Tag: a little of this and a little of that

Categories
Every Day

A Little of This and a Little of That

It has been a rough week. My back has been bothering me but is a little better today. There is really nothing they can do for it but surgery. I refuse to do that so I will manage it with OTC pain killers and exercises from my chiropractor.

Hubby tore his meniscus in his left knee. It has been bothering him for a while but he finally was able to get in to see the orthopedist who made this diagnosis. They gave him a cortisone shot. It seemed to work the first day but he says he is in pain now. Next step is an injection of gel. Final step is a knee replacement. So I have been busy most of the week taking care of him. We also had doctor appointments yesterday and Hubby has 2 next week and I have some tests one day also. Needless to say I have been really busy and exhausted each and every day.

Fortunately, I have wonderful neighbors who have been bringing our garbage cans up from the road after they have been emptied. Then all I have to do is open the garage door and put them away. I was grateful last week because we had a lot of snow and this week because it was 22 degrees and extremely windy. So I will be baking homemade banana bread for them and their families soon. They think I don’t know who is doing it but my outdoor cameras are showing me who it is.

However, we did not get take out for meals. I was tempted but resisted the urge. I made all of our meals all week. We had pork chops one day with Spanish rice, soup twice, and red beans and rice with smoked sausage. Leftovers were eaten for breakfast along with bacon and eggs and chicken salad. Today we should finish the chicken for brunch.

The grocery deals were not that good this week so I didn’t miss those. I may get to Aldi and Dollar Tree this morning very early. I haven’t looked at the Top’s ad for next week yet but unless they have really great deals, I will not shop. It will be too crowded.

We have been craving filet mignon, baked potatoes, and a salad so I will defrost the meat today.

We were supposed to have Christmas here tomorrow with some family but one of them is sick and they don’t want us to get sick. So it has been changed to Sunday but most likely that will end up getting cancelled. We were looking forward to it but things happen. At least I have all the stockings filled but they can wait until some future time.

Since I was sitting a lot because Hubby wanted me to watch some taped shows with him, I wrote 23 Christmas cards out and got them mailed. I have one friend who is almost blind so I will call and chat with her soon.

I am so happy that Christmas money envelopes and all 5 stockings are done. I would not want to be running around now gathering those things.

We are not putting up our tree this year because of Eloise. She would either knock it over or become an ornament in it.

We continue to work on our budget for 2025. We were bitterly disappointed when our pest control company sent us notice of an increase in our quarterly cost. I just paid $202.+ for the past three months. Now it will be $234.+ a quarter or $936.+ a year. That is a yearly increase of $ 128. per year. I was not happy that every year they raise it but this is the largest increase. I hate spiders, all bugs and bees and wasps. So we are researching what we can do. We also have traps that they put food in each quarter to get rid of the voles that ruin our lawn. If anyone treats these things at the their home themselves, I would love to hear about in the comments and any products you use. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I hope you are all getting your Christmas food at the stores and your gifts done.

Categories
Every Day

Weekend Doings

I woke up with a flare up of my sciatica going down the back of my left leg on Saturday. I tell you this not for sympathy but to let you know that growing old is a REAL pain. So I need to get a lot done but I won’t get as much as I want to. I have spent part of my morning putting ice on my leg. I am supposed to do it three times a day. It did help for a while.

I pulled 2 pork rib eye steaks out of the freezer to thaw. Hubby grilled them indoors because it was raining here. We had cinnamon apples for the side.

Breakfast on Saturday morning was grilled cheese sandwiches and coffee. Then it was time to fill my pill containers. It is a job I hate to do, so I fill 4 weeks at once. Then I don’t have to do it every week.

All the laundry was done the other day. I think we will use coated paper plates so there will be hardly any dishes to rinse and put in the dishwasher.

I just finished entering two weeks worth of receipts into Fetch.

I scanned the weekly ad for Top’s that starts on Sunday. I will be using a $ 5.00/ $35.00 order Top’s coupon, $ 2.00 off fresh produce coupon, and a coupon for 100 extra gasoline points this week. I will keep my order as close to $35. as I can.

