hqueen's collection of Far From the Usual stuff.

[hqueen13]

That seems to be the way of it, FEM, I'm just hoping that isn't the case for a whole lot longer! I'm ready to be able to do more while working less!!
The BF and I didn't get much done last night, but I did make a grocery stop, so we at least ate an ok dinner at home. And then we did a little cleaning and a little decorating. We moved the antique safe from next to the basement door across the room next to the couch instead. It will let us get rid of a side table/night stand thing that was next to the couch, and I think it looks a lot better there than it did sitting over where it was. The night stand thing will go to the BF's brother, so that gets it out of my house! I'm thinking I might get one of those boot tray things to sit next to the door since we often come in the door with dirty shoes down there.
I also pitched my idea to turn the old antique cook stove into a bar/liquor cabinet thing again to the BF. Nobody is buying it for the $1200 that I have it listed for. It's worth it, it's in great shape as it is, and it's a beautiful stove. So I told him how I would put wine glass holders under the little bread warmers, liquor on top, and put plexiglass over the burners, maybe even take some of the eyes out and put some sort of lighting underneath or something. Take out the fire box stuff, and then put in drawers, or wine bottle holders, and put more wine bottle holders into the oven space, then take the side boiler and turn it into a bottle holder or something cute. That would need some work because it's a bit rusty the way it is right now. I think it would be cute and worth SO much more than it is the way it is currently. I would think we could get a couple grand out of it that way, where nobody will make me an offer on it right now. Heck, I'd be tempted to keep it if we remade it that way!
We'll see what happens, I'd need his help to actually do it, so he's got to get on board if it's going to happen...

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Stove conversion to a bar sounds cool! Pics - we will definitely need pics!

 

[hqueen13]

LOL, yes, I will take pics when/if I do it!!! I hope I can make it happen, but we'll see how it goes. I have to get the BF's buy in on it because it's going to require some heavy work to make it happen.

Yesterday I got the fake tree up in the office, and it's cute. It took the BF forever to notice it, which was really cute. I'm glad we have a place to put the presents under the tree because that's part of the whole thing for me. Last year they sat in the corner of the office on the floor. Now I just have to figure out what the rest of the presents are that I need to buy.

Not much else is happening. I'm in the office too much, we are about to start another big project, and I have way too many things to do at home right now, too. Fun times!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Congrats on getting a tree up! I'm such a scrooge. Seems like a lot to do when there aren't any kiddos around. My luck my DD will give me 12 hours notice and show up with all the kids. I'll be scrambling then, lol!

 

[hqueen13]

LOL FEM that's too funny!! I love decorating, so I don't mind doing it for us. We do live on a street that gets some traffic, so I enjoy being able to put lights out. The girls that grew up in the house loved the lights last year, since they still live on the street, they see everything we do. I just enjoy having them. It is quite a bit of work, but I like the festivness of it and it makes me happy in the gray winters that we have here.

We had a busy weekend, but a really good one.
Friday we both got home at a decent time, so I was able to finish getting the ornaments up on the tree, and then get all the extra boxes and things put away, which made me feel so much better. The guest room is almost back to normal! I just have to vacuum up a bunch of mess from the ornaments and the new garland that we got.
Saturday morning I didn't have to be an any barns, so we were able to sleep in and made a nice breakfast for ourselves, which we don't get to do all that often. We needed to go to the dump and it was supposed to rain more later, so we got ourselves going and loaded up the truck. We had to take a grader blade back to my friend that we borrowed it from, so we put that in there as well. That didn't take terribly long, and we came home and made some lunch. We went to the grocery store and BJ's after lunch to get stocked up for a while. Came home and made dinner and then took care of a few more chores before crashing into bed.
Sunday morning the BF was kind enough to come with me to the barn so we were able to get finished by 9:30. We came home and were about to get started on some chores when the BF looked out the window and saw our neighbor's dog in our other neighbor's back yard. Of course he was in the not-so-nice neighbor's back yard. This is also the Great Pyrenees that guards his livestock... which made me concerned that there could have been livestock out along with the dog. So I grabbed my old dog leash and headed down into the woods. When the dog turned and headed back towards his own property, and I hadn't heard back from the owners of the dog, I headed into our woods to go check their property. The BF came with me and we had a nice walk in our woods since he had never been into the woods that far yet. We got to our neighbor's fence and the dog was back in the paddock with all the animals. By this time the husband called me, and we went back and forth about whether or not I actually saw the dog, and then he questioned himself if he had put away the other dog that morning, and so I told him I would just check the fences to make sure that everything was secure. A few minutes later he called me back to say that one of the other neighbor's had seen the dog in the front yard and put him back into the paddock. So at least I wasn't crazy that I had seen a large floofy white dog running around in the woods. I turned around and walked the fence in the other direction and found the hold the dog had dug under the gate. The BF and I shoved a large rock into the hole and hopefully that will hold him. The neighbors were super grateful for our help. I don't know, I just can't leave an animal to run around, especially one that I know is supposed to be responsible for keeping predators away from other animals! We headed back through the woods into the house and ate some late breakfast since we hadn't eaten much before leaving for barn chores. Then we headed outside to put up the christmas lights, which I had been jonsing to do for at least a week. We got started, but then found that half of the strings were out, which was NOT cool. We tried checking them, but couldn't figure out what was wrong, so finally I told the BF we should set up everything else and then come back out when it was darker and see what we could do. The sun was too bright to see the lights easily to know which ones weren't working and which ones were. Back into the house we went and eat some real lunch, and then we started getting the wood stove and stove pipe cleaned out. We checked over everything really thoroughly and got it all cleaned up and ready to roll again for the season. I think it's finally going to be cold enough long enough to make it worth fussing with. The BF does need to get the log splitter home so we can finish splitting the other wood that we were given, hopefully he can do that this weekend. We finished that and it was just dark enough to go out and start messing with the lights again. I showed the BF the trick I had used last year since some of the lights weren't completely working last year... I started stringing them on the evergreen bushes that we have, and when I got to a section that was out, I simply stuffed all the dead bulbs into the bush, and kept on stringing the lights. It took 7 strings of lights for 3 bushes, but they look great, and you'd never know there are dead bulbs stuffed into the shrubs. I told him it felt like cheating. The house looks super cute, though, and I'm happy with it. I love having the lights up, they make everything look so much more cheerful in the dreary gray of winter here. We came inside, and fixed dinner, and then got our showers and crashed into bed. It was a super productive weekend, and other than the groceries, and the $7.00 for the dump, we didn't spend any money this weekend at all!
Now I just have to get the rest of the christmas presents ordered and I'll be good to go....

