HappyTrails

Since we are saving for a cruise and really watching our budget, we are not eating out as much.  It is giving me withdrawal symptoms!  Some hot and crunchy breaded chicken wings or some kind of appetizer would be nice.

Likely the weather is getting to me as well.  Colder air has been blowing in and the front screen door is banging against the frame; that only happens when it is really windy out.  We are going to be getting zero and below zero temps, and cold weather really just is not my bag any more.  Snow is fine, as long as the temps do not go low, but this is just too cold for comfort.

Fortunately, we went food shopping earlier today, because it is just too miserable outside to do that now.  Shopping can be exhausting when you go to several stores to stock up on the specials and bogos.  One of the places had a favorite vegetarian canned soup on sale.  After all the driving around and shopping, I was not planning on spending an hour cooking dinner afterward, so that was part of what was easy for dinner tonight.

I decided we needed more than just soup, bakery bread toast and hot spiced applesauce.   How about some appetizers?  They had to be easy, I was tired already.

We had just bought some fresh low fat deli ham thin sliced, and that would help ramp up the protein for dinner.  Ham and cream cheese appetizers sounded good, and they really tasted pretty good.

Take a thin slice of ham, spread with room temperature cream cheese and well drained, chopped green olives with pimento.  Roll the ham slice and chill.  Just cut it in serving sections — and use about three thin ham slices per person.  Yummy appetizers, and it seemed like a special treat because it was different.

To make spiced hot applesauce is pretty simple too.  Heat the contents of the can or jar, add a couple heaping tablespoons of brown sugar, and a few dashes of cinnamon.  Stir well and serve.  Occasionally we add a teaspoon of lemon juice to the mix, but not everyone likes that.  My family just prefers it sweet with cinnamon.

The ham appetizers will definitely be made again.  I was looking for some simple ones, and while this video starts out slow getting to the point, it was definitely worth watching to see these appetizers being made.  Well, now I am hungry again, I will not mention for what, but I have the bacon and the breadsticks…

We officially opened a bank account to save for a cruise.  Most of the time we really do not travel that far away for vacations, or just work on the house.  Real exciting time painting, cleaning, fixing, forget it!  One more time this year we will stick close to home and split time between fixing the house and going places that are close, but 2010, here we come!

Hubs and I have not yet decided where we want to go.  Just throwing around a few ideas and trying to decide where to go.  So far we are considering taking a cruise ship to the Caribbean, Alaska or Hawaii.  If we pick the Alaskan cruise, we both decided that it will have to be during summer weather; at this point in time, nobody here is interested in going anywhere cold!

It will be about a year and a half before we can go as we want to pay for the cruise ahead of time and have spending money, too.  That is a great incentive to tighten our budget and save more.

We will be trolling the internet to find cruise lines and discounted cruises and then plan accordingly.  Neither of us have ever been on a cruise, so anyone with any favorite cruise lines, please leave a message on this post.

What are your favorite cruise lines or line, and is it worthwhile to buy trip cancellation insurance? What did you like or not like about the cruise ship?  How do we get the best discounted cruises?

Our gas company should be making quite a bonanza of money this winter, our temps are lucky if they are two digit and the forecast says it is going to be even lower this coming week.   We turned the thermostat down to a chilly 66 degrees to keep down our escalating utility bills, and we are all grumpy about that.

Some Happy Trails today, it is just plain cold, outside and inside.  The only difference is when you have been outside, the inside feels like a heatwave.  Stay inside awhile and a lousy 66 degrees feels cold.

Hubs has Merino wool socks and thermal underwear.   And right now, some thermal underwear and Merino wool socks would make a big difference in my attitude.  Something very soft and luxurious and warm.   Hubs has to put those on when he visits his brother.  They are keeping their inside temperature at 62 degrees.  Now that is really chilly inside.

About the only places near here that would carry the good Merino wool socks will charge way above what a little work to search online reveals as the going price.  A lot of the online stores also have the thermal underwear available too.  Delivery charges are worthwhile not to have to run outside to run from store to store.  In the meantime, I have a blanket when I am sitting down and two pairs of old socks to stay warm.

