Happy Thanksgiving

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

I hope you are all enjoying the day with your family.

Before and After - tables

This is the old, falling apart, piano bench that I am replacing. When my grandkids pretty much demolished the bench when goofing off around the piano, it became a place to display some plants under the window. Now, the bench was about on its last legs before the grandkids came so it wasn't totally their fault.

One day not long ago, I happened to be looking over the Target ad online and a small table caught my eye. When I checked the measurements I found that it was almost exactly the same size as the bench only taller. Price wasn't too bad, but I wasn't quite ready to spend the money. Later it was on sale, plus free shipping, plus an extra 15% off, and I ordered it via Ebates to get another 2.5% off! I thought that was probably the best I was going to do price wise, so it was ordered.

I had a little assembly to do but that was just screwing in some short bolts to attach the metal legs. Easy peasy.

Here is the result:

I am very happy with it. There are also 2 drawers to fill. They are still empty as I have not figured out what will go in them. I probably should get some nice coasters for the rare occasions I might have company that wants to set a drink there.

Now, if you come to my blog expecting some beautiful house and furniture, I am sure you are disappointed.  Things aren't the way I would like them to be, but it is the best I can do with what I have and what I can afford, plus my limited energy and ability to move around, not to mention that I am renting and am limited as to what I am allowed to do.

The walls look light blue in the picture, but they are white - every room has white walls. I hate white walls! I would love to paint the living room a light coffee latte, but I am not sure that color would work with the tan carpet which is more like a rose beige. Not my favorite.

I enjoy other blogs that show all the neat decorating they have done, but that isn't happening here except in my dreams. I barely have any surfaces to put even my old displays out that I loved. I would like to get some new accessories but am not sure what I can find that I like plus afford, will work in like I want it to. Some people have a real knack for that and I would love to have them come to my house and arrange things! But first, I think I need to keep working at decluttering and that has come to a standstill right now. One of these days. . . . . .

Watching Your Money

Check your store receipts!! It is really important this time of year especially, when stores are busy and you are busy trying to buy gifts and extra food for the holidays coming soon. Not only check to make sure you were charged the sale price and not regular price, but check everything. Something might get rung up more than once and the cashier didn't catch it to void it. And I have recently been reading of scams where the cashier will have it show on the receipt that you asked for extra cash when paying with a credit or debit card, but you didn't ask and you didn't get the extra cash. Instead the cashier pocketed it.

Last week I did a big shop at Walmart and thought the total was quite a bit higher than I expected. It was $274.18! I was a bit shocked when she told me, but since I usually have much more than $100 total, and have had amounts above $200-250 occasionally, I just thought things added up faster than I thought. I know prices keep going up little by little.

Luckily, I scan the barcodes of all my purchases for a survey company. I have to report the price marked on each item and if it was on sale, used a coupon and what its face value was, etc. So when I got to the day-old muffins that were reduced to $2.02, and saw that I was charged $87.07, I was both very irritated and very relieved. I was relieved that I had not spent that much money and would be getting a refund. But I was very irritated that it happened at all, and that I had to make the trip back to set it straight. It is 11 miles one way to the store from my house. Not a great distance, but all total, about 1 hour of my time and the gas at these expensive prices.

This happens quite often in this store with the day-old bakery markdowns. They just don't scan right. Most of the checkers are aware of this and double check to make sure the right price came up, or they key in the numbers, or scan with the hand scanner. Evidently this gal did not do that, and I was busy unloading my electric cart and not in position to see the screen for the price as she scanned. Anyway, this should have been caught at the register.

I asked for a full refund since I had to make the trip back to the store, and that was only the $2.02 that the muffins were marked, which I thought was reasonable, right? Customer service said they had to get the manager's approval and asked if I wanted to wait. I most certainly did. A floor manager happened to come up and he approved it immediately, no questions asked, and was very nice about it. So I got the $87.07 credited back to my account and I left.

To make this story even longer (LOL), when I paid for those items I put them in the car and went back in the store because I forgot to buy the cat food Felix loves and had been out of for 2 days already. He would not be happy if I didn't bring it home. I had also looked at microwaves earlier as my old one had stopped working, but thought I would wait until another trip. But since I was in the store again for cat food, I just went down the appliance aisle and made my choice and went to the fast lane with my 3 items. As I was ready to go out the door the greeter stopped me and asked for my receipt. By this time I really needed to sit down. I said something about having to ask because of the cat food under the microwave and he said no. They are now stopping everyone that is carrying something out that isn't in a bag. That is certainly a good idea this time of year and I had no problem with that. None of my things could fit in a bag anyway.

