Hershey Nugget Easter Wrappers

I should have been cleaning my house today but I was drawn to my computer………….more often than I’d like to admit.  I decided while I was there I would create some Easter Nugget Wrappers.  I made a bunch for Easter and Christmas…..yes, Christmas.  I love Christmas!  But for today, I won’t post the Christmas nuggets…I’ll save them for Christmas.  I was actually singing Christmas songs today, too – Falalalala la la la la!

St. Patrick’s Day Hershey Nugget Wrappers

A few weeks ago, with the help of some free graphics on the internet, I created some St. Patrick’s Day wrappers to put on Hershey Nuggets.

The Friday before St. Patrick’s Day, I went to lunch with a friend at the seniors dinner in town.  I gave each person two nugget bars…one of each kind.

I had a bunch left over………….even more than what is in the photo.  Ummmmmm – 55 to be exact.

I was going to give them out to friends and family, leave a few laying around here and there for people to find, etc.  When I came home from the senior dinner, I put them in a place where I would know right where they were so in four days, I could deliver my little nuggets.  As you can see, my “place where I would know right where they were” became a secret hiding place.  I looked, looked, looked, and even looked again for those little nuggets.  I didn’t find them until three days ago when I went to get into a cupboard where I keep all my tape, staplers, etc.  Why I thought to put them there, I don’t know but…………….! Maybe I’ll just put them in the freezer and bring them out of hiding for next year.  Yep, that’s what I’m thinking.  So next year around St. Patrick’s Day, maybe all of you out there in blog land can shoot me an e-mail and remind me WHERE I PUT THOSE LITTLE NUGGETS!

Grumpy Robin

With yesterday being the first day of SPRING, I looked out my windows off and on all during the day to see if I could spot a robin.  Nada, nada…..there was not a robin in sight.  But, this morning as I was getting ready to go to Idaho Falls with a friend, I looked out the window and…………….there it was…………..my first robin of the year.  Just look at the face on this bird.  Seriously, does this robin look grumpy, or what?

Barrow’s Goldeneye Ducks at Bridge

I went out to lunch today with a few friends and afterwards I went to  the Mine Hill bridge.  This place never disappoints me.  I always see something there to entertain me.  Even when the waters are still and there isn’t any wildlife around, I am still entertained by it’s beauty.  Today, it was Barrow’s Goldeneye ducks.  It’s fun to watch them swim, disappear under the water, then pop up somewhere else. 

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Ecofan Airmax – Heat Powdered Stove Fan

My husband and I really like having a wood stove in our home.  The warmth is totally different than the warmth we get from our electric furnace.  The one thing we do not like about it is the noise that the fan creates.  We have a wood stove insert and in order to get the most out of our stove, we need to run a fan that is connected to the stove to force out the hot air. 
This past winter, we have noticed a different kind of fan in a few of the homes we have visited.  After discussing the fan with others, we decided to get one for ourselves.  They are a bit pricy but as we have found out, they are well worth the money.  We have noticed a big difference with the heat in our home and we don’t have to run the noisy fan all the time.  The fan we purchased is an “Ecofan Airmax” and it runs virtually silent.  There are three types of the Ecofans… the original, the UltrAir and the Airmax.  We opted to get the top-of-the-line, fan.  The Airmax fans are longer and it moves more air at a wider range of temperatures

The fan does not need any batteries or electricity to run.  Nice, very nice.

When the thermoelectric module, that is on the back of the fan gets hot, it controls the fan blades.  When the stove is quite hot, the blades rotate very quickly and when the fire dies down and the stove cools down, the fan blades slow down.

We purchased our fan from the “Go To Marine” site.  At the time, it was the lowest price on the internet that I could find.  I think you can find it cheaper in other places now because of sales.  The fan claims to distribute the warm air in your home more evenly.  We have found this to be true.

It states that you are supposed to place the fan near the back of the stovetop so that the cool air will be drawn over the cooling fins. 

Since we have a wood stove insert, we set it towards the middle of the stove on the left-hand side, next to a heavy metal plate.  This allows our fan to still draw the cooler air and we haven’t noticed any flaws in it’s performance.

Sometimes I turn the furnace on in the mornings for a quick Heat-up-the-house, then I turn it off and let the woodstove and Ecofan Airmax do it’s magic for the rest of the day.  It’s so nice sometimes to just sit and listen….ah, listen to what….I don’t hear any fan – Heaven!

