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We are all set up in our trailer now, and it's been an easy adjustment to life in a small space.  It's so much easier to keep clean and organized, and I really love it! 

One thing I don't have right now is a dishwasher.  I hated the one I had in the house anyway, since pieces of the rack were always breaking off and leaving rusty tips that messed up some of our dishes and containers, but it is definitely strange for me to deal with the dishes without a dishwasher!  I actually have to scrub the pots and plates after all our meals, dry them by hand, and put them away.  So far, it's not bad.

However, I'm sure my next house will have a dishwasher, and I want it to be a good one.  At least I can get a head start by looking into dishwasher reviews now.   It's really important to me to get one that is rated well for saving energy and also nice and sturdy.  I abuse my appliances, I really do.  The dishwasher reviews I've read so far lead me to believe that Whirlpool is the best.  My mom always said that -- she got a dishwasher when she was pregnant with me and it survived well into my twenties, so I think she has a point there.

The dishwasher in my house was pretty basic, both in looks and performance.  It didn't do anything to improve the look of my kitchen, so while I'm looking at dishwasher reviews, I'm also happy to see that newer dishwashers are much prettier.  They all seem to have smooth, streamlined appearances that will enhance a kitchen rather than just taking up space. 

If I can keep Ronin from climbing on the next dishwasher we have, we'll be all set!   

jess @ 10:25 | comments(0) | Permanent link

Our house is cleaned out, and as I type this, our renters are moving in.  In the rush to get all of our furniture out and boxes packed, I almost forgot that I needed to find them a mailbox so that the mail carrier can separate our mail from theirs.

I am really liking the whitehall mailboxes I found online.   Not only are they classy and well-made, but they also have an option for a side-mount double mailbox so that we can have a new box for ourselves as well as our renters.  I stenciled on the last mailbox we had, and while it looked cute for awhile, it's gotten badly damaged by plow trucks.  We could use a new mailbox!

Since we can get personalized mailboxes, I think I will put our names on one, and add the renters' names to the other.  We're all a bunch of unmarried heathens living with our partners, so we'll have to fit a few names on each box, in addition to our house numbers.  I suppose I could break out the stencils again, but professionally-designed custom mailboxes seem like the best idea right now.

I just hope the mail carrier can figure out who's who!  She isn't used to delivering to more than one family at our address.  

jess @ 10:12 | comments(0) | Permanent link

We try to avoid plastic and use wood and other materials as much as possible in our lives.  This means staying away from plastic toys for the kids, and avoiding plastic in other products as well.

I've found some beautiful wooden wall niches and other accessories online, and since storage is something we always need, I am really interested in buying some.  We desperately need a good way to store our books, and I would rather buy a wood bookcase than one of those pressed board ones they sell at Walmart.  Since this site sells magazine racks as well, I thought it might be nice to get one of those to go along with my bookcase.  The one we have right now is cheap and falling apart. 

I love that this company's prices are so reasonable.  It seems like wood is always vastly more expensive than other materials, and it's nice to be able to afford things that are well-made and built to last.  If you're starting to think that wood is good, check out those links and see for yourself!

jess @ 09:12 | comments(0) | Permanent link

Mike does quite a bit of side work using our garage, and so he likes to have it set up nicely.  We have an automotive lift, two parts washers, a transmission bench, a steam cleaning machine, various air compressors and a ton of other tools, and one of his first projects in the garage involved building a separate room in which he could work on transmission rebuilds.  He really has a great set up, but he has two more projects before he says the garage will be done:  insulating the ceiling with spray foam, and putting down an epoxy floor system. 

The reasons for insulating the ceiling are obvious; it's necessary to keep the heat in, in the winter and the air in, in the summer.  But I know he's gotten a lot of questions about why he would want to spend money on the garage flooring.  The first reason is that it's very hard to keep clean when all you have down is cement.  Garage floor mats are good, but they can only do so much, so he feels like it's important to cover the entire floor with something that can be cleaned.  His second reason is purely aesthetic -- the floor looks nicer when it's all sealed and shiny with epoxy. 

