Jerry Loggins

 I have to say that my wife’s favorite time of year is Christmas.  She seems to be planning for Christmas all year long.  She loves to make ornaments as gifts for her friends and relatives to put on their Christmas Trees.  Some years she will knit a lot of ornaments, some years they are crochet, sometimes she crafts them out of beads, or empty paper towel tubes.  One year she made some little fairies out of artificial poinsettia flowers and pipe cleaners to put on the trees.  Another year she painted burnt out light bulbs and made them look like beautiful Victorian ornaments.  And yet another she painted frozen orange juice lids to look like snowman faces! 

My wife never ceases to amaze me with her creativity.  She has made so many ornaments for our own house that we have had to put up three Artificial Christmas Trees in our own house just to display all of the ornaments she has made!  And of course, we have to have one that also has ornaments that were given to us by other people, or that we bought because we liked them ourselves.

Even so, we seem to be having trouble finding enough space for all of the ornaments.  So we’ve started hanging them on wreaths and garlands that we use to decorate around the house.

And in preparation for future Christmases, we do a lot of bargain shopping in January to pick up Christmas clearance items.  Last January we got a great price on several White Christmas Trees that were on clearance.  We are thinking about putting them up on the front porch and decorating them with weatherproof ornaments.  She’s thinking about ways to create those weather proof ornaments out of recycled materials, such as colorful bottle caps and soda can pop tops.

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One of the first things that my wife and I decided to do when we bought this house was to replace all of the exterior door locks with sets that all used the same key.  We did not want to have to try to remember which key opened which door.  All of our key-chains were already over crowded with vehicle keys and store loyalty cards.  Life sure is simpler when you only have to use one key to open it all!

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There is a big push going on right now between, State Farm, Progressive, Geico, Allstate and Nationwide Insurance. The TV is flooded by their wacky and unusual commercials for home, auto and life insurance. Geico almost always gets me going, but some of them are totally off the wall! Let the insurance wars begin…..

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I’ve never met anyone with a greener thumb than my own mother. I never really paid that much attention to the house and the yard that we grew up in back then. I mean I knew that we had a nice yard and that the neighbors were always complimenting her on her landscaping ideas and her green thumb, but it was still just a yard to a kid like me that always had to be moving and on the go, usually on my bicycle back then.

We had two very nice outdoor planters at the end of the front walk way that my mother always managed to have something colorful and alive growing in them all year round. I’ve never seen another outddor planter that looks remotely close to them and my mother doesn’t remember where she got them or what even happened to them after we all grew up and left home. My folks were back on their own in a large empty house that they eventually sold and moved across town and down sized a bit.

My mother still likes her outside work, but she has a hard time with the extreme heat that we have all been experiencing this summer. She has focused more on the inside of the house this year rather than the yard and the gardens. She found some nice indoor planters on the Internet that she has placed in various locations around the place and it looks real good. Everything is blooming and it helps the house smell real good. Plants are a good healthy thing to have in your home. 

I didn’t get any part of my mother’s green thumb. I have jut the one indoor planter that I received as a Christmas gift years ago.  I’ve tried to grow things in and have long since given up and just use it for an ash tray for visiting smokers that end up in the garage getting their nicotine fix on.

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The house that I grew up in had Ceiling Fans in just about every room. My mother insisted that my father install them in each bedroom, the dining room, the kitchen, the den and the living room when they first purchased and moved in the place back in the 60′s. When I moved out of my parents house and went out on my own I didn’t consider that I’d be sleeping in a room without the circulation that I’d grown accustomed to all of my life. A Ceiling Fan makes a big difference in my night’s sleep. Not only is the circulation important, but the cool breeze and the slight white noise that it provides is all included in my total “sleep package” if you will. If I plan on sleeping away from home I certainly can’t be toting a Ceiling Fan around with me but I do take a good sized box fan that seems to do the trick most of the time.

The Ceiling Fan that is currently in my master bedroom has been making some pretty freaky noises the past couple of weeks, I just keep forgetting about it during the day and by the time I hear the darn thing, I’m ready for bed and keep putting it off time and time again. So today I’m spending a bit of time online and am researching different types of Ceiling Fans and I think I’ve found the perfect one at the Hansen Wholesale Ceiling Fans website of hansenwholesale.com. They have a decent selection of Eco Fans in an effort to offer green products in today’s every growing greener demanding consumers. Right now with the promo code of Promo Code: N932502530 they will pay the tax on your order, plus they offer free shipping.

Emerson Midway ECO Ceiling Fan Model CF955ORB

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I never realized that our son J was interested in fine linens until we took him shopping last month for the things that he needed for his new apartment.  When we went out I thought it would only take an hour or two to grab a few things and toss them in the shopping cart.  I sure was surprised when we were in the bedding department and he spent at least an hour picking out his bedding.  If it had been me, I would have just grabbed the cheapest set and been done with it!

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One of the reasons that my wife and I enjoy going to trade shows is because we get some really good and creative ideas on how to solve some problems and some great ideas on things like landscaping and decorating.

Last spring when we went to the home and garden show we saw several displays using rain chains as part of the landscaping.  My wife was especially fond of the different garden rain chains that she saw – she especially liked the ones that looked like water was coming out of a watering can.

I liked the gutter rain chain and copper rain chain corner leaderhead that I saw.  I thought that they were great solutions for a couple of the problem drainage areas we have on our roof.

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Mike called me and asked me to help with a tiling job. His client had bought some new Subway tiles and wanted them professionally installed in her pool house.

The contractor that Mike had hired to lay the tiles didn’t show up for the job, and Mike was in a bind. He had promised the client that the job would be done by the end of the week, and his contractor was nowhere to be found.

I don’t like laying bathroom tiles. It just isn’t my specialty. I agreed to go out and help Mike with it, but only two hours into the job the client came into the pool house and started demanding to know why the job wasn’t finished yet and started cursing me out because the job wasn’t finished. I tried to explain to the customer that I wasn’t the original contractor; I was just called in that morning, and I was trying to get it done as soon as possible. The customer kept yelling and cursing, so I just put my trowel down and said “I’m done now.” and walked out to my truck and drove myself home. I don’t need that kind of guff from anyone!

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My wife is so excited!  She just found out that her older sister Carol is coming to visit us this weekend.  She hasn’t seen Carol in five years!  So she is going to be running around like a chicken with its head cut off for the next few days getting the house picked up and cleaned.  She will be spending one night here in my wife’s studio.  I was just realizing that I’ve never even met Carol before!  It will be interesting!

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My wife and I are so proud of our son J.  He’s just graduated college and went straight into a really nice job, with only taking a two week break to find a place to live near work.  He’s ended up sharing a luxury condo with a middle aged man who only lives there during the week.  One of the things that impressed me about the place is the work-out room in the building that has a lot of different fitness equipment in it.  It feels like a five star hotel!

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