Posted by Janice on February 5, 2010
I absolutely love living in rural Virginia. I love looking out from my living room window at the cows, sheep, and horses grazing in the fields across the street. I love how quiet the nights are, and how easily I can see the stars because the is virtually no light pollution. But let me tell you, with this blizzard we just had, we had a power outage of seven hours, and even after the power came back on the cable television and Internet did not come back on for almost twenty-four hours!
My entire family was just about climbing the walls because we had no Internet access for so long! I think I’ll be checking out the wildblue satellite internet services to see what their rates are. I don’t want to be without Internet again! I can’t believe how dependent my family has become on it for so many functions – entertainment, communications, paying bills, shopping….. We depend on it so much!
Now that the Internet has come back up on line, the entire family has parked themselves in front of their respective computers. Watching shows, checking their emails, playing games. I have to make sure that the bills I needed to pay got paid! I hope I didn’t miss any deadlines!
Posted by Janice on January 23, 2010
I wanted to bake a cake earlier today, and I remembered that I had a couple of different cake mixes in the cupboard. So rather than dashing to the store to buy a mix I thought I just find the mixes I already had and bake one of them up. I was mortified to find that both the cake mix and can of frosting had expiration dates of August 2007! So I threw them away. Rummaging around I found more cake mix and frosting that hadn’t expired yet so I pulled them out onto the counter. Reading the directions, it calls for oil. Looking in the pantry I pulled out the jar of oil and see that it is almost empty. Not quite sure I’ll have enough, so I went out to the “auxillary pantry” to pull out a full one. That was was pretty far back on the shelf, so I decided to check the expiration date on that as well. Darn if it was expired too! Not by as much, but expired just the same.
I guess that means that it is past time for me to go through the cupboards and check the expiration dates on all of the goods and throw them out! Not a fun job, but one that needs to be done. I hate wasting food!
Posted by Janice on January 17, 2010
My husband has been encouraging me to start my own business. He’s heard that there are a lot of business grantsavailable for women entrepreneurs. It’s nice to know that he has such confidence in me! The thing is, I’ve got so many different skills, talents and interests that it is hard for me to pick which one to try to turn into a business!
Although I’m good at a lot of things, I’m not sure that there is a sustainable market for the things that I do! Once I do figure out what I want to do, though, I will certainly be turning to the National Institute of Small Business Grants for guidance on where to find the right business grants for the business I want to start! I’ve taken a lot of college courses on running a business, and to be perfectly honest at this stage of my life I’d much rather be retiring than starting a new business!
Posted by Janice on January 2, 2010
My New Year’s resolution? Hmmm…. I really hate to make one! OK, how about this one – to try to shop more frugally. And combine trips to town so that I don’t waste a lot of gas and time by making extra trips into town. No, I’m not going to resolve to lose weight! The doctor says I’m at the ideal weight so even though I’d rather be about ten pounds lighter I’m not going to put myself through that aggravation! Um, and to try to get more sleep! I haven’t been getting enough sleep lately, and that makes me cranky! That’s a good one – sleep more! What are YOUR resolutions?
Posted by Janice on December 30, 2009
I love to give unique gift baskets to people for presents. I like to find out what their interests are and then try to come up with a gift basket full of goodies that are related to their interests. For example, if it is a woman who loves to experiment with colognes I might give her a gift basket full of different sweet scented body lotions and creams, and maybe some nice scented soaps to go along with it.
For a health nut, it might be a basket of fruit. For people who enjoy chocolates, it would be a basket full of a wide variety of chocolates. As for me, I love cookies to snack on. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t eat a lot of cookies every day, but I do have a sweet tooth, and chocolate gives me heartburn! So when I think of a sweet tooth I have to think outside of the candy box of chocolates! That’s why I think this gift basket of a variety of cookies would be a perfect gift basket for someone with a sweet tooth like me! The Scottish shortbread and the danish butter cookies are cookies I know I already love! And I see some other cookies that sound interesting to try. Cookie Monster would go crazy over this basket, don’t you think?
Power outage