Exceedingly Mundane

I always have such good intentions about blogging. Take this blog post, for instance. I took this picture over a month ago, and stored it away to write a post about:

Now, here it is several weeks later, and I no longer have any of the dish soap or hand soap. I was going to blog about how I had bought my first Mrs. Meyer’s products last fall and winter. I love this pine scent that came out around the holidays. I was going to blab about how my local Target had this one seasonal scent, but I can no longer find these products at my store. And of course, they’re not at Walmart (where I normally shop, I know, I know!). I don’t shop at drugstore type stores (CVS, Walgreens, etc), so I don’t know if they carry them. I was pleasantly surprised to find some unscented Mrs. Meyer’s products at my local Marshalls / TJ Maxx stores. That’s where I got the countertop spray in the middle, which I do still have 🙂

I had the best intentions about doing a nice, little post about cleaning products, and what people use to clean their kitchen with. Are you a germophobe and very concerned about germs, and only use anti-bacterial products? Do you hand wash dishes, and if so, what brand or type of dish soap do you use? Are you adamant about your floors and countertops, and what do you use on them? Are you a sucker for a certain kind of dishwasher product – tabs, gel, powder, etc?

I must admit, I’m brand dependent, but only to the extent of what I can find in bulk at our local Sam’s Club, combined with what I like. I normally use Palmolive anti-bacterial dish soap. It’s an orange colored liquid that I buy in a huge container at Sams, then I fill up a glass olive oil with spout type container at home (did that make ANY sense?!) to use for washing pots and pans in the sink. I use Cascade tabs in my dishwasher. I’ve tried powder, gel and tabs, and I do like the ease and convenience of the tabs. Sam’s sells both Electrosol brand and Cascade brand, but I couldn’t tell a huge difference between them. The Cascade are a bit cheaper, so that’s what we use. I keep hand soap on my sink, but once I had used up all of my Mrs Meyers, I admit I went back to using the Equate brand from Walmart, an antibacterial one. I mop my floors with Armstrong floor cleaner. With a dog that is only allowed on the tile in the kitchen, my floors have to be cleaned pretty often 🙂

So, there, it’s not timely or well-stated, but I wanted to ramble on about cleaning products in the kitchen. I’m always interested in what other people use, and what they like and dislike. It’s usually a good way to find something new to try, that I might like better 🙂 I am a homebody and I work hard to keep our home a happy, healthy, clean, comfortable place. These topics are so mundane to most, but always so intriguing to me!

Leave me a comment and let me know what you use at your house, or if you really could care less about this type of stuff 🙂 Maybe you’re not the only cleaning up the kitchen, or maybe it just doesn’t matter. But if it does, and you’ve found products that you either like or dislike for whatever reason, let me know!

Oh, and have a great day!

It’s a little thing, but I’ve decided to go with more glass and less plastic in my kitchen. For quite a while now, I’ve been thinking about trying to get rid of most of my Rubbermaid / Tupperware / Misc Plastic containers. I have read (or as Tim thinks, bought into the hype) that there’s stuff in the plastic that can leach into your food. Plus, plastic gets stained with tomato products like spaghetti, chili, etc. Now, I like plastic for the no-breakage option, but I’m trying really hard to be careful and not chip or break my glass containers.

I bought a couple of 3 pack Pyrex glass storage containers at Walmart to give them a try. A few days later, Tim and I were at Sam’s, and he found this. He came and got me and said, “Let’s get this for you, I think you’ll love it!”. Such a sweetie 🙂

I told him, I really don’t need that many containers, nor do I have room for them. But, I started going through my cabinets and decided I could purge some other things that I had. I had a set of stainless /coated storage containers, some ramekins, as well as all of my Rubbermaid containers. Once I cleaned all of them out, I had enough room for all of my red Pyrex glass containers.

