Thursday, July 8, 2010
Outta Here!!!
I am gone, loooong gone!!! Tomorrow starts my summer vacation - at least for three days! I am going north, heading out, AWOL... See you on Tuesday, when reality kicks me in the butt and it is shipping time! See you later!
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
My New BFF
Okay, this is my shout out for the week – hooray for Tide Stain release!!!! I love cleaning products…what can I say? I am a self professed OCD cleaner. This week, this little orange plastic container came to my rescue in a big way!!
To start off, I should let you know that I have to buy cleaning products when I go grocery shopping – even if I don’t need them at all. I believe that someday, there is going to be a war or a food /cleaning product shortage or a world crisis and I will not be able to get the cleaning products that I need. Your laughing at me right now I can tell! Well, I am sure that if there were a world crisis, cleaning might not be on the forefront of my concerns, but I have the food crisis covered (I am also a food collector) so my issue is that there will not be enough Mister Clean, Tide, Fantastic or Windex around for everyone. So my story starts in the grocery store, where lo and behold, a new cleaning product that I have not tested was on the shelves. So I bought some – Tide Stain Release.
This took place just before our black water woes in May. When the water was clean enough to do laundry (or so I thought) I ran a few loads of dark clothes through before I put a load of light colored sheets and towels in. They started out cream colored and ended up BLACK!!!! I ruined them all. So I went and bought another set of sheets and new ivory towels. I thought that the old towels might make good dog bathing towels and so I didn’t even try to save them. A week later, after the arrival of the Tide Stain Release, I tried it out on my black towels – which instantly became their rightful color. I was so excited!!!
Then more recently, Mike took me on a clothes shopping spree at Macy’s one day sale when we were in Couer d’Alene. In all of the piles of clothes I had on the counter, the sales clerk forgot to remove one of the dye buttons off of a really nice blouse. When I got home and discovered it, I had no way of getting it off without a dye explosion. It’s not like I could take it into a store and ask someone to remove the button – they would think that I had stolen it. So I asked Mike to remove it for me. Not on my veranda. Not while he was wearing anything good. If it wrecked the blouse, then I guess it had to be. Did he listen to me? No.
Mike pried the button off, on the veranda, wearing his best pair of jeans and POOF!!! It exploded. The blouse was ruined. The deck was covered and so was most of what he was wearing. I thought about throwing it away and then I remembered my earlier success with my new best buddy. Tide Stain Release not only removed all of the dye from the shirt, I watered it down and cleaned the dye off of my new Trex veranda. I am in love!!!!
So, here is my testimonial – buy some Tide Stain release and let your husband do whatever he wants – he is going to anyway!!!!
To start off, I should let you know that I have to buy cleaning products when I go grocery shopping – even if I don’t need them at all. I believe that someday, there is going to be a war or a food /cleaning product shortage or a world crisis and I will not be able to get the cleaning products that I need. Your laughing at me right now I can tell! Well, I am sure that if there were a world crisis, cleaning might not be on the forefront of my concerns, but I have the food crisis covered (I am also a food collector) so my issue is that there will not be enough Mister Clean, Tide, Fantastic or Windex around for everyone. So my story starts in the grocery store, where lo and behold, a new cleaning product that I have not tested was on the shelves. So I bought some – Tide Stain Release.
This took place just before our black water woes in May. When the water was clean enough to do laundry (or so I thought) I ran a few loads of dark clothes through before I put a load of light colored sheets and towels in. They started out cream colored and ended up BLACK!!!! I ruined them all. So I went and bought another set of sheets and new ivory towels. I thought that the old towels might make good dog bathing towels and so I didn’t even try to save them. A week later, after the arrival of the Tide Stain Release, I tried it out on my black towels – which instantly became their rightful color. I was so excited!!!
Then more recently, Mike took me on a clothes shopping spree at Macy’s one day sale when we were in Couer d’Alene. In all of the piles of clothes I had on the counter, the sales clerk forgot to remove one of the dye buttons off of a really nice blouse. When I got home and discovered it, I had no way of getting it off without a dye explosion. It’s not like I could take it into a store and ask someone to remove the button – they would think that I had stolen it. So I asked Mike to remove it for me. Not on my veranda. Not while he was wearing anything good. If it wrecked the blouse, then I guess it had to be. Did he listen to me? No.
Mike pried the button off, on the veranda, wearing his best pair of jeans and POOF!!! It exploded. The blouse was ruined. The deck was covered and so was most of what he was wearing. I thought about throwing it away and then I remembered my earlier success with my new best buddy. Tide Stain Release not only removed all of the dye from the shirt, I watered it down and cleaned the dye off of my new Trex veranda. I am in love!!!!
So, here is my testimonial – buy some Tide Stain release and let your husband do whatever he wants – he is going to anyway!!!!
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Father's Day Water Fall
For Father’s Day, both of the boys gave Mike two free days of labor to put our water fall back together. We planned the event for the weekend after Father’s Day, when Mike and I would be back from Coeur d’Alene and we could get all of the tools and equipment organized for the event.
This is the before...
