Thursday, September 30, 2010

New Followers

Welcome new followers. Wild Blue Yonder, CeiPui, Dennis and Donna, Heidi, John and Judy, Jerry and Kimberly. We are happy to have you on board. This blog maybe kinda of boring since we are not fulltimers yet. But we are looking forward to summer 2011 when we will be.

Thanks for following and comments are always welcome.

Stay Safe

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

They Just Don't Get It!

People are constantly stopping by our house to visit. That’s not a bad thing. We know a lot of people around here. Dawn was raised here and I have lived here thirty years.

Recently it has been interesting to watch people faces when they come in and notice the absents of furniture and knick knacks. They always ask where is all your STUFF. We explain that we have sold a lot of STUFF and will soon be moving into our RV and hitting the road.

This explanation always brings on a lot of questions. First question is usually, how long you going to be gone? We explain we are not sure how long we will be gone. It all depends on how long it takes us to see all we want to see. We have even had friends ask just what on earth is it we think we needed to see out there? They just don’t get it!

Second question, what are you going to do with the house? We explain that we are going to sell it. They get this look on their face and then tell us that we can’t just sell the house and hit the road. Where will we live when we get finished traveling? We explain we are not sure. We are pretty sure there won’t be a housing shortage when we get ready to settle down. We might find another area to live instead. They just don’t get it!

Third question, What about your family and friends? Sure some of family members think we have a loose screw but, for the most part, they wished they could do the same. We all have cell phones and computers. We can continue to communicate just as we do today. They just don’t get it!

Of course we have a few friends and family members that think we are totally insane and won’t last a month on the road. Dawn and I have discussed why some people give us nothing but negative comments about living in our RV. We had to stop and put ourselves in their shoes. These people that make those negative remarks don’t go anywhere. They are homebodies. There are some that are afraid of their own shadow. There are also those that get so set in their ways and change is very hard to take. Some cannot imagine living anywhere else beside in their hometown. Some are so physically attached to their families that they would not go anywhere unless the entire family went too. They just don’t get it!

We had a friend recently tell us that we are crazy! The scenery might be a little different but the people are all the same wherever you go. There is nothing out there worth giving up your house and all your STUFF. That comes from someone that was born and raised in this small town and anything outside of it upsets their comfort level. They just don’t get it!

We have also been told that it will be dangerous for two women to be out on the road alone. That person doesn’t know us as well as we thought they did. We are perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves. Dawn has had her hand gun license for a good while and grew up hunting. She knows about guns and how to use them. I on the other hand can carry a mean case of PMS and no one wants to cross me. All kidding aside, we have traveled a good deal by ourselves and are always caution and don’t take any chance.

Anyway, they just don’t get it!

We also realize it is not everyone’s cup of tea. Why can’t people just be happy for us and stop with all the negative comments? Maybe we won’t live in the RV for more than a year or two, who knows? But one thing about it, we can say is we did it!

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

New Look for Sofa

Just wanted to show you what a difference the leather treatment did for the sofa daybed. Here is a before and after picture.
This pictures shows the black frame.


This is the finished product. This finish treatment ties in better with the colors we now have.


This is a close up of what the leather treatment looks like

We also had a made some light weight wall art out of some cheap jewelery and some dollar frames. We removed the glass and used some of the left over leather and glued the earrings, neck less pendent and button covers to the frames. We think they turned out really nice and they don't weight much at all. The horse art we found in the Christmas aisle at Hobby Lobby. It is a Christmas tree ornament! We have used a lot of Christmas ornaments for decorating. People don't believe us when we tell them they are ornaments.

This wall of art work cost us about five dollars. I love a good bargain! 


Monday, September 27, 2010

Weekend Musings

We did a few things around the house this weekend. The weather is getting cooler but on Saturday it rained most of the day. It was nasty outside Sunday morning. Saturday afternoon it was beautiful out. We cleaned up a bedroom suit and took a few pictures of it so we can post it on craigslist.

We pulled the fifth wheel out of the garage and went through the cabinets. We removed all the STUFF we don’t use. WE removed quite a bit of STUFF. We pulled out the daybed sofa frame and I did a leather treatment to it. Neither of us cared for the black color of the frame. We decided it needed the leather look. I have done a few other pieces of our furniture in the past and we really like the look of it. I used a leather treatment kit by rustoleum.
It is a two part treatment. It doesn’t take long to do and can really change the look of your furniture. The first step is to spray paint the furniture with a can of paint that is kind of a terracotta color. When that dries, it doesn’t take long. Then you use a brush and paint on the dark color (looks like chocolate milk). Then you take a plastic grocery sack and dab it all over. It looks really ugly until it dries. Once it dries it looks like leather!

The sofa daybed looks great. I also did an end table. It took a few hours to do both pieces but it was well worth it.

