Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Where did this month go?
We have an appointment tomorrow to take the Vue into Cedar Rapids and have the tow bar welded on. We are going to have to take both cars as, it will take all day and too far to come back home, so we will make a day of it. Not sure what we are going to do all day, I called one of my friends to let her know we would be in town, but haven't heard back from her. Guess maybe we might see if there is a movie we can go see, that ought to kill some time.
After getting home from our camping trip with Roger's brother Larry and wife Sherri, we have been trying to finish up with things here at home. We had ordered two new bathroom sinks and they came right before we left to camp, so Roger got them installed. The other project was to get the crack in kitchen ceiling fixed. We had a guy come to do it, he works on mobile homes all the time and when he was here to winterize the place last fall, he told us he could fix it. Well, he wasn't quite sure how he was going to do it, but ended up mounting a 1x4 on ceiling all the way across. Roger is now painting it. That will pretty much end all the fix it projects. Now I need to get out to garage with Roger and start sorting all his garage treasures (that's what he likes to call them).
I have been working on my crafts for the craft sales at our park over the winter. They have one every month and the table only cost me $3 each month. I have many crocheted items, manly bookmarks, butterflies, hanger covers and photo frames. I have also made tissue box cover with plastic canvas and these have photo frames on side. The other item I make is sun catchers made out of beads. These I learned how to make sometime ago and they take quite a bit of time to do as I have to drill the holes, cut the sticks, sting the beads, etc. I have just finished making some 34 of them. They are not all alike, I have cardinals, blue jays, USA hearts, hummingbirds, red hats, Canada flag, and hearts. I am now working on some more of the tissue boxes. Don't know what will be next, I made a list of everything I had left in Texas and that helps to decided what I need to make more of. I like to keep my hands busy, so it is craft, craft, craft.
I decide to look into Face Book as everyone seems to be doing it. I joined and can keep up with what the rest of family is doing. I have been able to see photos that I never would of seen if I hadn't joined and read about what family is doing. I also go hooked playing Farkle. Oh well, you only live once, might as well enjoy it.
We are not quite sure when we will be leaving Iowa for Texas. Roger has an eye appointment the 19th of Oct. so will have to be after that. I really wanted to leave earlier, but guess not. We are still waiting for the sale of our place to happen. Have one gal that wants it, but is getting a divorce so the money has not happened yet. She did line up for someone to come and evaluate it and they are suppose to come this afternoon. I hate this waiting till the last minute as if this is going to happen, I need to start packing. I am getting too old to try and get it done all in a time frame of a couple of weeks. I guess we are going to give her till the end of Sept. and if there is no down payment, we will pull it off the market and try again next spring when we get back. I have packed some things and have them sitting in garage. It is just hard to know what to pack and still make this place look lived in. I can't strip all the walls bare (yet).
Roger likes Bluegrass music and we missed the festival that was in Strawberry Point (Backbone) so I looked on line and found out the one in Central City is this weekend, so we are going to go to that. Will pack the lawn chairs, cooler and maybe I will take a craft to work on while listening to music. Should be a fun time and good to get away for a day.
"The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra."
Monday, August 10, 2009
Coralville Lake
After attending our grandson's graduation last May, and seeing the zoom my daughter got with her camera, Roger decided we needed a camera with a better zoom. Well, we got it and have been playing around with it while we are camping. All the pictures in my new album will be from the new camera. It is Nikon Coolpix P90. It has 12.1 Megapixels, Wide 24X zoom, 3 inch Vari-angle monitor and vibration reduction. It is going to take some time to get use to it. As you can see from my pictures, we have a ways to go.
From Coralville Lake |
We spotted these geese out on the lake our first day camping and got out the camera. Then we tried really zooming in on them. Remember, we have no tripod so found it was had to get a good focus. Here is a picture of geese with the zoom.
From Coralville Lake |
Not too bad, but still working on the zoom. Be sure to click on either picture to take you to rest of the photo's.
Roger's daughter (Jenny) and her three girls came by campground for a visit. They live in Muscatine so we don't see a lot of them. They went to the beach for a swim and then back here for hot dogs. Roger's son(Matt) and wife (Heather) came by with his boat and gave everyone a ride. The boat use to belong to Jenny's father in law and had ran for 15 years, so Jenny was glad get to get a ride in it.
