Brrrrrrrrr! I am now wishing we would have put in the heated mats underneath our floor tile in the kitchen…. this room is cold!!! We saved over 1800 bucks by not doing it, and since this is not our forever home, so we skipped out on it. Maybe someday we can insulate the very narrow crawlspace underneath and that will help. I’ll put that on the To-Do List.
Well, I was able to find our third tree. Garden Ridge to the rescue! I found a 7’ skinny tree on sale for $35, originally $149. I almost bought two, but I held back. This is the tree for the middle room that will have our traditional Christmas ornaments on them. By traditional, I mean the ones that we have brought from home, the ones we receive as gifts, and the ones that our future children will make at school and display proudly. Someday. Not soon. Haha. The number of ornaments on this tree will grow year by year. Right now, I think we only have 11 ornaments on there.
Mom bought me two neat wreaths at Alco earlier because they were on sale, I was going to hang them outside under the windows but it didn’t really work out. I have one hanging on the bathroom door (below, and yes, still no trim) and the other is on the inside of the front door.
If you’ve driven on North Main Street in Red Bud lately, you’ve driven past our house, AND our Christmas light display. I had a lot of fun decorating this year. Of course I wish our house was bigger and featured a wrap around porch and dorm windows up top (wouldn’t that look cute? I’m trying to convince Craig to put them in when we fix up the upstairs), but this is what we have to work with for now! We are planning on getting rid of our birdhouse of a mailbox soon. Any takers?
Here is my St. Nick’s Day present. It went from a $100 dollar bill to this, but I love it just as much:
We have a new member to the Hick Household, my cat Flower!
Flower is almost three years old, and was one of my farm cats at my parents. Last fall, after he was attacked numerous times by tom cats and several vet trips, I decided to make him an inside cat, even though my parents didn’t agree at first. They soon began to love Flower and didn’t mind him being inside. Just one catch, this cat didn’t use the litter box. He went outside, just like a dog. I tried leaving a litter box in my room but he never used it. The day after our wedding, I brought Flower to our house to live with us, but after he “held it” for 36 hours I felt sorry for him and took him back to the farm. First thing he did was go to the bathroom. Anyways, I missed him too much and we bought a “go here” spray from Petsmart, worked like a charm! Just spray the “go here” spray in the litter box and he started using it within 12 hours. The spray works for cats and dogs, so if anyone needs or wants it, you can have the rest of our bottle, I have only used about 1/100 of an ounce!
Remember Annabelle, our bottle baby? She will be 8 weeks on Thursday and she is getting big. I let her play in the snow tonight, it was cute!
School is over for the semester, I’m glad. I got straight A’s! Yay! Only three classes left next semester and my comps to pass, and I will have my Masters. And I will never go to school again. Ever. Seven years is enough. Bring on the student loan payments…
Have you heard of duck hunting? It is quite possibly the reason that our middle room and laundry room still have no trim, or that we do not have a backsplash in the kitchen yet, or that we do not have a banister on the steps. Just sayin. Hopefully that will change soon.
However, have you ever cooked duck? I cooked about 15 duck breasts in the crock pot Friday. My father in law gave me directions. Put in the duck, then put in brown sugar, salt, and pepper, and then cover all of the breasts with apple juice. Cook for about 6 hours, drain everything, shred the breasts, return to the crock pot and smother in Sweet Baby Ray’s barbeque sauce! It turned out pretty good! George and Alex came over and we had a nice supper.
I tried another crock pot recipe tonight with pork tenderloin. It was amazing…. pork tenderloin covered in 24 oz of applesauce with 1/4 of brown sugar and 1 tsp of cinnamon, cooked for about 6 hours. Craig definitely approved!
I don’t know if I will update before Christmas, I will only if we get anything done around here. If I don’t, I hope everyone has a safe holiday season!!! Enjoy the time with your families and be thankful!
