The Other Side of Amazon Prime

Photo from Theverge.com

The Other Side of Amazon Prime-
To be honest we all like a good deal. And we all buy stuff. One of the things I try to look at more and more over time is what I'm buying, and WHY. With a recent big deal of Amazon Prime days, coupled with watching the news, here are a few ideas that the mainstream media does not promote. As we all know Amazon has put a lot of companies out of business and that's part of the supposedly free market system. And they are very, very convenient, which is great for people who don't want to think a whole lot about how they actually shop. So here's a few different things I thought of that I will list. In no particular order....

Why do you pay a fee to buy stuff? Prime membership always cracked me up.

How many things to buy on Amazon that you could probably find locally and support local businesses assuming that you need something new?

How many things could you buy used or recycled, through various venues, instead of buying something new on Amazon? Maybe get free on Craigslist? Or barter?

How many things could you restore/reuse instead of buying something new on Amazon? Like our wheelbarrow we re-painted and added new hardware to-

How many things could you find online through smaller companies, they have just as many deals and the same products, that you could support instead?

How much stuff do you really need? To me that's really the biggest question. Good ideas, and maybe some answers here-

And how much of your old stuff winds up in a landfill?

Where are you going to store all your store when you run of of room?

It's been on and off in the news for quite a while about how dangerous, and punitive it is, working for Amazon. Not drinking water on the job, because then your count goes down when you use the bathroom. (See the article at the for more information). When I started seeing their trucks around town on the weekends I just sort of shook my head. They're catering to people who want instant gratification, all the time, for everything. This country has no patience and no deep thinking sometimes. How about simplify?

Homesteading to me harkens back to older times, when we were more self-sufficient and made do with a lot less. I had to laugh when I watched the movie Red Sparrow. There was a section in the beginning when a Russian teacher is instructing her class of spies-in-the making, that Americans are addicted to their shopping and their social media. I almost burst out laughing the theater. How true, how true. But I think it really hit the nail on the head for me for how the country is moving. I see that speed shopping encourages people to become so lazy that they don't want to drive anywhere, to buy anything, and or even get out of the car. Some people simply want to press some buttons on a device. It's mindless and it's promoting a scary future in this country... There is hope though, book stores are making a comeback!!! So here's some ideas-

From Lilywilliamsart.com

Fresh Eggs, Sunroom & The First Winter Storm, Thanksgiving & Family, Blog Re-Vamp

Fresh Eggs, Sunroom & The First Winter Storm-
Unlike some people I was really thrilled last night when I heard some really strong gusting winds hit the windows and heard the rain! It is been so long since we've had any rain, probably a couple months. We really don't get summer storms that produce any rain anymore. 20+ years ago, when we first moved to the Boise area, we would pretty regularly get some summer storms with thunder, lightning, and heavy rain. Those days seem to be over. This morning when we woke up there were lots of leaves on the ground and everything was really wet, perfect. Air smells great and there's still more rain headed this way today. David cleaned out our gutters a few days ago knowing the storm was coming in. It's so much easier to do in the leaves are dry in the gutters! Our maple tree still has quite a few leaves, but that's just the way it goes. Every year.

Sunroom on left

Dave decided to put the coop sun room up Wednesday since he had that day off work. We were both off work all week on vacation, a nice treat! Dave created this sun room for the girls years ago after I saw something similar online. We salvaged lumber, and bought some really cheap, used shower doors. Dave then built a frame for it and made it removable, so we can store it when spring comes. The chicken started exploring it as soon as he had it up. n space and they were taking dust baths yesterday. It just gives some extra room for the birds if the weather gets really bad. Ironically two winters ago when we had Snowmageddon 2017 we had decided not to put it up, go figure. That winter turned out to be the heaviest snow on record, or close to it, in the Boise area ever-

It's been really fun collecting eggs again! We've been getting one small egg everyday and I'm not sure if it's from one chicken or both of the younger ones? They're a little smaller so I suspect they're not from our two older hens. The really nice thing about having younger hens is that you know you'll have several years worth of fresh eggs. While the older hens are doing pretty well, they stopped playing when they went thru their Autumn molt. I suspect they will probably start laying again but time will tell.