Sticky Gunk Remover – Doterra Wild Orange

Why, I DON’T KNOW…..but I have a hard time throwing away empty bottles that previously contained food items…like jam, peanut butter, etc.  You know, you can always use an empty jar/bottle for something, right?!  I came across THE MAMAS GIRLS, where they wrote how to make a product equivalent to GOO GONE and with all natural ingredients.  Only two ingredients, to be exact!  Doterra “Wild Orange”, and Fractionated Coconut Oil.

The instructions on the blog said to use 20 drops of Wild Orange with the Fractionated Coconut Oil but with my usual thinking, I thought… OK, if 20 drops worked, 23 drops will surely work. 
I actually happened to have an empty (15 ml) bottle (ha, see….empty bottles come in handy) of Wild Orange  so I took out the Orifice Reducer (dropper), and holding my new bottle of Wild Orange on it’s side, I let 23 drops of Wild Orange drip into my empty bottle.  I continued to fill the rest of the empty bottle (which now contained 23 drops of Wild Orange) with Fractionated Coconut Oil, returned the orifice reducer, put the lid on and shook it really well to mix the oils. 
Now for the test run…….I took an old peanut butter jar which still had the sticky gunk left on it after removing the label and put a few drops of the homemade gunk remover over the sticky parts.  I spread it around with my finger, waited approximately 10 seconds, then took a paper towel and wiped off the goo. 

IT WORKED!  I had to apply the gunk remover two time (I also do that with Goo Gone) to remove all the icky, but it really worked, taking off every bit of the sticky residue.  I had my doubts at first but now, I’m a Believer, for sure.  Yeah, no more chemical products to remove sticky ickys, for me.

Mr. Beaver’s Twig and Log Collection

Back in November of this year, I posted about a beaver dam over on Houston road.  As I was driving by again today, I took a few more pictures.

I noticed today close to the edge of the road, one of the places Mr. Beaver collected his twigs and logs.  It was interesting to see the signs of how the beaver got supplies to build the dam……you can see how the stumps come to a cone shape, chips of wood lying on the ground and even his teeth marks in the stumps. 

Baby Loch Ness Monster ? ? ?

On my last trip to the Mine Hill Bridge, all seemed quiet and normal, as usual.

But then something appeared in the water.

My first thoughts were…..oh, it’s just a log floating in the water.  But I kept watching, watching, and watching.  It seemed to come a little closer in my view from where I was sitting in my car on the bridge, but not a lot.

It was a little strange because one minute it would be there and then it would disappear for awhile and then it would pop up again, in basically the same spot.  The waters were calm so I saw no reason why, if it was a log, that it would keep bobbing up and down like it did.  Call me silly, but I actually sat and watched this for quite some time, zooming in closer and closer, trying to get a good close view.

Hmmmmm…………………Log, or Baby Loch Ness Monster ? ? ?

Grandma Happys

My little 1-year-old, grandson, really (I mean really) enjoys seeing himself in a mirror.  He laughs, babbles on, and gently butts his head to the mirror (his sign of affection….he butts his head against yours).  Even the black oven door makes enough of a reflection for him to get truly excited.

  
 
Watching this video (over and over and over and…….) sure brings on the “Grandma Happys”!………..Happys….a word…..probably not, but it fits me perfectly.
If you are viewing this blog from Feedly, you will need to go to my webpage at http://marshasayer.blogspot.com/2015/03/grandma-happys.html to view this video.

PET Balls – Fire Starters

I read on line about making PET (petroleum) Balls for emergency survival. It stated to start out with a wad of dryer lint, mush it really good with Vaseline then roll it into a ball for storage in an Altoids can or any another container you might have on hand.

When you want to use it to start a fire, it stated to spread it out a bit to form a cup. 

After spreading mine out a bit, it stated that any type of spark from flint and steel, fire steel, lighter, match etc, would light the PET Ball.  I tried to light it with a spark lighter, but after many attempts, I found that method did not work for me.  To get mine to light, I used a match, holding it to the Pet Ball long enough for the fire to start.

It started fairly easy and I had a pretty good flame going in a very short amount of time.

I didn’t time it but it seemed to take around 3 minutes for the flame to start dwindling.

 

Shortly thereafter, the flame had gone entirely out.  It did stay lit long enough to get a fire going if you needed it for camping or an emergency situation.  It might have stayed burning longer if I hadn’t placed it in snow.

You really should go to the site highlighted in red at the beginning of my blog to find out more.  You can use many things besides dryer lint as your fuel source.  You can even use Carmex for your petroleum.