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Our house is a dust magnet

December 8, 2009 by Tricia

Do you ever wonder where dust comes from? Or perhaps a better question is, how can you spend hours cleaning your home only to have dust everywhere a few days later? LOL

Our house seems to accumulate dust – maybe it’s because we have an old furnace? Or maybe because we haven’t finished our renovations so there’s exposed plaster in a few areas?

I don’t know what it is, but it seems no matter how often I clean my house there’s always dust on things within days. Sigh. Oh and we change the filters on our furnace about every two months. I’m sure that helps, but I guess it doesn’t get all the dust. Like I said we have an old furnace, maybe if we had a newer one it would help lower the dust in the house.

Chris had the day off today, so we decide to do a thorough house cleaning. It was snowing outside -our first real snow of the season – so we might as well have done something indoors, right. I changed the bed sheets, and dusted everywhere (even the walls!). Chris followed a bit behind me vacuuming. He even cleaned the three ceiling fans that we have in the house. The arms on the fan even manage to get dust on them when they are running 24 hours a day.

It’s great that my husband is so helpful around the house. He even did the dishes!

We got a flyer today for a local Canadian Pharmacy and they have air purifiers on sale, so I think we might get another one for the house (we already have two). Maybe that will help.

Does your house seem to accumulate dust easily too?

Of course along with the dust we also end up sweeping or vacuuming up a lot of dog hair. Our black Lab always seem to be shedding.

Our dog has two dog beds and we vacuumed them today as well. While I was working on one of them I noticed that there was tons of dog hair stuck on the inside to some of the velcro that holds the donut pillow. Man that was hard to remove! I didn’t get it all – not by a long shot! No wonder her bed was getting smelly!

After seeing how dirty our dogs beds were, my husband decided to take them to the laundromat down the street. They have some really big washing machines and driers. So now the beds are clean (well there’s still some dog hair stuck to the velcro, but they smell much better!).

I also spent some time sewing up some of the holes that our dog had made in her beds by chewing the material. Most of the holes were old ones that she did when she was younger. She’s two now and doesn’t really chew things other than her toys now (thankfully!), so I’m hoping that with the repairs her two beds will last for another year or two.

I love it when the house is clean. I’m not a neat freak, but hey … it is nice when the house is tidy. I’d just like the house to be able to stay clean for a while after putting hours in dusting, vacuuming and cleaning counters, tubs and showers. If the dust and dog hair would go away I’d be really happy!

Time for bed … I love sleeping in a bed that’s just been made up with fresh sheets. Don’t you? …. Good Night!





Filed Under: Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Life with Chris Tagged With: air purifier, bed, ceiling fan, Chris, clean house, clean sheets, cleaning, counters, dog bed, dog hair, dust, dusting, furnace filters, happy, help, home, hours, husband, neat freak, old furnace, shower, too much dust, tub, vacuum, vacuuming, velcro, walls, wash dog bed, working

When we renovate our bathroom we’re putting in a digital shower

November 30, 2009 by Tricia

The other day I mentioned that we were starting to think about finally finishing our home renovation projects. Well, as a result of this new interest in sprucing up our home I’ve been looking at home renovation sites and checking out new products.

It will be quite a while before we renovate our upstairs and basement bathrooms, but I definitely have some ideas as to what I’d like to do when we do work on them. For instance, I had no idea that such a thing as a digital shower existed! When we redo the basement bathroom I want to put in a whirlpool bathtub and have a separate shower enclosure, and now I’m pretty sure that the shower controls will be digital!

Have you ever heard of a digital shower? If you haven’t and you’ve been thinking of redoing your bathroom, you should look into this new technology. A digital shower allows you to start the water flowing in your shower from any room in the house. Not only that, you can program the temperature that you want the shower water to be set at and you’ll have the perfect shower.

No more adjusting the temperature over and over again as you start your shower. That’s one of the things I hate about our shower. I start the water and it’s always too cold at first, so I add more hot water and then it’s too hot so I spend a few minutes trying to get it just right. I imagine I’m also wasting quite a bit of water as I try to get the temperature just right. If we had a digital shower I wouldn’t be wasting my time or all that water anymore.

You can apparently program a digital shower for each family member. So if one person likes a cool shower and another likes a hot one (I like warm – not too cool or too hot) everyone can program in their personal preferences.

How does it work? Well you turn on the shower and when the desired temperature is reached it will beep or give some kind of visual signal. Some of the units will even even keep the water temperature consistent even if other members of the household are flushing a toilet while you shower.

