A Little Of This and A Little of That

My son, DIL, and grandson returned last Thursday from a 3 week vacation in France. They even took the train to Switzerland on their anniversary to eat at a steak house. They came yesterday to visit so I made French toast, eggs, and sausage for breakfast. I did not want to waste time going out to breakfast. We just wanted to hear all about their trip and see all the pictures. And get plenty of hugs! What a beautiful country France is. While they were there they spent a couple of days seeing the 2 Disney parks in Paris. They have now been to every park that Disney has worldwide. So that was the highlight of our day yesterday.

My son did alot of things for us while he was here. It had been 4 weeks since they had come. The wind blew one of our outside cameras off kilter and it needed a battery. He fixed that. The painters had taken down all of our beautiful things from the top’s of the cupboards in the kitchen when they painted the ceilings. He put all of those back up in the exact spots where they had been. Hubby had taken pictures before the painters took them down. Lastly, he put brighter lights in our dining room light over the table. We have never had this much light. I am loving it. I am grateful for everything he and my grandson do for us. Hubby and I do not want to climb ladders at our “young age”.

Our friend who is our neighbor brought over 4 of the largest muffins I have ever seen that she baked. They were blueberry and the large berries reminded me of the Maine blueberries that we used to grow in our yard when we lived in the eastern part of our state. I have to get this recipe from her. They were so delicious.

Let’s now talk about our electric and gas bill that came last week. We have been trying our hardest to keep the bill down. The bill was for 33 days and was $213.97. We used 696 kwh’s and 4 ccf’s of natural gas for cooking and heating water.

Last year’s bill(same period) was also for 33 days. It was $ 214.22. We used 774 kwh’s and 3 ccf’s of natural gas.

So we used 78 less kwh of electricity and 1 more ccf of gas this year. However the bill was only $ .25 less than last year’s. The bill probably would have been more if the oil prices hadn’t gone down. I expect that with oil back up that the next few bills will be outrageous.

So we are trying hard to think about what we are doing when we use kwh’s or ccf’s. We have an oversupply of paper plates that we purchased prior to 2021 when they were cheap. So we use them sometimes. That lets us only run the dishwasher once a week. If we have company, then I have to run it more. Recently, I purchased 8 place settings of silverware. Our old ones were pitted and very old! I quickly realized that I needed 8 more place settings so that I don’t have to run that dishwasher often especially when we have other people here. They are being delivered today. I got them on a great sale and with $7.00 off coupons. We love the ones we picked out.

Our new freezer is supposed to only use $47. of electricity a year. Time will tell. Since it is an upright, when you open it the cold air falls out. So since we only stock beef and butter in it, we don’t open it as often as the chest freezer. We only eat beef about once a week and I have no problem keeping 3 weeks worth of beef at a time in our upstairs freezer on our refrigerator.

I only do 2 loads of laundry a week most of the time. If I am doing spring or fall cleaning then I do more. We hang as much as we can indoors which cuts down on the dryer use.

Most lights are kept off in the daytime unless it is dark out. I do follow the sun around the house pulling the shades and putting down the blinds to keep the heat out of our home.

Since it is not as humid as it had been, we have turned off our dehumidifier in our basement. If the humidity comes back then we will turn it back on.

We are having Chinese food that we purchased yesterday from our local take out place. They give you so much food that we have enough for tonight. So 2 meals for each of us for about $23.+ tax is not bad.

Tomorrow, I am doing something for the day that I haven’t done in over 26 years and I am so looking forward to it. I will tell you all about it either tomorrow when I get home or the next day if I am worn out from it.

I hope you are all having a great day.