With the colder weather I brought out my faux sheepskin chair cover from Ikea last summer, nice and toasty! My back always gets cold sitting next to the glass in the dining area-

The morning after

Thanksgiving & Family-
We had a really great time yesterday for Thanksgiving, and we hosted. I provided the following (sorry no photos)- the 22 Lb. turkey, Yukon Gold mashed potatoes, gravy, dressing, homemade cranberry sauce (Emeril's), Indian pudding and a Flourless Chocolate Almond Cake.  Since Dave can't really eat dairy anymore I wanted to have a dessert that he would enjoy. My one daughter brought a pumpkin cheesecake and I made Indian Pudding, both with dairy. The chocolate almond tart was a big hit with everybody! I could go the rest of my life without ever eating another pumpkin pie anything. I'm just not a fan. Between an apple pastry my daughter brought, a berry pie, pumpkin cheesecake and the chocolate tart there were just desserts galore! I must say I really miss having a separate dining room that we had at our last house.

Dining table needs to be put back together

Our current house is smaller and has one space for the kitchen/dining area. With the table leaf we can seat 6 and you can squeeze in 8 if you need to. We also had a card table set-up that works next to that. It was a tight squeeze but we all had a good time and lots of great food and that's all that matters. We also had an unexpected guest which was fine, someone was at their families house and wanted to drop over. I'm a big believer in the idea that a house full of love has elastic walls. Ironically I had roasted an extra turkey breast for plenty of leftovers.The next day or two and I will clean off the carcass to make turkey soup.We don't watch football here, play computer games, we just talk and it's really nice to have just family. Someone in our family has gone to other Thanksgivings elsewhere and said there were just way too many people, friends, neighbors etc. They missed just having family time to just hang out. That's the way we like it! I hope you had a great one!

Blog Re-Vamp
You'll be seeing some changes on the layout of my blog soon. You may have already noticed a few? I'm eliminating a lot of the Amazon links on the left side bar since it wasn't really generating much income. For whatever reason people just weren't looking at various items. The reality is that I found I earned more money as a Hometalk featured blogger in two months than I did in the last year or so with Amazon, so I'm concentrating on that. My total out of all the years I have been blogging has been less than $120.00 or so. While I don't mind working for free I would actually like this blog to generate some income at some point. Time will tell, but you'll see some changes. I still may have specific items in specific posts with a link, but many of the other generic links will go away. Everything else is still there, just maybe on the other side of the blog.

Garden & Chicks Update, Potato Progress, Cell Phone Deal/Insurance, Farm Fresh Decor

Garden & Chicks Update-
We have had more of the same wacky weather, temps swinging like a pendulum here! In the 80s's all week, then wind hit bringing a cold front, temp dropped 20 degrees this weekend. 45 this morning, brrr. We've been trying trying to figure out when to plant some things, and that can be a little bit challenging. I had planned on putting the chicks out this weekend for a while, but the weather was just too cold.  transferred them from the laundry basket that we had them in for one week to a larger box last weekend. It works out really well since they have plenty of room, with nice pine shavings. Today I took them out, then I took the box outside and pitched it all into the compost pile. Hopefully next weekend the weather is supposed to warm up, we can move them out into a temporary coop for a while and see how they do. I plan on putting them out this week for few hours in the warm evenings. We have an outdoor playpen that we got at a thrift store years ago. It's really fun to see chicks go outside for the first time and explore! Here's the 2 boxes I put together for their temporary digs, and added chicken wire on top-

busy exploring!

It's amazing how fast they grow in 2 weeks! Feathers coming in, getting taller-

Our hens were in trouble last week. Due to a too-low gap in fencing, they got in and completely ravaged our lemon cukes. Dave was in a huff and went shopping and came back with a few. He also bought taller chicken wire. Next night he stopped somewhere else on the way home. He bought some on sale tomatoes, more lemon cukes and some peppers. I think we're set for now! Lots of berries on the vine, and first blossoms on squash/slicing cukes. Now we just need some warm, stable weather!

waeting out the rain, again

My flower seeds are coming up,flowers blooming, and the rain has really helped with that! Warm and wet, perfect for plant growth.

Potato Progress-
Our free potatoes seeds planted in the trash cans are doing really well! After having some torrential downpours I thought maybe they would rot in the totes, but they had pretty good drainage. We planted them in a light, fluffy organic potting soil and Dave had drilled lots of holes, so that helped. We've been adding soil once or twice a week as the green start to come up. I'll be really curious to see when we can dig the first potatoes.