Friday, September 24, 2010

Worldy Possessions

John and Carol (Our Trip Around the Sun) are so right when they commented that downsizing from a house to an RV is not for sissies! It is a long drawn out process and you really have to decide what your priorities are. What to keep and what to get rid of is not that easy. This process is something most people don’t understand. I guess the only people that really do understand are the people who have taken the plunge and have moved into an RV or a boat.

Everything you have accumulated over the years has to be examined and careful thought has to go into your decision of what to do with each possession. Do you really need to keep it? Is it something that should remain in the family? What family member should have it? Is it something that you have such attachment to that you can’t part with it? It is something that is really worth placing in storage and paying a monthly fee for? Is it something that you can sell? Is it really worth anything?

Not only do you have to make those decisions, but you also will suddenly be overwhelmed with the emotions and memories attached to each possession. You will remember when it was given to you as a gift. Remember that it was made by someone special. Remember when you had to search all over town to find the right color or size. Remember how long you had to save before you could afford it.

We have spent a lot of time recently going down memory lane. We have touched and thought about each item that we have put in the garage to sale. We have touched and thought about each item that we have donated to charity. Like I said, it is a long drawn out process. We are just grateful that we have the luxury to do it at our own pace. Our house is not yet on the market and we don’t have to rush.

With that being said, we really have to stop and think about what we are keeping. We don’t want to rent a real large storage unit and pay a high monthly rental fee. We have to remind ourselves that we are going to rent a small unit and we will have a limited storage area. To our credit, we both have very good spatial relations and that will come in handy. We don’t really decorate for Christmas anymore so, we can get rid of all the Christmas decorations with the exception of a few ornaments that are sentimental to us.

We are making progress and we are really getting excited about it!

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Getting Rid of It

Our garage sale last weekend was a big success. We sold a china hutch, dishes, complete punch bowl set, power tools, comforter sets, costume jewelry and a lot of other odds n ins. On Monday we sold an oak curio cabinet that we posted on craigslist. Wow, we are starting to see light at the end of this STUFF filled tunnel!


We plan on spending this weekend dragging out more STUFF for the next sell.

I sure do envy those people that can sell all their STUFF at one sale. Our problem is that we have an accumulation of STUFF from our catering company, bed and breakfast, her STUFF, my STUFF and the items that were inherited from her parents that were married for fifty years. Parents that saved almost everything! Like I said before, we are starting to see light at the end of this tunnel. It all just takes time and right now we have plenty of that!

We have learned that the garbage collectors will take one bulk item per week with our garbage. We now know how to get rid of the five mattresses and four box springs we have in the garage. We will be dragging one a week to the curb. That sounds like a great plan.

The weather is predicted to begin cooling off this weekend and that means we can work outside without having a heat stroke. I am here to tell you, that you won’t get much work out of these two old fat girls when it’s hot outside!

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Wedding Pictures

O.K here are a few of the wedding pics I took of my niece's wedding




Monday, September 20, 2010

Exhausting Weekend

What a weekend we had. Friday night we worked on organizing the garage for the garage sale on Saturday. We worked on that until almost ten. That garage was a mess! We are having a hard time working in this humid heat.

Saturday morning we got started early. We were up at six and got busy right away. We had a lot of STUFF to pull out. The weather was terrible. It was hot and humid.

We had people show up before we put the signs out and it was a steady stream of folks in and out all day. We sold a lot of STUFF. We normally close down around two but we were so busy we were open until four. We also had several friends stop in to visit.

We were so exhausted by five and still had STUFF to put back into the garage. We went in cooled off a bit and then returned outside to finish up. We decided to get a shower and go for Mexican food for dinner. We had a nice dinner and visited with friends we ran into at the restaurant. By nine thirty I was in bed.

On Sunday morning Dawn went to the grocery store and I steam cleaned the living room carpet. I steam clean the carpet on a regular basis. We do have four legged kids that track in all kinds of dirt and grime. When Dawn got home with the groceries, I helped her put them away. She put a roast in the crock pot and we went to work on the riding mower. The belt needed to be replaced. We got the belt on and found out quickly the guy sold us the wrong one. Our yard needs to be mowed today. It really has grown a lot since the rain last week. We barrowed a couple of push mowers from a friend. While loading them into the truck, Dawn slipped and almost did the splits. She thinks she pulled a muscle. When we got home we unloaded the mowers and mowed as long as we could. Did I mention it is hot and humid here? Well, let’s just say these two old fat girls didn’t last long pushing lawn mowers! Beside I had a snake run between my feet while mowing and I HATE snakes. In an hour we had mowed all we could. We had to go in and cool off.  We live on two acres and there is NO way we could mow it with push mowers. We only mowed the small yard were our small dogs play.