I’ve had them a few weeks now, and I really like them. I can mix up something like chicken salad in one of the containers, then just store it in the fridge. I can scoop up leftovers from supper, then when we want to warm them up for lunch the next day, I don’t have to worry about taking them out of the plastic and putting them on something else to warm up (that’s mostly what I had read about plastic, don’t microwave in it and heat them and the contents up). I can pop them in the freezer, I can put them in the dishwasher and they come out looking brand new. I really like this set from Sam’s Club, because I have some rectangular / oblong ones in addition to different sizes of round ones. Lots of variety and lots of storage sizes. All good things 🙂

So, here’s a quick question – do you do leftovers at your house? Do you store them in plastic or glass? Do you freeze leftovers?

Have a great, happy, joyous day 🙂

I’m starting to feel like I’m missing out. The girls in our neighborhood that used to come around and sell Girl Scout cookies have all grown up, so we have no more doorbell rings to look forward to. Usually, I find a troop setup at a local grocery store with a table of cookies for sale, but this year I have not happened upon any. I’m starting to feel left out. Not that I need the calories, but sometimes, you just want a Girl Scout cookie, you know what I mean?

How about you? Do you buy Girl Scout cookies? If so, do you eat them right away, put them in the freezer? Or do you have Girl Scouts in your house and you dread the thought of all of those cookies, this time every year?! 🙂

How do you spell that? That’s what my computer did this week, it went ker-pluey, ker-plunk. It died on Wednesday, but I’m happy to say it is patched, bandaged and limping along at the moment. My HP laptop is 3 years old and has had only one problem, but this is the third time that this has happened. The first two times, it was under warranty, and extended warranty, so I was able to mail it back to be “fixed”. Not that they really fixed it, since it keeps happening over and over 😀

My video card (Nvidia GeForce Go 7600) and the processor on my computer, apparently, upon further research, have a major incompatibility. The video keeps going out on my laptop, which is really quite bad. Multi-colored vertical lines instead of Windows loading is really not all that fun. Nor is a black screen.

Tim, being the wonderful, sweet, smart guy that he is, figured out a way to switch my setup over to the basic VGA setting on the motherboard (you know, the one that works with Safe Mode, which does still run on my computer). So, now everything is really big and less crisp, but it’s up and running. It’s bought me some time to make sure all of my files are backed up (hello, don’t want to lose years worth of digital photos!). I don’t know how long this patch will last, but in the mean time, I’m happy to have a computer at all.

I was going to make a separate post, but I guess I’ll go ahead and spill the beans here.

Tim got a MacBook Pro a week or so ago!

It was a very belated birthday/Christmas/Valentines etc gift (and in fact anniversary gift, since yesterday was our 14th wedding anniversary)! He’s been wanting to get a Mac for a while, and we finally got him one. In fact, here’s the kicker:

Tim has never had his own personal computer :gasp:

He’s a full-time computer guy and his work has always provided him with a computer. He’s bought me 2 or 3 brand new computers since we’ve been together, and he has always, always taken the old one as a hand-me-down, to use for himself. He’s so incredibly unselfish and always gets me a new one, and has never ever had a new one for himself. So, this was way overdue!

P.S. Please note, not only does this photo show his shiny new Macbook, but you can also see one of our other new happies – Saints Super Bowl champions t-shirts! Woo-hoo 🙂

Note to self: Be sure to keep the garage door closed. All of those birds you’ve seen flying in and out of the garage the last couple of days have been up to something:

I felt really really bad to get rid of the nest they had started. I know they need to have one somewhere, this time of year. But, my opened box of kitchen garbage bags that I had stored on top of my shelf in the garage is not the best place to do it. I just know I’m going to need more garbage bags from behind the nest before too long 🙂

Poor birdies, no babies in my garage!

I haven’t been blogging for the last week or so. I’d like to convince you it’s because I’m so busy watching the Olympics (which we are, sort of!), but mostly it’s because I haven’t been able to think of a whole lot to blog about. It definitely comes and goes, ideas for blog posts 🙂

So, have you been watching the Olympics? If so, which sport or athlete has been your favorite?

We’ve really been enjoying the speed skating, a lot of the skiing, and the snowboarding (love the snowboard cross).

My apologies to all who have already seen and heard about this on Facebook, but this is just too good to not post at my blog too! After all, I always look back here to reminisce and look things up, and just generally remember all the little and big things.

