O Tannenbaum

I looked at my list this morning and I chose to get the tree up and decorate it. It isn't what I consider to be part of my deep cleaning this week, but it was on my list so I won't be too upset about it. It is still a big job and I did it myself. It took most of the morning to do.

I have the Christmas tree lights and the ones on my mantel plugged into the power bar along with the television, so I will be able to enjoy the lights in my living room while watching TV in the evenings.
And since I brought down the tree decorations this morning, I finished up decorating the garland around the French doors leading from the dining room. I had the lights up for the grand kids but I didn't have time to hang the gold ornaments and beads until today.

Touches of gold.

I also clipped my red and green feathered birds to the Norfolk Pine in the computer room.
I watered the plants upstairs today....all my succulents and all the geraniums I brought inside to over-winter.

On my way out of town this afternoon, I mailed off my 50 Christmas cards that were stamped and ready to go. I dropped into my bank to do some banking before visiting one grocery store....No Frills.

Frozen produce cost $26.00 even....oriental vegetables, spinach, the last 5 bags again of winter veggies and a 2 kg package of frozen blueberries.

Fresh produce cost $13.01 (cabbage, 2 eggplant, 4 zucchini and walnuts)

I paid $11.76 for this ham  (only  $1.27 a lb)

Dairy cost $12.71  for a total expenditure of $63.48 on groceries today. I will make a moussaka with the eggplant and half the feta cheese, and I will slice up the whole ham and freeze in portions. I still need to pick up eggs, milk and cheese, but I will buy them at another store for a better price.

It is another weekend. Hope you have a good one.

The Fridge

I did in fact choose cleaning the fridge from my mile long to-do list of deep cleaning chores I had written out. Yesterday morning I finished up washing the banister and railings that surround the top of the staircase that I refer to as the loft. The nice thing about having a list of chores that I would like to get finished by Christmas, is that I feel like I have a choice about what I feel like doing on any given day. I MUST tackle one of the items but I can choose which one. Cleaning the fridge is not one of my favourite cleaning chores, but I felt I had the energy and motivation to get it done. On a day where I might not be in the mood for deep cleaning, I might choose to wipe fingerprints from the light switches, or dust my bedroom furniture. I am feeling quite proud of my clean fridge. Not only did I clean the fridge, but I also cleaned the freezer above. That was a huge job and I ended up throwing a lot of unused items into the garbage. It is never a good thing to feel fine about tossing food, but these items were left from before I went on my current diet. I cannot eat them and they are too old to offer to someone else.

Yesterday I also watered my indoor plants that are downstairs, and I made card boxes for the three sets of cards I am gifting at Christmas. I stamped the backs of my homemade Christmas cards and signed my name, and I printed out inserts with Christmas sentiments for the insides of the cards. I started signing and addressing the cards last night and finished them all today. I have spares for if I need them.

Fifty cards ready to put in the mail tomorrow.

Because I needed a bigger table for my company last weekend (and for my dinner on Christmas Eve), I moved my smaller table against the wall seen in the top photo and I brought out my craft table from my crafting room in the back, and covered it with  a Christmas tablecloth and the quilted table runner that my SIL gifted me last year.  I brought my tree indoors but have not set it up yet. I feel like I may be on schedule this year, and it feels pretty good.

A Day of Socializing

I slept until 8:15 this morning before crawling out of bed. I dressed and came downstairs instead of taking a shower. I checked over my To-Do list to pick out the deep-cleaning activity for today while having my two cups of coffee, face-timing with "Dee", and unloading the dishwasher while making my 2 egg omelet. Then I went upstairs to throw a load of laundry in the washer and have my shower and wash my hair.

Yesterday my job was washing the inside and outside of each pane of glass in all SIX French doors downstairs. That was a lot of washing. I was going to use Windex and paper toweling on them afterwards, but I think I picked too big a job for one day, and because the windows look so great already, I decided that if I have time later on, I will clean them again. So today I decided to wash the stairs, banister and railings. Again, it was a huge job, so I decided early that I would just wash the railings and banister going downstairs, and save the banister and railings around the top of the loft for tomorrow. I was just finishing up when I got a call from my son and my DIL. She had a break between classes and wanted to come out for a visit. We had lunch together and had a couple of hours visiting before they had to go back into town. Soon after I got ready to leave for Kingston myself. We were meeting at a restaurant to celebrate another friend's birthday. I should have brought Christmas cards with me but didn't think of it. The next birthday celebration isn't until February.