The friends we barrowed the mowers from came out and mowed some for us and took the belt off our riding mower so we could return it. We then ate a quick bite of roast and had to run across town to meet a friend. I needed to take some pictures for him. We spend an hour there. We got home about eight and at nine-thirty I was ready for bed. We are both sore all over from all the work this weekend.

I am so ready for fall weather. Neither of us likes the heat.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Garage Sale Time

We are planning on having another garage sale tomorrow. The weather is finally cooling off a bit. Tomorrows temperatures are predicted for low nineties. It’s still hot but not as hot as it has been!


We have posted our sale on Craigslist and will work tonight to get our new inventory added to the lot. We were going to work on it last night but I had this hare-brained idea to drive into Addison and check out the Addison Oktoberfest.

We stopped off at a seafood restaurant to have fried shrimp for dinner before going to the festival. We ate fast and got out of there in a hurry. The music was so loud we couldn’t talk and the place was more a bar than a restaurant. The food wasn’t all that good either. Oh well!

We drove around the Oktoberfest area for twenty minutes looking for a place to park. We finally found a place a couple block away.

We were planning on seeing the German dancers, dog agility show and snap some pictures. We walked around for a bit and did see a few dancers. We walked through the vendor’s area and we did see a few of the agility dogs but mostly we saw a lot of beer drinkers. There were tons of people and everyone was carrying a huge stein of beer. OMG, I don’t want to be around a bunch of twenty-something’s that are drinking like it’s the last day of school. They should name this festival the beerfest!

We didn’t stay long. We should have just stayed home and worked on the garage sale stuff instead! Well, now we can say “Been There, Done That!

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Big Foot Leveling System

As mentioned in the past, we have owned a motorhome. We found it somewhat cramped and traded it in for our current fifth wheel. We love everything about our fifth wheel with the exception of leveling the beast. We kind of got spoiled with the leveling of the motorhome. We pulled into our site and pushed a button and the motorhome could be level in a matter of seconds. We could adjust our level from front to back or from side to side. Boy that is really the only thing I miss about the motorhome.

We have been doing some research and would like to add some kind of automatic leveling system to our fifth wheel. We have looked at Level Ease and Big Foot. The Big Foot system seems to be exactly what we need. The problem is that we don’t know anyone that has experience with them. We have checked with our forum friends and got back two responses that said they were really great to have. We noticed that Bill & Debbie (The GoodeLife) was getting some installed in the near future. But we wanted to find out if anyone out there has any experience with them and what their opinion is.

We really trust our RV blogger friends opinions.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Productive Weekend & Rant

We had plans to have a garage sale on Saturday but learned on Friday evening that there was a very good possibility it would rain. We will try again next weekend.

We decided to do our grocery shopping on Friday evening. That was a complete disaster! Dawn gets mad at me for making rude remarks to RUDE people. I find the older I get, the less tolerable I am of unruly children and their ignorant parents. I consider myself a polite person and I feel like manners should be practiced at all ages. My mother made sure we had good manners and they were so instilled in me that I am shocked at people and their public behavior. Do you hear a rant coming on?

Well here it is!

Have you encountered the Stop & Talk Cart! That is people who have to stop dead in their tracks to talk on their cell phone. You know the kind that has to stop in the middle of the aisle so that you can’t get around them!

How about Lifeline Cart! The people that have four or five kids surrounding the cart hanging on like it is their lifeline. They can’t even let go when they meet you head on in the aisle and instead will ram into your cart because the aisle isn’t wide enough!

Or Stationary Cart! The people that leave their carts parked in the middle of the aisle while they wonder from one end to another returning occasionally to drop items in!

Or Screaming Cart! The cart with the screaming kid that has the parent who insist on pushing them up and down each aisle so that everyone can enjoy the noise!

Or Cell Phone Parent? This is the parent that is too preoccupied with the cell phone that they don’t notice the kid pulling stuff off the shelves, crawling over merchandise, running and down the aisles!

How about in restaurants? Have you encountered the Restaurant Terrors? The kids that jump up and down in booths, crawl on and under the table, throw food on the floor and return to the buffet to stick their grubby little hands into the food! What part of that seems like good behavior?

Or Last Minute Parent? The parent that stands in line with the kids at the fast food counter that doesn’t bother to ask what they want until it’s their turn to order. Then the arguments start. Shouldn’t that have been decided before you got in line?

HELLO, am I the only person that has a problem with this?

Don’t get me wrong, I love kids. I even have one myself. He’s grown now. He does have manners. I would have died of embarrassment if my kid would have done some of the things we have witnessed recently.

Sorry about the rant, just had to get that off my chest!

