• Home
  • Blog
  • Archives
  • Links
  • About
  • Guest Blogger
  • Contact

Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto

  • Home and Lifestyle
  • Recreation
  • Health Fitness and Beauty
  • Entertainment
  • Web and Technology


You are here: Home / Archives for Home and Lifestyle / Family

Don’t you hate it when things start breaking down in your home?

December 7, 2008 by Tricia

I rarely use our basement washroom, but for some reason, I used it earlier today. That’s when I made a discovery … the taps we have in that bathroom are beginning to break. Figures .. just when we have NO money we’re probably going to have to go out and buy a new faucet set.

My husband knew the taps weren’t in good shape, but he never got around to letting me know. Men!

If we can keep the taps for a while, well until we have some extra money, I’ll wait and get some Moen faucets. We’re eventually going to redo the basement and basement washroom so I’d like to pick out nice, quality fixtures if at all possible.

Doesn’t it figure that things start breaking down just when you can’t afford it? That happened to my sister in law and her husband. They just bought a new house (across the street from where they had lived) and once they moved in, in October they realized that their furnace wasn’t working so they had to replace it. They also had to replace the washing machine and dryer, plus their water softener and snow blower just broke down too! They replaced the water softener … at a cost of $2,500 bucks! Why??? I’m sure they could have lived without soft water for a while. I think replacing the snow blower (considering their new property is larger than their previous property plus it’s on a corner so that means more snow to shovel!) was more important.

Anyway .. isn’t that a run of bad luck? A new furnace, washer, dryer, water softener and soon hopefully a snow blower … that must be $15,000 or more in extra expenses they weren’t counting on!

I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that nothing else in our house breaks down. Our washing machine and dryer came with the house and we estimate that they are going on about 35 years old! Yeah, I’m sure they are energy hogs … we’re going to replace them soon … but hopefully not before we can afford to replace them.





Filed Under: Appliances and Accessories, Family, Home and Lifestyle, Home Decor, Home Renovation, Items to Try Tagged With: bad_luck, breaking_down, broken_taps, brother_in_law, faucets, home, house, new_home, no_money, replace, sister_in_law, taps

Time to start Christmas shopping … I think

November 28, 2008 by Tricia

If I’m feeling well enough tomorrow Chris and I were thinking about officially starting our holiday shopping.

We still aren’t sure what kind of gifts we’re going to buy all the kids in the family! Perhaps tomorrow outing will just be a trip out to get some ideas. Most of the kids, nephews and nieces, are teens and I think those are the hardest people to buy for each year!

I had mentioned in another post that I was thinking of getting some of them newly released movies and or gift certificates to their favorite stores, but if you have any ideas for gifts for teens I’d love to hear them. Especially gifts that don’t break the budget! I haven’t been making much money lately so we don’t have much to spare to buy gifts this year.

My only brother that lives in the area has invited us over to his house for an early Christmas get together next weekend. His wife, my sister, her twins and their girlfriend and boyfriend, and my brothers daughter, her husband and their new baby will be there. It’s just a small gathering, but one that we try to do each year.

My brothers and sister and I usually don’t exchange gifts anymore. As I said in an earlier post we decided a while back just to buy gifts for the kids. This year I might get my brother a gift though. I found some fantastic silk ties and I know how much he loves his ties. So I might surprise him with a small gift. The gift would be a thank you for the Tom Cochrane and Red Rider concert passes that he got us in the summer.

Have you started shopping for the holidays yet? I’ll bet that some of you started today consider that it’s Black Friday! Did you put yourself on a budget this year? Cut down on the number of gifts that you’re going to buy?

I always find Christmas the most expensive time of the year. I’m still trying to figure out how we are going to manage to buy all the gifts we need to purchase this year on almost no money.

Filed Under: Family, Gifts, Items to Try, Money, Shopping Tagged With: brother, budget, christmas, christmas_shopping, DVDs, Family, get_together, Gifts, gift_certificates, holidays, Money, Movies, nephews, nieces, Party, Shopping, sister, teens

Gift ideas for teens?

November 24, 2008 by Tricia

After I wrote that post about wanting to get started on my Christmas shopping early this year, Chris and I had a little talk about what we’re going to do for Christmas this year – present wise, I mean.

Over the last few years our families on both sides have pretty much agreed not to exchange presents between the adults. Why? Well, everyone has children (except us) and we’re all established in our homes. We don’t really need presents. Oh they’re nice, but when you already have most everything you need or want you don’t really need to get Christmas presents.

So for the last few years we’ve all just been getting presents, for the most part, for the kids in the family. That’s still a lot of gifts to get! Between Chris and I we have 17 nephews and nieces, plus two on my side have kids of their own so add three more to the list (oh and add our two god-children as well!) If we were also buying for each of the adults individually we could add another 20 gifts to the Christmas list that we’d need to buy! So I guess we cut it in half … but it’s still a lot of gifts to buy.

Most of our nephews and nieces are in their teens and I find teens the hardest to buy for each year. Most of them don’t really need anything in particular. I mean they all have iPods, game players, closets full of clothes … so what do you get for a teen that already has everything?

As I said earlier I’m keeping my open for anything that’s on sale that might make a good gift. I think for at least half of the kids I’m leaning towards getting newly released DVD’s, music CD’s, and perhaps some popular games. I just need to find out what they already have (what games and game players, dvds and music) and what others are planning on getting them so they don’t end up getting two or more of something.