So….

Today, it snowed! About 4 or 4 1/2 inches, depending on which area of the yard we measured in! They had been forecasting snow all week, but I was very skeptical. I kept saying, “I’ll believe it when I see it”. They forecast our area to get 1-3″, and I really thought we would just get a dusting of snow, or an inch or less. When I woke up this morning, I was shocked! Happy, but quite surprised 🙂

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I gave Tim a really good list for Christmas this year (well, 2009, still hard to believe it’s 2010), and he did a wonderful job of getting me both things I wanted from my list and surprising me. One of the practical things I asked for was an electric kettle. I have never owned a traditional kettle that you use on the stovetop to boil water. I have always used my microwave to boil water, I don’t know why. But when people are over and it’s cold and everyone wants hot chocolate, it’s hard to boil a lot of water fast for 4 or 5 cups of cocoa.

Enter my new baby! She’s a keeper. She boils water really fast (although she sounds like a freight train after a minute or two), and the water is really hot. Almost too hot. But I can boil enough for a cup of hot cocoa or cider or tea for me, or for a crowd. I know it’s not something I’ll use year round, but it is wonderful to have for the winter. And after all, we’re having a really cold winter around here, so she’s getting a good workout lately. Yep, she’s a keeper 🙂

I’m just a little goofy, because I got excited when I found out a few days ago that this year, Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day are on the same day 😀

If you’ve visited here before, you might remember me blogging about the fact that Tim doesn’t really buy into the “greeting card holidays” as he calls them. Valentines is his biggest pet peeve. And even though I love to get flowers or chocolates or even a card, I really do see his point.

In the beginning, when we were dating and first married, he pushed through his cynicism and did what I wanted – sent me expensive flowers, took me out to nice restaurants, etc for Valentines Day. One year, we waited at a local Italian place (Amerigo) for over two hours then had less than stellar food and service. We had been married a few years and I was starting to see his point, but that ill-fated date night out on Valentines Day sealed it for me. These days, we do little to observe Valentines. Tim is wonderful about getting me flowers or cards or happies any of the other 360+ days out of the year (anniversary and birthday don’t count!), so Valentines really is not a big deal for us. We normally grill out a steak and watch tv, no biggie.

This year though, I saw that the Chinese New Year is on February 14. So, I’m really excited! You see, Chinese food is one of my most favorite things in the whole world. And Tim loves to get take-out more than eat it in restaurants, so it’s a win-win thing for us. I’m hoping we can get some Chinese food this weekend; in fact, I’m already planning for it and looking forward to it 🙂 We do have some steaks in the freezer, so maybe the other night (Saturday), we can grill out a steak and just celebrate both with our favorite foods 😀

BTW, I’m a Dragon and Tim’s a Rooster on the Chinese zodiac… we always have fun reading about those on the paper place-mats at one of the local Chinese places we visit. Have you ever checked to see what you are? You can read about the Chinese New Year here at Wikipedia, or find out your sign here.

Do you have plans for either holiday this weekend?

Today marks the five year anniversary of my little blog, Exceedingly Mundane. I made several really boring posts on February 3, 2005, and have been making mundane ramblings ever since 🙂 I still enjoy it, but there are days when I can’t think of a thing to say, LOL! It’s really awesome to be able to look back though, and see things that I posted about, big and small. It’s a great way to remember things in life and see pictures that I posted to remind me of places we went, people we saw, etc. I love that aspect of it.

I’m not sure how much longer I will blog, but then again, I didn’t plan on blogging this long either!!!

Boy, you get old, you blink and a month goes by in a flash!

It seems like we wait all year for football season, and when it FINALLY gets here, we’re so happy. Then, before you know it, BAM! It’s the end of January and it’s almost over. Although for us this year, for the first time EVAH, our team is going to the big game. Can’t wait! We’ve never really experienced a true Super Bowl experience. We have a party every year (not this year though!), so we always watch the game, but we never get to root for our team. Not so this year!

Ok, I actually meant to post about what little was going on around here in January.

