Happy New Years

Happy New Year!  Joe made us a supper of shrimp, cheese/crackers/sausage, baked whitefish and collard greens (my favourite part of supper) for supper along with some wine and then champagne later.  This year we actually stayed up to watch the ball drop.

Today I thought I would share the top posts this year

1. 5lb. ground beef – This is the most popular search that brings people to my site.  People seem to be very worried about buying ground beef in a tube.  Or maybe they want to know what someone would possibly do with that much ground beef.  I don’t know, but it was popular!

2. Saturday, November 29th, 2008 – This post was before I added words, when I was just taking a picture everyday.  Sometimes people click on ‘random post’ for my blog and this is the post that word press almost always chooses.  I don’t know why but it is a bit annoying! Although, Buddy and Ocean sleeping together is pretty cute.

3. Dead-Leaf Moth – I’m guessing people found a similar moth and wanted to know what it was!  I don’t know what it was either but it was pretty interesting to look at!

4. Lazing About – Another not very interesting post… we had a lazy day and I wrote about it. Probably wouldn’t be the first post I would pick, but lots of people did! It is always nice to have a lazy kind of day.

5. Snowshoeing - This is from last year when I tried to take Cora out snowshoeing.  It was awful and no fun and I haven’t tried since.  Now that she is older maybe she would be more fun and better at going along.  I don’t feel the urge to try again yet though.

6. Two Not-Pepperoni Pizzas – I think people must have been looking for different types of pizza to try here.  I like almost all other types of pizza but my favourite is still just pepperoni, or pepperoni with olives.

7. 1920′s Record Player – Lots and lots of people like to read about Joe’s old record player! We don’t play it too often but every once in awhile we’ll load it up and play some records on it while we’re cooking supper or something.

8. Gun Cleaning - A lot of people were also interested in Joe’s gun cleaning.  Maybe they wanted to know how to do it, or wanted to find someone to do it for them.  Who knows!

9. Old-Fashioned Snow Roller – A neat little part of the history of the area here.  Plus, Cora is in this post and she is super tiny.  We were on an outing to try and socialize her.

10. Crockpot Chicken, Stuffing and Sweet Potatoes – I’m still not a huge fan of sweet potatoes but we have cooked them in much, much better ways since we tried to make these fries so at least now I’ll eat them!

11. Soap Nuts Review - I still like the soap nuts, and I especially like the idea of them being a bit better for the environment etc. but I did learn that after awhile they just can’t compete with regular laundry soap to get our workout clothes clean.  Now I often use Tide Sport which seems to get our workout clothes much cleaner! I still think soap nuts are perfectly good for regular, lightly soiled clothes.

Our Trip to Marquette

Today Joe and I went to Marquette.  We’ve only been to Marquette one other time, and that wasn’t on purpose… we were supposed to be going to a Draft Horse Show but we missed it by a week and since we were already halfway we just kept going.  This time we purposefully went to Marquette for the afternoon.  We stopped at the feed store for some supplies, we could have gotten them here but thought we’d go there for a change, and then stopped by a music store and wandered around Big Lots although we didn’t find anything we had to have at either of those places.

We went to Target next to use a gift card we had and ended up buying some kitchen items we liked.  After Target we went to Lowe’s because we also have a gift card for that store but after wandering around we decided to save it for now since nothing called to us irresistibly…. We’re thinking we may put it towards the creation of a kitchen island that we’ve been wanting.

Finally, we stopped at Best Buy and Gander Mountain mostly just to look around but Joe did find a couple of CD’s he has been wanting at Best Buy.  We ended our trip with some Culver’s drive through and then headed back to Dollar Bay.  It was a fun trip and more shopping than we usually do!  Our dogs were a bit mad when we got home after their supper time, but they forgave us eventually.

Joe picked these out for the chickens when he saw them at the feed store… technically for ‘insect eating wild birds’ our domesticated, everything-eating chickens just loved them! I thought about trying to give each chicken a worm just to make sure they all got at least one but as soon as I started spreading them around the chickens went wild and I think they all made sure to get some… no one was left out

A Player Piano and Temporary House Guest

Today Joe got a free player piano!  He has been looking at them for awhile, and this particular one was available awhile ago but then someone else beat Joe to the ad.  Fortunately that person ended up not wanting the piano so Joe got to have it!

The piano is from about 1908-1909 and was built by the Aeolian piano company out of New York.  For how old it is it is in pretty darn good shape, and it shouldn’t take too terribly much to get it working again.  It does play of course, but some of the keys are broken and it needs tuning very badly.

As Joe was unloading the piano, with the help of his friend (it is extremely large and heavy), a wandering cat passed by and stopped to say Hello.  Joe didn’t recognize the cat, so he brought it inside for awhile to decide what to do with it.

Temporarily named Snuffy, It turned into a She and she ate a big bowl of food… got some pets and then we kicked her out   She seemed well fed and healthy, her coat was nice and she smelled a bit like perfume, she was friendly and tame and oh so sweet… so we decided that she must be someone’s cat even though we don’t recognize her and she isn’t one of our immediate neighbors cats.  We put food and water and a cozy bed outside for her and she saw it and then went out for a stroll and we lost track of her.

Update on Snuffy: Kitty has come back to eat at least once that I actually saw her, and a few other times food was gone from our outside bowl so I think she came back multiple times for a snack.  We still think she belongs to someone but we’re not sure if she is lost, or just visiting us because she knows we’re suckers and will feed her.  Either way I’ll keep food out for her and keep an eye out for her.  I’m tempted to put a collar on her with a note for her owners asking them to call me and tell me to quit feeding their cat That way I’d know she lived close by and was just visiting and not lost and/or homeless.  If she is homeless she is welcome inside… we just don’t want to steal someone’s cat! For now at least she has a cozy spot to sleep and a bowl of food always outside for her (water just freezes so I quit doing that)… just incase!