This year I am buying the wife a rain chain that she has been eyeballing ever since seeing the rain chains at her sister-in-law’s house over the summer. I have to admit that these chains rain are a nice concept. It is a well known fact that water is therapeutic, I’ve always enjoyed seeing, hearing, smelling as well as feeling water, so having a rain chain or two or three or however many you choose to have is a positive thing.

We have worked hard on our backyard to make it attractive and comfortable as possible and I think having a good looking quality rain chain would be a nice addition. It’s just trying to decide which one of the many I’ve seen online to go ahead and commit to and order. I had no idea that there would be so many to choose from. I don’t have a lot of time left with Valentine’s day only a few weeks away.

Well, when my mother took ill and we needed to take care of her for a couple of weeks last fall, the old baby monitors that we used when our kids were babies were quickly located (from their spot in the basement) and put to good use for us to be able to keep an ear out for Mom’s calls when she needed something. I have to admit, my wife did good this time.

It seems to me, though, that she could really go wild on one of the Keystone Mailboxes. Painting one of those would be really eye catching! Whatever she decides, I’m sure it will be gorgeous. Sue has such a great eye and talent that everything she touches looks great! When we first moved into this house, Sue gave us a gorgeous hand-painted bread box for our new kitchen, which we have receive so many compliments on throughout the years. Too bad I didn’t take after my mother, a very talented artist indeed.

Using one service provider for our internet service and cable has made my life a lot easier. I recently switched to a bundle deal with a new company because I was having trouble with my last cable company. I could never get a hold of anyone or work my way through the phone tree. I would often find mistakes in my bill and it would take me thirty minutes to get everything straightened out on the phone. Sometimes things didn’t get straightened out and I would end up having to call again! I was spending at least an hour a month talking to the cable company on the phone. Now since I have bundled with a new company, I can pay my bill on-line for both services. The service is not spotty and I actually ended up saving a pretty good bit of money. The best part about my new service is that I don’t have to get on the phone every single month to correct my cable bill. My internet speed is actually must faster than it was before too, so I can stream internet movies and watch videos on YouTube. I wish that I had thought of this sooner!

What I really need to do is empty the whole thing out, put in a nice tool box and a new workbench and start filling it up again with only the essentials and in an orderly fashion. I’ve seen some nice workbenches online, which would do nicely in there. I don’t think that this is going to happen any time soon, but something to put on the back burner, to be sure.

Something else I want and need to do is to start planning on purchasing some out buildings made of metal and/or steel. I’ve hear a lot about these Future Steel Buildings that seem to be right up my alley. I know of a few people that have gone with these Future steel buildings and they couldn’t be happier with the outcome. Next time I get a chance I’ll have to look up the website and start researching for myself.

You see Blomus specializes in stainless steel products that are pleasant looking to the eye as well as being very affordable. My grandmother purchased a blomus stainless steel teaset a few years back that she is very happy with. One that she actually uses on special occasions with her special little lady friends. My grandmother belongs to several clubs and organizations so she entertain quite often, and she really enjoys those times spend with good friends that are in the same age group as she is and have the same interests and tastes.

There are so many sports channels on satellite television that it would be easy to watch sports twenty four hours a day!  Almost all of my neighbors and relatives have satellite service.  Apparently we live in an area that doesn’t have cable, so antenna and satellite are the only two options available right now.  But even many of the people that I work with have the option to have either and they still opt for the satellite – they say that they have a lower rate and that they are very happy with the service.

My father used to always have a rain water barrel that he used for our small garden that we all worked so hard in year after year for our home grown fruits and vegetables that my mother loved cooking with. That made a big impression on us for years to come about rain harvesting.

I’m hearing that there are now more rain water barrels are being sold than ever before. Did you know you can find many rain barrels for sale right online at sites like simplyrainbarrels.com has to offer? They have a very large variety of  sizes, colors and shapes as well as various price ranges. What I really like is that simplyrainbarrels.com accepts PayPal, I’ve put an end to my credit cards and rely on my PayPal account more and more for online purchases such as this.

But by the time I was offered the job, my wife had just been offered a terrific job here, and the kids were deeply involved in their school lives, with their activities and friends. My wife and I entertained the idea for a short while and even went up to New York for a week to look at New York real estate in the area that my job would be in. Seems that the New York housing market is one of the markets that never goes into a slump; everything we liked cost a lot more money than we felt we could manage. So I turned down the offer at the time, not wanted to uproot the entire family.

Now it seems that Jason is thinking about moving up there for a couple of years because he has received a job transfer offer from his office, with a very healthy raise in pay. He was telling me that he found a website NewYorkhousing.com and he is thinking about making a trip up to New York himself to see what he thinks of the area. I can understand the exciting draw of the Big Apple to a young single man, but my wife is not very happy to think that Jason would be that far away from home. She didn’t like it when he was away at college, and New York is even further away than he was when he was in school.