Well, no wonder these Merino wool socks are a bit pricey,  up to $11,000 for a ram…

Maybe I just do not go shopping enough?  Last year I ordered a pair of winter boots from Penney’s on sale,  got my size, and the darn things did not fit, they were huge.  Disgusted, I put the box away and forgot to return them, so all that is left to wear is my winter boots from about 6 years ago and they really need replaced.  Getting a little sorry looking, but right now that is the only pair that fits.

Boots are a pain to put on and then carry shoes around as well, so we all tend to pretty much avoid wearing them if possible.  We are supposed to be getting some pretty heavy snow this weekend, so going without might not be an option.

Hubs has a couple pairs of waterproof boots that he likes and are still in good shape.  My old ones are just getting too old, but you know how you hate to throw something out that actually is what you really like and cannot find a replacement.  You just do not want to part with them.  They are the perfect pair of boots, ladylike and waterproof.

Maybe shopping sales for something ladylike and waterproof at the same time just do not exist in winter boots fashions any longer.    Guess I will just have to try the internet stores again to find winter boots, or, we could go out shopping this weekend and then have to stop somewhere for lunch…that would be nice.

In the alternative, I could go sock shopping and get a few more pairs, then maybe the ones from Penney’s would not fall off my feet if worn all at the same time.

We had a lot of rain the other night and today was so cold, maybe 20 degrees for the high, but a little windy.  Just perfect weather to get a hot shower, bundle up and stay inside.

We should have checked the car earlier today because Hubs forget to stop at the store yesterday to get something he had ordered.  Big mistake to wait until evening and not check the car to scrape the ice on the windshield and see if the doors open.

The spray can of defroster was out of pressure, and due to the temperature, there was no talk of walking to the closest store that is almost two miles away that might have it.

You really do not want to know how long it took outside in the cold to use a hair dryer to open the driver door.  We had to attach some plastic to the car roof rack and hold the sides to prevent the wind from blowing away the hot air from the hair dryer.  This takes two people freezing their rears off to accomplish!

Why are we not using the garage?  Besides the fact there is no room for the car, I have a blow dryer!!  Just get out a heavy extension cord, heavy plastic to shield the door from the wind and plug in the blow dryer.

Hubs needs to get up a bit earlier to find interesting (and I use that term rather loosely) things online to email me.  We have his and hers computers, because neither of us wants to share, so he emails it.  Anyway, I was at the already been there, done that stage with reading the article and obsessing over yet another additional possible rise in the prices of meat and milk.

Your friendly, and at your service, Environmental Protection Authority seems to think that if we could just tax pigs (no comment here), beef cattle and cows, there could be rules and regulations on gaseous emissions under the Clean Air Act, a cash cow to call their own.

Initially, I had visions of getting all the animals together and getting them to agree on no more belching, farting or defecating.  Anyway, that isn’t what the EPA has in mind, it just wants tax money.   Plain and simple, it is a fart tax.  If this needs paid on the animals, could we be next?  Oh, we already pay more in taxes than we get to keep, just nothing designated, yet, as a fart tax.

If the EPA does get its way and taxes the animals, the animals are going to tell the farmers they will have to pay for it or go out of business.  Not one of the animals I polled could produce a W-2 form or had a Social Security number.   There was lots of confusion here, the hens were feeling left out and the raccoons thought it was fair they were not mentioned because they did work chewing up leftover garbage and reducing the load on the landfills.

Personally, I blame volcanoes, among other things.  Taxing animals and putting farmers out of work is just not the way to go, especially in our economy.  The taxes will move up the food chain, one way or another.

Here’s the article http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20081230165231.aspx

Anyone else notice some new tactics while shopping at the grocery store?  Grocery stores are well known for many marketing tactics to tempt shoppers to buy a lot more than planned.  The highest profit producing products are normally set up within eye level and easy reach, and impulse buys at the checkout.

When my youngest son was little, it seemed items to tempt him were put at child’s eye level while he was sitting in the grocery cart seat, and within easy reaching distance of his little arms.  There were always more items in my cart than what I had placed in there myself.  The store did not make extra profit on me that way, they got to re-shelve the extra items that I missed being tossed in my cart.   The queen, er, I mean, German Gal, was definitely not amused.

A new tactic has now been added.  Most of us are bona fide coupon carrying shoppers with a list, and know what is on sale.  Obviously, it is time to try to thwart our plans.  Now, here is what I discovered.   New packaging — well, that does not sound so bad, does it?

