Updating Technology On A Budget, Winter Project Time

 

New Wind Anemometer

Updating Technology On A Budget-

Recently we did some updates of some of our technology, on a budget of course! Our TV was getting a bit old and it always had terrible sound. It was a great deal seven or eight years ago but it was time for something bigger with our aging eyes. We looked around for a while and I had always told Dave I wanted to get something with some decent speakers since I love music! For my birthday in December Dave bought me /us  a new TV! We wanted one that fitted in our existing entertainment center since we didn't want anything too big. I'm not a fan of huge huge televisions. Maybe if I sat around all day and have nothing to do but watch programs, but hey, I have other things to do! We got a great deal at Costco and got a perfect size. It's a Roku Smart TV, and since we already had a Roku stick on the old TV and account it was easy to transition over to it. The sound is amazing!

We donated our old TV, hopefully someone will give it a new home! 

For a Christmas present Dave got me something I have wanted for quite a while. Being the Weather geek that I am Dave got me a La Crosse wireless weather station with an anemometer (solar powered)  or wind measuring device. It's on the top of our house's garage peak! Pretty easy install, works great!   

It has a really bright LCD tablet that's easy to read. He also got this at Costco apparently. Truly accurate which is nice and I'm always watching the winds because we can have some pretty severe wind gusts here. That can affect our chickens and the coop and whatever we happen to be growing at the time. It's nice to have the app on the phone too, part of the set up process, which was pretty easy.  

Our Keurig coffee maker was on its last legs. We wanted to be more environmentally friendly and David said he really preferred French press coffee anyway. I did some research on electric teaa kettles on Consumerreports.org. You can sometimes find their test results for free. If you ever have to buy a car I highly recommend spending the $5 a month subscribe for 1 month and do some research. We've been super happy with our Mazda hatchback after doing research and buying one. It's 11 years old and has had hardly any problems of all, super reliable. Anyway I did some research and I we bought an electric tea kettle. Some of them are glass, which makes me a little bit wary, if you drop it's dead!  So I went with Consumer Report recommended as a best buy-

It's funny some of the most expensive models out there had poor testing results...

Some winter kitchen decor

Winter Project Time-

I decided to take a four-day weekend and work on some projects this week. One of them is deep cleaning my kitchen counter, back splash, my spices, and re-organizing part of my kitchen drawers. Some painting too, reveal coming soon! Good things to do when it's winter! It's been cold, but then we had two days where it was in the low 50's! Almost felt like spring, but back down to the 30's tonight. 

Dave and I will also be cleaning the coop this weekend replacing the old deep litter Pine shavings with fresh. This method works so well I cannot even tell you! No smell, biodegrades/composts and I only have to clean off the top roosting area about once a week in the winter. In the summer I do it two or three times a week. A bale is about $9.00 locally, with some leftover. We do about 4"-5" in the winter-

Debbie on the right, Sunny on the left

Sunny says what's up!

Next going to hit a couple thrift stores on Friday when I'm off look for a couple things. I've been trying to find a simple nice wood twin headboard for our spare bedroom where our grandsons stay. It doesn't have one, want to dress it up a little bit. I'll look to see if there's something cute that I can either rehab or retrofit. If not we make break down and build one-

I bought this online from Ikea several months ago, a Moppe Mini storage chest, Birch plywood, 16 ½" x7" x 12 5/8 "-

I had plans for it, but kept changing my mind! I finally found the perfect thing to finish it. It's bare wood and I wanted some kind of finish. Will post it when it's done! 

Restoring Vintage L.L. Bean Maine Hunting Shoes, Thrifting Find

 

Restoring Vintage L.L. Bean Maine Hunting Shoes-

You just never know when you'll run into something you been wanting! I'd been on the lookout for a used pair of L.L. Bean boots. They're pretty iconic, all made in the U.S., old school technology that still works. I gave up ever finding a pair in a thrift store or cheap on eBay. We were in a thrift store recently, I happened to go over to the shoe rack and saw this label-

I looked at them, stopped and thought, wait a minute! Maine? I took the boots off the shelf, looked inside and saw this- 

