so I wouldn't be exhausted by doing it all at the last minute. Still a lot of the food prep can't be done until the day of the party.  so tomorrow I'll be making the appetizers, baking the pasta and heating the meatballs in sauce, getting and cutting up baguettes, figuring out all serving dishes and utensils, setting out plates, etc. Hubby is in charge of drinks but I'll get the decaf coffee ready to go, cups out, etc. My son and DIL are coming over a bit early to help. Hopefully there will be enough food and people will like it!

I'll take pictures and will do a separate blog post since it is something different for us to do.