I’m going to put a digital shower on my wish list for when we get around to renovating our bathrooms.

Does anyone already have a digital shower? If so, what do you think of it?

Filed Under: Appliances and Accessories, Home and Garden, Home and Lifestyle, Home Renovation, Items to Try, Shopping Tagged With: bathroom, bathroom renovation, consistent water temperature, digital shower, family members, home, home appliance, Home Decor, preferences, programable, shower enclosure, timer, toilet flushes, wasroom, water temperature, wish list

PC Mac and online games for Christmas

November 30, 2009 by Tricia

My husband and I will be starting our Christmas shopping this week. We aren’t going to be going all out this year, simply because we can’t afford it, but we’ll still get some gifts for the kids in the family and a few close relatives. One idea that we came up with was to possibly buy some PC, Mac or online games as gifts.

I haven’t played many online or PC games in the last few years, well, with the exception of an online puzzle and a Mahjong game that I play every once in a while. So I’m trying to figure out which games would be good for teenagers and younger kids? Any suggestions?

I was looking online and games such as Princess Isabella – a Witch’s Curse, City Lights, Zuma’s Revenge, Luxor Adventures, Trapped and Campfire Legends seem to be interesting games that I think my nieces and nephews might like. They’d certainly make good stocking stuffers!

Another idea that I had was to possibly buy some memberships at an online game website, that way the recipients could easily play online games or buy games that they like for a discounted price. They could even download games right to their computer – games like Amazing Adventures The Caribbean Secret, Avenue Flo or Big City Adventure.

Have you ever thought of gifting someone an online gaming membership? I think at least two of our nephews would love that as a gift.

Filed Under: Cool stuff, Family, Games, Gifts, Internet, Items to Try, Recreation, Shopping Tagged With: christmas, computer, cool idea, download games, gift, Gift ideas, great idea, kids, mac games, membership, online games, pc games, play games, stocking stuffer, teenager

The yard work is done for the year – now it’s time to finish our renovation projects – oh boy!

November 28, 2009 by Tricia

My husband and I spent a couple of hours outside today getting the final yard work for the year finished.

We cut down plants that had died off and sawed down the sunflower stalks – yes, the stalks were extremely thick so pruners wouldn’t do the job – we had to use a small hand saw on them to take them down! We also put leaves on the garden beds to protect them through the winter, and put away our many planter containers, teak table and other odds and ends.

It’s good to be ready for winter! Of course that doesn’t mean that I’m anywhere near ready for it to snow. The snow can hold off for months as far as I’m concerned!

Now I’m tired. I shouldn’t be, but I’ve been much more tired than usual over the last two months or so, and to top it off I haven’t been able to get to sleep easily this past week, so that’s just compounding the tiredness.

So now I’m just relaxing on the couch, watching HGTV shows like Disaster DIY – which is making me think of all the renovations we’ve started in our home and haven’t completed (yes I believe we’re prime candidates for the Disaster DIY show) and preparing to get our christmas cards done.

I’ve found that I’ve been watching reno shows on HGTV more often in the last few weeks and it’s making me think about our renovations.

We’ve done a lot of work on our house since we moved in such as redoing all of the hardwood floors, painted all of the walls, did venetian plaster in the master bedroom and the living room dining room, tore down walls in the living room, dining room and entrance way (prior to painting etc), put a skylight in the roof of the enclosed porch as well as putting in a hardwood ceiling and refinishing the whole enclosed porch, totally refinished the hardwood stairs, put in a new sink and cabinet in the upstairs bath and a bunch of other things. I can’t even remember everything we’ve done, but I guess I could also include landscaping our front and backyards and putting in a fabulous garden.

Now, other than our plans to renovate the kitchen, two bathrooms and finish the basement, we still have to finish some renovations that are about 80% complete. The main ones I’m thinking of are the living room dining room. As I said we tore down walls, refinished the hardwood floors and did venetian plaster on the walls … but the ceiling still needs to be done. We bought tin ceiling panels … oh 6 or 7 years ago, and we still need to put them up. We also need to put crown molding, base molding and quarter round in the living room dining room. Then it will be done.

We’d better finish it soon because I’m already tired of the venetian plaster. LOL … and I’d like to see the rooms complete before I decide to sand and paint over the lovely plaster.

Since I’m really getting in the mood to finish our work, I’m hoping that maybe in January Chris and I can start finishing what we started so long ago. Believe me, I’m tired of look at the unfinished ceiling!