From Coralville Lake |
From Coralville Lake |
I then tried to get a sunset pictures. The sun was setting behind some campers in a distance, and here is what I got. Not too bad for my first try.
From Coralville Lake |
Now I have the smart card in my purse and going to take it and Roger to Wal-Mart and show him how to get the prints made. He keeps telling me he wants prints to look at not just the computer. Do you think that has anything to do with the fact, he doesn't do anything on computer.
I must say, I like this new camera. We got it with the idea that Roger would like it and use it more. He needs a hobby and thought he would take more pictures this way. I think he is going to have to use it more to get use to it and learn the different settings one at a time. One of the things that is nice about it is, when I upload the pictures to Picasa, there is very little editing to do. Seems like the camera takes a great picture.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Check out the VUE
We did get most of our painting done. I posted a picture of our master bath last time, I took a new picture and I must say it turned out pretty good. I am not sure how many people will be happy with the color, but I like and they can always paint it after they buy the place. Here is the master bath now.
From Summer in Iowa |
It was really had to match the green counter and we didn't want to redo them. We have gotten new sink to install and Roger is working on that as I am typing this. The trip to find the sinks was and adventure all its own. Roger had called a mobile home place and found out there was a place in Davenport that sold mobile home parts, after checking, it was in Moline. We took off last week on Monday for our trip to get new sinks, got there and they don't carry the kind or shape we needed. You will notice in photo they are sort of a square shape. They sent us to a couple of other places and still no luck. After returning home, I googled "mobile home parts" and opened up the first site that was listed, went to "bath and there they were our sinks, they were even in the color we wanted............and only $19.95 each. Wow, we should of down that in the first place. I placed the order and they arrived here on Friday. We are moving right along with getting this place fixed up for someone else and hopefully we can sell it.
Last summer Roger put on vinyl siding and when he did that we closed off one of the doors to the mobile home. You see there were two doors in front, one to living area and one to bedroom right next to living room (I use that as my office). We really didn't like two doors almost right together and when we moved in here, we had a back door added off the kitchen, so didn't need the door in bedroom. After closing it off, we never finished it off on inside, only put some insulation up, now we have added paneling to back side and sides and are going to put shelves in the opening. It is an easy fix, but better for us then trying to sheet rock. Only one more fix to do after Rog gets the new sinks in, and that is the crack in ceiling from when they moved this mobile home here. That one is going to be hired out, hopefully real soon, as I want to advertise and have an open house to see about selling and time is running out before time to leave.
I guess I didn't tell the story about Roger selling his Mazda pickup. He had $750 on it and had some lookers but decided he needed to take it in and see about getting the catalytic converter removed or what ever it was he has going to do, it was clogged. The guy told him there was a problem with the brakes and it would cost him about $160 to fix. Well, he didn't want to put anymore into it, he wanted to get rid of it. He had a guy that had offered him $550 but Roger said he acted like a jerk and he would not sell it too him. He gave in and called the guy and in the end the guy jewed him down another $50. Ok, $500 in our pocket. A week or so later we had gone out to eat and were walking down the sidewalk when here comes his truck and pulls in a parking space right in front of us. It wasn't the same guy that had bought it so Roger ask the guy if he just bought the truck, he says yes and Rog wants to know what he paid for it, he tells the guy he just sold it. Well, the guy paid $1,100 for it. OUCH. After a long talk with this guy, and Roger is telling him some of the history of the truck and what needs to be done, we also find out the they guy is interested in the tow bar we have to go with it. We give him our name and phone number. He does call later and buys the tow bar from us. At least Roger gets another $50 for it.
Now Roger is feeling really low about loosing his truck so he starts thinking about what will make him happy and what he wants next. We start looking for a SATURN VUE. After some local looking I get on the computer and find one that he likes in Wisc, so we made a trip and bought a 2006 Saturn Vue. Here is a picture of it, now we have to get it set up for towing.
From Summer in Iowa |
Now if any of you readers are interested in buying our 2001 Saturn SL200, let me know.
