Category Archives: Home & Garden

Wine Storage

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I feel like our basement is constantly a work-in-progress, with a purpose that is constantly changing, LOL. Earlier this year we bought three 50-bottle(ish) wine coolers. One is in our dining room, and two are in the basement. We have a larger wine stash than most people we know, LOL, but some of my wine-blogging friends have even more so that keeps me from feeling too weird about it 😉 Anyway, while I would love to join a wine of the month club, it does not seem to make sense because we just have so much.

Anyway… now Drew is going back to one of his original ideas and is hoping to to open up the area under the basement stairs for a mini-cellar. It was open when we put the offer on this house, but for some reason the builder decided to throw sheetrock up and close it up. It wasn’t really necessary. So I think D. is just going to remove that bit of drywall and arranged the two basement coolers under the stairs. This way they will be out of the way and give us a bit more room for storage, opening up the area where they currently are.

Lotsa projects around here. Always lotsa projects, LOL…

Killer Deals!

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I am just having the Best Week Ever when it comes to finding deals. Today at Target they had the Franklin-Covey organizer refills that I wanted… on clearance!. I had a great CVS run (details on Saturday). And earlier this week, also at Target I found a pretty new plaid shower curtain for the upstairs bath. I like the one up there now. It’s yellow with a floral print and it’s really nice, but we’ve had it for probably eight years now and I would like to switch it out for a while. The new one was marked down to $6! Yay! As Drew mentioned in a recent blog entry, one of our winter projects is a quick bathroom makeover upstairs. I think the only other think I’d like to get is new cabinet door hardware. The vanity is just a typical “contractor’s special” so a couple new knobs would dress it up. Should be a quick project, but I think it will really look nice!

Home Organizers

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I love organizing. And reorganizing. So over the last week or so I’ve decided to update my household organizers. OK, I guess the knitting one doesn’t really count as a “home organizer” per se, but having all of my Internet patterns printed and filed sure beats my previous system of disorganized bookmarks in my Web browser. Naturally the first thing I wanted to do was pick out pretty paper for the covers. Easy! Especially since Michael’s had a sale last week. Then I bought a bunch of dividers at Walmart. I can never find what I want there, though. I thought the dividers would probably be near the pens and pencils, right? No. They were next to the shipping boxes. Of course, that makes perfect sense! [/sarcasm].

At any rate, I did find them and buy some. The only bad thing is that they are smaller than my pages which kind of defeats the purpose of dividers. Sigh. They’ll do for now, though. It was a huge task working on my recipe binder, but I think it was really worth the effort. Not only did it cut way down on a mountain of magazines, but now I might actually be able to find recipes quickly! I’m still finishing up the Household Organizer, but at least now all the take-out menus, warrantees, and things like that are stuck in it. Next week I’ll finish it up. The School Binder is pretty self-explanatory. I made it last year (though I just got around to the pretty paper 🙂 ). I keep a copy of the school calendar, communications with the teacher, receipts for extracurricular activities, etc. It has come in handy so many times!

I do have one more organizer, but I’m thinking of writing an entire post about soon: my coupon binder. Since I started playing the “drugstore game” in January, I developed a need for an efficient coupon system. My index card box just wasn’t working. I’ve been using the binder system for a little over a month and I’ve found it to be worth the time investment of filing everything because finding the coupons I need, and culling expired ones has become so simple!

What kinds of systems (if any) do you use for home organization or coupon organization?

Weird Weekend

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mum's the word This whole weekend has just been a weird one. It started yesterday morning. I was up in our bedroom getting my clothes for the day when I noticed an ambulance turn around in the driveway across the street. This was minutes after I’d seen a flatbed tow truck on the road. I put my flip-flops on and went outside to ask Drew (who had been stacking firewood) if he heard anything. He hadn’t. I walked to the bottom of our driveway and looked down the street and discovered there had been an accident! A car had gone off the road and crashed in our woods. Drew and I stood by the road watching them pull the car out and telling drivers that they couldn’t get through (unless they wanted to wait).

Afterwards, Drew walked down to check it out and was talking to one of the officers. They think the guy fell asleep while driving and just went off the road. The driver was OK, but pretty banged up. I’m not sure if he was from the area or what, but hopefully if he wasn’t he had some kind of travel medical insurance. But that’s not all. The night before, a pickup had spun out and crashed into the woods on the other side of the street! Though I think that incident had more to do with speed and a wet road. The speed limit on the street is 35 MPH, and cars regularly drive in excess of 55 MPH. The officer mentioned that they’ll see about putting a radar unit on this end of the road and I hope they do. We’re far enough away from the road that I don’t worry about the boys running down there, but it’s a very rural area and there are plenty of deer and wild turkeys running around. I wish people would use their common sense.

