How I Pass Time Waiting For Winter To End

We are in the tail end of a long winter so I have to find ways to pass the weekend afternoons since I'm not outdoorsy. Thankfully the kids are old enough to go play outside mostly unsupervised leaving me time alone in the house. I spend a lot of time on Etsy looking for ideas to steal and the supplies I need to do them. I just started making these glass pendant necklaces...

First you need some pretty paper. These were not my first choices but I wasn't up to going out in the snow so I went with them.
I ordered these round silver trays and the domed glass inserts that fit inside. I also found I needed the corresponding circle punch. On my first attempt, I tried to trace and cut out a circle myself and ended up with more of an oval. Thanks to the AC Moore $10 coupon I earned from shopping there, I got this punch and a blackberry candle for only 61 cents.
These circles are what you want-perfectly round. I wanted something bright but I couldn't decide if I liked these or not.
Now it's just a case of doing some gluing. I learned how to do this in kindergarten. I glued the circles into the trays and let them dry a little.
Then, I glued the glass tops in place and now I have 3 new necklaces. I only like 2 of them so I'm going to have to take another trip to the store for some new paper...

It's Time

It's time for Spring to come around here. I know this is Maine and it's still only February but it is still time.

See that long white twisted piece of metal on the ground next to my ugly house? It looks a little out of place doesn't it?
That's because it's our gutter and it belongs up next to the brand new roof. Right next to that unpainted ignored looking area.
See all the ice just underneath the twisted gutter? That's the ice dam that was up on my roof before it let go and took the gutter out with it. Why can't something damaging happen to my 1970's ugly mint green aluminum siding instead? Or our even uglier chain link fence? Then our insurance could pay to replace them and I would be less ashamed of our house. It's not the poor houses fault. It's the people with bad taste who lived in it in the 60's and 70's and did terrible things to her. Now we have to wait until Spring until we can fix this. So, it's time for Spring.

Time To Upgrade

Somehow, I've gotten old enough that my things are becoming outdated even though it seems like I just bought them. Remember going to your grandparents house and they had the oldest craziest things in it? Or when your parents tried to figure out the microwave or VCR when they first came out? I either need to replace some things or just accept that the world is passing me by.

Not a major thing but I only own 2 wine glasses and this is one of them. I bought them at the Dollar Store in the early 90's and they look it. I drink about 1 glass of wine a year but maybe I would drink more if I liked the glasses. A trip to Target will solve this.
This has been my tea kettle for 10 years. I bought it to boil water so I could make Grace's formula. Sadly, I bought it even though the handle was broken-I think it was discounted because of it. It stayed glued for several years but has been like this for a long time. It's sort of dangerous to carry boiling hot water in a kettle with very loose handles.
This I'm not so sure what to do about. I have an actual telephone mounted on my kitchen wall with a cord on it. I pay for a land line and that is becoming as outdated as VCR's. I'm just not ready to give up on phones. Plus, if I took it down, I would have a big ugly phone jack on the wall.
Here is the biggest laugh for last. This is my cell phone. It was very advanced in 2005. I never use it because there is no one I need to talk to that badly. I never even have it turned on. I have it for emergencies. I hate it when those women have long, overly personal conversations right next to you in the store and I will never be one of them. I don't even text. I know how to text(things haven't gotten that bad for me). I just don't feel the need to. I don't even have a cell phone contract. This is a prepaid one. Every 2 months I spend $20 to keep it going.

Don't even get me started on MP3 players and downloading music. Because I don't know how to do that...

The Budding Author

Declan came to me last night with his newest project. He has become obsessed with the Titanic and is learning all he can about it. Luckily for him, his mother had the same obsession and has many books for him to read.
After reading about 10 books, he decided it was time to write his own. He got a binder and filled it with paper and has started work on it. This is the cover....
...and this is the title page. No one is allowed to look at the rest of it until he is finished writing it. After that, he want to send it to a publisher to have it published. I think the ultimate goal is to make enough money off his book so that he can pay to go down on a submarine to check out the wreck. I'm not pressuring him or anything but he better make enough money to bring me along with him.

The End Of The Road

It's the end of the road for our washing machine. Tomorrow, she will be carted off and replaced with a new model. I'm sort of sad about this. Tim and I were 26 and stupid when we bought this house and I was mostly excited that it came with a washer and dryer even if they were old back then. The thought of never going to the laundromat was almost too much to take in. She has done more loads of laundry than I care to add up. I think we only had to have 1 small part replaced in the 13 years we've had her.

She's had a rough couple of years. I realized a while ago, that we most likely would have to replace her soon so it seemed like a waste of money to fix the small things that broke on her. I figured out ways around them. She moves around a lot when she's going and always ends up sort of twisted to the side so I just leave her like this.
Her handle broke right off about 2 years ago. The important parts were left behind so I have been using a pair of pliers to start each load.
There is a little plastic thingy on the lid that tells her the lid is closed. I think what happened is it wore down over time and wasn't telling her the lid was closed so she wouldn't start. I solved this problem by sticking a plastic wall anchor onto the end before I shut the lid. This has fooled her for about 2 years too.
Last year, I thought the end had really come. I washed something big and it caused the inside drum to sort of disconnect with the outer frame of the machine. I didn't think she would make it past this but she still worked fine as long as I didn't try to move her. That's why she stays at an angle.
There is a little heart sticker that Grace stuck on her when she was little. She went through a phase of putting stickers on things that she liked and wanted to mark for her own.

Now, some men from Home Depot are going to bring us a new machine. Truthfully and a little scarily, I haven't seen this machine yet. I saw it in the flier but wouldn't be able to make it there with Tim before the sale ended so he went by himself. It's really just an updated version of the machine we have now. It's not my dream machine which is one of those huge bright red front loaders with the extra drawers below. I'm sure it will do just fine. Now that we'll have a new washing machine, it's about time for the dryer will start acting up.

Weekend On The Ranch

Even though I'm going to the library tomorrow to pick up more books, I already have my weekend reading...

I've read most of it online but there is much more in the book....
It's the only thing to keep my mind off the fact that it is going to snow 3 more times in the next 5 days.

SnOMG!

I would have updated sooner but we've been buried in snow. We lived through the big storm that wasn't. It was big as it approached us but then just sputtered out and we only got a foot. Only a foot. That tells you about our winter. It's our 5th Wednesday in a row with a storm and it's safe to say that we are all sick of it.

Except Carly. She loves it and doesn't understand that she needs to come inside when she starts shivering uncontrollably.
One good thing, all the snow is starting to hide the hated fence.
My lilac trees are in there somewhere. So is my house's foundation.
Here there appears to be some sort of ghost around the icicles hanging off the ice dams on our brand new roof. Here is also the siding that we never get around to repainting.
Carly doesn't care. There are still squirrels to be on guard for no matter how deep the snow gets.
There is no more room in the driveway to put the snow. We could end up buried to the eaves like on Little House On The Prairie. We are supposed to get 2 more storms in the next 5 days. Can't wait for that.