 

[frustratedearthmother]

I'll bet your house looks really cute. We live on a dead-end road so barely any traffic here. We generally go out at least once before Christmas and tour the neighborhoods that are well-known for decorating.

Congrats on being frugal for the weekend (she says after a $500+ trip to town this morning).

 

[hqueen13]

I like to go driving around looking at lights, too, FEM. The old neighborhood I used to live in wasn't very nice, it was a lower end neighborhood, but it was known for lots of lights. Christmas and Halloween were the best times of year there.
LOL I hear ya on big trips to town. We spent almost $200 on groceries shopping this weekend... which is pretty much my entire grocery budget for the next 2 weeks! Now I have to figure out what to do to make sure that we aren't spending any more... Tomorrow I've got to go to the store to pick up supplies for all the home made treats that I do for the holiday to give to friends.... I know I will blow the grocery budget doing that, but hopefully not by much. I don't think I'll need a lot, I just need to pull out my recipes for the treats that I make and see what I have already and what I'll need to buy.
I'm kind of irritated at my boss. He really needs to make a trip down to the new office to support them and celebrate for the holidays, but he had a pretty tough trip to see his wife's family in NY this past weekend, so he decided not to go. Today was the best day to go, but now he's decided he's going to go on Monday, and I'll go with him because I think it's important that I am there, too. I'm afraid Monday is going to be BAD for traffic since it's the start of the holiday week. I just hope I'm wrong and it's not. Either way it will be more money for me because the meter will be running the whole time I'm with him. It'll just mean a bigger check, which is a good thing right now because there's things I need to buy for gifts (just did a bunch of that today...) and things I need to catch up on buying... So I could use another really fat check!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

I need to figure out what I'm gong to bake and give this year too. List has definitely shrank since I'm not at work! But, I think I'll do a cream cheese pound cake for the neighbors.

Hope your trip to the other office with your boss works out to be lots of extra hours for you!

 

[hqueen13]

Oh dang, that sounds so yummy, FEM!!!
I got a lot done yesterday, which was a good thing! I managed to get the Christmas cards finished and mailed, ran to the grocery store, washed the sheets, remade the bed, stopped while I was out for one more present for Eddie, and then wrapped the presents I have for him when I got home. I did a FB Live for my biz, and then managed to get half of the edging stitch done on the blanket I'm making for a present. The BF got home and we loaded up the firewood holder in the house again, and got the stove running hot, and cleaned up some things before I started making cheesesteaks for dinner. The BF's brother and wife were coming over, and then the guys were going to the wood shop to work on the table for the brother, and his wife and I stayed at home, and I got 1 batch of horse cookies made. So I accomplished a lot, but still have a LOT more baking to do. I Just found some amazing sounding gluten free recipes that I think I'm going to use for cookies for the couple of friends/clients who are gluten free, so I'll have to stop at the store again to pick up those ingredients (because you know it can't be normal cause it's gluten free ). I think I can squeeze that in on Friday, though.
Cowboy and Coyote's owner left us a "little something" since they headed out of town again, that 'little something' turned out to be a $200 check. I feel really blessed. Then I got into the office and was checking my accounts and updating my budget (my morning office routine LOL), and found that work had deposited $250 in my account, which must be our christmas gift. I'm very grateful since we normally get a $100 visa gift card. Of course I used up almost all of it getting my budget current from the christmas spending I've done a bit too much of. I'm glad to have it, though, because it really helps.
I'll be stuck in the office today longer than normal since we have our holiday mini party today, which is going to be a meal, but it won't start until like 2:30 or something like that. I'll have to be here longer than I would normally but it's extra hours so I'm alright with that I guess.
So the usual holiday hustle happening. Hopefully I can continue to get a lot of baking done so I can be ahead this weekend and don't have to rush to get it all done. We'll see how that goes... Goal tonight is to get a batch of cat treats made, and maybe a batch of dog treats, but we'll see how that goes. I need to do at least 1 more batch of horse treats, too, and then figure out which gluten free recipe I'm going to use and what ingredients I need for that.

 

[flowerbug]

we made some truffles last night. Mom made molasses cookies yesterday. i didn't have too many cookies but hard for me to resist cookie dough and molasses cookie dough is way up at the top of the list. i only had a bit of that, you know, to taste test...

for breakfast i had one of the truffles, i won't have any more as they're all being given away. i'll have to make some more because we have a few other friends who like chocolate as much as we do... i like making chocolates and treats too.