I spent some time this evening looking at the DVD section at Buy.com. There are a lot of great movies that have just been released on DVD and there’s a section there where you can pre-order DVDs that will soon be released like The Dark Knight , Mama Mia, Indiana Jones the Kingdom Crystal Skull, Step Brothers and many other movies. I figure that if I order some movies that are only being released at the end of November or in early December there’ll be little chance that the kids I get them for will already have these movies.

Of course, for some of the kids I might just buy them gift certificates. I’m fairly sure some of the teenage girls might like a gift certificate for one of their favorite clothing stores.

So do you have teens on your shopping list? If so, what kinds of things are you thinking of getting them?

Filed Under: Entertainment, Family, Gifts, Items to Try, Movies, Music, Shopping, Television, Video Tagged With: Buy.com, buying, christmas, Christmas_gifts, deal, DVD, dvd_section, Games, game_console, game_players, Gifts, gifts_for_teens, gift_certificate, gift_ideas, ideas, kids, Movies, Music, Nephew, Niece, Shopping

Shopping for the holidays and sticking to a budget

November 24, 2008 by Tricia

Does it seem like time is flying by faster than normal or is it just me? This month has gone by so quickly I can hardly believe that we’re near the end of November already. Before we know it Christmas will be here!

I often procrastinate when it comes to doing my Christmas shopping. This year I’m determined to get it all done before the 24th! I hope I can do it! I mean, I have a history of doing ALL of my Christmas shopping on the 24th! LOL So to get it done well before that date it’s going to be a challenge.

Another challenge this year will be finding quality gifts, yet spending as little as possible. No, I’m not cheap. I generally give nice gifts, however, this year we have virtually no spare cash.

We don’t have Black Friday here in Canada, so I can’t count on a major sales day before Christmas to help me keep my gift budget low, so my plan is to keep a close eye on Online stores and watch for items I’m interested in to go on sale.

Online stores like Buy.com often offer Free Shipping on select items or items in certain categories, so if I do end up doing some of my shopping online I’ll be watching out for free shipping deals as that will also save quite a bit of money.

I’ve also bookmarked buy.com’s Holiday Superstore and I’ve been checking it every couple of days to see if they have any deals on items that I might want to give to friends or relatives as gifts. A lot of the items in that section are not only on sale for great prices, but they also come with free shipping as well! Now that’s a deal.

Have you already started shopping for the holidays? Are you watching your gift budget carefully this year?

Filed Under: Coupons and deals, Family, Finance, Gifts, Home and Lifestyle, Items to Try, Shopping Tagged With: bargain, budget, Buy.com, christmas, Christmas_gifts, deals, free_shipping, Gifts, gift_ideas, holidays, holiday_superstore, no_extra_money, sale, Shopping, Weekly_deals

Waiting for news

November 21, 2008 by Tricia

Chris and I are just sitting here are home for news about our friends surgery. We haven’t heard from our friends husband or Chris’ brother in law who came into town earlier today to be with him.

We did call the hospital a little while ago and we found out that our friend who had open heart surgery today is in recovery. So hopefully that mean the surgery was a success!

Chris and I will be the main people visiting the hospital over the next week, so we’ve decided to stay home this evening to wait for news. Her husband is with Chris’ brother in law and another friend, and of course our friend that had the surgery … well we probably wouldn’t be able to get in to see her tonight anyway … so baring any emergency calls we’ll sit tight for tonight.

I hate waiting for news though. I wish someone would call us to let us know how the operation went.

Update: We just heard from our friends husband and it sounds like the surgery went as planned. No complications. He got to see her in the ICU for a few minutes and he’s feeling better now too.

Filed Under: Family, Health Fitness and Beauty, Toronto Tagged With: brother_in_law, friend, friends, heart, Hospital, news, recovery, stay_home, surgery, waiting

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16
  • …
  • 41
  • Next Page »

Connect with Us

  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • Instagram
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Categories

Sites of Interest

Useful Links

Eavestrough Cleaning Toronto

Shopping

Gifts, Gadgets,
Books and More!

Recent Posts

  • Is your home well insulated or do you have energy leaks?
  • Pet Safety Tips
  • Top 10 Most Fundamental Yoga Poses For Beginners
  • Will My Interior Décor Stand The Test Of Time?
  • Outdoor Furniture- Spicing Up Your Backyard
  • Ensuring You Have A Good Experience Staying At Hotels With Children
  • Mother’s Day Cookies

Recent Comments

  • Bill on Top 10 Most Fundamental Yoga Poses For Beginners
  • [bonus]old school new body-f4x workout on Why does my husband always bring home the wrong stuff?
  • Rodhe Stevens on 5 Little Known Secrets To Finding Cheap (But Durable) Furniture
  • Julia Carlson on How To Install A Mosaic Tile Kitchen Backsplash
  • Humane Raccoon Deterrent Idea on Helped save a baby raccoon last night

Subscribe


Subscribe to our RSS Feed It's FREE!

Subscribe to Tricia's Musings by Email It's FREE!


Follow me on TWITTER

Find us on Google +



Find us on Facebook



I have two mottos-
1. Live life to the fullest; and
2. Don't have any regrets.

Get More Traffic

Visitors since 2006

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Search this site

Tags

blog blogs camera Canada Chris computer crohns dinner dog Family flower flowers Food friends funny garden Gardening Green Thumb Sunday Health and Fitness Health Fitness and Beauty holiday home Home and Lifestyle house husband IBD Inflammatory bowel disease Internet Music neighbors pain photo photos plants puppy Shopping sick sleep spring Toronto TV Video visit website Wordless Wednesday

Blogs I Visit

  • The Domestiquette
  • Shopping Maniac
  • BlogTO
  • Casual Slack
  • Sans Pantaloons

Copyright © 2026 · Lifestyle Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in