Transforming a Lamp

We have no lighting in the living room so when I stopped at a yard sale that a church was having last Saturday, I splurged and found a brass floor lamp for $5. It's rare that I splurge for such things, but I didn't think the $5 was a really big thing and as it turns out, it wasn't.

The lamp has been tarnished badly, however. So when we went on our usual grocery shopping trip I picked up some brasso to clean the lamp with. I had originally tried a homemade mixture of flour, salt and vinegar. While the mixture did do some good, the tarnish is so bad that it needed a little ooomph. So I spent $2 for the brasso and boy is it working wonders! I am so excited and can't wait to show you! I will take some before and after photos to show the transformation. So all in all I spent $7 for the lamp. It's a very heavy lamp too. Not one of those cheap wal-mart made lamps.

I really don't know how old the lamp is, but I was told that it came out of an old building here in town. I am so excited and can't wait to show you the transformation results!

Cleaning Up

Last week I ordered a big trash dumpster from our city's dumpster program. Generally the city charges $200 per a day for the dumpster which is really insane, but in an effort to get people to clean up the city, they're offering it for free at the moment.

So, needless to say, I took advantage of the opportunity. We had some old furniture and junk in the garage that needed to go and since I was able to get it for over a 3 day weekend, I figured this was the perfect time.

So far I have managed to throw out an old mattress set, a bbq grill and smoker left by the previous owner of this house and the pool liner from the no longer there pool. As scary as it is, just that stuff has managed to fill up the dumpster! I do have an old dresser that I want to throw out too and a couch. The dresser I think I can get away with, but the couch I'll have to call the city about.

I actually wanted to clean out the garage and get rid of a bunch of stuff in there too, but it looks like that might have to wait until next time around. Actually, I hope there is a next time around. I guess we'll see!

Our Wonderful Neighbors

Since we've moved into our new house, there have been a lot of things we haven't been able to get do to us both having to start over from previous marriages. One thing we've always had to borrow is a lawn mower to get our lawn mowed. Luckily my husband's dad has a lawn mower we can borrow although it's rare for him to ask to borrow it.

Because of that, our grass tends to get a bit higher than everyone else's in the neighborhood. I remember the first week we were here, our neighbor on the right side of us came over and mowed part of our front yard. She didn't mow the other part because she didn't want to be nosey.lol

My husband was okay with her mowing in the beginning, but because she mows once a week (when she mows her yard), he's starting to be upset by it. I guess because he's not used to neighbors who are helpful or he feels badly since we don't have a lawn mower of our own and can't return the favor as often to her.

Well, today our neighbor across the street came over and asked if they could mow our front yard for us. She explained that her husband has a riding lawn mower that he loves to use. He mow their front yard and her dad's front yard who lives on the corner, and he even takes it out to the shooting range and mows there as well.lol I'm not sure if our front yard was an excuse to use his lawn mower or they just knew we needed our lawn mowed.lol...but whatever the reason I said ok because I feel badly that our yard isn't as up to date as everyone elses. I just hope my husband isn't upset about it.

They're a very sweet older couple and have even brought over items for us that they were getting rid of when we first moved into the neighborhood. We ended up with an end table, a bookcase, some planting pots, an old fashioned style radio and a boom box style radio.

Our neighbors are such wonderful people! I am going to have to do something nice for them one of these days.

Nighttime Mowing and CashCrate Pay Day!

The neighbor is mowing her yard after dark again. I wonder how she can see what she is mowing? I mowed after dark once and it was a really big pain to do! Heck I can't even mow well in the daytime. I found that out after I mowed our yard recently. The next day I was chatting out front with a friend and realized that there were a few areas I'd missed on our lawn. It must have been when I was trying to avoid the bees in the tree.

I got a surprise in the mail today. Cashcrate.com sent me my first check for just simply filling out 2 minute surveys for free. The amount was for $23.39. It's not much to most people, but that $23 is paying for the kids school lunches for the next few weeks. I have continued to fill out surveys for cashcrate.com and plan to increase my earnings from them for the month of September. I'll keep you posted with how it goes. If you're not familiar with what cashcrate.com is, you can check out my post titled, "Got a Junk Mail Address?"