Week-end Afternoon

I hate when I have not posted in so long that I have to spend so much time trying to recount the missing days. First of all, I got too busy to write and then I didn't have a working computer. But here I am at long last. I am feeling very tired today and I will probably have myself an afternoon nap, but I will post this blog first.

At the beginning of this week, I had many invites presented to me....lots of people to see and places to go. There was another Christmas Craft sale at my friend's church, which I could not attend. My brother and SIL who live in Smiths Falls were hosting their annual "come over and decorate and have dinner" event. I turned down that invite. After all, I have my own house to clean and decorate. For a while I considered going to Collingwood. My Dad and "Dee" , my sister and BIL rented a time share for the week and asked me to go and stay with them for a few days. I would go past my daughter's place on the way there, or the trip home, and I could stay overnight and we could exchange Christmas presents and the kids would be sure to get their Advent calendars before the end of the month. But as the week progressed, my cleaning at home was getting underway and the highway conditions were not great for me traveling.  By Wednesday I decided that I would not do the traveling, knowing that the weather was looking better for this weekend and my daughter, my SIL,  and two grand kids could drive here to my house instead. At the very least, we could do as we have done in the past, and both travel as far as Cobourg and have lunch together at the Swiss Chalet.

With that in mind, I decided to just finish up cleaning the computer room by doing a damp dusting and doing a thorough clean of my computer, including my keyboard. I removed all the keys, and cleaned out the dust and grime with  q-tips  moistened with rubbing alcohol, as I have done so often in the past. However, this time I couldn't have been as careful as I usually am. Later that night when I tried to use my computer, I discovered that I'd lost function in my asdf keys. I tried rebooting the system, but no go. I spent all of Thursday, after going for groceries in the morning, putting up as many lights and decorations as possible  inside the house. Friday was spent with damp dusting and vacuuming all through the house, cleaning bathrooms and readying the bedrooms for my guests.  Traffic outside of Toronto was particularly bad, so they didn't arrive until closer to 6 PM, so dinner was ready for them. And when they drove up, my whole house was lit up with lights both indoors and out.

My grocery shopping expedition on Thursday morning yielded plenty of bargains.  Meat cost me $32.71  The ground chicken listed at $10 for 4 lb. chubs, was actually only $8. The bacon was only $3.47 per pkg., so I bought two. The 500 gm pkg. of Pillars pepperoni (17 meat sticks) was on sale also for only $4.77, the kielbasa cost $3, and the butterball turkey roll was only $10. I saved $22 .79 off the regular price of the meat alone.  I roasted the turkey roll for dinner on Friday and there was lots leftover. I also served bacon for breakfast the next morning.

Dairy cost $17.52, saving me  $8.09 off the regular prices.

Cereals and breads cost $4.99, $2 off. The bagels were eaten at breakfast. The holiday Rice Krispies I  bought because if I do no other baking, I have to make marshmallow rice krispie treats for Xmas.

Produce cost $7.47 The grapes went home with the kids, as well as a lunch mate snack pack for each of them that only cost $1 each. (Not pictured) I cooked and served the two yams for dinner and we had blueberries and blackberries with breakfast the next morning.

I bought a few other items that I have not taken a photo of and spent a total of $97.40 at two grocery stores. I saved a total of $28.57 at one store and $24.90 at the other. I took advantage of a lot of sale items.

I have not been able to watch Netflix or Amazon Prime on my television lately. In fact, over the past couple of weeks, it has been increasingly frustrating trying to watch anything on my tablet. The signal from my router has just been getting increasingly weaker. So I had ordered a new, stronger router from Amazon waiting for my son to come over to install it. My SIL offered to install it for me, and so they discovered that was an impossibility with no asdf keys working on my keyboard. Ha, ha. So off he went to the local WalMart,  the same evening he arrived , and bought me a brand new keyboard. Within half an hour, I had a working computer and television. I was feeling so blessed. They left earlier yesterday than they had intended because the road conditions in Bradford (where they live) showed freezing drizzle had arrived,  and was moving east towards Kingston. They hoped to get home before conditions got worse. They had rain for most of the trip home. Rain did not arrive here until the afternoon and then it did not freeze, fortunately. They messaged me when they got home safely.

So yesterday and today, I have been having a restful weekend recuperating and watching Christmas movies on the big screen. How was your weekend?