Hubby and I watched some of the college football games.

Sunday was another easy day. My son and West came to visit. We took them out to our favorite Greek restaurant for breakfast to celebrate my son’s birthday that was last Wednesday. I was happy not to have to stand to cook breakfast. Hubby made a homemade pizza for dinner. It was delicious.

I spent some time making a list of what I have to get done for Thanksgiving. I have a lot on my plate.

We again watched some pro football. But not the Bills because they have a week off.

I went to bed really early to rest my leg and so I could get up with Eloise. She slept late for a change.

It is Monday and I have a very busy day. I will be back tomorrow.

Categories
Every Day

Saving Money The Past Few Days

I have been deleting and unsubscribing to e-mails that are trying to sell me something. If I don’t know about a deal, I am less tempted to buy it.

We installed cameras around the outside of our home. Hubby thought he needed something extra to install the doorbell camera. We didn’t so I returned it to get a refund of $ 8.63. It was a refund from Amazon so I didn’t even have to take the item anywhere to return it. No gasoline used. Every little bit helps.

Hubby has been enjoying watching Thursday night football on Amazon Prime. This Thursday night will be his fourth and last game on there. This free trial has been very useful not only for football but for the Amazon Prime days earlier in the month.

We have been eating homemade meals at home. We have had filet mignon and tossed salad, grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, chicken breasts, and corned beef reubens. I found another on sale corned beef that I purchased after last St. Patrick’s Day so I cooked it in the crockpot on Sunday. After we watched the Buffalo Bills game, Hubby made the reubens. We ate them again last night. They were delicious. Hubby will use the rest of the meat to make corned beef hash for breakfast this morning.

Brunches have been bacon or SteakUms and eggs, cranberry orange muffins, French toast and sausage.

I prepped two pounds of strawberries into mason jars that I put in the fridge. I diced up 10 Hass avocados that I got for $1.00 each and got 100 free gasoline points too for buying them. I froze them in portions.

I stocked on canned Fancy Feast Tuscany Chicken for kittens for Eloise. I took advantage of a $20. off coupon and got free shipping at Chewy.

I did two loads of laundry using cold water. I did a load of clothes and a load of new sheet sets for our beds. I bought 2 sets of sheets at Amazon on the Prime Days for a total of $ 20.17 after a great sale and using Amazon points. We now have enough sheets for our beds so that we don’t have to launder them but once a month since we have weekly sets. I hung the clothes to dry and dried the sheets on low in the dryer using the dryer balls.

I am back on the treadmill walking to see if it helps my back.

I scanned my recent receipts into Fetch to use for Walmart gift cards.

We have closed off some rooms in our home to see if it lowers our heating bill. I am not sure it will. We’ll see. This also keeps Eloise from getting into those rooms.

Speaking of electric, we got our monthly natural gas and electric bill 2 days ago. We used 400 KWH of electricity and 15.5 therms of natural gas for 27 days. We have only had the heat on for about a week of that period. The bill was $ 128.78. I figured it would be lower than last year because we have had a warm fall and this had been the latest that I ever turned on the heat.

So I compared it to the same bill period in 2023. We used 393 KWH of electric which was only 7 KWH less than this years. We used 23 therms of natural gas which was 5 and 1/2 therms more than our current bill. The 2023 bill was $ 114.27.

So this years bill was $ 14.51 more for less usage. The bill would have been much higher if we hadn’t saved therms. Moral of the story is you can conserve all you want but the bill just keeps rising month after month. According to our news, we can look forward to more increases over the next 5 months of winter.

Our news last night spoke with one of the utility companies out here yesterday. They gave a forecast for heating months of an 11% increase each and every month for the next 5 months which equates to a natural gas average increase of $ 560 over those 5 months. The average increase for electric they said will be 1%. Time will tell.

We can’t wait to get our smart meter installed so that we can monitor this much easier. However, we are the last area in NY for that to be completed. We won’t get ours until somewhere between July 2025 and December 2025.

