Tricia's Musings

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



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

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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.





We definitely need more lighting in our backyard

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At some point in the afternoon I realized that I hadn’t watered the garden in ages! In fact, I think the last time the plants got any water was when it rained last Monday (remnants of Hurricane Ike)! definitely

So at about 5:30 in the afternoon I went outside and pulled out the hose. I started watering the front yard and by the time I reached the back, Chris came out to join me with Midnight, our Lab puppy. Like most Labs, Midnight loves water and she tries to bite the water coming from the hose. I don’t know if she thinks it’s solid when it’s coming from the hose or what, but it’s hilarious to watch.

Needless to say we soon had a soaking wet dog!

So once I was done watering we decided to stay outside and sit on the patio having a drink or two while Midnight hopefully dried off. Of course it got darker and darker the longer we sat outside and Midnight being a black lab … well, after a while, we could barely see her when she was at the far end of the garden.

That got me thinking – we need more lighting in the backyard. We have solar lights, but they don’t really light up the backyard all that much, although they do help. We also have a very bright flood light that lights up the whole backyard, which I mainly use when I’m doing some extreme gardening after dark … but that’s too bright if you’re just trying to relax while having a drink on the patio in the garden.

So I visited Buy.com when I came inside and searched for outdoor lighting. I found a few lights that I liked, but I think the one I liked the most was this Outdoor pendant lantern in Misty pewter. I think that if we added a couple of hanging lanterns near the back of the yard they would look attractive and help us see Midnight in the dark!

The lantern is a decent price already, but since our money’s kind of tight right now I think I’ll keep an eye on Buy.com’s Weekly Deals page to see if it goes on sale in the near future. I do visit this page once or twice a month as they sometimes have great deals on things we need. Now that I’m actually looking for something in particular I hope it goes on sale soon!

A gas or electric fireplace would be nice in our home

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I was speaking with my sister-in-law last night about their upcoming move to a new house and the discussion gradually lead to my sister-in-law asking how our renovations were going. Of course this caused me to laugh, as our renovations have been stalled for a few years now.

You cannot believe how tired I am of looking at our unfinished living room/ dining room ceiling! It just needs a day or two’s more more and it will be finished! Hopefully we can get that done before the year is over.

Once the main floor reno is done I’ve decided that the basement will be our next project. Our house isn’t very big and all we are using the basement for right now is storage and as a laundry room, so it would be nice to make all that extra space usable.

I think I’ve mentioned what I want to do in the basement a few times now. It’s going to have a small spare bedroom, a storage room, laundry room, nice bathroom and the remaining area will be a rec room / TV room. Well, I think that’s the plan.

I’ve been thinking that it would be nice to put in an electric or gas fireplace when we renovate the basement. My brother renovated his basement a couple of years ago and he added a gas fireplace and it just makes the room. Plus basements tend to be cooler than the rest of the house, so having a fireplace down there would help us keep the room at a comfortable temperature.

Now as you know, I’m in Canada, but I happened to find what appears to be a great online store in the UK that specializes in both electric and Gas Fires. I know that I have several regular readers from the UK, so I thought this store might interest you if you’ve been thinking of renovating your home or perhaps replacing an existing fireplace.

The company is called HotPrice.co.Uk and they stock all of the leading brands of fireplace manufactures. Plus, as I said they seem to have a huge selection!

I haven’t given much thought yet whether we’d install a gas or Electric fireplace. Certainly we won’t be installing a full fireplace. Our house is just too old and that would be a huge renovation in addition to what we’d already be doing to our basement.

I think I’m partial to the inset gas or Electric Fires. They don’t take up much space and are as attractive as the outset fireplaces.

If you’re interested in getting a fireplace for your home take a moment to visit HotPrice.co.Uk. You can get Gas Fires in wall mounted, inset and outset styles in a range of traditional to contemporary designs. Their electric Fires come in both inset and wall mounted styles.

As I briefly mentioned earlier, if you are interested in a full fireplace, you’ll find a large selection of full fireplaces at HotPrice.co.Uk. They have designs made of limestone and wood, and you can even find full fireplaces that appear to be made of stone. They’re just gorgeous.

If I had a large home I’d want a full fireplace however since our space is already compromised we’ll likely go with one of the inset or perhaps a wall mounted electric or gas fireplace.

Do you already have a fireplace in your home? If you do, is it full, gas or electric? Do you enjoy having a fireplace in your home?

The dog’s under the table

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Wordless Wednesday

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I love this picture of Midnight. She was lying under our teak table in the backyard when i snapped the shot. I love how the legs of the teak table frame her face.

I really like our Teak table. It’s made with recovered teak wood – as in teak tree stumps and or old fallen branches. These pictures aren’t great, but you can get an idea of what the whole table looks like:

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Click on the pictures to see a larger image.

I won a prize!

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Guess what? I won a fantastic prize!

Big Jason from the Big Marketing Online Blog started what he called “The largest blog contest ever” sometime in mid-July. I entered the contest at the end of the month by doing several of the requested tasks in order to build up my entries and earlier this week Jason informed me that I was a prize winner.

Not only did he write to tell me that I’d won a prize, but a few days later he wrote to me again to list my top five choices. So I kind of picked out my own prize from the huge assortment of goodies he was giving away.

I decided that I wanted StoreStacker. It’s a program that allows you to build multiple affiliate stores. What does that mean? Well … you can set up an online store in minutes that will sell products from Amazon, Ebay, Overstock and several other large companies. You can set up a store (or stores!) that sell a wide range of products, or if you have a niche site, like say my gardening blog, you can set up a store that sells products that cater to your sites niche.

I downloaded my prize and all of it’s components yesterday, but I haven’t had a chance to install it or set up a store yet. I’m dying to try it!

I’ve just been too busy. Chris is on holidays and that’s kind of taken me out of my routine, plus our dogs been so hyper lately! It’s crazy here. With Midnight jumping around on the furniture and up at us I just can’t get anything done. Even worse, she managed to make a little rip in our leather couch yesterday! Grrr. Well … maybe with the new stores that I’ll be setting up I’ll make enough affiliate income that I’ll be able to got to a home furniture and pick out a new couch? Nah .. the rips only tiny .. I’ll spend my earnings on other goodies or better yet pay the bills!

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