While I was stopped there as he checked, a felt a cart roll into my back. Not hard, just rolled up to me. I turned and it was empty and nobody there. But a guy walked around me carrying a large storage tote. So the greeter yelled at him to wait. Apparently the guy didn't appreciate that I stopped in front of him, so purposely rolled the cart to me and walked around. Why didn't he go around me with the cart and leave the cart out in the area where the carts are kept like other people do?? So I can only assume he was not a happy camper.

Anyway, the store is being vigilant in trying to stop shoplifting, but they can rob you at the checkout. Be on the alert!

Have no fear. . . I'm still here!

Yes, I am still here, wallowing in clutter and undone work. After working many, many hours for 2 weeks on genealogy, everywhere I look I see things that need to be done, and have a long list in my mind of things that must be done and things I want to do. There just are not enough hours for me to do them all. . . . at least not for me since I don't move very fast. I wish I could make my body move as quickly as my fingers when I type.

My trip down Ancestor Lane proved to be quite interesting. I went much further back on some branches of my tree than I ever expected to. My dad's side bore the most fruit and was able to go back to the 1600's before coming to a dead end. There I discovered that I am not 99.9% pure German! First I found Dutch ancestors on both of my dad's side, and since I married a true Dutchman almost 25 years ago, and moved into a very Dutch county here in Iowa, I was tickled pink! No wonder I have always felt at home here and have enjoyed learning more of the Dutch-American culture (especially their foods).

Then, as I worked further back, I discovered I also had some ancestors that came from Switzerland. And the last ones really floored me. I have ancestors that came from Norway and Denmark!! I was even lucky to find a couple of short biographies of two many-times great grandfathers and one stated that he had been a wagon maker. I think these two men came from Norway, but will have to check back on that. There are so many facts and dates that I covered that I have not absorbed them all yet.

Now, back to the list of things that need to be done. Am I the only one who looks at all the work to be done and am rendered useless? I feel overwhelmed, and then just shut down. I end up sitting at the computer and playing games and/or checking Facebook. I haven't even dared to check Pinterest for a long time. I get so many delicious looking and sounding recipes shared on Facebook these days, along with craft ideas and quilting, etc. I believe Facebook has become the new Pinterest!

I have also been preoccupied with the state volleyball tournament and state football tournament games this week. I don't know who thought they had to schedule both tourneys during the same week! Some schools end up with teams at both events. How are the fans supposed to support their teams? They can't be in two places at once. For instance, yesterday afternoon two local schools played the championship games. One was a town 16 miles from here, in our conference, who played and won their championship game. And after that game, the other team was one of the Christian high schools in my town that played, but lost the championship game. An hour after the volleyball game started, a football game started with a good team from another town 20 miles away, and also in our conference. That was a semi-final game so they will be playing in the championship game next week. Another team in our conference, from a town 10 miles away, will be playing their semi-final football game later this afternoon. The football games are televised so I watch them. I think the volleyball games were on TV last year too, but for some reason were not this year. At least I was unable to find them, so listened to them on the radio. It just isn't the same as seeing them. Now, none of these games involved the same school but it was quite possible that it would happen since all of these schools have sent teams to state at one time or another for every sport, and some years the girl's basketball team and the boy's team from one school, plus their football team all make it to state the same year. Add in the volleyball team, speech team, and any other contest and chances are good that things will overlap.

I never had an interest in volleyball until my granddaughter played in high school. Then I attended most of her games and got to love it. We didn't have volleyball in the school I attended so many years ago. Those games can get really intense! I also love to watch them at the Olympics, both regular volleyball and beach volleyball.

This was going to be just a short post, but you know how the words keep coming for me even when I try to be short. I do have some other things to write about for other posts so keep checking back. They may be sporadic for awhile until I get things a little more back to normal around here. Normal. Just what is normal? I think inactivity is the normal for me, to be honest! But now I really do have to try and get some cleaning and putting away done before that football games starts, because I know I won't feel like doing much after that is done.

Catch you all later!