But I refuse to be defeated and will do what I have to to lower it this coming month. But it is an uphill battle! Today I will be buying some more snakes to put in front of outside doors to keep any drafts out.

Hubby has been doing the fall cleanup in our yard, trimming bushes, weeding, and mowing the lawn really short. If we had hired the landscapers, it would have cost us about $2500.- $3000. But they are hired for the spring cleanup which is always a huge job.

That’s about it for now. I have two more blog posts ready for this week. So see you tomorrow.

Categories
Every Day

A Little of This and A Little of That

Here’s Eloise. She is growing bigger. She was 5 months old yesterday. It only took me 5 takes to get a picture of her standing still.

The end of the week was busy. My birthday was Friday so on Thursday night we went out to dinner at Wagner’s to celebrate both of our birthdays. Wagner’s is a family owned restaurant with good food. We decided to go on Thursday instead of Friday because Friday nights are busy because they have a fish fry special. It was an enjoyable evening.

On my actual birthday, Hubby knows that I take the day off. We had plenty of leftovers to choose from for dinner. However, you know what happens with the best laid plans. I went to my freezer about noontime to bring up a half gallon of ice cream to go with my birthday pie. The ice cream was like mush even though I had put it in there a day ago. I put it in the freezer on my fridge to try to refreeze it.

But then that left me with the question of whether my freezer was working or not. So I ended up spending 2 hours to empty my freezer into coolers, defrost it, take all the ice and water out, and dry it really well. Everything else in the freezer besides the ice cream was rock solid. Then I took inventory as I reloaded it. It needed to be defrosted anyhow. This is a small glimpse of what is in there. I finally got some Margaritaville Coconut Shrimp on Saturday when I went to get West’s vanilla ice cream. I didn’t have my raincheck but it was still on sale. So I can get those 10 when my freezer is emptier. Except for the chicken patties, that shrimp, the cheddar cheese and yeast, everything else is fish, beef, pork, sausage, turkey, chicken and other meats.

On Amazon Prime Day(I am on a free trial), Hubby ordered 3 cameras that were on sale for outside the house. My son installed them for us yesterday since I did not want Hubby on a ladder. This gives us an other layer of security. Hubby has since ordered a ring doorbell which came today. It was not on sale on Prime Day. So Hubby took some time to research and make sure that the way he wanted to install it, he could. It is already installed.

My son and West were here for breakfast. I made bacon and eggs for my son and us. I served West mashed potatoes and vanilla ice cream for breakfast which is what he wanted. He does not like eggs. He just got his invisaligns and his mouth is sore so soft foods only.

They brought me a beautiful vase and flowers for my birthday and after dinner, my son went online to the Buffalo Bills Store to get me some official gear. A sweatshirt and a winter hat are on the way. I really only wanted the hat because I fell in love with it. But my son talked me into the sweatshirt which I will wear on game days.

While I was making breakfast, I prepped the hamburger that I needed to put in a casserole that I was making for dinner.

I made a large hash brown casserole for dinner. Hubby and I each had one piece and will have another one tonight. The rest were frozen in portions to eat for brunches the next month or so.

On Saturday, these coupons came in the mail. It always pays to ask.

Today I purchased 6 lbs. of bacon for $ 2.99. This is the best price I have seen since 2020. If I had had more room, I would have gotten more since this is on my diet that I discussed with my doctor last week.

They also had Top’s ice cream for $ 2.99 which is a great price. However, we still have vanilla ice cream. Plus I want to give up ice cream except for holidays this winter.

Tonight is Buffalo Bills football and I want to give a quick call to my sister.

I hope you all had a great 5 days. Did you get any good deals this week?

Categories
Every Day

A Little Of This And A Little Of That

It has been a crazy few days. We have been getting our home ready for winter. We finally had to turn our heat on 3 days ago. The nights started getting chilly. Hubby got up one morning to take his shower and he said it was too cold. So the heat went on for the fall and winter. This morning it was 38 when I got up at 4AM with Eloise who doesn’t like to sleep at night. Since we turn the heat down to 64 at night, I quickly turned it up to 70. It was just too cold in here for me.