* The month started out cold, then our water heater went out. It was an ordeal to get it replaced, but it all turned out fine in the end. It definitely gave me a whole new appreciation for HOT water, as well as for all of the little things in life that I can so easily take for granted. 🙂

* We went to our great-niece’s 4th birthday party, which was fun. We weren’t able to make it to our niece’s 5th birthday party, as it was out of town, on the same afternoon as the NFC Championship game and we had invited some people over to watch the game.

* We had the whole Saints in the playoffs, going to the Super Bowl thing that I just blogged about (and yes, I know I blog ad nauseum about football and the Saints!).

* I didn’t cook a whole lot in the month, we ate a lot of sandwiches and soups and easy stuff, plus we picked up food on the weekend. We’ve been going to Fresh Market every Sunday after church, and usually get stuff that we can “eat on” for a few days. Or we have leftovers from the football food that I fix (or pizza that we order!) from the weekend. I do have one or two new recipes that I have tried, that I need to post on our family website (but I haven’t gotten around to that yet) 🙂

* I didn’t read a lot of books in January. I finished three books and I’m about 20 pages away from finishing another book, here on Feb 1. I completed “Home for the Holidays” (part of the Grace Chapel Inn series), “Leaving Yesterday” by Kathryn Cushman and “Latte Trouble” by Cleo Coyle (part of the Coffeehouse mystery series). I enjoyed all the books, even though I didn’t blog about any of them. I am also working on the five books in the Chronicles of the Kings series by Lynn Austin and thoroughly, thoroughly enjoying them. I have so many books I want to read!

* We spent one very productive Saturday in January, when it wasn’t so cold, doing a lot of outside work. Tim got all the bushes and trees cut back, and raked leaves. He also cleaned up a lot in the garage and stuff. I spent a lot of that day working inside, getting the office cleaned up (and a bunch of stuff thrown out), gathering up some stuff for Goodwill. And, the biggie, I got all of the yearly “paperwork” done from last year – shredding things we won’t keep, getting papers organized for the taxes, and going thru receipts. The shredder got a workout that day!

* I spent a lot of time on Facebook. Mostly on Farmville and Cafe World. I continue to be addicted. 😀

* I got back into walking with my walking buddy Julie. She wanted to start the C25K (couch to 5K) training program, so we did that. We’re into week 2, but I think we’re repeating week 1 on the program. It’s going to take us longer than the 9 weeks that the program thinks 😀

* We played some of our new Wii games, in between football, tv and Netflix movies. I’m really enjoying Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort 😀

Ok, February, bring it on! I have a dentist appointment and haircut to start the month off right, then there’s that all important “greeting-card” holiday that Tim loves to avoid. Mostly, we’re excited about the Super Bowl! February is a short month, so I expect it to fly by with equal speed, if not faster, than January did.

And to think, I wrote 2009 on a check the other day! I’d better get used to 2010 and a whole new decade, because it’s here with a vengeance!

It’s not a novel concept, but it is one I like to do from time to time on my blog, and I am always trying to work to be better about. I’m talking about being grateful for something, anything, everything. We’re so very blessed, my husband and I, and we try to be mindful of that. I think an “attitude of gratitude” is a wonderful thing, and something I want to do more of on here.

Today, I’m grateful for water, specifically hot water! I blogged before that our hot water heater went out last week, but we still had cold water. I was so grateful, first for just water period, and then when our hot water heater was replaced. Hot water is wonderful on cold days. Cold showers, washing dishes in a sink full of cold water, etc, are not fun. Today, I scrubbed our bathrooms, and it was so nice to be able to crank it over to really warm and not get my hands frozen trying to clean.

Plus, in the large town nearby, they are having serious water problems. Schools are out today, city and state offices are closed, the DMV is even closed (so, you know it’s serious!), etc. All because they have over 100 water main breaks in the city. We are not on the same water system, and I’m so grateful. To have water, and to have hot water!

How about you? What is one thing, big or small, that you’re grateful for today? You don’t have to explain it, but you can 🙂 Leave me a comment and let me know!