After that all happened I read an e-mail from my editor, who had given me the wrong deadline. I had to completely rearrange my plans yesterday morning so I could crank out two feature articles. Plus, it’s been so muggy because of Hurricane Kyle (though I was joking with my dad the humidity is here because I just put flannel sheets on the beds, LOL).

Other than that it’s been an OK weekend. Yesterday I bought two baskets of mums for our front entrance (though they are not the ones in this photo — those are in one of my flower beds). Maybe on Wednesday I’ll go and get some cornstalks to tie to the front stairs and place the baskets of mums at the bottom. The leaves are really starting to change, especially with the rain we’ve gotten in the last couple of days, so I want to make the outside of our house look festive!

Hope you all have enjoyed your weekends and that your week is off to a good start!

Sneezing My Way Through The Day

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Ah yes… the first cold of the season. It hit me yesterday 🙁 Actually, Tuesday night I started to feel under the weather and had a terribly sore throat, and when I woke up well… it was downhill from there. But my amazing husband did all the cooking and offered to watch Noah so I could make a run to Shop Rite. I didn’t really feel like it, but there were a couple really amazing sales I wanted to take advantage of before the weekend. I went to bed early last night and I feel a bit better today. I am still sniffly and not on top of my game, but I’m in much better shape than yesterday! So how about a bullet list of what is new at Chez Carol? 🙂

  • Today is Jake’s open house at school. He absolutely loves 1st grade and Drew and I have really noticed a change from last year. Maybe it’s because a few, er, “excitable” children are in a different class this year. But he is calmer and seems more focussed, so that’s great. Hopefully there won’t be any surprises from his teacher!
  • This weekend I am hoping we can all go and pick apples and raspberries at Greig Farm. I’ve got a baking itch that only apple crisp can scratch!
  • Drew has laid out the bluestone hearth for our wood stove and it is going to look so nice! Just a couple weeks until it is installed. I can’t wait.
  • Which reminds me that I need to order our sectional soon. We saw a very cool one that has built-in cup holders and recliners, but we’re not really looking for home theater seating, LOL. My style is a little more traditional. The one we’re getting is a sage green and has a chaise on one side. Oh, it’s going to be so wonderful in the winter to curl up with an afghan, the fire going in the wood stove, a cup of tea or cocoa, all while knitting or reading a good book! Anyone want to join me?
  • Speaking of books, I have let my curiosity get the best of me and I reserved a copy of Twilight by Stephenie Mayer. I first heard about it over on Sandra’s blog and then my friend e-mailed telling me that I HAD to read them. (She and I were voracious V.C. Andrews fans back in middle and high school!). Of course, there are something like 75 holds for the book in the Mid-Hudson system so it might be a while, LOL!

I guess that is about it. Oh, before I forget, today is the last day for my Holiday Giveaway! And a special hello to anyone finding their way over here from Monica’s wonderful blog, The Homespun Heart! She is writing a wonderful series on Christmas crafts and I am going to make the felted dryer balls she wrote about today.

Well, off to get some ironing done!

Genius!

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There is certainly something to be said about the quality of old homes vs. new homes. Don’t get me wrong — I love my house, I really do. But we are discovering that the builder was not exactly… uh… top-notch. Last night Drew was ready to pull up the bluestone hearth in front of the fireplace. We were hoping to salvage it as a single piece to use elsewhere. If it had been on a piece of backing board it would not have been that much work. Of course, we discovered that the slate was glued directly to the plywood floor. Ugh… It was impossible to get it up in one piece, but Drew was able to carefully get it up in chunks that we can use outside for a path, at least. Still… disappointing.

Oh, and then there was the electric socket that we learned was behind the fireplace too (remember that the corner of the room had been blocked off. Maybe it wasn’t a fire hazard, but I’m not sure! At any rate, it is all open now and I feel good about that.

Crazy.

Pavement: not just a great band

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mosaic6088096.jpg

I’ve been wanting to pave our driveway for oh… about four years now. But when we were trying to sell the house, we figured why bother? It wasn’t worth spending all that money if the house was going to be someone else’s. But when we decided to take the house off the market, we made our driveway a priority this year. And today they did it! We hired Briggs Paving out of Poughkeepsie and they were just awesome! They arrived sharply at 8 AM. The crew was incredibly courteous and happy to answer questions. They did an A1 professional job and we are absolutely thrilled with the results. (The other two paving companies we set up estimates with never even showed up for those estimates!) I just wanted to spread the word on the off chance someone from the Hudson Valley was researching pavers. Briggs is top-notch.