Cell Phone Deal/Insurance-
I had an interesting experience last week. My old Galaxy 6 phone wouldn't hold a charge over several days so I could tell it was on its way out. I had insurance on the phone for several years and knew there would be a copay to replace it. I called my service provider ATT (work discount) and asked about the co-pay.  To make a long story short I paid $112 copay for an $800 new Galaxy 8 Active phone. Yes, retail about $800.00, geez! The guy in the store was really shocked that I got such a good deal. He was really helpful transferring all the data from the one phone to the other. It's a heavier phone with really long battery life and tons of storage. I thought it was kind of funny that being a homesteader of sorts I wound up with a military grade phone! It has little rubber bumpers on each corner and actual screws on the frame on the outside. I did order a couple of inexpensive covers as the back is a little bit slippery. It's great to know that it is waterproof, dust proof, sand proof, etc. It'll be nice for blogging since I can now take photos on my phone and upload them to my photo editor on my computer. I used to be able to do that but the plug-in port died a year or so ago. I was able to wirelessly charge the phone but I couldn't transfer any photos directly to my computer. I could upload them to Facebook and transfer them from there, but that was kind of a pain. So insurance may be a good idea for some people and with AT&T the co-pay goes down over time, it's not fixed. Even with the premium for the insurance of about $10 per month for the last 2 years, and the copay, I still wound up with a heck of a deal. I could have potentially bought a phone off of eBay, Amazon or some other website but I was wary of doing that. So,just a thought- if you're thinking about getting a new phone, slap a little insurance on it!

Farm Fresh Decor-
I finally hung up my Farm Fresh wall art, and I love it! Up close it looks like an original piece of art. I love the colors and size, perfect over my little side table. It's made of wood, 13.5" long x 24" tall x 0.62" thick, less than $20.00! More info here-

                                                    

Spring Rains & Snow, Hardboiling Fresh Eggs- Egglettes Review, Swedish Washcloths, Thrifting Scores!

Today

Spring Rains & Snow-

We've had an unusually cold, wet week. Almost an inch of rain in 3 days! Good timing since we just put out the rain barrel! Beats the huge snow back east for sure. Everything is greening up and the hens have enjoyed some time out-

then we woke up to snow this morning-

Luckily it started to melt in the afternoon-

Lots of hazy sunshine. Not bad but classic, unstable spring weather, stay tuned...

Hardboiling Fresh Eggs, Egglettes Review-
Over the years I've tried a few different ways of hard boiling my fresh eggs usually I've tried lots of different combinations and then one night I stumbled onto Egglets.  Egglettes are silicon pods with a twist off lid to use in boiling water. Basically boil eggs without the shell. I started thinking it seemed like a perfect solution to my fresh egg issue. Typically I just wound up buying store-bought eggs to hard-boil since my fresh ones would be one big mess when I tried to peel them. I did a test drive of them today, cracked my fresh eggs inside and I did three-

Pods with lid

Egg inside, ready to go

I started the water boiling and put the eggs in and left them in for the suggested amount of time. For hard boiled egg time the suggested amount was 13 to 16 minutes. That seems a little long to me but I decided to do it the way they suggested. They came out about 3/4 the way done after 13 minutes-

White not smooth, but a little undercooked 

Lunch,

One of the things you can do is use the mini-recipe book that comes with this set. You could do little omelets, adding things like cooked meats, ham or bacon, cheeses or vegetables. For people watching their cholesterol you can also use egg white substitutes. You can certainly soft boil eggs as well, you don't have to hard-boil them. I did find a spoon helped release the eggs easier and you do want to use tongs to remove from the boiling water. With enjoying poached eggs on the weekend it's certainly less cleanup. No pan to wash, just wash the pods. I'd give it two thumbs up!


                                                         

Swedish Washcloths-
A few years ago when we remodeled our bathroom I added some Scandinavian touches. I was looking for a few different things online and stumbled onto Swedish washcloths. I wasn't quite sure what they were just, so I just ordered one for a bathroom and really loved it! Basically it's a combination of an old-fashioned cellulose type sponge and fabric. You can wipe up almost anything with them, they rinse out great, and they absorb a huge amount of liquid. While I like cotton washcloths for my kitchen they just don't absorb any liquids. Sponges are small so this seemed to fill the bill. I keep one behind the faucet in our master bathroom for quick spills and wipes-

 Recently I was on Amazon placing an order and decided to buy some new ones and found the ones listed below. I bought a set of four, and they really do double duty as sponges/washcloths! You can get them a lots of different colors and designs. Ikea sells very inexpensive ones but they are plain with no pattern. You can throw them into the washer and we'll just let them air-dry and they last for several years. They will stain however so if you're mopping up anything like blueberries, grape juice or anything like that be aware, it may not wash out. Got to leave it to the Scandinavians to come up with a perfect solution!

