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Archives for 2009

I’m tired of freezing when I go to bed

February 22, 2009 by Tricia

I’m starting to get sick and tired of our bedroom being freezing cold when I go to bed. Our master bedroom is the coldest room in the house in the winter. Changing into my PJ’s each night is quite the experience as I end up covered in goose-pimples! LOL

We live in an older house. It was build in 1927 and as a result it’s probably not quite as warm as newer homes. Our bedroom is upstairs at the end of a long hallway so that likely makes it harder for the cold air that builds up in the room to escape. Remember cold air goes down (as in down a staircase) and warm air goes upward.

When we moved in we had some duct work done including adding a cold air vent in the master bedroom. I’m sure this has helped to make the room warmer than it would have been without the cold air return vent, but it’s still pretty darn cold in the dead of winter.

We did have an electric heater that we’d use in the bedroom for the first hour or so after we went to bed, but it stopped working in early December and we haven’t replaced it yet. After suffering through a very cold January (February has been warmer here, but it will get colder soon) I think it’s time to buy a new heater.

I’m going to watch for an electric heater to go on sale and hope that I can get one for a good price soon.

Our last electric heater was a tall standing one that oscillated to move the warm air around the room, but I’ve been look at this Honeywell Cool Touch heater and it looks like it might fit the bill. The description says it will heat a large living space so it might be too powerful for our small master bedroom.

What we’d normally do with our old electric heater would be to turn it on when we’d come upstairs to use the washroom and wash up before bed so that it would take a bit of the chill out of the room before we’d have to go in there to get changed. It also had a timer on it so we could set it to run for only an hour or so. That would ensure that the room was warm as we were trying to fall asleep, but we usually didn’t need it to run all night. Not once the bed was warmed up anyway.

Do you find the the upstairs of your house is a lot cooler in the winter than the rest of your home? Do you use a heater in your bedroom or do you just suffer the cold?





Filed Under: Appliances and Accessories, Home and Garden, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Shopping, Toronto Tagged With: bedroom, changing, cold, cold_air, cold_room, electric_heater, heater, home, old_house, pjs, sale, shop, Toronto

The snow is back

February 22, 2009 by Tricia

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We’ve had such nice weather for most of February.

It warmed up to above seasonal temperatures for several days making it seem very spring like and all the snow that we had melted away. Unfortunately that’s over now … it’s snowing like crazy this weekend so all we’ll see for a while is white when we look outdoors.

I think for today I’ll remember how nice and warm summer is by enjoying this lovely Cactus Dahlia:

Dahlia

How’s the weather in your area?

Filed Under: Gardening, Green Thumb Sunday, Photography, Toronto, Tricia's Garden Tagged With: cold, dahlia, Green_Thumb_Sunday, GTS, snow, snowing, Summer, winter

Itching and hives oh my!

February 21, 2009 by Tricia

As I was writing my last post I was overcome with a fit of itchiness. Suddenly my neck, scalp, back and the sides of my face were itching like crazy.

Trying as hard as I could not to scratch I finally gave in and started scratching in madness. My hair is likely now standing up on end due to all the crazy scratching. After about five minutes of itchy madness Chris who was watching me with concern as I scratched and tried to rub my back on the couch (and ask the dog to scratch me) suggested I take a Benadryl (allergy medication).

I told him to follow me into the kitchen where the light is brighter so he could check me for hives. At that time I only had one or two hives on my back and neck, but by the time I took two Benadryl and walked back to the living room (10 minutes or so after the itching had started) my face, neck, upper arms and back were covered in hives.

This evening, after we came home in a snow storm from shopping I decided to prepare skinless boneless chicken breasts and mixed veggies for dinner. Then I decided that since I’d had a craving for shrimp for a while, why not saute a few shrimp to go with our meal? Yeah … why not. LOL

I’m actually supposed to be allergic to shrimp, but I rarely seem to react to them. Oh I’ve had some mild itching occasionally after eating shrimp but only every 4th or 5th time. Well not this time! This time I’m sure my hives and mad itching are a result of the shrimp I ate. I guess their off the menu from now on.

I’m trying my best not to scratch. If I don’t scratch for a while the itching dies down a bit but there’s still that burning strange feeling. When I do scratch the itching gets worse and more hives appear. Every time I have a new itchy area and start scratching it hives show up a few minutes later. At this rate … If I keep scratching I’ll be covered in hives from my head to my feet!

I hope the allergy meds kick in soon. Of course I’ll then become super sleepy, but they work!

So … did reading this make any of you itchy too?

Filed Under: Health Fitness and Beauty Tagged With: allergic_reaction, allergy, arms, back, Benadryl, crazy, dinner, head, hives, itchiness, itching, mad, madness, neck, scalp, scratching, shrimp

Some posts draw more spam than others

February 21, 2009 by Tricia

Last week I wrote a post about how Chris and I have been trying to eat healthier in the past month. Not that we usually don’t eat good low fat foods or anything, but we really stepped it up in light of Chris’ high Cholesterol.

Well let me tell you … that post has received more spam comments in the past week than any other post I’ve written in the last month!

The comment spammers are all from sites that talk about weight loss, health foods and diet pills. Oh and a few of the spammers seem to be fixated on hamburger for some reason, even though I never mentioned hamburger let alone hamburgers in the original post. Weird.

Do you ever write posts that seem to bring all the comment spammers out of the woodwork? What topics draw the most spammers?

Filed Under: Blogging, Health Fitness and Beauty, Items to Try, Nutrition Tagged With: chicken, comment_spam, diet, foods, hamburger, healthy, pills, spammers, weightloss

Flowers all year round indoors and out

February 15, 2009 by Tricia

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Some how this year I’ve managed to have flowers almost continuously, by this I mean I’ve had flowers either in my yard or in my house since last spring!

At the moment my kitchen is the bloom factory. If you’re a neat freak you wouldn’t like the look of our kitchen table as it has at least 10 plants on it, but at least that only happens in the winter. During the warmer months most of my plants go outdoors or onto our enclosed porches.

We have two types of Orchids blooming (another just finished it’s flowering), a small hibiscus that puts out one or two flowers every few days, one Amaryllis that just finished blooming and when my husband was in the hospital the nurses that cared for him gave him an African Violet plant – in bloom.

Our Thanksgiving and Christmas Cactus’ keep putting out the occasional bloom as well … so as I said we’ve had flowers surrounding us for a year now! That’s a first.

The Orchids are just lovely right now.

Purple Orchid 5

This purple one is one of my favorites. I love it’s intricate pattern. I almost looks like a butterfly to me.

These white Orchids are new. I bought the plant in the first week of January and it’s still blooming!

White Orchids 18

I love how the flowers all line up in a delicate row like that.

Oh … here’s a shot of my messy plant covered table … the plant with the weird spider like things is an orchid that’s producing babies. Those spider leg like things are air roots and the green leaves are new plants growing high above the base of the main plant.

table full of plants

Do you have any flowers blooming in your house right now? Even some store bought Valentine flowers?

Filed Under: Gardening, Green Thumb Sunday, Home and Lifestyle, Photography, Toronto, Tricia's Garden Tagged With: Amaryllis, blooming, flowers, Green_Thumb_Sunday, GTS, hibiscus, indoors, orchids, plants, year_round

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