On Sunday morning, I went up to Top’s to get on sale fresh salmon for $ 7.99 a lb. and the ad also showed the Margaritaville shrimp on sale for B1G1 again this week. The Margaritaville they did not have. The fish guy told me they should be in later in the week. He said they are out of stock. They only had 3 small packages of the salmon( I took 2 packages which had a total of 3 pieces.) and this was the first day of the ad. I asked it they had more and he said no. He told me maybe later in the week. I guess Top’s sales ads are useless this week. There was nothing else that interested me. So I have to go out later and will stop by there to see if they have any of the things I wanted. If not, I am going to get rain checks.

Anyhow, I had not had salmon in over a year because the price was way too high. So I had one piece baked with 2 eggs for brunch yesterday. It tasted so good!

I defrosted a large ham over the weekend that I purchased at 1/2 off after Christmas last year. Then Hubby cut it all up for me. We have lots of slices and chunks to use up. These three food saver bags that you are looking at are separated into 4 meals each. So you are looking at 12 meals that I froze for the future. We have been eating off of a large amount of slices that Hubby put in the refrigerator. We have had ham and cheese sandwiches and navy bean soup. We have had 3 meals for dinner and 1 meal for brunch so far.

I made the soup with the ham bone, 5 cans of navy beans, extra ham pieces, mustard seed and other spices. I usually make it from dry beans that I soak overnight but I had the canned beans needed to be used up and it also made it easy for me on a day that we would be out. On Monday, I quickly threw it all in the crock pot so that it would be ready when we came home. It was delicious. We have already eaten about 1/8 of another jar. We have this one left to finish this week or to freeze if need be.

On Monday morning, Hubby did a lot of cutting back bushes, trimming hedges and pulling annual flowers to get ready for the winter. I worked for a while in my pantry to see what gaps needed to be filled in the next few weeks to stock for winter. Then we had mid afternoon annual checkups which took an hour and a half. My primary is fantastic. He explained to me some heart issues that my heart doctor had not. He really went into detail and showed me how to check my pulse. He told me it might be a good time to buy a watch that does this for me. So I am looking into that.

On Tuesday, my back was so painful. I couldn’t take it easy because we went to get our senior flu shots and to pick up Hubby’s prescriptions. I am glad we had a ham meal that we could quickly put together for dinner.

Today my back is better so I will run a few errands. Since I will be at Top’s, I am then going to stop at Dollar General to check their $ deals, next will be the liquor store to get the cheapest vodka I can find. I am almost out of vanilla to bake with. Since I have vanilla beans, I will make a whole bottle.

Last stop will be across the street from the liquor store at Big Lots to see what kind of deals they are running.

The rest of the day I am going to take it easy and just gather the garbage cans within our home to take out to the garbage in the garage which gets put out tonight.

I hope you all have a great day.

Categories
Every Day

September Savings

We were only able to save $ 4127.46 this month. It was a month of spending on some fast food and three restaurant meals for us and family.

We also had higher bills for our utilities: electric, natural gas and a water bill we paid for the entire summer. Our medical bills were higher than they have been all year due to the fact that we try to group our appointments and tests over the spring, summer, and fall. We don’t do winter appointments if we can avoid them. We have two dentist appointments between today and the first week in November. They are very expensive especially since we lost our dental plan. We also have 2 doctor appointments this month. Most of Hubby’s prescriptions have been zero except for one $60. one. Mine are usually $60. each even though I don’t take many drugs. They add up.

We also had maintenance bills for the furnace. This month we have a tree being taken out and the sprinkler lines being blown out. They will be hefty bills. Life is expensive when you have a home and property.