Right now, we don't have money to spare on the garage, and we need to remodel the porch and add on a third bedroom, so I'm not sure poor Mike will ever have his beautiful garage floor.  He'll just have to keep dreaming (and throwing down that kitty litter stuff that soaks up oil) for now! 

jess @ 08:52 | comments(0) | Permanent link

Our little patch of garden is finally ready for planting.  Mike finished running the tractor over it last night, using the discs to break up the big chunks of soil and making it nice and smooth so that I can plant it.  The only things we need now are seeds! 

Last year, we bought them online through a garden catalog that came to our house, but this year, I would like to look elsewhere.  I just went on to this shopping site, ShopWiki which is like a shopping search engine -- it shows all the stores on the web in a particular category.   Very cool, and very easy, so even my lazy self likes it!

I did a quick look for vegetable seeds and was even able to narrow down so that I was looking at organic seeds only.   Apparently,  seed shopping is as dangerous as grocery shopping when done on an empty stomach.  Looking over things like artichoke seeds and other organic veggie seeds made my stomach growl!  Take a look at these:

You know you want some!!!

jess @ 11:01 | comments(0) | Permanent link

One of the things I never get to do in my house is decorate the walls with art.  We have mostly plaster and cement walls, and it can be difficult to hang things.  Mike always resists the idea of putting up anything new.

Fortunately, we have a few nails already in the walls from pictures that were hung before we bought our house, and every once in awhile, I find something new to hang on them.  This time, I've been looking at Len Grossman's Silhouette Art.  I love the whole concept of the way he works.  His silhouettes are created using only paper and scissors -- he doesn't do any preliminary drawings. 

Another really cool thing about Mr. Grossman's art is that he is willing to come to parties and entertain your guests by doing their silhouettes.  Isn't that neat?  I remember my parents going to a party that had a caricature artist once, and they thought it was fun, but I bet a silhouette picture is something people would be more apt to take home and hang on their walls.   

Too bad we don't live in Ohio . . . maybe someday we'll get an artist like him around here!

jess @ 20:52 | comments(3) | Permanent link

In spite of our plans to move from this never-renting house, we did manage to score a set of bunk beds for the kids from Freecycle last weekend, and now I am really excited to decorate their room.  It hasn't been done since my daughter was a baby, so she is dealing with a pretty baby-ish border on the walls and lots of other things that are beneath her now.  I'd like to do something that would make the room feel more like home to her, and to her two year old brother who is sharing with her now. 

I hadn't thought about them before, but I found a fun selection of wall decals on ThisNext.   I think my son would get a kick out of the wallpaper menagerie, especially if there are any elephants involved, and my daughter would probably like the set of pastel dots at the very top of the page I linked above.  She may even go for the menagerie herself. 

For all the painting I like to do, I like the idea of sticking cute images up on my walls even better.  Who says wall decor is limited to paint or hard-to-hang sheets of wall paper?  Not I!   Between fun/cute/fancy wall stickers and equally adorable tile decals, I feel like I've been missing out all my life.   I don't even feel guilty about buying a few of these since they're not that expensive and  they will make such a difference in the less-interesting rooms in my home.  What a discovery!!

jess @ 11:24 | comments(1) | Permanent link

It looks like we might finally have the opportunity to move! We have had our house up for rent since September, and in the past few weeks, we have finally had some interest in it. Several families have come to see it, and I'm hopeful that we will be able to get out of here in the next couple months as long as this level of interest keeps up.

In the interest of putting the cart before the horse, as I always do, I've started looking into moving services. I was able to find one local company that had several positive reviews -- Reliance Relocation. I'm a bit amused at the euphamisms; in searching for movers, I've discovered that as a society, we no longer move, but we do a lot of relocating. At least, that's how moving companies are billing themselves these days. It seems like a George Carlin skit waiting to happen!

Anyhow, I found quite a few reviews like this one,  and another that I discovered here, and I am pretty sure we will go with Reliance Relocation when the time comes. We have been packing up a lot of our things, cleaning out all the old junk we had collected, and getting ready to make a fast exit as soon as we have the house rented out. Hopefully we will be able to take advantage of the summer moving deals I found.

jess @ 09:03 | comments(0) | Permanent link