It snowed today and is supposed to continue all through the night. This snow is sticking and the trees look very pretty. I forgot to turn off my outside Christmas lights yesterday before going into town to help move a cedar chest for a friend of mine. So they were on to greet my arrival last night and also tonight. With snow, they look especially festive. 

 Some simple decorating inside my house. Old Christmas baubles in a hurricane glass with fake snow (from the Dollar Store) poured over top.

Different kinds of snowflakes gathered over the years are strung up with fishing line against one wall from the ceiling.

Daybook: Monday, Nov. 26/18

Outside my window.....the snow is all gone, again. It has been raining the last 3 days and the grass is back to looking very green. I turned the timers on the outdoor Xmas lights for my grand kids coming this past weekend and have not turned them off yet. I will do that today when I go out.

I am thinking.....of the very short but wonderful visit I had with my daughter and SIL and the two grands on Friday night and Saturday.

I am thankful for.....their safe return home as they were driving in the rain that had the potential to become an ice storm.

From the kitchen.....there isn't a lot going on these days. I have been eating the leftovers up from the turkey roast and vegetables left over from Friday night.

I am wearing.....black jeans, black socks and a dark gray thin knit sweater.

I am creating.....nothing crafty this past week, save for a couple of note cards. I do have to make packages to hold the card sets I made for gifting, and I need to write and address the Christmas cards to go out at the end of this week. I am still trying to be optimistic about the mail getting through despite the postal workers grievances. I hope for a resolution soon.

I am going.....to pick up a friend tonight after work and take her over to another friend's house to pick up a cedar chest and bring it back to her place. I will probably take the opportunity to stop at No-Frills to pick up this week's specials and to the drug store to pick up a prescription that I am phoning in. 

I am hoping.....to accomplish most of the items on my To-Do list this week.

I am hearing.....the sound of tires on wet pavement outside. 
Around the house..... I need to start making some detailed to-do lists each day this week. I want to continue the deep clean of each room in the house, but mainly the kitchen.  I will bring in the tree and decorate this week, so I can wash the floors afterwards. I have to do my Christmas cards (and maybe a newsletter to include inside?)

One of my favourite things.....is my brand new keyboard that was gifted to me by my daughter and SIL.

A few plans for the rest of the week.....include another birthday dinner for one of my girls' weekend ladies, tomorrow night. I was also scheduled to attend a follow-up meeting of the cravings workshop this week, but it has been postponed until January. So far, this coming weekend has not been booked for anything yet. I had something going on every weekend during the month of November.

Here's the picture I am sharing.....

 Christmas poinsetta I bought for $3 at Freshco this past Thursday.

My Christmas cactus is starting to get blooms. A Norfolk pine is in the foreground. I will put bird ornaments on it this week.

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?

Decluttering

On Sunday, we had temperatures of -7 C degrees, so in the end I decided NOT to start hanging my outdoor Christmas decorations. Instead I made up some more Miracle cleaner to replenish my spray bottles. I disinfected my kitchen counters. I made up another batch of homemade Taco seasoning and my Ten Things Farm chicken seasoning because I was out of both. I did two loads of laundry and hung them up inside to dry. They have since been put away. And then, even though I told you I finished the twelve Christmas projects that I set out to do....I  finished another one.

Yesterday's temperatures were mild, so I took advantage and went outside to string up my lights. I have them on timers and I checked them last night to make sure they are all working, but I won't turn them on until after the first of December. I have far fewer decorations than past years because I got rid of a lot of them after Christmas last year. I also sold some at the yard sale this year. I did put out my little fake evergreen tree (made by wrapping a rope light and garland around a tomato cage). I have that up on the "table" on my front verandah. I didn't want to put hooks into my brand new front stoop, so I just wrapped the Christmas lights around and through the railings. Since I do have hooks on my fence and my front verandah, I strung both garland and lights from those. I took night-time photos, but they really did not turn out. I will have to take daytime pictures, I guess.  In the afternoon, I made up a "Thinking of you"  card and wrote a message inside. I wrote birthday wishes in another card for  one of my grand daughters, and I wrote another notecard for my mother. I walked them to the post office and picked up my mail. There was another card from my 7 year old grandson. I was going to make up the packaging for the card sets I made a few weeks back, only to discover that I had not put any birthday sentiments inside the cards. Fortunately, I keep a binder of card designs and stock sentiments on hand, so it was just a matter of printing them out on a sheet of printer paper and inserting them inside the cards.

