The First Snow of '18-'19

On Monday, we got a dusting of snow, about 2 inches.  It was a wet snow though, so it was mostly slush and quickly turned to ice after two nights of 11 and 15 degree weather. 

 

Today we took a few snow pictures.  Ok, a lot of snow pictures. 

 

It's Gwennie's first snow! She also celebrating her half birthday yesterday, so that was exciting!

 

 She mostly just wanted to eat the snow...

 

 

 

 

 

We're supposed to get about 8 inches today...and Dan's plow stopped working last night when he hooked it up.  So he is currently at the shop trying to get it fixed before he has to go do some plowing and the snow gets too deep. 

 

 

Declutter October

     A friend of mine made a post on social media about a challenge she was doing to declutter her home. She encouraged her friends to join in for the month of October.  This challenge was the entire month long and every day of the month, you had to get rid of that many items. 
So October 2nd, get rid of 2 items...October 15th, get rid of 15 items and so on. 

     Lately, I've been bothered by the stuff lying around the house which I don't use.  If we're all honest with ourselves, there's stuff we all keep that we never or rarely use.  So I took my friend up on this challenge.  Days 1-8 were a breeze.  I started in the kitchen, going through cabinets and found so many mugs, dishes, and utensils I never use.  After exhausting the kitchen, I moved to my closet. 

     As much as I really want to be able to fit into some of the clothing I was able to wear when I was 22 and at my most fit stage of life, I'm seeing that goal as being more and more unrealistic.  That doesn't mean I've given up on losing weight or being healthy.  It just means that I don't think I'll see THOSE numbers on the scale again.  All that to say, my closet had a lot of clothing for me to get rid of in it.  I made it to day 15 getting rid of clothing, shoes and nail polish. 

     Moving to the baby's room, I was able to go through her things and get rid of some of the items I don't use.  At about day 23, I started struggling.  I got rid of a huge box full of books, piano music and cd's.  Clothing hangers were another easy item to get rid of, since I have bazillions of them.  I had already decided before starting this challenge that I wouldn't touch any of Dan's items (although you can be sure I wanted to clean out the garage with all of his tools...), only the things he didn't care about.

     I made it to day 31...barely.  Now that the challenge is finished though, I look around and find things every day that I still need to get rid of.

     During the 31 days, I was collecting and piling all of these discarded items in our biggest closet.  On Monday, I called the Salvation Army and asked them if they accept anything, or just certain items.  The man on the phone told me that they would take anything and were accepting all donations.  So we loaded the truck full of boxes and bags and headed down to Queensbury.  I was so excited to get rid of this stuff, but when we walked into the Salvation Army, the same man I talked to on the phone said that they had a temporary hold on taking donations and that they couldn't take anything from us.  I was annoyed because we had a truck full of things I was desperate to get rid of.  We were able to find a bin that took clothes in a parking lot, but everything else we had to haul home. 

     In my moment of desperation, I took photos of lots of stuff in boxes, and posted ads on Facebook marketplace and craigslist for free stuff. 

     I got super excited when about 10 people started messaging me that they wanted to come and look at it right away.  I wasn't going to put it out at the curb, since it was snowing and sleeting.  Out of the 23 total people who said they would come to get stuff, 2 ended up showing up and taking only some stuff, instead of taking it all like I said on the ad.  I kept saying to Dan "I never KNEW it was so hard to get rid of free stuff!"

     I guess the funniest messages I got were from three different people who were telling me they couldn't drive and needed me to bring the stuff to their houses.  One woman gave me her address and asked me to please ship it to her, and thank you.  Her address was in Maine! 

     Since I was so desperate to get rid of this stuff, I even agreed to meet up with one woman at a gas station to give her two boxes.  But she didn't confirm a time, so we never met up.  I learned a valuable lesson from this.  When you see something you want on an ad, don't leave the "seller" hanging.  It is SO FRUSTRATING.  Also, if the stuff is FREE, don't ask someone to deliver it or ship it. 

