Nobody that I know has ever told me that they have any experience with chains rain, so I’m a little bit anxious about trying something that nobody else that I know has used. Funny how I depend so much on the experiences of my friends and family!

I’ve fallen in love with the beauty of a copper rain chain that looks like lotus flowers, and I’ve bookmarked the website for future reference. My biggest worry right now about copper rain chains is whether or not some one would be bold enough to come up to the house and steal them just for the melt down value of the copper. Maybe I should consider aluminum instead, but I DO love the warm look of copper!

My father used to love watching the Monty Python’s Flying Circus television show back in the ’70s and ’80s, and whenever I watch any Monty Python flick I think of my father. When I watch them I get a melancholy, bittersweet feeling. I miss him. I hope you enjoy this short video of one of my favorite parts of the film – the taunting of the French Knight.

At least now I don’t feel quite so bad when I ask people to repeat themselves – the doctor has given me a very good reason for not being able to hear very well!

My daughter and her husband finally saved up enough money to buy a new house. They have been married for three years and had lived in an apartment the whole time. The day they had the closing and got the keys they had to get the electricity turned on in their names. They went online to ShopElectricityRatesTexas.com to find the best deal that they could find. My son-in-law’s father had told him that was a great place to get electricity. Then they went into the house and decided that they wanted to paint everything before they moved in. We all chipped in over a long weekend and knocked that job out pretty quickly. We also cleaned everything from top to bottom because my daughter is pretty much a germaphobe. Then over the next week, we all helped, when we could, get all the furniture moved in. The next part involved making the curtains. My mom is a great seamstress so she was a big help in getting the curtains made for every room. I think my daughter learned a lot about sewing from her. So now the house is mostly complete. I am really hoping now that they will start thinking about having a baby. I can’t wait for that to happen.

Over the past years I’ve gained about twenty pounds and I have been forced to buy some new clothes to wear. I was hoping to lose the weight before summer came so I would not have to buy a new summer wardrobe, but the weight is a lot harder to lose than it is to find!

So anyway, I was looking at the website and saw a yummy recipe for making some raspberry truffle cheesecake. Loving recipes as I do, I went ahead and clicked on the link and was seeing how easy it would be to make my own from scratch. I found myself wondering if I would be able to substitute the cream cheese with fat free cream cheese, and substitute the sugar with Splenda or Truvia, and perhaps make the cheesecake a little bit healthier. Have you tried doing that yourself? If so, were you happy with the results?

I usually wear a size 6 1/2 shoe, but my foot is wide, so I decided to go ahead and order the boots a couple of sizes larger than I usually wear. I’d rather have boots on my feet that are a little bit too large than too small. Well, I went ahead and ordered size 8 1/2, thinking that would be leaving me plenty of room to wear some nice heavy socks. The boots arrived today, and they are almost too small! I can wear them with regular socks, but I will not be able to wear them with heavy socks. That is a true aggravation – ordering something a couple of sizes larger with the thought that they will be too large, and then having them arrive almost too small! I guess I should just be really glad that I did not order my regular size!

The catch with the pre-payment plans were that if your kid didn’t want to go to that college you would not be able to get a refund. Well, that sounded like a really bad idea to me – especially since the college my parents wanted me to go to was really a secretarial school and not a college at all. If I refused to go to the school of my parent’s choice, why in the world would I think that my own kid would go to the college I wanted my kid to go to?

One of the more painless ways parents can save for college is by joining programs that give you rewards for signing up at a website and shopping with their affiliated partners. When you do that, a small portion of the money you spend go into a special savings account that you can spend later on college tuition. I did that for my kids; it didn’t save them a whole lot of money, but every penny helps!

We left the store empty handed; she said that even though there was a spot for the Leap Day Birthday cards the slot was empty. She was quite disappointed; I suggested that we could make a card using our computers and card stock. She said that it just might have to come to that.