Ok, I’m obviously running out of things to blog about! I am constantly drawn to food blogs, recipes, cookbooks, grocery stores, food, Food Network, shows on the Travel Channel about food, etc. To say I love to eat is a gross understatement. To say I love to cook is apt on some days, and on other days, couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Today has been a good day. I’ve cooked twice, LOL! I made a loaf of banana bread and some potato soup for supper. We had sandwiches for lunch, and I had oatmeal for breakfast.

How about you, what did you eat today? Do you have something that you eat every day or something that you have on certain days like Saturday or Sunday?

Leave me a comment and let me know!

Can you believe this weather? It’s so cold! I remember reading late last summer and going into fall, that they were predicting a colder than normal winter for us this year. I was excited (and still am!), because I knew it would help kill the mosquitoes and fleas and stuff. However – I didn’t think it would get quite this cold! It’s been cold all week, and the forecast for the next two days are for the HIGHS to be below freezing!! That’s really, really, unusual for us. Plus, the lows the next three nights are forecast to be in the teens, with wind chills in the single digits or near zero. Baby, that’s cold!

On the bright side, we have heat, and we now have HOT WATER! If you read my previous post, you know we had our old hot water heater go out, and it was a bit of an ordeal to get the new one installed. But, it’s in now and it’s working great. I can wash dishes and not have my hands get frostbitten 🙂 Hot showers and hot baths have never, even felt so good or been more appreciated around here 😀

So, I’m assuming that it’s cold where most of you out there in bloggy-ville live… what’s your favorite thing to do when it gets this cold? Do you like to snuggle up under a blanket, by a warm fire, drink hot tea or cocoa? Do you live for a bowl of hot soup or some other comfort food? What’s your favorite thing about the cold? If you can think of one, LOL!

Leave me a comment and let me know, and remember — Stay Warm! 😀

We’re having some really cold weather lately, and it is forecast to be this way for the next 7-10 days. Last summer, our air conditioning unit went out, and we sweated a bit during a heat wave, getting it replaced. At the same time, we also had them replace the heating portion and the blower, and now, I’m so glad we did! Our central heat is running, and it’s warm and toasty in the house. 🙂

However, not so with our hot water heater – it went out yesterday. I had run the washing machine and dishwasher. Tim had gone out in the yard and noticed a little stream of water running in the yard, and came back in to ask, what are you doing, did you by any chance leave the water hose on outside? No, I had not been outside, just inside running the washer and dishwasher. Come to find out, it was neither of those, but the hot water heater (which in our house, is located in the attic). The hot water heater is original to the house, so it was nearing the end of its life span. It had some kind of clog, and it was overflowing from the water drip pan beneath it. Also, there was a pipe on the outside of our house that was just running water, like a water hose or water faucet opened up would do. What a pain!

It’s been an ordeal ever since. Tim trying to go to Lowe’s and buy a new one, trying to get it installed himself, then trying to get a plumber (or the installation people that Lowe’s use) to install it, etc. Come to find out, the one we bought at Lowe’s is too wide to go through the tiny opening up the stairs into our attic. And even better – Lowe’s doesn’t sell one that narrow, nor does any place in town. Apparently, ours is so old that they don’t make them that narrow any more. We’d have to go way down on the gallon capacity to get one that would fit, which is not what we want to do. Switching to a tankless system would be nice, but that’s cost and time prohibitive right now. We really don’t want to be without hot water that long. So, Tim is trying to do what he does best…. “rig” it. Sigh.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s an inconvenience, but I know it could be a lot worse! I still have heat, so I’m warm. We still have cold water, so we can brush our teeth, boil water on the stove, flush the toilets, etc. I tried to be all 1800’s “pioneer girl” last night and heat up big soup pots of water on the stove and take to the bathtub to try to take a warm bath. After 5 pots of boiling water, the water in the tub was getting cold, and it was less than an inch deep, so it was not the best bath I’ve ever had! However, it was a lot better than a freezing cold one, and I know I’ll appreciate a hot shower all that much more once we do get this fixed! 🙂

It’s always something, with a house, isn’t it?! LOL!