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You are here: Home / 2012 / Archives for August 2012

Archives for August 2012

Still trying to cut expenses

August 10, 2012 by Tricia

I’m still working on cutting expenses. I don’t know how successful I’m being but I’m working on it. These things do take time. Well they can take time unless you have absolutely no money and then you absolutely have to start cutting expenses – right?

The trouble is I think I’ve always been pretty good at cutting corners and cutting expenses so I don’t know how much further I can go other than cutting out the very few luxuries that I allow myself. Luxuries to me are having cable tv and paying for things like the movie channel. If I couldn’t do this I wouldn’t … but since I’ve been home sick on medical leave (for a long time), the days are long and sometimes kind of lonely … TV does make good company as sad as I am to admit that.

Someone had suggested that I use Hulu or Netflix but I’m in Canada and well .. being in Canada I can’t use Hulu and Netflix Canada isn’t really up to par. I was checking it out and a lot of the TV shows it carries don’t have current seasons and the movies look older. So that idea doesn’t work. I wish there was a good Canadian option.

I’ve even been thinking of changing my life insurance company … so I’m going to compare annuity rates and see if I can find a better rate.

Let’s see, other things I’m doing to cut expenses – as usual are making home cooked meals, growing some of my own vegetables and fruits, my husband takes his lunch to work, we don’t drive our car very often, we walk a lot … Any other ideas?





Filed Under: Finance, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Money, Toronto Tagged With: bills, cable, Canada, cut expenses, finances, garden, grow, home cooked, hulu, lunch, luxuries, meals, movie channel, netflix, save money, vegetables, walk

My Lab and her barking problem

August 9, 2012 by Tricia

I think my Labrador Retriever is finally starting to feel better. She hasn’t been feeling well for about two months and she’s had me worried.


She’s been on antibiotics for about two weeks and probiotics for a yeast infection in her bowel. She still has two or three weeks to go on the medications but it really seems like she’s feeling a lot better.

The only problem lately is that she’s been barking a lot. It’s like nervous barking. Little sounds seem to set her off and she seems more excitable than she used to be. Of course it probably doesn’t help that we’ve had someone staying at our house for the last little while and that might be one of the reasons why she’s barking so much and gets excited so much easier. I just wish she’d calm down!

Well I guess I can’t complain too much … at least she doesn’t do things like this dog! BTW this dog ate some lipstick apparently. I know it looks like a mess and being red it looks like something else .. but it’s just lipstick!

Midnight has chewed on some furniture – when she was a puppy … but for the most part she’s a fairly good dog. Well, with the exception of the barking thing lately. I have to figure out how to get her to stop that.

Does your dog worry you when it gets sick … and does your dog cause mischief?

Filed Under: Home and Lifestyle, Humor, Our Puppy Tagged With: barking, black dog, dog lipstick, excited, funny picture, labrador retriever, mischief, nervous dog, sick dog, stop barking, trouble

Finding creative ways to save money

August 4, 2012 by Tricia

I’m trying to find creative ways to cut our bills yet still pretty much maintain the lifestyle that we’ve grown accustomed to in the last while.

By this I mean not just cooking all our meals at home instead of getting the occasional take out or delivery, but making sure those home cooked meals are high quality meals. Believe me, I’m a good cook I always get lots of compliments when I cook for others.

I also want to see about cutting back on things like our cable bill. We have an HDTV and I’d like to look into antennas for tv’s particularly HDTV’s. I’ve heard they can pull the signal for a lot of free HDTV stations so it might be worth looking into and that would definitely cut the cost of our cable bill if it works.

I’m trying to think of other ways to cut costs – yet not feel the pinch too much. Any ideas?

Filed Under: Finance, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try Tagged With: antena, cable bill, creative, cut costs, delivery, HDTV, home cooked meal, meals, quality, save money

The Beaches Jazz Festival was great

August 3, 2012 by Tricia

The Toronto Jazz Festival was on this past week. Last Saturday my husband and I went to see a couple of bands perform in Kew Gardens in the Beaches. We made some sandwiches, packed some drinks and brought some folding chairs – oh and we brought our dog Midnight along with us as well and we spent the afternoon enjoying some fantastic music. We saw a band called the Heavyweights Brass Band and then we listened to Leona Boyd perform.

After the performances in the park were over we walked down to the boardwalk with our dog and let our dog loose in the off leash area. Naturally, being a Labrador Retriever she went straight to the water and had a swim in Lake Ontario. As usual we had a terrible time getting her out of the water. She just like a little kid that doesn’t want to get out of the pool!

When we were finished spending some time at the beach we walked back up to Queen street. We were headed back towards our car, but of course we had every intention of walking on Queen for the Jazz street fest. Oh and we did .. we enjoyed several bands playing as we walked. The music was amazing and everyone there seemed to be having a great time!

I love this city. There’s so many great festivals and free events like this to attend. I love it.

Filed Under: Culture, Home and Lifestyle, Music, Recreation, the beach, Toronto Tagged With: beach, Beaches jazz festival, dog, festival, fun, funk, heavyweights brass band, Jazz, kew gardens, leona boyd, Music, park, Saturday, street fest, street festival, swim, Toronto, Walking

Time to do some renovations!

August 3, 2012 by Tricia

I think we’re going to start working on our living room renovations again this weekend. We were going strong on the reno for about two weeks but in the last week or so we haven’t done any reno work at all. We’ve been busy with other matters.

This weekend we’ll be putting in the baseboards and doing other molding work. Chris wants to rent a nail gun and compressor so that we can get the work done faster so I’m looking up places that we can rent from. So far I’m trying to decide between places like Home Depot and an industrial supply rental company. I guess we’ll just see which store has the equipment we need in the morning and go from there.

Something tells me it’s going to be a busy weekend!

Filed Under: Home and Lifestyle, Home Renovation, Items to Try Tagged With: baseboards, busy, compressor, living room, nail gun, renovations, Rent, rental, weekend

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