Aren't I clever!

I had to buy Kaida some stuff from Babies R Us, including waterproof pads (that kid pees on the changing table several times a day). The pads and sleep sacks came in those heavy duty plastic envelopes. The kind with snaps that have a little hanger for display purposes.

I tried to think of something to do with them since they're pretty sturdy but I came up blank so I tossed them in the waste basket. But later that night I remembered all of the shoes that have been passed down to Kaida. They've been sitting in a shopping bag on the floor of her nursery for a long time.

These plastic envelopes seemed like the perfect solution so I dug them out of the trash and put them to use.

I'm so resourceful.

Blood

Today I gave blood.

There was a blood drive at church so I signed up. I haven't given blood since college. The main reason being that the Red Cross doesn't operate blood donation sites here, just blood drives. I looked them up right after we got married but couldn't find anything. A couple years after that I heard about a drive in the office park I was working at so I went to try to donate there. That's where I found out that Central Blood Bank does the collection in and around Pittsburgh. And that you can't donate blood until a year after you've visited the ruins in Mexico because of the chance of malaria.

I guess after that I didn't think about it again, I still didn't know where to go, and I had a job. And then I had a baby.

But now that I've donated with Central Blood Bank I'm sure they'll start hounding me and I'll learn all about the places I can go to donate.

Anyway. I don't remember it being quite so draining. I mean, I couldn't play in a soccer game after donating but I could walk up some stairs and stand around. After I carried Kaida upstairs to change her diaper I had to sit down. I guess I'm getting old. And it is lame.

So I think I've only donated at two other blood drives before (I would normally just go to one of the Red Cross's permanent sites) but this still seemed a little disorganized to me. I had an appointment for 11. I was 10 minutes early. They took me back to do my questions at 11:40ish. Why did I make an appointment if they were just going to take all the walk-ins ahead of me?

And their instructions weren't very clear. I understand that they say the same instructions a hundred times a day. But I only hear them once and if you're walking away from me and pointing at things while I'm on the other side of a wall from you, your meaning is not going to come across very well.

Maybe Blood Drives get the B-Team, especailly weekend blood drives.

I'm going to get some water now, and go to sleep.

New Roof!

The roofers came today to start our new roof. They started in the back since it's "walkable". They had to rip off two layers of old roof to get back down to the bare boards. That is very noisy business. The whole house was shaking sometimes.

They asked JR to go up in the attic to check if certain pipes are still connected inside the house, so I went with him. The boards that are usually underneath the shingles run across the roof from one side of the house to the other and there are big spaces in between them. So we could see them working and see the sky too.

We have boards instead of plywood for the floors too. If you look up at the ceiling/floor when you're in the basement you can see them. But even the floor boards seem to be put together tighter than the roof. It seems odd to me. But I'm not a builder, so maybe it makes sense.

We chose Colonial Slate for our shingles. The back part of the roof is so high up that you can't see it so I have no idea if they actually put any shingles up today or not.

Here is the house as it is now. Ok, more like 4 or 5 years ago.



And this is what it will hopefully look like, I'll post pictures once it's all done.
My DesignEyeQ™ Shared Project

Potato Kielbasa Skillet

I found a recipe for Potato Kielbasa Skillet on Recipe Shoebox through another website I follow.

JR said he'd eat it (I guess his love of kielbasa overpowers his hatred of wilted greens) so I put it on the list and made it for dinner tonight.

We both approved!

You mix together some brown sugar, mustard, vinegar, pepper, and thyme to add to the meat and potatoes right near the end and as I was dumping it in I was very worried. I was sure the sauce was going to ruin it. It smelled fantastic with just the kielbasa and potatoes cooking together and I couldn't imagine it tasting better.

But it did. It was really good.

Next time I'll do the whole pound of Kielbasa, since that's how it comes. And I made some notes to myself on the recipe. Like, start the bacon first, and, while the bacon is cooking chop up everything else you need. Since it comes together pretty quickly.

We think it would go nicely with the pear gorgonzola salad kit we can get from Giant eagle. Sadly they were out this week and I didn't think to check if they had a pear gorgonzola salad dressing by itself.

Anyway, yum!

CSH

This past weekend we went up to RIT to celebrate Computer Science House's 35th anniversary.

We hung out on floor. JR took me on a tour since I've only been there one other time. We saw a lot of people who were there when he was. There was a lounge set aside just for people to hang out and tell "remember when" stories.

In the evening there was a dinner in the SAU cafeteria. The food was ok, better than school food but not really fancy. RIT is a dry campus and the organizers forgot to submit the paperwork for drinks. I'm not sure if that means alcoholic drinks or soft drinks. 'Cause there were neither. Luckily the wait staff was very good about making sure that our water glasses were full.

We went back to Buffalo for the night. Everyone was like, oh wow, an hour and 20 minute drive? That's rough. But we drive it pretty frequently so we don't consider it very long. $20 in gas compared to $100 + for a hotel room. Seems like a pretty good deal to me. Plus the built in babysitters were pretty handy.

On Sunday we took Kaida back with us for an informal lunch. So Jenna and Baer, and Chris got to meet her. Brock and Erin didn't come on Sunday. I guess Brock wanted to meet his niece more than Kaida. I can't imagine why!
We had DiBella's for lunch. It was good but now that we have DiBella's here it's not quite as much of a novelty.

I think the organizers did a pretty good job. Especially considering that they're students there now. It's hard to think of everything to throw a party at your house even when you've done it a dozen times. Organizing something big like that is quite the feat.

It was a nice way to spend the weekend.

Holy Savings Batman!

Last week I wrote about our trip to Sam's Club

The membership cost us $40. So that finally gave us a reason to actually compare what things cost at Sam's Club vs. what they cost at Giant eagle and Target. We looked at the receipt and figured out the unit price of everything we bought.

Yesterday I was at Target so I took the list with me. I figured out the unit prices while I was in the store. This morning I figured out the difference and multiplied that out by the number of units we bought. I was really surprised by my findings.

I knew there was a difference, otherwise Sam's Club wouldn't exist but I didn't expect it to be so dramatic.

In our one trip we saved $147.51. If we subtract out the price of the membership we still saved $107.51. And that's just on Toiletries and cleaning supplies. I haven't done the grocery side of it yet. Hopefully those savings are equally as dramatic.

Our biggest savings were on razor blades, vitamins, and toothbrush heads. The vitamin savings alone almost paid for the membership.

There have been two things so far that we didn't save on by buying it at Sam's, tissues and my deoderant.

I also noticed that the savings differences were generally larger on Men's products. I have the feeling that they think men won't comparison shop. Good to know!

Cleaning

I started a new cleaning schedule/chore chart this week.




I found in on Home Ec 101

I've switched Wednesday and Thursday since we grocery shop on Thursday (And story time is on Wednesday and I don't think we could do both) but otherwise I've been able to pretty much stick to it. At least the big task. Sometimes the small task only gets partially taken care of.

But so far it's pretty tiring. I'm hoping that after I've gone all the way through once or twice the tasks won't be quite as tough since the built up dirt will be gone.

I'm also hoping that it will take a little less time. Kaida's been taking really long naps in the afternoon but I'm still not able to get everything done while she's asleep. So then I have to leave her to play by herself while I finish up. So I feel a little bad about that.

I guess finidng a home for everything (or getting rid of a bunch of stuff) would make dusting at least go a lot faster. Hopefully we can deal with that when we spring clean. Or if I magically find some extra time once I'm done cleaning!