I thought these were L.L. Bean "Boots", but they were Maine Bean Hunting Shoes! These are the very first, original design, not Bean "boots". More flexible, thinner soles, more like a moccasin. Info here Wikipedia.org L.L. Bean They were a Men's eight (runs big), so I tried them on. They fit perfect. I didn't see a sticker on the boots and they were on a shelf that said $3 for all shoes, unless otherwise marked. I wandered around for a few other things and took them up to the front desk to pay for them. The woman clerk was upset at the register and said several times they weren't supposed to be out on the floor. She also asked if there was a sticker on them for another price and I said no. I kind of waited for her to veto this purchase but she said okay you're getting them for three bucks. She was not happy. It was obvious somebody made a big mistake there. So I bought them and took them home along with a couple of other things. Here's the before shots- 

The first thing I did was remove the laces, the insoles and took a good look. Next I cleaned the leather with saddle soap. I washed the rubber on the boots with warm soapy water. I let them dry overnight, here with wet leather-

Next I bought some Boot Guard leather conditioner that I had used years ago. The leather was really, really dry and stiff. I folded up a paper towel and started liberally applying it on all of the leather. I had to use my fingers to get in between the gusset under the laces. The gusset is what keeps all the water out of the boots, which is great! 

This next picture shows the difference after applying half of the conditioner on the leather-

What a difference the leather conditioner makes!

So both of the boots were done. I waited about an hour and added a second coat. A little later I touched up a few other spots with my fingertips

The leather softened up quite a bit! Buffed, came out with a nice patina!!!

The insoles were shot, stitched leather with something on top that looked like burlap-

I bought some black sheepskin liners, with a foam arch support. Fit perfect, warm and cozy! 

Got new laces, similar to what's used on the L.L. Bean boots. I found out the traditional laces on the Hunting Shoes are plain brown, but I like them! I emailed L.L. Bean and found out these are probably from the 70's /early 80's. I may get them re-done at some point. I could get the whole rubber bottom replaced for about $40.00 Not a big priority right now. The leather might also not be intact enough to re-do anyway. All done, the products I used are listed on the left sidebar. Ready for snow and rain!!! Apparently they are also big for preppy style, who knew? 

Thrifting Find-

When we were checking out with the boots, and a little flatware rack, I spotted this! It was in the glass case, for $4.00! It has multi-color LED lights that rotate the colors. It's about 6" long. My one Grandson love trains so I got it for our house for him to see. We love trains too however!  It's very bright, the photo was hard to pick that up. Just too cute to pass on! The lights go blue, red, dark pink and green-

First Snow! Independence Days Challenge

 

First Snow! 

We sure did hit our record low! It warmed back up, with 67 Friday, then the wind kicked in yesterday, Saturday. Rain started late afternoon, then snow I noticed around 10 p.m. At 5:50 am today I saw about 2 " of SNOW was on the ground, with more coming!  

It's 32, still snowing and melting on the ground.  Forecast is more snow this week off and on, cold, 22 degrees tonite. Lots of snow in the mountains, it's a big storm!

Independence Days Challenge-

We've been busy, and yet the days are shorter, with garden put to bed for the winter. Friday, with the storm coming in, I covered my garden bench with plastic and took down the last of the garden decor to move inside. The patio table and chairs are now stored as well. We're doing a BIG project right now, that will be a separate post! So here's what we've been up to! 

1. Plant Something-

Not this time of year, garden has been put to bed. 
 
2. Harvest Something-

We got an egg yesterday, our first in about 5 months! Either one of our young hens has started laying or one of the older ones started again. Time will tell, but very excited! Looking forward to having our own fresh eggs again, that was always one of my goals. With 3 new hens we should have a good supply of eggs this winter, although it varies with the shorter days-

I harvested the last of my Thyme, Oregano and Collard greens-

3. Preserve/Store Something-

I bought a new Nutrichef freezer bag vacuum machine. I did quite a bit of research before I bought one. Ironically the $55 version I bought at Amazon was a better deal than the same price at Costco. The Costco brand was only 8" wide on the bags, which isn't very large. This machine goes up to 11"". So far I've mostly done fresh produce but we'll start doing meats, etc. when I get a good deals. I hope this will prevent a lot of freezer burn I've had in the past and the reviews were great! Link on left sidebar. For some reason Blogger won't let me put an Amazon link here, just a photo with link, go figure. It's noisy and does take a little getting use to. Took me a couple of tries, but Youtube helped, and it worked great after that. The only thing I had trouble with was trying to bag quartered, dead ripe tomatoes. So much juice came out of the bag it wouldn't seal! Next time, I'd do them whole, that worked fine. It's been working great for storing garden produce! I did a lot of fresh garden tomatoes mixed with sweet peppers and Italian frying peppers- 

Italian peppers to stuff

I made a big batch of pasta sauce with our own organic tomatoes, added sausage and froze half. Good for more dinners. 