Anyway, clearly I am a big dork by how excited I am over our driveway, but it really is something I’ve been wanting for a while. At the end of the week the boys can have a blast playing out there. I know they will love the fact that Big Wheels rides will no longer be so bumpy 😉

I have a whole set of photos on Flickr if you’re interested.

Long Weekend

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I hope you all had wonderful Memorial Day holiday weekends (applicable only to those in the U.S., though). Ours was really nice and I’m trying so hard to get back into the swing of things today. Yesterday we went to the parade over in Rhinebeck, like we do every year. It was a lot of fun because Rhinebeck Little League and a local karate school marched so Jake saw a few of his friends. (Little League assigns teams by zip code, not school district, so he got put in a different league with a few other kids from this side of town.) I feel like everyone was throwing even more candy than ever before. Seriously — it was like Halloween, only you didn’t have to go door-to-door! The weather was just gorgeous — an absolutely perfect day for a parade. After it was over we had lunch at Del’s (a local drive-in type of restaurant). We thought it was going to be packed, but we were one of the first people there. We then realized that the way the roads were closed off, it didn’t make it easy to get over there, so most of the weekenders probably lunched right in town. Meanwhile, we enjoyed some yummy hot dogs, cheese fries and soft-serv ice cream cones. So good!

After lunch we went to Home Depot for more pavers. Drew is making a small patio up by the kids’ swingset. We have a small bistro set up there and the patio blocks will look so pretty. We came home and set up the pool for the boys and they splashed around while we enjoyed gin & tonics. For dinner I make ribs, grilled pineapple, and cole slaw. It was just a fun, relaxing day.

Now I’m trying to tackle my to-do list. I’ve got one item crossed off (using one of my trusty personalized pens, of course). Does that count for anything? I really need to rally though and get some of this stuff done. I will probably order a pizza for dinner tonight because today is our first CSA pickup!!! The farm is just down the road from where we usually get pizza, so that will work out great. I’ll update later with a photo of the delicious veggies in our first distribution. I can’t wait!

How to save pyjama bottoms and make something cute

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ragamuffin garland

A couple years ago, my brother and sister-in-law (before they were married) went to The Cape and brought back Jake these super cute pyjama bottoms from The Black Dog. Jake loooved these pj pants and wore them all the time. In fact, he wore them out. Somehow he managed to wear the knees so thin that one eventually tore and really it didn’t make sense to sew it up. But because he loved them so much I didn’t throw them away.

The other day I was reading one of my favorite new blogs, Nesting Place, and I saw her post with a how-to for this adorable Ragamuffin Garland. Instantly I knew why I had saved those pj bottoms: to make this garland! So this morning I got down to business and tore up the pants along with an old pair of my jeans, a onesie from when the boys were babies (::sniff!::), some fabric remnants, and ribbon pieces. I tore and tied and tore and tied and attatched a couple clothespins and voila! I had made my very own super cute ragamuffin garland. I ran upstairs to hang it over Jake’s bed:

Ragamuffin garland over Jake's bed


I can’t wait until he comes home from school. I think he’ll get a kick out of it. Plus, he can hang photos or artwork from the clothespins. I am going to make one for Noah and I might also make one for the kitchen. Heck, I might make these everyone I know because they are really easy and totally adorable! (Well, I guess you have to like shabby chic/cottage living type decorating.) Now I’m going to raid all my bags of clothing donations…

Someone Hand Me A Box Cutter!

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Seriously, we have a HUGE accumulation of shipping boxes in our garage that I need to cut up for recycling. A lot of them are from packages we’ve received in the mail, but not all. We had a lot of stuff already packed away when we were trying to sell our house, and now that we’ve unpacked most of them… well, you can just imagine. It’s just such a hassle and I am dangerous with a box cutter so I keep putting it off. But at some point, we’d like to be able to put both vehicles in the garage again!

At least I’m finally making a dent in our donations pile. Yesterday, Drew’s mom had Noah for the day so while Jake was at school I ran a bunch of errands including dropping off 5 bags of clothes, 2 boxes of old dishes, and 1 stack of brand-new dishpans (I have no idea what I had planned to use those for!) at Goodwill. We still have like 4 or 5 boxes of books, and a lot of baby stuff. The baby stuff I am hedging on (no, not because we’re thinking about it — nope, no way). Some of it I’m hesistant to donate just in case someone close to us has a baby in the near future. Sigh… what to do? At any rate, I really want to clear that side of the garage out this week because it’s making me crazy!