It seems like costs are going up everyday. Now that the longshoremen are on strike along the entire east coast and west to Houston, costs are going to get even worse. Inflation will be horrible in a few weeks if they don’t go back to work. They were offered a 50% raise in pay amongst other things and they didn’t take it. I think most people would love to get a 50% raise. Biden says he is not going to interfere which is ridiculous. He can but he won’t.

If they are out for any length of time, people will starve. Food banks are already not doing well so they are not going to be much help. I just pray that people have stocked up knowing this was coming. If not do it now. It will take a week or so for the prices to go up unless the grocery stores raised then overnight to gouge us. Soon you will see shortages like you have never seen before. It only takes 3 days to strip a grocery store. Economists are saying it will take months to get the supply chain back to normal especially if they are out for a long period of time.

I will be keeping my eye on prices and you should too. I plan on buying nothing except what I need on sale. They can’t so anything about this week’s sale ads that are already printed and out. Get the sales now!

Take care of your needs and your families. I am praying that this strike does not last long.

Categories
Every Day

Sunday and Monday Happenings

I had to purchase Hubby’s alcohol prep pads. He only had about 5 days left. Amazon carries the ones he uses. When I went to order them, they offered me a 30 day free trial of Prime. I took them up on their offer so that I didn’t have to get $35. worth of items and I got one day shipping. Hubby will enjoy Thursday night football on Prime for at least the next 4 Thursdays. And I will see if there are any movies I would like to watch. I have every intention of cancelling at 30 days.

We met my son, daughter in law, and West, at Duff’s yesterday for lunch in another town. We ate no breakfast so that we could enjoy Duff’s wings. Buffalo wings were invented out here at the Anchor Bar. So many tourists go there to try them. However, I and thousands of other people out here who do the yearly survey on who has the best wings, pick Duff’s. Their wings are amazing. Duff’s has won the survey for a number of years in a row. We had a few beers and soda for Hubby and West with out meal. Plus West wanted large fries and huge breast meat fried tenders. There was so much food that Hubby and I had enough for our dinner last night. I decided to pay for all of us. It was the largest lunch bill I have ever paid but considering that we got 7 meals out of and a great time, it was worth it. Since I did not pay out much grocery money this month, I just took it from that budget.

We all gathered at our home afterward so that my daughter in law could meet Eloise. She loved her and West got all of her toys out from under the furniture for us. Then we all played a 500 point game of Rummy. It was a fun afternoon.

I have been trying to run the dishwasher every three days instead of every two. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. I am thinking all the time on how I can cut down on the number of dishes we use. For example, I ask myself if I can use a small plate instead of a large one. Can I mix all dry and wet ingredients in one bowl instead of two? Everything I am questioning. I want to get the electric bill down as low as I can this month.

Hubby had planned on cooking pork rib eye steaks on the grill for dinner. But since we had leftover wings last night, he will grill them tonight and I will make a tossed salad(trying to use up the romaine lettuce), and serve applesauce.

Our Buffalo Bills played the Baltimore Ravens in Baltimore last night and we got stomped. The Ravens are a big and rough team. I just prayed none of our players got hurt. One did though. Hopefully, he will recover quickly.

Hubby got up with Eloise this morning at 4:30AM. He let me sleep in for a change. I didn’t get up until 9:30AM. It felt good for a change. But I woke up not feeling well so I have taken it easy today. I have done some paperwork to get ready for our savings report tomorrow. Plus I paid our credit card bill that we got in the mail on Saturday.

I realize today that we have another CD expiring in the next 10 days so I will take care of renewing that tomorrow. The bank never sent me a notice about it. Ugh. I will take care of that when I call them.

I have lots of posts for this week starting with the savings one tomorrow. See you then. I hope you are having a great day!

Categories
Every Day

A Savings Day

Before I talk about our savings today, I wanted to post a picture of our filet mignon and tossed salad dinner last night. I put ranch dressing on mine and Hubby had Italian. The filets were just seasoned with salt and pepper before Hubby grilled them. They were melt in your mouth good.

Our son who lives in the Adirondack’s in the eastern part of the state called Hubby yesterday afternoon for his birthday. We both enjoyed talking to him. It is rare that we get to see him because he works a full time job, owns a business, and is helping two different friends renovate their homes.