As I’ve said repeatedly over the last several months we have absolutely no extra money. However I don’t think that will slow our finishing of the renovations if we can make ourselves get started again … Why? Well, we already have all the supplies we need or pretty much everything we need. We have the tin ceiling panels (already painted – but I’m hoping we have enough of them to cover the ceiling!) and the molding stored in the basement. At the most I think we still have to buy the quarter round that we need and then some paint to finish off the molding.

Just the thought of starting up our renovations again is making me tired, but I’m just sick and a little bit embarrassed by the look of our unfinished home. Hopefully that will help spur me on to finally get started again. I’m also worried about what to do with our dog when we start finishing our renovations again … she wasn’t around when we started this big project. Hopefully she’ll listen to us and lie down in a corner when we’re working, otherwise she’s going to be a dusty and possibly paint covered dog.

So how many of you have homes that could be on a show like Disaster DIY? Have you started reno projects and found you didn’t have time (or the knowledge) to finish them? If so, are you going to get around to finishing your reno sometime in the near future?

Filed Under: Gardening, Home and Lifestyle, Home Decor, Home Renovation, Items to Try, Life with Chris, Tricia's Garden Tagged With: ceiling, ceiling panels, dining room, Disaster DIY, DIY, do it yourself, dog, finish renovations, finish the job, garden, hardwood floors, HGTV, Home Renovation, January, living room, molding, painting, ready for winter, reno, renovate, snow, stairs, tin ceiling, tired, TV, Venetian plaster, winter, yard work

I can’t wait until the scuzzy neighbors next door leave

November 26, 2009 by Tricia

I can not wait until our renter neighbors next door end up getting kicked out. Note that I didn’t say move out … I’m sure they will have to be kicked out given the stories and history of them we’ve heard from some friends that used to live in the same apartment buildings that they did.

They are just plain scuzzy people. The kind of people that you take one look at and get a bad feeling about.

Now usually I give people the benefit of the doubt even if I have a bad feeling about them when I first meet them. usually my instincts are right – but I still like to give people a chance. Not in this case though … Chris and I just got a bad feeling about them from the start and then we started hearing from our friends that the guy had just gotten out of jail and that he and his wife are hooked on drugs and get this – that the guy actually robbed both his sister and his parents recently!

Chris just came back from the corner store and guess who was there just before him … our scuzzy renter neighbors – the guy, his wife and their teenage daughter. It looks like they pulled a scam while they were there too.

They apparently bought a long distance calling card. The store owner gave it to the teenaged girl and the girl proceeded to walk around the store – I guess while one of her parents were paying for the card. A few minutes later the girls said the card wasn’t in the envelope. So the store owner ended up having to give them another long distance calling card.

I suppose it’s possible that the card wasn’t in the package, but knowing these people’s history it’s more likely that they pulled a scam by distracting the store owner while the girl took the calling card out of the package and then said it was empty.

I only wish that the people that own the home had looked into these people better before renting to them. We apparently have no home owner rental laws here in Ontario where the home owner is supposed to do a criminal background check etc on prospective renters – kind of like a pre-employment screening that some companies do.

Why? Well, if they don’t and it turns out that the renters are doing something illegal in the home like making drugs etc then the home owner will be liable for their renters activities and any damages that the police do when they bust the renters … ie if the renters set up a drug lab in the house and the police bust in and break doors etc or tear up walls the homeowner has to pay for all the repairs because they didn’t do a background check on their renter. I guess if they did do one and the renter didn’t have a criminal history but then did something illegal then the story would be a little different for the home owner.

I don’t know exactly how it all works, but it’s clear that the home owners in this case didn’t check up on anything that the renters next door told them. I mean, not even calling their employers. The guy had told them that he worked for the Toronto Transit commission and that his wife was a social worker … but we hear from our friends that the guy got fired from the TTC a year or so ago and then spent close to a year in jail and that the woman hasn’t worked for a few years.

Arg … I can’t wait for these people to leave. I’m sure it will start with them not paying their bills or their rent and then the home owners will have to kick them out. It can’t happen soon enough for me!

In the mean time we’re keeping all our doors locked and someone is always home. Hey, if the guy would rob his own sister and parents homes then it wouldn’t be a big leap for him to rob his next door neighbors – would it?

Filed Under: Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, The Neighborhood, Toronto Tagged With: bad feeling, bad neighbors, bad people, corner store, criminal background check, employment record, home owners, jail, kicked out, locking doors, neighbors, not paying bills, not paying rent, out of jail, probation, renters, scam, scary, scary neighbors, scuzzy, scuzzy people, sick, stole calling card

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