 My verandah. This is the entrance people use to my house.

My new front stoop and the front of the house. The milder temperatures took away most of the snow

Today I planned to clean my computer room.The big job was to dust off the desk and the book shelves on the wall above the desk. At the end of the night, neither is done. It took me HOURS to file everything away in their designated locations. (I am thinking of you Bless)  I shredded 5 grocery bags of papers so far. I decided not to open the proverbial can of worms and just get all the rest into my filing box to take care of in January. I have manuals for appliances I know longer own. But I remembered that last year when I started in this same room, I spent days sorting through tools and hardware and organizing the lot so I would know where to find stuff. I did not want to fall into that trap again. Tomorrow, when I have natural daylight again, I will tackle the dusting and washing. At least the big job of putting things away where they belong, is finally done.

Amherst Island

I arrived dockside to catch the 9:30 AM ferry. I left my car on this side and traveled over with the other 3 women in one car. We arrived at 10 AM just as the elementary school/community centre was opening. Stella is a very small but well-knit community. Inside,  the vendors were setting up tables for the Silent Auction, crafts, Amherst Island t-shirt and fleece jacket sales, books, photography, baking, and the ever popular (and my personal favourite)  white elephant table. I had to keep reminding myself that I was purging stuff from my own house and I didn't need to pick up anything at all. There are some lovely treasures to be found on these tables and "purchases"  are made by way of a donation. Despite my restraint (and I really, really mean that), I picked up a couple of small items.

I bought this brand-new, never been used Christmas wine bag. I like to use these cloth bags as gift bags to hold " difficult to wrap" Christmas gifts. This one has a pocket in front to hold a little extra something, like candy or maybe a gift card.  I love that red winter mug. I had my coffee in it this morning. In front of it is a gorgeous little gold pin of a Xmas tree in red and green enamel. I couldn't resist the bird. It is a Styrofoam base covered in plant material. At Christmas, I decorate my fireplace mantel with an evergreen bough with birds and rustic decorations made of natural materials. This satisfies both requirements. In the centre is a jumbled pile of wine charms. I bought those to repurpose the beads and charms into my card making.  Charms are generally very expensive to purchase from a hobby store. One's cast-offs are definitely another's treasure.

Admission is free, but I usually pay $10 at the door....$5 for lunch, and $5 for 3 raffle tickets on a huge basket full of goodies that I never win, but it is fun to wish. All the proceeds from this Craft and Bake sale go to the Church renovation fund.  Lunch is chili or a variety of soups with buns and dessert, and of course coffee or tea. I can't have the buns or dessert, but the bowl of chili was more than enough. We also went to the Island gift shop which features arts and crafts from the Islanders (lots of extremely talented artists reside here) and we dropped in at the studio of one of the portrait painters on the Island, since he was having a Studio tour. Then we set off in the car to find a Snowy Owl, since the Island is famous for them. Amherst Island is on a migratory path and is renowned to birders from all over the world. We didn't find the elusive Snowy, but we saw dozens of red-tailed hawks and as many deer, up close and personal. Not one of us thought to bring a camera because we were only going to come to the sale and lunch.

After coming back to the mainland, I drove one of the ladies with me to No Frills to pick up a few groceries and I took her home. I stopped at the pharmacy to pick up my prescription I phoned in the day before, and I stopped to pick up my Avon order that arrived Friday afternoon. It had some last minute stocking stuffers.

 I spent $22.72 on produce. I cleaned out all 5 remaining bags of winter vegetables that were left, and 2 bags of oriental mix, 3 zucchini, 1 red onion and cabbage.

 I spent $13.67 on meat....loin pork chops and chicken legs with backs attached.

Dairy cost $15.07
I spent a total of $51.70 and earned only 700 points, but I will take them. Every little bit helps. I don't think I am finished grocery shopping yet. It seems to me that cheese is on sale somewhere else this week for a really great price and I could pick up another variety of meat if I find a sale price.

I had planned to put up my outdoor decorations today. It is currently -7C, so I don't know if it will happen today or not, but perhaps I can get a start at it. Others on my street have theirs up already. Not to worry. I have lots of dusting and vacuuming that I can accomplish. How is your weekend stacking up?