Some of the other excitement in our lives is our trip to Clear Lake for the family picnic, we just got back from that. We are going to get the RV out and go camping the next week with Roger's brother and wife for a week, that should be fun and a break from the work around here. If you click on one of the photo's I posted it will take you to the rest of the album and you can check out the rest of our excitement, 40th Ann. party for one of Roger's friends, visit with grand kids, painting and others. Check it out.
Remember: Love is a little word; people make it big.
Monday, July 13, 2009
What to write about??
I sent the hand scanner I got off QVC, back to QVC. I just didn't like it and they have a 30 day return policy, so why not send it back? It wasn't doing me any good sitting in the corner. I am still scanning and editing photos in Picasa, I am up to 1995 now, not bad considering I started with the years I was married and raising my three girls, that was 1966. I put those all in one album and burned a DVD for each of my girls. Now I want to make a cover for it.
My crafts..........I finished the cro-hook afghan I was making. Wanted to make one for two of the granddaughter's for graduation next spring. Had one done and needed to make another one. Now with that done, I have started on my beaded sun catchers. Roger got me the sticks when he went to Menards and I am now marking where the holes go and then will go to garage and drill all the holes. Have six sticks and there are 116 holes each stick............WOW I'm tired just thinking of it. I am sending in an order for more beads, it should be here about the time I get all those holes drilled. Roger did buy me a small drill press and that is a big help.
We have had a few showings on your place here. It seems people have trouble getting loans for a mobile home. This last one seems like it was going to be the one, but we haven't heard back from her, she was going to bring her mother over on Saturday to look at it, but it was a no show. If we don't sell it this summer, will try again next spring when we come back home. We have been trying to get a few things done around here to make it better. Got some paint and decided to paint the master bath. It had a horrid rose wall paper on walls and really out dated. The bath room also has these green counter tops. It is really hard to match the counter tops (can't take them to store with us) so after trying a couple of times, decided to go with a light lavender. It was that or pink or yellow. I already had purple towels and rugs in there, so it was lavender. I must say it looks pretty good. Not sure how many other people are going to like it, but it is better then the roses. I am going back and doing touch up painting right now. I hate to rat on my hubby..........I've already told him this...........but he is a terrible painter. He wants to get in there and get it done in a hurry and the paint gets on too think and runs and then a mess. Even taping, he gets the tape on where it is covering part of the wall, so now it is back to touching up. Oh well, I have nothing but time. We are going to get new sinks and faucets for both bathrooms, but have to make a trip to Davenport for that. There is a place down there were we can buy mobile home items. The sinks are sort of a square shape and we don't want to replace counters so that is our best bet. I bet your asking, why not new counters if there is a green one in master bath.......let me tell you, it is a very odd shape and a lot of angle cuts and Roger is not good at that sort of thing............so just new sinks.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Senior moment
I have been going thru all our photo albums and pulling out photos. Started scanning them and putting them on computer then, make DVD's with them. It is quite a job, but when one is retired, we have all kinds of time. Once they are scanned, I edit them with Picasa and label all of them. I can't believe all the photos that have no writing on back to tell you who they are when they were taken. I came across this a lot when doing the old photo's of Roger's family and I don't know the people so really hard to label them. I need to get him to sit down with me and go through them with me........like that is going to happen. LOL My scanner will not work with vista and that is what I have on my lap top so I am using my desk computer to do the scanning. I was going to get rid of it, but when I found out I could not get a driver for this scanner to work with Vista, decided to keep the desk PC just for scanning. I have two computers in office running all the time, one scanning and one for my other work. I saw on QVC a while back, a small photo scanner that you can sit on couch and do your scanning while watching TV. Wow, that's what I need. I ordered it and it was great till the plastic sleeve the photos were to go in to do the scanning got streaked from going thru the scanner. After awhile the scans were a poor quality, so back to my old scanner.
I really need to get out may crafts and see what I need to make to take back down to Texas for the craft sales. I made a list of what I had before I left and I know I will need to order more beads for my sun catchers. Should do that this week as it will take a while to make out the bead order and then have them mailed to me. The rest of the things I can do as I want, but the beads need to be ordered. Not sure about the craft sales in Texas, I like doing them, but it seems I don't really sell that much, wondering if it is worth it. But for those of you who know me, I love doing my crafts and I need to keep busy.