Anyway, we did have a productive weekend. We bathed all three little dogs, pulled the fifth wheel out and starting going through the RV building. We took a load of JUNK to the dumpster and have another pile of STUFF to add to the garage sale. We also sold a dresser we had listed on craigslist.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Severe Weather In Texas

The weather here has been crazy here in North Texas. We really needed the rain. The problem is that we didn’t need the flooding rains. We have gone all summer with hardly a drop of rain and then the rain comes but it is flash flooding rain. We have had flash flooding here since Tuesday and yesterday there were creeks out of their banks and people had to be rescued in Lewisville, Arlington and Dallas. The local fire departments were rescuing people from flooded cars and the roofs of houses. A school had to be evacuated.


Almost as soon as the flooding rains stopped the reports of multiple funnel clouds started. They were touching down in different areas. There were damages reported in five area towns.

We watched on TV as live video captured the funnel clouds touching down and then disappearing almost as quickly. One of the funnels was reported to be on the ground for ten minutes in a busy area of Dallas. It is an industrial area that had extensive damage to several buildings. A few homes had their roofs torn off.

We continued to watch the news as they reported that the severe weather with a tornado warning was posted for our area. The fifth wheel was parked in the yard behind the house and we decided we should put it in the garage. The rain had let up to a slight sprinkle. We went outside and hooked up to the truck and I began to back it into the garage when the rain started coming down so hard I couldn’t see the garage door opening I was supposed to be backing into. I put the truck in park and told Dawn we would have to leave it outside. By the time we got back into the house we were drenched. Luckily the storm pasted over us without any severe weather hitting us.

The sun suddenly appeared! We returned to the truck and put the fifth wheel in the garage. The sunshine lasted for an hour or so and then the rain started again.

We realize that we will be get into some serious weather when we are living fulltime and won’t have a garage to protect our fifth wheel. We just want to start our fulltime life without any weather related damage to the fifth wheel. With the luck we have been experincing lately we decided not to take a chance!

We did receive a real education while watching the tornados live on TV. We now know what the clouds look like when tornados begin to form. Now we know what to watch for.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Labor Day Weekend

Last week was a crazy week. Our garbage disposal stopped working for no apparent reason. Dawn broke the pot to the coffee pot. We don’t drink coffee but we use it to make our tea. Our neighbor’s hot water heater went out. Dawn was cooking a feast for company on Saturday and the oven locked up and she couldn’t use it. She had to take her homemade cobbler next door to bake. Thank goodness for the neighbors!


On Friday, Dawn smoked brisket, ham and beer can chicken. Saturday she made potato salad, coleslaw, baked beans, roasted corn on the cob, deviled eggs and watermelon. For dessert she made peach cobbler, chocolate pie and freezer caramel pie. I kept reminder her that there would only be six of us for dinner!

Saturday evening was spent with some good friends and enjoying some great home cooked food. Even though we all stuffed ourselves, there was plenty of food left over. Thank Goodness, Dawn is a great cook!

Sunday we pulled out the fifth wheel and with the assistance of friends removed the recliners and moved in the new sofa. The new sofa works out better and looks great. We had leftovers for lunch and dinner.

Monday we did a few things around the house and completed the curtains in the fifth wheel. Monday evening we drove to the airport to pick up a friend that has been out of town for a few weeks. We sure spend a lot of time going back and forth to the airport even though we haven’t been on any trips recently! Anyway, we picked him up stopped for dinner before going home. Dinner was good and we really enjoyed looking at all the pictures he took while in Canada, Seattle and Alaska.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

New Sofa Is In The Trailer!!!!

Well, We got the new sofa in the fifth wheel with no problem! We didn't have to cut a hole in the roof or remove the rear window!!! It was even easier than I had thought it would be. We had some good friends offer to help us and we took them up on it. It only took a few minutes to remove the recliners and get the sofa in. It took longer to put the legs on then it did to get it in there.



We are very pleased with the new sofa. It is comfortable and fits just right. We can now see out the two windows that the high back recliners blocked.

We are still making a few changes to the interior to get it to feel more like a home and less like a typical trailer. We are about finished.

We have ended up with somewhat of a western theme. We just thought we would do something a little different with our interior. It is now one of a kind! A friend told us that people pay big bucks to have their trailers and motorhomes redecorated. We must have saved ourselves a lot of money!!!

The best part is that we have lightened our load. The furniture we took out was heavier than the furniture we have replaced.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

New Baby in the Neighborhood

We have a new baby in our neighborhood. The couple that owns the land across the street from us had a new baby jenny born yesterday. We have been waiting all week for this little one to be born. I couldn’t wait to take my camera over and snap a few shots. Her name is “Pumpkin”.


She is still a little wobbly. I guess I would be too, if I was trying to balance that set of ears! She is very sweet and her mother is a sweetheart too.