Archive for December 4th, 2007

Mass Produced Home Decor

Tuesday, December 4th, 2007

Did you every see the ‘Friends’ episode where Rachel buys a bunch of furniture for her apartment with Phoebe and she tells Phoebe that it’s all antique because Phoebe thinks stuff from places like Pottery Barn is mass produced and everyone ends up with the same stuff?  I had such a moment.  I’ve been trying to sell my house for a while and one of the groups that came through remarked that the picture in my office of trees lining a rural road looked familiar – because they had it too.  Thank you IKEA.

Holiday Travel

Tuesday, December 4th, 2007

With exchange rates being as favorable as I hear they are for just about anyone outside the USA, now seems like a great time to take an affordable vacation. Flights to USA are easy to find so why not fly for the holidays to USA? A nice destination holiday will create memories to last a lifetime. DialAFlight is a good service through which to make your plans. They book flights to New York, flights to Washington and have plenty of Holiday Offers to take advantage of. This service works over the phone so you don’t have the question of whether or not your information was accepted at the end of an internet booking. Now seems like a great time to take a vacation!

Galileo Thermometers

Tuesday, December 4th, 2007

Have you ever seen a Galileo thermometer? You probably have, they were the cool thing to give at Christmas a couple years back. I just love looking at them although I didn’t want to tell anyone I didn’t know how to read one. Last year someone gave me one and I finally figured it out, but I still think they are more interesting as a thing to look at than as a thermometer.

galileo thermometerRustic

Traveling to See Family

Tuesday, December 4th, 2007

People in my family scattered to the four winds when they went to college. Spread from west coast to east coast and lots of places in between, I like to find the cheapest way to visit so that I can visit more often. I also don’t like to stay with them — there’s a reason why we scattered (just kidding). Sometimes I go alone, sometimes I go with my family and I don’t like to invade a one room apartment with my brood. My favorite thing to do is go online and get everything booked in advance (my dad used to go from hotel to hotel looking for rooms in the middle of the night). That’s always easy to do with plane tickets since the airlines are the same everywhere (if it flies out of here and to there then it is both here and there). Not so with Hotel Reservations. Sure the Marriot probably has locations just about anywhere I go, but I don’t know that for sure. When I do book, will I be staying 20 miles away from the person I’m visiting? Is the Marriot there a dive that I won’t feel safe in? Can I get a better rate at a closer hotel that isn’t a chain at all? At Hotel Reservations, they cover all this. You tell them what city you want to stay in and they give you pricing, quality of the hotel and best value available. You can even narrow your search by asking for hotels with specific amenities. The rates they give are better than some others I’ve seen. Better yet, you can book your flights on their site and line up a rental car if you need one.

Weather

Tuesday, December 4th, 2007

It just got cold around here and I’m freezing my tail off. See, I’m trying to keep my natural gas bill down so I won’t run the heater. I keep getting these things with my gas bill that tell me to buy products that run on natural gas because it is more efficient and cheaper than electricity and that if I want to keep my bill down I should keep the house at 68 or less. 68?! I can’t go out in that kind of weather without 3 or 4 layers of clothing, how am I supposed to walk around the house dressed like that? And since I live in Arizona, it just seems wrong that my biggest home energy bill ever was a winter bill. I know people out there will say I shouldn’t complain, that it’s way colder everywhere else, but I’M COLD TOO!