                                                        

Planter $6.00, Grocery Outlet

Thrifting Scores!

I hit a thrift store on the way to an appointment after work and spotted these, perfect for the 2 grand babies, .99 cents each, like-new melamine-

Brand new ceramic serving board with removable wood board, $5.99-

Wood removed, love it! I also donated a box this weekend. More cleaning out!

Because It's Just Too Cute!

Because It's Just Too Cute!
I just had to share this, because it is just too cute! When you have chickens you have lots of eggs. My flock will be replenished in the summer next years since mine have gone on strike. But I digress... I always wanted a Boiled Egg Set and when I saw this is was just too darned cute not to post. Sometimes presentation is such a great part of eating and what a fun way to present eggs! And 5 star reviews, $27.99 and FREE shipping-

My Birthday Wintry Mix & "Supermoon" Tonight, Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding w/Almond Milk, Solar Charger Review, Mini Sink Makeover

My Birthday Wintry Mix and Super Moon Tonight-

Today is my birthday and I woke up to a very wet day- 34 degrees, rain and snow mix. It must have poured all night from the look of the fencing. It's really windy, but the sun is coming out this afternoon. I put out extra wild bird food for the local critters and they're eating. We had a gorgeous sunset a couple of nights ago- 

Dave wanted to get me something for my birthday. I really couldn't think of anything, but the one thing that would make my life easier was a new monitor, mine was pretty small. With aging eyes, it's harder. Dave found a 75% off deal and I love it! My old one was 18, new one is 22", here's a side by side-

Big difference, much easier to use!

I just found out that tonight will be extra special, CBS news said-  "The supermoon" will illuminate the night sky on Sunday, December 3, when the moon will appear about 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full moons. This is the first of three supermoons in a trilogy that will continue on in January." via Twitter. Cool!

Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding w/Almond Milk-
I had some Brioche bread (Trader Joe's) left over from Thanksgiving weekend, bittersweet chocolate, walnuts and lots of eggs. So... it was bread pudding time! Since Dave has developed a sensitivity to too much dairy, I used 1/2 Almond Milk. Next time I will use 100% since it came out amazing, just perfect for a cold night.

Recipe- 
1 loaf Brioche?Challah bread, cut into 1" cubes, about 8 cups
10 eggs
2 cups Almond Mix
2 cups milk
1/2 sugar plus 2 TBS
1/2- 1 cup Guittard bittersweet baking chocolate, chopped, love that brand!!!
1/2- 1 cup chopped walnuts
2 tsp. vanilla extract
pinch salt

Butter 2 qt. baking dish, fill with bread cubes. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In large bowl beat eggs, salt, liquids, 1/2 cup sugar. Mix in choc chips and nuts into bread cubes- I put about 1/2 in the middle and 1/2 on top. Slowly our egg mixture over bread. Let sit overnight (for best results). Sometimes I bake right away, if so, push liquids into the bread gently. Sprinkle bread with remaining sugar and put in oven. Bake 1 hour, remove and cover with foil, bake an additional 25 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean. Cool and enjoy! If you're a real chocoholic, add coarsely chopped gourmet dark chocolate! And double the nuts! Enjoy! You can also sub chopped apples, cinnamon, nutmeg for a fruit version.

Solar Charger Review-
I recent bought a Floureon Cell Device Solar Charger  It comes with one USB cord, a LED flashlight, and SOS flasher. Waterproof and small, the size of a cell phone, but a little thicker-

Front

Back, has clip and compass/keyring

You can charge up to 3 devices simultaneously! I did 2-

I have to use a wireless charger as my plug-in port died, worked great!

VERY bright LED flashlight, can also flash SOS in Morse code, handy!

There are so MANY applications for this- keep in your car on trips, hiking, hunting, cross country trips, emergency preparedness, you name it. You might not have a cell signal if there's a real crisis, but there might be info on your phone you'd still need. A great deal, $16.99, I LOVE IT!!!

Mini Sink Makeover-
All of this was less than $10.00 and I like it! love our white cast iron sink we bought a few years back, during our kitchen re-do, but I don't like this, the side sink strainer, hard to keep clean and I rarely plug this sink. This just kept bugging me-

I was on Amazon buying a belt for Dave and I found this- NITO Stainless Steel Sink Strainer, it's effective and simple, $5.00-

It has a depression, is easy to lift and empty. The garbage disposal strainer, ditto- this was the 2nd one I'd bought, kept staining-

I spotted this Danco Garbage Disposal Strainer, $4.00, black, domed, and antimicrobial-