Not much more news around Stanwood, I go for my 2 mile walk in the mornings then stay in where it is cool and work on my computer and some house work and crafts. What more can I say. Happy Trails to everyone and stay cool and stay safe.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Birthday
The rest of the week was taken up with dinner in Iowa City with my friend Janis and her hubby Jim, then on Wed. our friends from Mission stopped by to see our place. That was Dick and Darlene, Dick went to school with Roger in Clear Lake so they go wayyyyyyyyyy back. We also went out to eat with them. I bet I gained a few pounds this past week.
I started off this post with a heading of "Birthday" so I guess I better explain that one. For those of you that read this blog but don't know me all that well, Thursday the 11th was my 64th Birthday. It was spent at home, Roger got up and gave me his gifts and Matt and family came over in the afternoon with a card and a gift card. Then my daughter Sandra along with her hubby Brian and daughter Emily and I can't forget the 2 dogs came for supper and grilled out and made supper for us. She also made we a Watergate cake. I got a nice E card from my sister and a phone call later. I also got nice calls from my other two daughters, Kim in California and Janis in Colorado. I also got a nice card from my high school friend Janis. Thanks to all of you for remembering me and the cards and gifts.
Happy Trails
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Catching up
Roger put his 1990 Mazda pickup For Sale and we had quite a few looking at it, or knew somebody that would be interested, it is still sitting next to garage with the For Sale sign on it. We use to pull it behind our motor home and is set up for towing, even has the tow bar to go with it. We also placed a FOR SALE BY OWNER sign in our front and back yard, as we are going to try to sell this place. Have had some phone calls on it, but nothing to get excited about. Only one showing at this time. With the house up for sale, I have been doing some deep cleaning and decluttering. Roger says I watch to much HGTV and that is why I am doing all that. I say, what can it hurt. If we move we have to get all this stuff out anyway. Yesterday, I cleaned out our bedroom closet. I must say, the place looks pretty good, I would be interested in it if I were looking. Roger's worried people will not be able to get a loan on a mobile home, I told him, that wasn't his worry. If it happens great, if not, we will wait till it does. No hurry.
Every morning I turn on my computer and log onto the Internet, read my mail, go to the Good Sam website and sign in for free monthly giveaways........still haven't won anything and been doing it for over a year.........and then start reading all the blogs I follow. It is really fun to see where all our friends are now and what they are up to. I follow about five of them right now and I guess that is why I decided to write in mine this morning. Some of them do not write every day and I start wondering what they are doing, so guess I should keep mine up for the few people who read mine.
We were in Cedar Rapids on May 19th and at Menard's (home improvement store) and decided to get us a counter top ice maker. It was on sale $98 so we got it and took it home. After reading the little book of instructions that came with it, we decided to get some distilled water to put thou it the first few times. After getting the water later in the week, we plugged it in and gave it a try. I say try as that is what it was. The darn thing kept coming on with a red light telling us to add more water. Well the book said to turn it off, wait 3 min. then turn it back on, the water was working its way up into the machine. So this we did.......and did.........and did.......and did.....and did. You get the idea, we did that for over an hour, then called the help phone number in the book. The tec told us to take it back, it was not working. This we knew, that's why we called. We took it back to the store and they didn't have any other ones so they credited our debit card back. They did call the store on the other side of town and they had one. On our way home we stopped at the other store. They had one left however.............it was not for the same price we paid before. I asked the clerk about it, he said it has never been at that price. After much go around with them, and a number of people to talk to, they gave us that one for the same price we had at the other store. There should of been a flash of light go off for us, why was it so cheap at other store ( didn't work). We took the new one home and tried it right away and guess what, it made about 4 ice cubes then started doing the same thing the other one did. WE TOOK IT BACK TOO. We won't buy one of that brand again........EMERSON.
Roger is so excited, he went to a foot DR. place in Cedar Rapids on Monday and they did measuring of his foot and told him they think they can get him in regular shoes. He won't have to wear the Frankenstein boots. He goes back next Monday and they we set him up. They had to get approval for new shoes from his DR as he is diabetic and Medicare pays for a new pair every year. He only has one pair of shoes to wear and if they get wet, or something happens to them, he is out of luck. Hope it all works out for him.
I will keep reading all the blogs and if any of you get close, please stop by to say hi. Till later............Happy Trails