This is the water fall at this point was almost complete - but very ugly!!! The rain barrel had blown over to the pond during the spring storms, you can clearly see our Christmas tree had blown there too, what a mess!!! It only took two flat deck trucks full of rock, one track hoe, a jumping jack to tamp the ground hard enough to support the weight of the water fall, both our sons, one guy from the roofing crew, a friend of Andrew’s ( who got roped into one day’s hard labor) Mike, to plan everything and two full days of putting a rock down...everyone looking at it...deciding that it was not the right shape, or the right slope, too big, too small ...moving the rock out with the track hoe...putting in another rock...etc. etc.
Finally, on Sunday, they decided that the structure was good enough and they turned on the waterfall. The water did not fall exactly as they wanted, so they made some last minute adjustments and called it quits. Now all I have to do is get in there and naturalize the edges of the pond, to make it look like it has been there for a hundred years, a few more rocks, a few shrubs and some flowers and then we can go and get some fish!!!!
If I could figure out how to get another picture in this darn blog, I would show you the totally finished result, with the water running down the falls. It is much bigger than in this last picture, as due to technical difficulties and a slip with the hoe, the large cap rock cracked in half and they had to build higher than originally planned. The darn guys stold some rock off of my dry stack stone fence to keep going and just before the sun went down, the falls were complete. I will have to post another photo to show you after I am done the planting.
This is the before...
This is the water fall at this point was almost complete - but very ugly!!! The rain barrel had blown over to the pond during the spring storms, you can clearly see our Christmas tree had blown there too, what a mess!!! It only took two flat deck trucks full of rock, one track hoe, a jumping jack to tamp the ground hard enough to support the weight of the water fall, both our sons, one guy from the roofing crew, a friend of Andrew’s ( who got roped into one day’s hard labor) Mike, to plan everything and two full days of putting a rock down...everyone looking at it...deciding that it was not the right shape, or the right slope, too big, too small ...moving the rock out with the track hoe...putting in another rock...etc. etc.
Finally, on Sunday, they decided that the structure was good enough and they turned on the waterfall. The water did not fall exactly as they wanted, so they made some last minute adjustments and called it quits. Now all I have to do is get in there and naturalize the edges of the pond, to make it look like it has been there for a hundred years, a few more rocks, a few shrubs and some flowers and then we can go and get some fish!!!!
If I could figure out how to get another picture in this darn blog, I would show you the totally finished result, with the water running down the falls. It is much bigger than in this last picture, as due to technical difficulties and a slip with the hoe, the large cap rock cracked in half and they had to build higher than originally planned. The darn guys stold some rock off of my dry stack stone fence to keep going and just before the sun went down, the falls were complete. I will have to post another photo to show you after I am done the planting.
Caught Red Handed!
For those of you who know me well, you know that I have a sort of obsession with dishes of any sort - I collect meat platters, complete dish sets, random dishes that appeal to me, I can't help myself!!! I am Cindy and ...I am an addict...I have not bought a dish in two days...When I had to start hiding dishes in boxes, under the beds, in the front closet,
on the top shelf of my bedroom closet, Mike made me promise that it would come to an end. What came to an end was me hiding them where he might find them. I started being more creative. I started taking them over to the workshop and hiding them in closets over there. Edna, my accountant has a locking closet at the workshop where she stores my bookwork for Scrapbook Cupboard and Monday Night Class. I figured that if required unlocking a door, Mike would probably not look in there. I also had to find a "dish mule", someone who was reliable and not tell on me, make sure that the dishes were delivered on a work day when Mike was not around, and be willing to smuggle in my fix when ever I saw a set that I could not live without. Tanya has been my most often used dish mule, as she lived in Lethbridge and had access to Pier 1, Winners etc. She was also very safe, as I signed all of her paychecks ( so she knew that I was the boss) and she worked odd hours when Mike was not "around".
Recently, I saw a very pretty set of dishes in a Pier 1 catalogue and gave Tanya a cheque to cover some rather "extensive" dish purchases. However, my daughter happened to be around to see the deal go down and then very promptly ran to her father and blew the whistle on me. Tanya no longer could be used to smuggle, as Mike then started watching her like a hawk when she came to work. I had to become even more creative.
A week or so ago, Mike and I took a road trip to the States, just a few days off to eat and relax and see some new sights, before shipping started. Luckily for me, not so much for Mike, he can't keep up to me with his crutches. After a period of time in a mall or in a store, he usually goes back to the car to rest, while I finish looking around. I feel like a convict that has escaped!!! Straight to the housewares I go and check out all of the new patterns and colors. Then I have to figure out what I can buy that I can hide dishes in!!! This trip, I came home with a whole set of luggage.
What Mike does not know is that I had the clerk wrap up all of my dishes and put them inside the suitcases (I asked her to do it so they would not break as we were travelling) and I walked out of the store, right to the car, put the suitcases in - RIGHT UNDER MIKE'S NOSE- and he never suspected a thing. Later that night, when he went to take a bath, I transferred just enough clothes and purchases into the suitcases to camouflage the dishes. He never suspected a thing!!!!
Can you blame me? Look at that pretty platter with the crewel flowers on it!!! This is one that Tanya smuggled for me!!! I love this pattern! It is currently residing in the workshop on this shelf that my Dad built for me. You are probably wondering why Mike does not notice the dishes when they are out in plain view?? You have to see my house to understand. Or my workshop! I have been collecting fall decor and dishes for so long now that I can decorate several houses and I had custom cabinetry (in the house) built for my collections, so it would be very hard to notice a small addition here or there. Even I can't keep straight all that I own, so how could he? Long live the addict!!!!
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