Well, yes it does — and here are the subliminal messages I find:   Supposedly, if a manufacturer tones down the fancy packaging to look more like the plainer, less fancy packaging of store brand or generic items, shoppers might just pick the name brand over the store or generic brand product.  Since most people have to to do their shopping in a hurry or deal with fussy children, this leaves room for error.  And, if name brand looks more like the other lesser priced products, it will remain unnoticed until the grocery bill total has to be paid at checkout time, usually with no extra time to go back and get the right item.

Today is December 31, 2008 and I want to wish all of you a very Happy New Year!   Do not drink and drive, stay alive — and watch out for those grocery store prices!

Sticker shock grips me every time I walk into the grocery stores.  My dad always proudly said that I knew how to make the buffalo on a nickle holler since it was always being squeezed, but I seem to be losing my touch.  Sometimes you can only take so much aggravation with the price hikes on everything.

We shop several stores in the area according to their sales flyer, our need, and then bring our coupons. Fortunately, there are about 4 stores that are close enough to us to do so.  Coupons help because some of the stores sometimes double face value if a coupon is no larger than $0.99 –if it is a $1.00 off, you are out of luck.

Coupons are available online too — before you go anywhere, always check the website of the company from which you need to buy something, and check for coupons to print.

At least there are weekly specials, and sometimes BOGO deals, but it often seems to me that a higher price per pound, or last week’s price was lower than when those are advertised.  So, this is just one more thing we have to do, compare prices when we need something and sort the coupons. At least most of the grocery store ones do not make you spend money for a stamp and fill out a refund form.

As the gasoline prices rose, the prices of food went crazy.  Here in Pennsylvania, the gasoline prices are still about 20 cents higher than Florida.  Since the gas price is down, the grocery store prices have a few more sales, but the normal sticker prices are NOT budging downward — they seem to me to still be climbing.

Some companies along the food chain have to be making a lot of money here…here is one explanation from a news station, but until I read a lot of independent bloggers and the views of other news stations, I refuse to take it at face value.  The buying public is being being gouged big time and there is always way more to the story than what is presented.

Is it possible that some of these people did NOT get the memo that we seem to be falling into a national depression, and if every one of us does not take great care in what we do, we are all going to hell in a really big handbasket?  Really, how smart can it be to raise taxes when so many people are losing their jobs, their homes are being foreclosed, and basic needs are not affordable?

North Carolina wants to raise their highway use tax a percent, and are looking at other ways as well, such as raising tolls.

A friend just sent me an email and said, “pass this on”:  Iif you bank online, you might be able to find out faster — her bank in Pennsylvania is quietly calling their callable CD’s.  So, if you got a good interest rate on a callable CD somewhere, you better check it regularly, if it has not already been called.  It is possible you will not get any formal notification until just before your new maturity date, and new, pay you nothing, interest rate.  It is up to you to find out — assuming of course, you had any money to invest in the first place.

This same buddy has been complaining that down in Pittsburgh (Allegheny County) there’s been a big drink tax levied.  Well, true to form, I searched YouTube, and found a protest song.  It seems people are not too happy about it.

It is snow again and we have not yet got our decorations up.  That will be the chore for this coming weekend.  Fortunately, the past few years have not been that hard to do.  We cleaned out all the old ornaments we did not want or use anymore, so any box you open now has useable ones and you do not have to dig through the rubble.

More than likely, Hubs and I are just like most everyone else this year, we are not going to do as much gift shopping for Christmas because we are watching our money pretty closely.  In the meantime, the house is being cleaned and I think I went overboard on getting the dishwasher running tonight.  It is a nice Kitchen Aid dishwasher, but is situated on the end of the row of cabinets and the dang thing is loud.  We have been saving power by not using the dry cycle to lower our electric bill.  We open the door and let it hydrate the air in the house — and the dishes all dry by themselves.

So what is a nice German Gal like me to do?  Put on the music and headphones to drown out the dishwasher noise is what while I surf the internet for interesting gifts that will please a lowered budget.

It was time to find something relating to Christmas music, and even better yet if there was a nice dose of humor to go with it.  Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer is playing now.  In case it runs through your head after you are finished listening to this, please remember it is NOT my fault and if you are feeling a little naughty yourself when you read this, pass the link on to this blog to your friends and loved ones!

Here you go: