Thursday, September 22, 2016

Hello Fall!!

Today is the first day of Fall.  It doesn't look like Fall in my neck of the woods yet.  The leaves have not changed color although in some places in the UP, the colors are absolutely majestic.  I do love to watch the colors change from the greens, blues and yellows of summer to the gold, red and bronze of Autumn and I wait anxiously for that time here where I live.   The temperatures have definitely gotten cooler....."sweater weather" my mom used to say.  Soon it will be time to put away the summer clothes and get the winter wardrobe into the closets.  Quilts have been put on the beds and windows which were wide open in summer are now closed to just the smallest opening.  Meals that were made up of cold crisp salads, corn on the cob, steak on the grill and tart lemonade will move into hearty soups, bowls of chili, warm homemade bread and hot coffee.  There will be many outdoor chores to do: putting away the patio furniture, getting the landscape ready for its winter hibernation, storing away the lawnmower and checking that the snowblower will be ready when needed.  The days are getting shorter and all too soon, this season will pass and winter will make its entrance.  Until then, I will sit at my window with a hot chocolate with marshmallows and watch as the farmland around me becomes a canvas of color God paints each year.

Monday, September 12, 2016

Telemarketers Are The Worst!

I will warn you on the outset, this is a rant about telemarketers.  I am so sick and tired of running to answer the phone and it is a telemarketer of some sort.  I put my phone on the Do Not Call List and did that help........NO!  I still get at least 3 to 5 calls per day.  Now that we are in an election year that number almost doubles sometimes.  We get opinion poll takers, candidate pollsters, issue pollsters, etc.  Also, I am about to reach the age for Medicare and so I receive many calls for supplemental insurance and other health gadgets they seem to think a senior citizen needs (example: the "I've fallen and can't get up" necklace).  What is the point of a Do Not Call List if no one is paying attention to it?  Thank goodness for caller id or I would be answering these ridiculous calls all the time.  However these places have gotten sneaky in getting around caller id.  There have been calls identified as being a cellular call, a call coming from my area code or city, or a call from a government dept.  All of which have turned out to be from telemarketers.  You would think after getting no answer the 6 or 7 times they have called, they would get the idea we are not talking to them and find someone else to harass but nooooo.  Of course, a lot of these calls are automated and since no human pays attention why would they realize that you will never answer their call.  So although this is a rant about the annoying telemarketers, it is also praise for the person who came up with caller id.  Now if that same person could figure out how to get the telemarketers to stop calling, that would be a happy day for sure.

Saturday, September 3, 2016

DIY Camouflage in the Kitchen



My husband and I have been updating our kitchen...new floor, old cupboards painted in a new grey color, wall paper,  new counter tops, etc.  Everything has been going quite smoothly until we reached what I call "the elephant in the room".  On the wall by the back door in the kitchen is our electrical panel.  It is an ugly metal cabinet which contains all the electrical switches for the house.  I don't like the look of it and have tried to hide it by hanging a picture/wall hanging over it.  But even those looked just as bad.  So one afternoon I was staring at it trying to come up with an idea how to camouflage it (it would be too expensive to have it moved).  Then it came to me perhaps a kitchen wall cabinet would do it.  It would hide the panel but still allow us to access it if needed.  We measured the area and purchased an unfinished wall cabinet.  Since the panel is on a wall by the back door, the cabinet would be too deep to hang up the way it was.  So we measured how deep it could be while allowing sufficient clearance for the back door.  My husband then sawed off the back of the cabinet to the right depth.  We painted the cabinet to match the rest of the kitchen cabinets and then attached it to the wall over the electrical panel.  The pictures above show how well it worked out.