Today will be a savings day and I will list those as I do them during the day.

My son who lives just a little over an hour away called Hubby last night for his birthday. He told us that his family is going to the Buffalo Bills store downtown for when it opens on Sunday morning. So they will not be here for breakfast but will come later when they are done. Hubby invited them for lunch. They all eat Keto. So I made out a list of things that they will eat and was going to go to the store early this morning to get those things that I did not have. However when I was done with my list, I saw that I had a text message from him. He said his wife said we should go out for wings for lunch. So that is the plan sometime after they get done shopping. I imagine they will treat us. So I cancelled the grocery shopping trip which saves us on spending money for food and gasoline.

I did a very full load of laundry with just a couple of tablespoons of detergent. According to my appliance people that is all you need. I have been trying to get down to just one load a week to save on electricity. I have finally done it. I have an energy efficient Speed Queen washer and dryer. I use cold water to wash. Most things are hung to dry. I do dry sheets and towels in the dryer but for only 25 minutes and then hang them if they aren’t quite dry. I just replaced my dryer balls after almost 14 and a half years of use. I found a set of 6 at Walmart a month ago with a storage bag for $ 9.00. I do not use dryer sheets and haven’t for years.

I caulked all the spots that needed it on our window frames and sills. We are trying to get ready for winter. Hubby has been cutting the lawn down really low and mowing up the leaves as they come down. He has also been trimming the bushes and cutting some of the plants down. This is keeping him really busy and saves us on hiring our landscaper to clean up for the winter.

We still have no heat on. That is amazing for the end of September. I hope we can go a few more weeks without it by wearing sweatshirts and long pants. I have gotten our draft stoppers for the outside doors from our storage area so that they are ready to use.

Dinner tonight will be the leftover honey bourbon chicken, which Hubby loved, roasted potatoes, and brussel sprouts from Thursday dinner. I like to cook two meals at once. When we eat these, all leftovers in our fridge will be used up.

I love coffee as I am sure many of you do. I never buy coffee at a McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts, Tim Horton’s or Starbucks. I always make it at home. If I want it while I am out running errands, I bring my travel mug with coffee in it. However I drink 4-5 cups a day. As you all know, coffee has gotten so high in price, especially the last two weeks in which it took a huge increase of $3.00- $5.00 for a large can. So I am cutting back to 2 cups a day. If I need something else hot, I will have tea. I have lots of tea bags. Plus I can use my teabags to make two cups of tea.

When we got Eloise, we needed to buy litter. It was so expensive that I was shocked. We seem to be going through it quickly. If you have a kitten or cat, can you tell me where you buy it the cheapest and what you buy? Also how high do you fill the litter box with clean litter when you change it? I scoop her litter box twice a day. She also really likes to cover things up and manages to get litter all over the floor when she is doing that. Do the covered boxes work better than the flat ones? Thanks to anyone who responds and helps me out. I am headed in there now to clean and wash her box. Then I will vacuum and sanitize the floor.

Popeye’s contacted me with an apology and a $15.00 coupon for my next order. I’ll take it. When things go wrong on your order, it pays to let them know.

Did you do a little something to save or not spend today?

Categories
Every Day

Friday’s Happenings

Today is Hubby’s birthday. We are celebrating at home because mine is in a couple of weeks so we go out to dinner in about a week to celebrate both of them. This year Hubby will pick the restaurant. We take turns.

But for his celebration today, we will grill filet mignon outside. We will have that with a glass of red wine and a tossed salad. Hubby wants an apple pie for dessert. Tonight we will watch college football.

We gave up exchanging gifts for birthdays and holidays years ago. That decision was made because we buy what we need or want when we need or want it. Our wants are few.