4. Manage Reserves- Get a Good Deal/Barter/Stock Up/Prep-

Went to the farmstead again, loaded up on local produce, with great prices and supports local farmers. Will freeze some of it. Froze some other french breads from a local store for later. I always make more soups in the winter and love a chunk of hot fresh bread with it! 

I bought some seed-saving envelopes, to start saving my own seeds. I've been lazy about that! We save some of my left over veggie and herb seeds. I got a set of 100 (link on left sidebar) for $8.00 and have started with some flowers I had and a gorgeous purple, tall ornamental grass down the street-

Bought new flatware, ours was really pretty beat up. I've been working quite a bit of overtime, with more coming, so I decided to replace it. I looked a lot online and did research. I got a great deal on Overstock.com for a 12 service setting set instead of an 8 service setting for the same price elsewhere. I also had a 15% off coupon, so it was about $110.00. Nice weight, should last the next 20 years, simple and pretty. I kept coming back to this pattern and loved it when I opened the box.  It's Mikasa French Countryside flatware-  

Also came with a nice hostess/serving set , basically 2 large spoons, large fork and butter knife, great for the holidays coming up!  

Hostess set

I wanted to sort and reorganize the silverware drawer, when I bought the flatware, what a mess! 

Before-

I bought a Erden Bamboo Expandable Drawer Organizer for Utensils, $25.00 on Amazon, fits perfect! I also moved some things to the china cabinet and donated some. Holds everything and the width is expandable. I measured carefully the inside edges of drawer. Fits great, with about 3" extra in the back. Dave cut a piece of scrap wood in back so it's doesn't slide back. I put little-used items back there. Perfect, may buy another for my "junk drawer. I liked the bamboo divider a lot! 

5. Eat the Food- Try New Foods/Recipe- 

I made the new beef roast recipe in my last post which was great! A good use of some of the leftovers was to make a Philly Style French dip. I split two pieces of French bread, put thin slices of beef topped with Swiss cheese, sautéed bell peppers, a little pepperoncini then broiled. I made Au Jus to go with it and it was great on a work night. Sorry no photos! I found some new baking recipes I may try. This is on my list for the holidays, Rosie is an amazing baker!

From Everythinglooksrosie.com Chelsea Bun

6. Build Community Food Systems-

We went to The Lakeview Fruit farmstead this weekend, they're closing soon. We bought some local apples (amazing), pears, huge bells peppers (.50 cents each!), local bread and 2 organic roasting chickens, will roast the chicken tonight- 

I bought enough apples to fill up our crisper in the fridge. Other than home-grown these are the best apples I've ever eaten! 

7. Recycle/Re-Use-

I made some donations to the local thrift store after cleaning more things out of the kitchen. Flatware and storage containers mostly. I found some really great deals on eBay for some used children's books for our grandson for Christmas. I know some people wouldn't do that, but if it's like new as an ex-Librarian, I know they will be fine. We're all thrifty in my family! I also scored a plush but I won't say which one in case one of my kiddos is reading this.
 
8. Skill Up-

I learned all about stainless steel flatware when I started doing some research about buying a new set. It's mostly the weights of the steel which affects the durability, there's 18/10 (best) and 18/0 (less durable) as a rough guide. Then there's the styles, basically American (smaller) and European larger. I went with the larger, similar to the bistro type sizes I've used and liked. Interesting info here- NY Times Guides To Buying Flatware

I'm also learning about hot water heaters, more later! 

 

9. Regenerate What is Lost/Salvage Something-

Our TV signal died Friday. We had Roku so the internet worked, but lost all the other channels. We have an antenna on the roof, which has done a great job. We ditched cable quite a few years ago, talk about saving $$$! We have about 45+ free channels, the Roku channel (ton there)  and Netflix.  Dave checked the coax cable on the roof and it was toast. Luckily we had spare cable! For no cost Dave was able to re-install new cable, and fit it all back together. Only thing to do is paint it in the spring when it warms up.

I got my new oil lamp burner from Lehman's, took about 3 weeks. Works great, looks nice and shiny! $5.00 fix-