I’m thinking about getting new cabinet hardware for the whole house when we get our tax refund. It’s something I’ve wanted every since we got this place, I’ve just never gotten around to doing it. But I think it’s high time I did.

The handles on some of the cabinets are broken. And all of them are made in a way that I just don’t care for. The tops and bottoms of them are pointy, and it’s quite possible that someone could get hurt on them. Pumpkin ripped her pants badly one one of them one time, so it’s not hard to imagine that they could do serious damage to somebody’s skin, or even an eye if they fell next to them. Not good.

I’m going to see how many we need and figure up how much it would cost to replace them all. If that’s not practical, I should at least be able to do some of them.

One of the reasons I can’t wait for spring to get here is so I can start walking. I’m pretty motivated to start exercising and lose weight right now, but the weather has been so unpredictable that I just haven’t bothered. If I don’t get to exercise several days in a row when I’m starting out, I tend to lose interest. I’ve been there and done that many times over.

Unfortunately I don’t have any room in my house for fitness equipment, and I have a hard time getting into those workout shows on TV. But I enjoy walking, and I think that would be the best way for me to start out. Once I start building up stamina (and more motivation) I can start with some exercise videos or something.

Somehow I’ve got to lose some weight. I doubt I’ll ever get back to the body I had before Pumpkin, and I really don’t care much about that. I mainly want to have more energy and less to worry about healthwise.

You couldn’t tell it by the weather around here, but spring will be here soon. I can’t wait.

Actually we have had a few springlike days lately, although the weather has been mostly chilly. And strangely enough, I’ve already seen some bees, and Hubby pointed out a bird’s nest to me today. Pumpkin even saw a butterfly late last week. After all that, I’ve got spring fever.

My mom’s birthday is at the beginning of spring, so I’ve got that to think about as well. Hopefully I’ll have the money to get her something nice. Maybe I’ll get her some of her favorite perfume, or some pretty religious jewelry. She would be thrilled with both of those.

I just hope the weather is nice this spring. Most of the time it’s pretty wild here in the mountains. I can remember several times when we haven’t gotten any big snows all winter, then after spring got here we got a foot or more.

I am a notoriously rabid bargain hunter. Partly out of necessity, and partly because I just love a good deal. It does my heart good to get stuff at the lowest possible price.

I recently checked out Buy.com, and found that they have some awesome deals on electronics, stuff for the home, DVDs and much more. But they’re so much more than just great deals.

They have a price comparison engine that determines where you can find the lowest price on a given item. And even if it’s not from them (which it quite often is), they’ll tell you where to find it. Now that’s an awesome concept, and one of many reasons why Buy.com rocks!

They also have a feature called Guidester that lets you answer questions about what you’re looking for and shows you products that meet those criteria. I tried it out with laptops, and I was quite impressed with the results. I still found several to choose from, but every one of them had exactly what I wanted, and was within my price range.

They also have weekly deals that are well worth checking out. And I haven’t even scratched the surface yet! Here is a video I made about why Buy.com rocks. Hope you like it!

I’m rarely late in real life, but I’m always late with things like this. But for what it’s worth, I hope everyone out there had a nice Valentine’s Day.

Mine was nothing to write home about. I spent the day running all over the place, trying to get a bill or two paid and run some other errands. While killing time before I had to go pick up some stuff, I did find out that a local computer place does layaways. So now I know where to go when I’m able to make payments on a new laptop.

Hubby and I didn’t buy each other anything for V-Day, for the simple reason that we didn’t have any money. I bought Pumpkin a small heart-shaped thing of one of her favorite kinds of candy. And that was the extent of my holiday.

Here I am with this pretty new template for my blog, and I’m just neglecting it something awful. Shame on me! But I have been awfully busy lately.

I’ve had work coming in by the truckload this month, figuratively speaking. I’m still not back to full speed since Hubby hasn’t gone back to work full-time yet, but I’m doing my best to keep up. I’ve had to put certain things on the back burner to take care of more pressing ones, but hopefully I can start juggling things better soon.

One topic I’ve been doing a lot of writing about lately is dogs. Although I’m not as much of a dog enthusiast as I was when I was younger, I have truly enjoyed it. It’s even got me thinking about getting a dog for myself. Hubby has a hunting dog, but I want something that is more of a companion.

I also got an assignment from a website that I already know and love, and I’m really psyched about it. I would love to share the details about all of these, but unfortunately the articles are to be ghostwritten, so I can’t.

I can share information about one of my projects, though. I’m researching scholarships for SuperCollege. That’s one of the things that I’ve had to put on the back burner somewhat, but they have been really understanding. I think the project wraps up this month, but I hope to work with them again in the future. I have truly enjoyed it.

That’s all for now. Hopefully this blog won’t be on the back burner for much longer, because it is one of the things I enjoy the most.

It has been ridiculously windy here today. The weather called for gusts up to 70 miles per hour, and I think we got that and then some.

Luckily we ended up with no major damage from it. We had a bit of a mess in the front yard, but other than that we came out okay. But there were lots of trees down in the area, including two right up the road from our house. Our power was also off for a while, but we were gone during most of it so that didn’t affect us too much.

There were several fires in the area, one of which I saw firsthand. A power line broke next to a little country store a couple of miles from us, catching some brush on fire. Fortunately that was taken care of quickly, and it didn’t get out of hand. I hope the others were as well.

I am very thankful that my daughter was born healthy. I was overcome with joy when she came into this world, but I was also checking carefully for any abnormalities, cerebral palsy symptoms, and to make sure she had all of her fingers and toes.

Some people are not so fortunate. My youngest niece, for instance, was born with some birth defects. I don’t know all of the details, but she was in the hospital for the first three months of her life. She just recently got to come home, and she still has to eat through a feeding tube.

I can’t stand to see a child go through things like that. One day when I have plenty of money, I’m going to give some to the March of Dimes and other charities for babies and children. Maybe it will help in some small way.

If there is one thing that I really need to work on in my home business, it is marketing. I can do it on paper, but when it comes down to getting out there and selling my services I just can’t seem to get going.

Advertising was one of my favorite subjects in college. I did well in it, and my professor fell in love with the campaign I did for my final exam. So much so, in fact, that she overlooked some glaring mathematical errors that I made and still gave me an A+. But that was advertising things that other companies had to offer, not my own stuff.

I cringe at the thoughts of setting up trade show booths, or even handing out business cards. But I suppose that if I want to succeed, I need to get over that.

When I went to see my mom last week, I finally picked up my, Hubby’s and Pumpkin’s Christmas presents from my sister. I was quite happy with mine, which was a nice sweater and an awesome pair of jeans. The jeans made me especially happy, because they were exactly the kind of cut and color I like.

But unfortunately, my happiness was short lived. I was planning to wear the jeans yesterday, but when I put them on they wouldn’t fit.

I can’t take them back, because I already took the tags off of them and they came from a store that we don’t have in these parts. But I doubt that I would anyway. I am bound and determined to lose enough weight to get into them. One of my primary goals for this year is weight loss anyway, and maybe this will give me some extra incentive. It’s not often that the perfect pair of jeans comes along, you know.