But before we celebrate, I had a few things to get done. As soon as Great Clips opened at 9AM, I signed in online and got my haircut. The senior price for a haircut is usually $18.99 but I have a $12.99 coupon that came in our ValuPak. I keep my punch card in my wallet at all times so I always remember that. After 7 haircuts, I get 1 free. I shampooed my hair this morning so I didn’t have to pay $6.00 extra for that. I have saved so much money since I left my pricey salon. First, Hubby cut it and then I found this Great Clips close by. It sure beats paying $ 140. a month for my salon treatment. It’s even higher now. Of course back then, I was getting my hair colored and high lighted. Now my hair is white and I like it.

Next I brought back some bottles to Fast Cash to get our $.05 deposits back. It’s in the same plaza.

Then I picked up a prescription at RiteAid for Hubby.

Next I stopped at Niagara Produce because Hubby wanted one of their apple pies for for his birthday dinner. They are his very favorite. I could make him one but not as delicious as the one he wanted.

Last stop was at Popeye’s because Hubby wanted spicy fried chicken for brunch. I got 2 orders of the Signature 3 piece chicken deal that I saw on TV on Sunday. They were $5.00 each plus tax which came to $10.80. My box had a wing, a leg, and a breast. Hubby’s had a wing, a leg, and a back. I have never served any of my family a back. It was awful. I tried to give Hubby my breast since it was his birthday and I felt bad. But being the gentleman he is he would not take it and told me to eat it. I did not want to go back there and waste gasoline to do it. Instead I wrote to Popeye’s online. They say it will take 24 hours for a response.

All of my errands were run in a loop as usual to save on gasoline. BTW, I went by my cash gas station today and the gasoline is down to $3.09 gallon.

That’s it for today. I want to go spend the rest of the day with Hubby.

brate

Categories
Every Day

Utility Bill And A Little Of This And A Little Of That

I took down the post on the U.N. because it was scaring some people. If you want to see what they are doing which involves the U.S., go to their press releases online on the U.N. site. I always check on what is going on there.

We got our utility bill yesterday. It was for $ 138.85 for 29 days. We used 536 KWH of electric and 4 CCF’s of natural gas. Last year’s bill for the same period was $116.37 for 32 days. We used 530 KWH’s of electric and 6 CCF’s of natural gas. We used less KWH’s and more CCF’s and it covered more days in last year’s bill. There was not a big difference in usage but the bill went up by $ 22.48.

It seems whatever I do to conserve, the bill just keeps rising each month. But if I don’t try to conserve more, it will go even higher. I am afraid our heat bills are going to be huge this winter. The meteorologists say the winter here is going to be much colder and snowier this year. So I will try to save every KWH and CCF I can this fall and winter. We have turned our air conditioning off. If we have a hot day, we use our ceiling fans. I am hoping to not have to put the heat on for a while. We have turned the dehumidifier off in the basement. It is no longer humid down there.

We will continue to use our smaller 11 in 1 oven instead of the big oven. I believe it does make a difference. Now that we have the wall built around our grill outside, we will continue to use it as much as we can through these upcoming seasons. If we have a lot of snow, we will have to stop using it. Falls are something we try to avoid.

We have had to find another snowplow guy because the one we thought we could use is only 16 years old. Not legal in NY. We called a company yesterday who is licensed and insured. The owner came today and told us it will be $500. for the season. He snowplows anytime we get 3 inches. We paid our other guy, who moved to Florida, $ 500. for last winter. So the price is not any higher which I am very happy about.

We had planned to make honey bourbon fried chicken, roasted potatoes using baby potatoes that are getting old, and brussel sprouts for dinner last night. However, the chicken that I put in the fridge the night before did not thaw. So we had to come up with a quick dinner. Hubby made grilled cheese sandwiches and heated up old fashioned tomato rice soup that I purchased for $ 1.00 on clearance . It was so good and brought back memories of my childhood. We will have the above chicken dinner tonight and tomorrow night. Because of having to do this, I have froze the other half of the sausage I cooked up for pizza. We will use that next week.

Brunch this morning was a small slice of ham and 2 eggs scrambled for each of us.

That’s it for today. I will be back with a new post tomorrow after I run errands.