     Although I enjoyed de-cluttering my house in the month of October, the bother of giving the stuff away was hardly worth it.  I couldn't help thinking of the people around the world who would have loved to have the things I was trying to give away, but couldn't because nobody here wanted it or was willing to drive a few miles to get it.  So sad. 

     We have so much, yet often are so unthankful.  I'm speaking to myself as much as to the people who weren't willing to come to get some free things.  
     I shouldn't just think about being grateful in the month of November, but I often forget how much I have because I haven't experienced what it is like to be without. 


(As a side note, if you've never tried de-cluttering your home like this...I challenge you to try it.)

Random Happenings in the State of NY

It's a beautiful day today. The first beautiful day we've had in a long time in fact.  I don't know about the weather in your area, but we have had rain every day for the past week or so.  Sunday there was a reprieve for a few hours. 
I honestly don't have any truly exciting news to tell, or any awesome pictures.  But we are still alive and well and I thought I would make a post.  Probably mostly writing, not so many pictures this time. 

About a month ago, Dan told me he wanted to go on a drive to see all the beautiful fall leaves.  Of course I was up for that, but the leaves were most beautiful when Dan and I were working nonstop on the house.  I didn't get any pictures, but we rented a bobcat and dump trailer and dug out 7 loads of dirt from what was supposed to be the driveway.  Then we got a load of gravel and Dan spread that and graded it.  Because we were renting the equipment, there was really no time to stop.  Anyway, we finished that, and then Dan installed the new garage door.  The outside of the house is now complete. 

By the time that week of non-stop work was finished, most of the leaves were brown and fallen.  But we still went on our drive.  Dan planned out to take me to Woodstock, Vermont.  The drive was nice.  It snowed in the mountains, and when we arrived, it was raining heavily.  Dan took us to a Rockefeller house there in Woodstock and we did the tour of it. 

It was a nice change from all the weeks of working on the house.

 

Even Gwennie enjoyed the tour!  She was the youngest person to ever take a tour apparently. All of the people in our tour group enjoyed her.

 

After we finished the tour, we drove around town a little bit just looking at the beautiful homes. Interestingly, I saw a sign that said "Justin Morgan" and we stopped to read it.  It jogged my memory of a book I read as a child called "Justin Morgan had a horse."  Come to find out that Justin Morgan lived in Woodstock with his famous horse, Figure.   

 

We drove back to Rutland for lunch because the prices in Woodstock are through the roof.   

 

In other news, Dan got two deer so far, exactly one week apart.  Our freezer is half-full.  We process them ourselves and last year, we were keeping every last piece of meat on the deer, even if it had sinew and grossness in it.  This year, we are only harvesting the good meat.  That way our freezer is full of good stuff, not junk like last year.  Our hope is that Dan will be able to get one more before the season is up beginning of December. 

 

 

We found a $4 meat grinder at an antique store and tried using it on some of the meat and it worked really well!  I just made lasagna Sunday with the ground venison and it tasted just like beef.  I'm very happy about that, since we ran out of the beef we had bought from my sister about two months ago.  I was having to force myself to eat the ground venison we had left from 2016 (the year we paid to have the deer processed) because it tasted truly awful. 

 

 

 

This picture brings me great joy.  We had to go to Albany last week.  Besides the history in that city, the only good thing about Albany is the Mexican restaurant, Salsa Latina.  We went there and ordered our normal, 3 tacos.  Turns out it was Taco Tuesday, a new deal they just started, so we only paid $6 for both of us!  Wow...you can't beat that.  And the tacos were amazing. 

 

 

Like I said, this post is just a compilation of a bunch of stuff that we've been doing, so bear with me.  On Sunday evening after church, it was so chilly that I thought we should watch a Christmas movie.  We watched 'The Grinch Stole Christmas" and it was Gwen's first time watching a movie.  As you can see, she was enthralled. 

 

 

Other news include the loss of a family member.  One of our 20 chickens died last night.  It's still an unsolved mystery, but I couldn't find any signs of foul play. 

 

I am very much looking forward to visiting my family at the end of this month for Thanksgiving.  Keep your eyes peeled for another post soon!